Novell plans to launch its first Linux desktop offering, which incorporates technology it acquired from German Linux vendor SuSE last year, within the next month. The vendor says it is combining its own proprietary technology with open source software in an “enterprise-ready” desktop operating system that will be a low-cost alternative for most organisations.
Novell’s Linux desktop available soon
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ooooh Suse + Ximian Gnome as default? Has to be the ultimate business desktop!
What filesystem do you guys think they will use?
ReiserFS 3.x. The system is based on SuSE, and so they will use whatever they have tested well.
My money is on XFS,although Suse has traditionally used ReiserFS by default.
Gnovell??? lol
i wish Novell good luck & much success in their Linux venture…
Perhaps JFS to thank IBM for the $50 Million.
Suse IMHO is the best distro out there for general use (server or desktop) for newbie to advrage Linux users. (However I prefer Debian and Gentoo, though I dont recomend them to people)
Ximian has some great stuff.. I love its posh version of Gnome althow I wish they could keep it up to date, Red Carpet (and rug) with abit more work could be the best package manager around and I use Evolution daily, Life wouldent go on for me without it.
I’ve some experance with Netware 5/6 and Ive always liked how its layed out. I think its easier to use (once you know it) then Active Directory and.. The new Groupware stuff just looks fantastic!
If Novell can tie all of these together I think we will finaly start to see Linux migration across entire domains.
we can expect to see SUSE 9.2 some time soon.
How can Novell develop a synergy between the Ximian desktop developers, the Mono developers, and the Suse desktop developers to create something that will differentiate themselves from the other distros.
Does Novell now offer free isos for the downloading? It was my understanding that Suse didn’t. If not, then why should I care about another KDE distro?
Red Carpet (and rug) with abit more work could be the best package manager around
This was the second reason they bought Ximian, the first being Evolution as the client of their GroupWise offering (I liked the earlier one, except that it was a bit buggy in my experience). What they needed was a good software installer for ZENworks.
What filesystem do you guys think they will use?
Well, I’ll tell you what. I managed to get hold of a beta copy that I haven’t gotten around to installing yet. I’ll do so tomorrow and report back what filesystem they’re using.
Is this Netware 7? .. Just wondering because they say “Desktop”..
why should I care about another KDE distro?
I’ve never seen anyone ever using Netware on a home network, so if you were using it at your house.. you wouldent, Its just another distro.. This is Groupware, and it will prolby have a hefty price tag on it.
I would think this is Netware 7 + SuSE + Red Carpet.
“…demonstrated a pilot version of the system, which has a graphical user interface with the look and feel similar to Windows. Kangro says this will give users migrating to the new environment a familiar experience.”
This makes me still hope the default will be KDE, with which the SuSE people have a lot of experience with. If Novell does some clever kiosk pre-locking of the desktop or enables easy graphical tools for it this should work pretty well for larger companies.
Although I still doubt there real “Open Source” intentions… combining all their proprietary stuff in and so on. I tend to think “if it’s not in Debian it’s not real OSS yet”
I`d like a torrent to that beta…
> Ooooh Suse + Ximian Gnome as default?
More Ximian FUD? There will be no default desktop.
> we can expect to see SUSE 9.2 some time soon.
Sure, it’s currently at Beta 3 stage.
In the long run, Novell Linux will be based on Gnome. The main reason being that they’re not going to release a desktop to cusomters and then say “by the way, you’ll also have to pay a small norweigian company a license fee if you don’t want to GPL your apps”. It’s just not going to fly. And of course, the Ximian influence too.
so what features they have added ?
i guess
mono
beagle
dashboard
evolution-2.2
modified nautilus
gnome-panel with rounded corners (ximian old desktop )
open office integration ( gtk file chooser ecc )
some general beautify
Yeah, and by “mono-fying” the distro they can release it as a superior developer platform than RedHat. RedHat better wake up and smell the coffee regarding mono before its too late.
Novell is not going to release a desktop where you have to pay licence fees to Trolltech, but they will release a desktop where you have to pay licence fees to Microsoft because of Mono or have lawsuits with Microsoft because of patent violations? Stop spreading FUD. And before you accuse me of spreading FUD about Mono, please read Seth Nicels blog: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono. Seth Nickel is one of the core GNOME developers
Well, by your .de IP I can understand your affiliation with KDE, but in the long run Novell Linux will be a Gnome desktop. It might take time to phase out KDE, but it will happen. And you do have to pay license fees to Trolltech if your app isn’t GPL’d. Something that is bad from Novell’s marketing decision. Too bad that QT couldn’t have been LGPL.
I read Seth Nickels blog (a long time ago) and he has a right to his opinion. What more can you say. Novell can do whatever they want with Gnome and Mono.
Oh, and you are spreading FUD about Mono. ECMA 335 and 336 are RAND + Royalty Free .
Oh, and you are spreading FUD about Mono. ECMA 335 and 336 are RAND + Royalty Free .
—-
DO you realise that royalty free doesnt necessarily mean FREE as in price? and that not all parts of mono are under an ECMA standard or that MS can demand everyone get a royalty free agreement license which is contrary to Free/open source software or that Mono directly implements parts of .NET with lots of patents on them?
—-And you do have to pay license fees to Trolltech if your app isn’t GPL’d. Something that is bad from Novell’s marketing decision. Too bad that QT couldn’t have been LGPL.
——-
we are creating a free software platform for free software users and NO you dont need to GPL your app. You need a GPL compatible license if you CHOOSE to redistribute your binaries to a third party. so much for FUD
“Seth Nickel is one of the core GNOME developers”
yeah and he’s also known as one of red hat developers
mono is GPL like every gnome programs,the only difference
is that mono may have some problem only with ASP.NET and Remoting patents.
gtk# gnome# glade# gecko# atk# gdk# cairo#
not infringe any patents (i thought ).
and btw redhat sell a distribuition optimized for java
such is not GPL.
so the real FUDDER for me is another person….
In the long run, Novell Linux will be based on Gnome.
This has been said since August of last year. Suse 9.0 was going to be based on Ximian Desktop, as was 9.1. Novell Linux itself is based on Suse.
The main reason being that they’re not going to release a desktop to cusomters and then say “by the way, you’ll also have to pay a small norweigian company a license fee if you don’t want to GPL your apps”.
I’m always amazed as to how people just can ‘t get through their skulls what businesses and enterprises want, and the incredible amount of entirely clueless people who comment but have never been in one in their entire lives. Try this for a rough and ready press release:
“Novell/Suse has a partnership with Trolltech, the developers of the popular development toolkit Qt, to allow seemless commercial and proprietary software development for your business. This is backed up by comprehensive support from Novell/Suse and Trolltech, quality development tools and future proofing for all your application development.”
Sorry to burst your bubble and all, but that will fly. That’s exactly what businesses (and especially medium sized to large corporates) want to hear, and what they will demand. Few small businesses will balk at the license because software development is different (and given the fact that less is being spent on licenses). You are generating software for efficiency and productivity improvements, or selling licenses for profit. That sort of software needs investment, and it is never going to be completely free for everything.
This is exactly why Ximian went out of business as an independent company, simply because they didn’t understand this. They thought they could bring free software development in-house, hack on it and make money by….. well your guess is as good as mine. They seem to think they can now do this in the safe harbour of Novell. Tell me, how has Novell made its money to allow Ximian to do this in the first place?
Mono 1.0 isn’t good enough for complete commercial software development, neither is 1.1 and goodness knows when 2.0 will actually materialise and be good enough for anything. If Ximian had dual licensed Mono then they may have had themselves a working business model and a complete development product that would have had companies like Trolltech and Sun very worried and could have dictated the direction of .Net. But, that just wouldn’t have fitted in with some individuals’ bizarre ideas of what businesses and enterprises want, would it?
Unless the Ximian people change their ideas about how their software uses free software to make money, Gnome will never be the default on any Novell Linux Desktop because there won’t be any Novell Linux Desktop. Potentially they will flush Novell’s entire Linux strategy down the toilet with it, but given past history, Novell are more than capable of doing that by themselves
. The only saving grace they have is Suse, and I sincerely hope that they aren’t going to have been better off remaining as an independant company.
Unless you full understand the above and understand the market that Novell is trying to sell their Linux desktop to, don’t bother commenting with stupidity. Even if Gnome and Ximian were made the one default desktop and software, I’ve given ample evidence as to why it will trip and fall flat on its face before it has even started. It’s actually got nothing to do with Gnome itself, but there it is.
Yeah, and by “mono-fying” the distro they can release it as a superior developer platform than RedHat. RedHat better wake up and smell the coffee regarding mono before its too late.
Who’s the company making the money and who has the working business model here – Red Hat or Ximian (or even Novell)? Show me the money. Smelling the coffee is quite funny, because Red Hat will probably do quite a bit of Java integration – as will Sun. They will differ on the implementations of course.
The only way Mono will be a complete desktop development environment is if it is integrated fully into Gnome, and is good enough to compete with what MS has. The only way Mono will be integrated into Gnome is if Red Hat (and Sun for that matter) as well as many hackers who have reservations, sanction it.
People should know by know that that will never ever happen, so people should wake up and smell the roses in terms of Mono and Gnome integration. If Novell/Ximian do go it alone, they will have a free (speech and gratis) desktop and development environment (if you can call it that) that makes no money directly in any way for Novell. They will then have to develop and support this completely in-house without the help of the wider Gnome community. Economically, that just isn’t an option for Novell even if they were the greatest pro-Mono/Gnome people in the world.
I don’t have a definitive view about the patent situation with Mono because it is all up in the air and uncertain – just the way Microsoft wants it
. Yes it’s royalty free, but what’s the small print? No one knows, not even the ECMA. Yes I know there are different GPL’d implementations to what MS has for .Net (like GTK#), but it is the fundamental platform that they are built, and the actual base standards and how they are licensed that is in question.
Collectively, Gnome can never afford to take that risk and Red Hat and Sun will see to it that it doesn’t. It’s simply amazing how far Mono has got on hot-air, hype and rhetoric in peoples’ minds.
Sorry to burst your bubble and all, but that will fly. That’s exactly what businesses (and especially medium sized to large corporates) want to hear, and what they will demand. Few small businesses will balk at the license because software development is different (and given the fact that less is being spent on licenses). You are generating software for efficiency and productivity improvements, or selling licenses for profit. That sort of software needs investment, and it is never going to be completely free for everything.
This is exactly why Ximian went out of business as an independent company, simply because they didn’t understand this. They thought they could bring free software development in-house, hack on it and make money by….. well your guess is as good as mine. They seem to think they can now do this in the safe harbour of Novell. Tell me, how has Novell made its money to allow Ximian to do this in the first place?
Press releases are meaningless. Novell absolutely does not like having QT as a dependency on its desktop and Ximian’s business models is irrelevant to Novell. They bought Ximian for the developers.
Mono 1.0 isn’t good enough for complete commercial software development, neither is 1.1 and goodness knows when 2.0 will actually materialise and be good enough for anything. If Ximian had dual licensed Mono then they may have had themselves a working business model and a complete development product that would have had companies like Trolltech and Sun very worried and could have dictated the direction of .Net. But, that just wouldn’t have fitted in with some individuals’ bizarre ideas of what businesses and enterprises want, would it?
And you think that writing front-end guis in C++ is somehow good for development. Novell has made it abundantly clear that interop with Microsoft is one of their goals and Mono plays right into that. Mono is way more productive than C++ and that’s what companies really want.
I don’t know why you are still fixated on Ximian. They are no longer a independent entity and their business model is irrelevant.
Unless you full understand the above and understand the market that Novell is trying to sell their Linux desktop to, don’t bother commenting with stupidity. Even if Gnome and Ximian were made the one default desktop and software, I’ve given ample evidence as to why it will trip and fall flat on its face before it has even started. It’s actually got nothing to do with Gnome itself, but there it is.
You are completely clueless if you don’t think that selling a desktop linux to businesses with the Trolltech tax hanging over them is not relevant. Novell’s plans aren’t just to sell to large enterprises. Not only that, but Novell doesn’t want to have to rely on another company to provide the toolkit that is the basis for their desktop. But if you want to ignore business reality then go for it.
Who’s the company making the money and who has the working business model here – Red Hat or Ximian (or even Novell)? Show me the money. Smelling the coffee is quite funny, because Red Hat will probably do quite a bit of Java integration – as will Sun. They will differ on the implementations of course.
Once again, Ximian no longer exists. Java is dead on Microsoft’s desktop and Novell has a competitve advantage if all they have to do is release a different front-end to a C# application that will work on Microsoft’s desktop. Go look at the video at Novell’s brainshare to see their touting of crossplatformness. And to point to Sun and RedHat as great business models is laughable at best. RedHat makes a small amount of money and Sun is bleeding.
The only way Mono will be a complete desktop development environment is if it is integrated fully into Gnome, and is good enough to compete with what MS has. The only way Mono will be integrated into Gnome is if Red Hat (and Sun for that matter) as well as many hackers who have reservations, sanction it.
People should know by know that that will never ever happen, so people should wake up and smell the roses in terms of Mono and Gnome integration. If Novell/Ximian do go it alone, they will have a free (speech and gratis) desktop and development environment (if you can call it that) that makes no money directly in any way for Novell. They will then have to develop and support this completely in-house without the help of the wider Gnome community. Economically, that just isn’t an option for Novell even if they were the greatest pro-Mono/Gnome people in the world.
Novell doesn’t have to break Gnome by integrating Mono. They just have to provide some good apps like Beagle and others that are now being developed and RedHat refuses to package. Evolution will have a mono-based plugin system. God knows that RedHat will dick around with C to the end of time. It’s interesting to note that you mention Java and RedHat, but the developers have stated many times that the Java license is completely unacceptable. Mono’s license is more to their liking, but because of FUD they don’t like it.
I don’t have a definitive view about the patent situation with Mono because it is all up in the air and uncertain – just the way Microsoft wants it
. Yes it’s royalty free, but what’s the small print? No one knows, not even the ECMA. Yes I know there are different GPL’d implementations to what MS has for .Net (like GTK#), but it is the fundamental platform that they are built, and the actual base standards and how they are licensed that is in question.
Collectively, Gnome can never afford to take that risk and Red Hat and Sun will see to it that it doesn’t. It’s simply amazing how far Mono has got on hot-air, hype and rhetoric in peoples’ minds.
The small print doesn’t exist except for people making up FUD about Mono (like redhat people) and rabid Microsoft haters.
You are completely clueless if you don’t think that selling a desktop linux to businesses with the Trolltech tax hanging over them is not relevant.
—-
Misleading. There is not tax for using kde or qt apps in novell. if you are proprietary company looking to sell your product you pay like you do for any other operating system. did you get visual studio for windows for free?. where is the proprietary good gtk apps?. people will pay if you give them something similar to the popular development environment that is QT with excellent docs and support. not plain gtk.
—
The small print doesn’t exist except for people making up FUD about Mono (like redhat people) and rabid Microsoft haters.
—
software patents are a bigger problem than MS.
Java is dead on Microsoft’s desktop
—-
Please tell IBM and SUN making millions of dollars on Java with windows
> In the long run, Novell Linux will be based on Gnome.
Your opinion. Just read a report from Brainshare Europe that Novell will follow the dual desktop road for 1,5 years and without mentioned plans for the time after.
> And of course, the Ximian influence too.
Oh, the mysterious mighty Ximian influence. Don’t do you think that SUSE has influence too? Being times bigger than Ximian.
> beagle
> dashboard
> evolution-2.2
You’re sure that you’re talking about the next/first release of NLD? 🙂
> open office integration ( gtk file chooser ecc )
Don’t forget the KDE file choose. 🙂
Whatever.
Can’t Wait to get my hands on it :-),and to upgrade my
dualboot SuSE/Debian laptop.
“You’re sure that you’re talking about the next/first release of NLD”
i don’t know if first release will provide this stuff,but
surely will.
Cheers
Desktop Enviroment wars again?
I predict that the next few upcoming releases will be KDE based, However I would expect Novell to use Gnome eventualy, mostaly because the center piece is Evolution, then there is the QT licence and we know they have big plans for Red Carpet.
While some of the Novell/Ximian developers are clearly developing on Novell Linux Desktops, it is unclear if that Desktop is the product to be released.
It’s also unclear if this forthcoming release will target the enterprise channel or the consumer channel. If the former, remember that enterprise products are typically priced well beyond the range of the consumer market. I.e., I’ll pay $100 for a good new release, but not $500.
SuSE also markets enterprise products. Now that they’re part of Novell, will they drop their enterprise products or rebadge the Novell boxes?
More fundamentally, what’s going to distinguish a SuSE Linux product from a Novell Linux product?
It’s also unclear if this release will incorportate things like Gnome 2.8 or an updated Ximian, Mono, Mono apps, etc.
One can always hope.
(And, Lundbergh: Why does the availablity of a give-away CD determine whether a distribution merits using? Linux is not about giving it away.)
i completely agree, don’t seem that they have a well written
roadmap….
the only things we know,are only few press releases and some
rumors.
i never viewed some screenshots some features nothing zero
nada
is real true this NLD or is only a vapourware ?
The latest Beta version of the Novell Linux Desktop has both Gnome and KDE as optional, with no preference which one user should select. Whether that applies to the final product as well, that remain to be seen.
OK I have to agree with Lumbergh on this one, for the following reasons:
– traffic on Planet Novell/Planet SUSE has been all about Gnome. I haven’t found 1 occurrence of “kde” in the last 3 months!
– there was already a press release that indicated that Novell’s intergration work is being done on Gnome only. *cough* Gnome bounty
– why hasen’t Novell helped with the QT# bindings?
– all the screenshots I’ve seen of NLD have been of a Gnome desktop.
But for the short term, KDE is going to be there. Remember netapplet http://nat.org/2004/august/netapplet.png The developers got a lot of flack for this being a notification area object instead of an applet. Their rational was that a prerequisite for netapplet was that it had to work on KDE aswell.
> traffic on Planet Novell/Planet SUSE has been all about Gnome. I haven’t found 1 occurrence of “kde” in the last 3 months!
Very few of the German (and hense SUSE) KDE developers blog AT ALL. Those who do, like Waldo Bastian, do so once every few months, and they aren’t even ON the PlanetSUSE blogroll. Judging from the blogroll of PlanetSUSE, it seems like a bunch of Ximian people with a few SUSE kernel hackers added in for good measure.
Most people on PlanetKDE, for example, are not from central europe, which leaves off a lot of KDE developers. Blogging isn’t “hip” yet in Germany. (yet)
In fact, I don’t see ANY SUSE/KDE developers on PlanetNovell OR PlanetSUSE. Almost none of them blog.
…we can expect to see SUSE 9.2 some time soon.
I recently received an email reply from Suse and they said
“The next version of SUSE LINUX, which will be announced soon, will have many more WLAN drivers included!”
>there was already a press release that indicated that
>Novell’s intergration work is being done on Gnome only.
Let me guess, that press release was from Ximian, right? 😉
If you followed KDE CVS digest, you’d know that integration work is being done in KDE too, mainly in Kontact and in Kopete. Not to mention Waldo’s Kiosk tool which was specifically written for Novell Linux Desktop.
Ahh, I can’t tell how much I love Ximian FUD 🙂
>>Let me guess, that press release was from Ximian, right? 😉
http://news.com.com/Novell+to+release+enhanced+Linux+in+fall/2100-7…
“…Christine McLellan, a Novell senior product manager.
[…]
McLellan said. However, Novell’s integration work is happening only with the GNOME applications, she said.”
>:)
Should anybody ever write a history book about the early days of Linux this will be one of the headlines for sure.
Nobody except some geek toy freaks likes having two DEs. It’s a nightmare for ordinary desktop users, cooperate users etc.
Lately some people said “choice” should be eliminated to fix the problem, completely ignoring the fact that free-floating evolution will – sooner or later – eliminate the problem automatically.
Which C compiler does every Linux distro use? GCC
Which X server does every Linux distro use? XFree86 (ok, right now we are in a transition period and soon the new standard will be X.org)
Which Office Suite does almsot every Linux distro use? OpenOffice.org
Why? Because these pieces of software are clearly superiour to all available alternatives. Right now neither KDE nor GNOME is clearly superiour. Both DE’s have their strengths and weaknesses. But sooner or later one DE will get a clear lead and become the standard. The DE wars are that bitter because the DE fanboys now that either KDE or GNOME will have to disappear into the shadows sooner or later. Of course you could still install it. Just like you can use AfterStep, XFCE, ratpoison or whatever instead of KDE/GNOME but only a tiny minority of people with “special needs” will do this.
The DE fragmentation problem will be solved believe me (and I’m 90% GNOME will win
)
“…Christine McLellan, a Novell senior product manager.
[…]
McLellan said. However, Novell’s integration work is happening only with the GNOME applications, she said.”
As I have pointed out before, Christine McLellan is a former employee of Ximian, whatever her job title (or Nat Friedman’s) might say
. A simple Google search will bring you the delights of all the bollocks she’s come up with before. Maybe they had to convince the venture capitalists that they were actually doing something for their 15 million dollars, I don’t know 
.
It seems as though some people are still determined to believe this stuff. There’s stuff that Ximian has come up with from 2000 onwards that never happened, but it still won’t sink in somehow.
All of this rubbish is doing serious collective damage to the credibility of Linux on the desktop because four/five years later, the hearsay and decisive sounding eweek/zdnet/vnunet interviews and press releases are still based on vapourware.
It’s entirely possible, or likely, that Novell’s release will deal with Gnome and KDE on an equal footing. By that, I mean including current and working versions of both, unlike recent SuSE releases.
It’s also entirely possible that what people see, or don’t see, on the blogs doesn’t reflect Novell’s direction. Now, if Novell’s managers and marketers had blogs, that might be a different issue. Yes, the ex-Ximian develops blogs have been Gnome-centric for months. What else would you expect? They’re Gnome developers. And, if SuSE’s German KDE developers aren’t blogging, so what? SuSE’s Gnome needs a lot of work, while their KDE needs less work.
As for Mono: Leaving aside Microsoft’s intentions, Mono is still new and barely ready for prime time. The runtime is at 1.02, is available in “supported” versions only on SusE, Fedora and Redhat, and the number of released and functioning Mono apps can be counted on one hand. Because no single organization can enforce coding standards on Linux developers (this ain’t Apple) neither Mono, C#, or any other language or environment will ever dominate.
Meanwhile, if Novell’s primary target is interoperability with Microsoft, not the ghostly consumer Linux market, it makes sense that Novell would fund and support something that holds out the promise of, literally, talking the same language as .NET.
<:(
I still stand behind my other 3 points
*tips hat to David and runs away
– traffic on Planet Novell/Planet SUSE has been all about Gnome. I haven’t found 1 occurrence of “kde” in the last 3 months!
I’ve wondered what the point of PlanetSuse is. There are no actual Suse employees on it (pre-Novell that is)! I don’t know.
I think Suse themselves have a cultural difference in that they don’t seem to blog about anything going on internally. Notice that recently, even some of the ‘Ximian’ people have been blogging less.
– why hasen’t Novell helped with the QT# bindings?
No idea. I suppose any agreement with the Qt# bindings would have to be done with the agreement of Trolltech as well to seriously push it forwards. It depends on whether Trolltech and Suse internally feel that Mono and Qt# is good enough to get behind and base a lot of application development on it. Despite Trolltech flirting with the idea and given the state of Mono, I doubt whether they will.
– all the screenshots I’ve seen of NLD have been of a Gnome desktop.
Well, there is a KDE desktop in NLD because it looks like the same track of development as Suse 9.2. Culturally, Suse don’t seem keen on showing you anything until it’s out the door. Sensible, but frustrating in that you don’t get any information out of them and it looks as if nothing is happening. They may have to change this attitude when customers demand to know what is going on and want ‘roadmaps’.
Despite any desktop strategy though, Novell have some serious strategic catching up to do with Red Hat on their home turf. They are moving into the server application space, rather than just selling a distribution, and seriously threatening some pretty serious Novell (and Sun to a lesser extent) cash cows.
Personally, I think Red Hat are looking in far better shape than Suse/Novell do, and this is after all the talk about Red Hat becoming irrelevant when Novell took over Suse. Their desktop strategy was a bit of a mess, but they’ve been proven right as the desktop wasn’t moving. Sun are throwing anything they can out of the gutter at Red Hat at the moment, so they must be doing something right.
The recent purchase of the Netscape software was a masterstroke – I can’t put into words just how good that was. Sun lambasts Red Hat. Red Hat throws some mud back and responds with some action.
They get pretty good software for comparitively little money, and GPL it like the always do. The absolute killer was the fact that this is an iteration of the very same software Sun has based their iPlanet server software on (mud in the eye there). Sun made an exhorbitant deal with Netscape and AOL in 1998 to use this software. Red Hat get it for pretty much nothing and GPL it! Absolute masterstroke. It certainly isn’t antique software as Sun is claiming, because it is a version up (6) from the Netscape Server Suite (5) that iPlanet is based on. That’s got to hurt! I’ve really got to hand it to Red Hat. I don’t know whether it was intentional, but who cares?
If Sun and Suse/Novell aren’t careful, Red Hat are going to completely wipe out their proprietary (and very expensive for Novell) server software business (they are already bringing together web application server technology). Sun has as little as it is to go on without this. I find it amusing that both Novell and Sun have played up the idea of security and identity management, web application and services server software, made very swish (and very over-complicated) looking presentations on it (Novell Brainshare) and then Red Hat gazzumps them with this.
Sun and Novell are looking more like old dinosaurs, and Suse are looking very wrong for going for the Novell deal. They should have stayed by themselves. I bow down before Red Hat. I haven’t liked them in the past, but they’re quietly pulling off extremely good strategic moves while the Sun rhetoric acts as a perfect smokescreen.
It takes time to build a good business, and Red Hat are doing it well so far. The ball, as usual, is in Sun and Novell’s court and it’s going to be there for a while.
suse is the distribution where kde is integrated best
i hope novell will continue to use kde
to get on that beta testing cycle -I love breaking software and I’ve been wanting to get off Fedora for a while now for various reasons – amongst them Redhat’s stance on Mono.
Should anybody ever write a history book about the early days of Linux this will be one of the headlines for sure.
Nobody except some geek toy freaks likes having two DEs. It’s a nightmare for ordinary desktop users, cooperate users etc.
Lately some people said “choice” should be eliminated to fix the problem, completely ignoring the fact that free-floating evolution will – sooner or later – eliminate the problem automatically.
Which C compiler does every Linux distro use? GCC
Which X server does every Linux distro use? XFree86 (ok, right now we are in a transition period and soon the new standard will be X.org)
Which Office Suite does almsot every Linux distro use? OpenOffice.org
Exactly the points I was making on the last (of numerous) “Choice” articles But I believe the Xfree86 vs X.org is pretty much moot because they both are based on a X specification so it doesn’t really matter.
The DE wars are that bitter because the DE fanboys now that either KDE or GNOME will have to disappear into the shadows sooner or later. Of course you could still install it. Just like you can use AfterStep, XFCE, ratpoison or whatever instead of KDE/GNOME but only a tiny minority of people with “special needs” will do this.
The DE fragmentation problem will be solved believe me (and I’m 90% GNOME will win
)
One should’ve dissappeared into the shadows a while ago and it should’ve been Gnome, but because KDE relies on the QT toolkit it will have to be the one to go. Also, the Gnome people have made its desktop less busy and more appealing to the coporate desktop which will translates into the home desktop at a later date.
One should’ve dissappeared into the shadows a while ago and it should’ve been Gnome, but because KDE relies on the QT toolkit it will have to be the one to go.
Then Gnome should have kept producing a well structured answer to Qt with Harmony. As it is, after all these years Gnome is still a developers nightmare and it isn’t going to change.
For the rest of the people who live in the real world, Qt was never, and will never be a problem. Secretly, many people who would wish otherwise know this to be the case. Open source software is about shared mutual effort between projects and companies. Companies can’t do everything themselves, but then again, neither can open source projects.
See previous posts as to why Qt will not disappear, and certainly not in the case of Novell as to how they will fund and bring support to their desktop.
I find it amusing that people promote Gnome as a corporate desktop (whatever that is), but it doesn’t have a commercial, corporate grade development environment to go with it. There it is.
Also, the Gnome people have made its desktop less busy and more appealing to the corporate desktop which will translates into the home desktop at a later date.
Apparently, Gnome has been on corporate desktops since about 2000. Companies must keep them very well hidden, that’s all I can say
. Gnome is not a corporate desktop, and neither is KDE for that matter. People shouldn’t pretend otherwise or else the chances of them actually being corporate desktops will be zero.
he press release I wrote was an example as to what customers would expect to see…
I was responding to your comment about the press release. I wasn’t trying to pass it off as my own.
Ximian’s people are, presumably, the ones who execute the strategy, write the press releases and chart a course as to how Novell will have a working business model based around open source software and how they will make money. That is the point! Ximian have proven from past history that they are, laughably, not capable of doing that.
You truly are clueless aren’t you. Once again, for the slow learners, Novell knew that Ximian’s business plan sucked, but they didn’t care because they bought Ximian for their engineering and desktop design, not because they’re great marketers.
It is not the C++ that you know, love and hate in Win32 and elsewhere that is important, it is the toolkit that counts. Qt as a toolkit makes things way more productive than anything else (no one is using .Net fully as they still have a lot of legacy applications, and definitely not Mono) and it is a safe bet that Qt will get more languages supported with it.
A great toolkit, no doubt, but a toolkit that you still have to pay for unless you’re willing to GPL-compatible your app. Microsoft’s C/C++,.NET sdks are free. At least Trolltech could do is sell an IDE. .NET can interop with COM and both Mono/.NET has a dropdead easy way to pinvoke into native code, unlike the JNI mess (but what would you expect from Sun who doesn’t even believe in legacy code apparently. Gtk+ still has more language support and it’s much easier to do bindings to C than C++.
And yet, businesses from small to large pay that Microsoft tax over and over and have so much less freedom than a Linux distribution simply using Qt would provide it isn’t believable. Go figure. The above argument is tired, very old now and totally disconnected from reality. The reality is that the Microsoft tax is not relevant to many people, believe it or not, however much they want to get away from Windows deep inside. Novell has to convince them otherwise and give them a good and well supported option
Well, you almost had it there, but forgot to mention that Microsoft’s SDKs are free to use for as many developers and as many projects as you want without paying a dime. I agree that Novell has to differentiate itself, and giving Mono support is a way they can do it. Just re-packaging Gnome doesn’t do that.
The business reality is that it is not economically viable for Novell to fund Mono (and GTK etc.) and a complete development environment of the sort that will be required, in-house with no immediate ROI (no funding via licenses) and no sharing of the development load.
No one can do any of this alone, and companies like Novell need business partners to do this with. That’s why the have half-heartedly partnered with JBoss – yes JBoss is the application server on Novell/Suse’s servers, not Mono.
Novell doesn’t go it alone with Gtk+ or Mono development. In fact, Redhat and Sun do the vast majority of the funding for gtk+ (Novell gets a free ride), and Mono is an open source project (unlike Java) and the majority of the Mono developers are not paid by Novell at all.
Not elsewhere it isn’t, and it isn’t dead on the Linux desktop because nothing can die. You’re not getting confused here are you? It is a Linux desktop Novell are selling and not a Windows one?
Look at Novell’s current core market, which is non-Windows servers, and start from there. How many Java web application servers are there for Linux/Unix, and what is the market? That’s why Suse/Novell ship JBoss as their main web app server.
Try to stay on subject here. We’re not talking about servers, we’re talking about the desktop. Java is dead on the Windows and Linux desktop. People that write Gnome/Gtk+ apps are flocking to Mono/Gtk#, not Java. Are you even aware of the reality of the situation?
Microsoft’s future plans for .Net development involve a lot of stuff that will be tied tightly to Windows. As a strategy, chasing that is an absolute non-starter and needs to be avoided at all costs. Chasing Micrsoft’s tail-lights will become more of a priority than creating new web standards through the W3C, which is extremely dangerous.
The only thing that is tied to Microsoft on .NET is the Microsoft.Enterprise and windows OS specific stuff which is miniscule compared to the number of classes in the framework. It’s apparent that you are clueless to .NET or Mono, which you are commenting on. Mono already has ASP.NET, ADO.NET done and Windows Forms would’ve been done by now too if they hadn’t been stupid and tried to rely on Wine. They now have fulltime developers working on a fully managed version that will emulate the most common wndproc uses.
No. For Gnome to be a full development desktop, it has to be fully integrated with Gnome – nothing else will do in the face of Windows. People have to be able to use and extend the control centre/panel, they have to be able to interface with the applet components and interface with absolutely everything else. That doesn’t happen right now.
Look to Microsoft as to how to produce an integrated development desktop environment.
Well, if Novell can can produce a compatible Gnome DE while integrating Mono then that is a way to differentiate itself. Gnome is mostly a collection of random apps anyway, compared to the KDE desktop framework which is highly integrated. Gnome desperatly needs a decent IDE like KDevelop.
I thought we all hated Microsoft to an extent, and are quite rightly suspicious of anything they license given past history?
Hehe, and the fanboy truth comes out. Windows is just a tool except to the freaks that think its a religion. There is no license for ecma 335 and 336.
The small print does exist, because Microsoft effectively controls the direction of the standard. What happens if Microsoft changes its mind? Who knows. No one from Ximian/Novell, ECMA or even Red Hat has clarified that fully. The ECMA .Net standards are not standards in the same way as those from ISO etc. You can’t just adhere to them with nothing attached even under certain circumstances. The stuff about Mono isn’t FUD until someone does a full legal analysis, and publishes it publicly, of what those ECMA terms actually stipulate.
And you keep on promoting Java, and your worried about .NET which actually has a standard and has the backing of a company that isn’t bleeding money like a schizophrenic Sun. You should be a lot more worried about Sun’s control of Java.
If you support Gnome as whole and what the Ximian people are doing at Novell, then you are really seriously embarrassing yourself with some pretty daft comments. But hey, that’s what we’ve come to expect over the years and why Ximian, as you say, no longer exists as a private company. If this attitude wins out at Novell, their Linux strategy (nevermind their desktop one) can be written off now.
The difference between me and you is that I’m not a KDE, or Gnome, or Linux fanboy. I’ve said in the past on these forums many times that I think that KDE is technically superior to Gnome, but its widespread adoption has been hindered by QT’s licensing scheme. It’s obvious you live in a delusional fantasy world if you don’t think that the QT license and control by Trolltech didn’t have an influence on Sun and Redhat’s decision to go with a Gnome desktop.
Your fixation with Ximian is bizarre. Ximian is irrelevant as an entity that needs to sell itself. They can focus on what they do best. And that is produce a good desktop, which I don’t think even you can say they have to prove.
I’ll look forward to your comments when Novell releases its gnome-centric desktop linux in the future.
A great toolkit, no doubt, but a toolkit that you still have to pay for unless you’re willing to GPL-compatible your app.
Oh no, poor developers wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Damn Trolltech to hell for trying to make money off their work while said developers are trying to as well (not releasing under the gpl implies money making as while it is possible to make money with gpl software, it is more practical with a proprietary license).
You forgot to include in the italics that Microsoft’s SDKs are free and there are other high-quality, crossplatform toolkits that are free too, like wxWidgets. No licenses needed. Heck, Trolltech doesn’t even have the windows gpl version of the toolkit on their downloads page.
So many people here seem to believe that Qt license is actually expensive. Well, if you are a poor sharewarenik then yes, the price might be prohibitive for you. But for medium and big ISVs this won’t be a problem, because time and effort savings provided by Qt will quickly outweigh the cost of licenses. Just consider how much you pay a good programmer for a day of work… (well, not here in Russia, but that’s another story ;-))
On the other hand, if you write crap software, free-as-in-beer Qt won’t help you much. And if it’s really good, people will buy and use you GTK+ soft even if KDE is their DE of choice.
And, by the way, IDE is a must anyway. Visual Studio Professional costs something like 1100$, so where’s the difference?
For cetain types of projects the cost isn’t really prohibitive. But that’s not really the point. The point is that QT is the basis for a major linux desktop environment, and if you’re going to compete with Windows, and low-cost is the major selling point of linux, then that’s just one more negative for selling linux.
We evaluated QT and came to the conclusion for what we were doing, releasing lots of little configuration and app management utilities to support our main software product, was not cost effective when you also factor in the per-OS/per developer/per app licensing fees.
Toolkits are becoming a commodity product, just like so many other libraries in the windows and linux world.
And, by the way, IDE is a must anyway. Visual Studio Professional costs something like 1100$, so where’s the difference?
Hehe, better tell all the Unix developers that an IDE is “a must”.
Better yet, for in-house development you can safely use GPLed Qt, because GPL explicitly permits that (as long as you don’t distribute your software). All in all, Qt seems to be an excellent choice for quite a lot of cases, and these cases pretty much describe the market Novell is aiming for.
<<Hehe, better tell all the Unix developers that an IDE is “a must”>>
Hehe, so you think if, say, Steinberg develops a Linux version of Cubase, they’ll be doing it in Emacs? We’re going to compete with WINDOWS here, after all, aren’t we? 🙂
Can’t your customers use your GTK+ apps in KDE? If yes, then what’s your point? If the problem is that they look different, there are plenty of unified themes around (I especially like MetaTheme — it uses the same engine for painting Qt, GTK+ and Java widgets; results are pretty impressive already for a 0.0.3 version).
Besides that, what exactly is per app license fee? AFAIK Qt doesn’t require anything like that…
There is a per developer/per OS/ per application “licensing” fee, not a royalty per app.
Umm, Netwares ONLY product will be Open Enterprise Server. This product is Ximian + SUSE + Nterprise clients.
If you have an account on Novells site, and you had tried to see about future beta’s, you would have had the opertunity to see this product earlier.
Novell has given up on Netware, they won’t publicly admit this, but its relatively easy to see. Even the only product that continues Netware will include SUSE just to tease the users.
There are no words that can fully convery your cluelessness. Here are some numbers for you:
Organization of 10 people, 1 of them a developer that produces proprietary for-sale apps: Price $1000
Organization of 100 people, 10 of them developers that produces proprietary for-sale apps: Price $10000
Organization of 1000 people, 100 of them developers that produce proprietary for sale apps: Price 100,000 (Actually, much lower because you get volume discounts, but we’ll keep it simple).
You believe that a 1000-strong organizaton can afford to hire 100 developers, yet cannot pay the equivalent to one developer/year salary for the licenses, you are seriously deluded. Particulary if those 100 licenses save the company tons of devopment man hours that result from a top of the line toolkit.
You really, really do the world a very poor service with your comments.
Welcome to the real world, master of FUD.
It doesn’t matter if its “worth it”. That’s completely irrelevant. And that’s all you people can come up with. The point is that QT is the toolkit for a major desktop on Linux.
Do you ever stop and think why RedHat and Sun chose Gnome over KDE when QT and KDE are superior frameworks? It’s because of the QT license.
It doesn’t matter how many times you whine “but QT is worth it”, Novell Desktop Linux will eventually be a Gnome-centric distro and if you can’t realize that, then you need someone to take the cluestick to you.
And don’t forget that you don’t pay just per developer. You also pay per OS, and per application.
I was responding to your comment about the press release. I wasn’t trying to pass it off as my own.
No, I made that press release up as an example of what businesses would want to read. Were you born this way, or has this come on gradually?
You truly are clueless aren’t you. Once again, for the slow learners, Novell knew that Ximian’s business plan sucked, but they didn’t care because they bought Ximian for their engineering and desktop design, not because they’re great marketers.
Look, Novell bought the people. Ximian’s people are now implementing one of a few open source strategies that Novell are implementing. Therefore Ximian’s thinking on how to go about doing this, and the business models Novell will employ, is absolutely critical because that is exactly what Novell bought. If they were crap then, they are crap now.
A great toolkit, no doubt, but a toolkit that you still have to pay for unless you’re willing to GPL-compatible your app.
An enterprise does not care about this. If you go into a board room and explain the advantages of Gnome to an IT director in these terms, you’ll be told to leave. Businesses, and especially medium to large businesses, buy licenses for development. Read my previous comments as to why.
Microsoft’s C/C++,.NET sdks are free.
The software certainly isn’t free, and neither are the licenses.
At least Trolltech could do is sell an IDE. .NET can interop with COM and both Mono/.NET has a dropdead easy way to pinvoke into native
Why? I can tell you don’t do this for a living.
Well, you almost had it there, but forgot to mention that Microsoft’s SDKs are free to use for as many developers and as many projects as you want without paying a dime.
Oh, please – it doesn’t come off. You just don’t understand how stupid you’ve made yourself look. The software to run it (you know, Windows) is most certainly not free and neither are the licenses or the platform.
Given this, why don’t people just use Windows? You’re complaining profusely about Qt’s licensing, and then you have the bloody nerve to tell me that Microsoft’s SDKs are somehow free!!!
Novell doesn’t go it alone with Gtk+ or Mono development. In fact, Redhat and Sun do the vast majority of the funding for gtk+
And yet GTK still isn’t good enough.
and the majority of the Mono developers are not paid by Novell at all.
Without Novell sponsoring the project it would never be where it is – which isn’t very far even then.
Try to stay on subject here. We’re not talking about servers, we’re talking about the desktop.
Novell’s core business is servers, not desktops. Keep your head out of the clouds.
Java is dead on the Windows and Linux desktop. People that write Gnome/Gtk+ apps are flocking to Mono/Gtk#, not Java. Are you even aware of the reality of the situation?
Look on Trolltech’s site for businesses, entire industries and enterprises who use Qt. Then tell me about equivalents that are flocking to GTK and Mono.
We’re talking about the big, bad development world outside which is Novell’s target market for NLD, not a bunch of Gnome/GTK developers.
The only thing that is tied to Microsoft on .NET is the Microsoft.Enterprise and windows OS specific stuff which is miniscule compared to the number of classes in the framework.
Windows.Forms is tied to Windows, as will Indigo, Avalon and various other technologies. They will be extended at the time of Longhorn, if these technologies are successful, with a great deal of Windows specific technology – and it will be tied. Learn your history.
It’s apparent that you are clueless to .NET or Mono, which you are commenting on. Mono already has ASP.NET, ADO.NET
Mono does not have ASP.NET, and it is nowhere near usable. Emulating a few assemblies means nothing. As ADO.NET and other components are extended with new drivers and Windows specific extensions it will become impossible to run applications unmodified between Windows and Mono.
It’s a total pipe-dream, OK? It’s been tried before by IBM when they were fighting Windows 3.0/3.1. It doesn’t bloody work.
They now have fulltime developers working on a fully managed version that will emulate the most common wndproc uses.
And I thought you said there was very little tied to Windows? There’s my point right there.
Well, if Novell can can produce a compatible Gnome DE while integrating Mono then that is a way to differentiate itself.
And when’s that going to happen?
Hehe, and the fanboy truth comes out. Windows is just a tool except to the freaks that think its a religion. There is no license for ecma 335 and 336.
Fanboy? You want to read your own comments.
You think that if you wish, but Microsoft has a past history of this, such as sender ID, That was wisely kicked out into touch. The ECMA standards does give scope for Microsoft’s patents on them. That’s a fact. To what extent needs to be determined.
And you keep on promoting Java
Nope, I don’t. That’s what Sun and Red Hat want though.
and your worried about .NET which actually has a standard
I’m not worried about .Net, because no one’s using it. People have too many legacy applications as it is. I would be worried about the potential implications for Mono in Gnome if .Net does take off around Longhorn, but I don’t really care.
backing of a company that isn’t bleeding money like a schizophrenic Sun.
As opposed to Ximian, which never posted a profit in its life? And you want Novell to turn their Linux strategy over to them?
The difference between me and you is that I’m not a KDE, or Gnome, or Linux fanboy.
No, you’re an idiot with no experience whatsoever.
I’ve said in the past on these forums many times that I think that KDE is technically superior to Gnome, but its widespread adoption has been hindered by QT’s licensing scheme.
By all means back that up, but you won’t be able to. Adoption of both KDE and Gnome has been hindered by Windows’ monopoly and the mechanisms that keep it in place.
Again, what kind of licenses do you think people have to buy in the world now? Again, you haven’t the foggiest as to what the situation is for most people in the world today. In the face of this, you think Qt licensing is prohibitive?
Please, work in a few companies and gain some proper experience before you open your mouth.
It’s obvious you live in a delusional fantasy world if you don’t think that the QT license and control by Trolltech didn’t have an influence on Sun and Redhat’s decision to go with a Gnome desktop.
I couldn’t give jack s**t what prompted Sun and Red Hat to choose Gnome. Give me the name of an enterprise that will reject KDE for Gnome based on a development license. Ximian tried for five years and didn’t find one.
Red Hat was always there with Gnome historically, and Sun had Java which they didn’t want Qt to compete with. Gnome was also heavily based on CORBA and C, and this certainly suited Sun down to the ground. Certainly, that was a big factor with Sun.
Your fixation with Ximian is bizarre. Ximian is irrelevant as an entity that needs to sell itself.
For the last time – Ximian are the people who are supposedly, along with Suse, executing Novell’s strategy. Ximian are proven failures – that’s the material point.
I’ll look forward to your comments when Novell releases its gnome-centric desktop linux in the future.
I’ll look forward to your comments when they don’t. We’re always looking forward, aren’t we? Suse 9.0, 9.1….they all came and went.
If they were somehow stupid enough to do that, I’ll look forward to your comments when it doesn’t sell and they are forced to withdraw it.
But that’s not really the point. The point is that QT is the basis for a major linux desktop environment, and if you’re going to compete with Windows, and low-cost is the major selling point of linux, then that’s just one more negative for selling linux.
And yet you expect Red Hat, Novell and Sun to pump the millions in when GTK falls short? Development tools and toolkits are not commodities, but the software that comes out of them rapidly is. Software generation itself is not a commodity. Those that think it is churn out terrible software that is not cost effective and wax lyrical on the joys of .Net
.
We evaluated QT and came to the conclusion for what we were doing, releasing lots of little configuration and app management utilities to support our main software product, was not cost effective when you also factor in the per-OS/per developer/per app licensing fees.
You missed his crap software point above
. You also want to start viewing your software development as a whole.
Toolkits are becoming a commodity product, just like so many other libraries in the windows and linux world.
If you think GTK or wxWidgets comes anywhere near close to Qt you don’t develop for a living. Developers need future proofing, future development, support, patches and documentation. Where is the documentation in GTK or Mono? A distribution cannot provide that themselves.
And don’t forget that you don’t pay just per developer. You also pay per OS, and per application.
You don’t pay per application.
It doesn’t matter if its “worth it”. That’s completely irrelevant. And that’s all you people can come up with. The point is that QT is the toolkit for a major desktop on Linux.
Qt being GPL’d is more than enough for most people. If it isn’t enough for you, then that’s pretty much tough.
I couldn’t care a less if it is irrelevant to you, it is not irrelevant to a corporate environment – you know, the places you think Gnome is best suited to? The press release I wrote before is what they want to hear.
If you don’t like it, go away and make something that is going to be better than Qt in the real world.
If you try to sell your wares into an enterprise and start talking about licensing like this, you will be told to leave – that simple. Talking like this will ensure Qt is chosen. You can’t just go in and tell company that using Qt because it’s worth it is irrelevant!!! Goodness me.
You either pay the licenses, or fund development with money or time until GTK/wxWidgets are on a par with Qt and put your money where your mouth is. The time and investment of the GTK and wxWidgets developers is not free or a commodity, and it’s insulting that you somehow think it is.
Look, Novell bought the people. Ximian’s people are now implementing one of a few open source strategies that Novell are implementing. Therefore Ximian’s thinking on how to go about doing this, and the business models Novell will employ, is absolutely critical because that is exactly what Novell bought. If they were crap then, they are crap now.
Once again, you prove that you know nothing of Novell’s strategy. You even contradict yourself by saying that Ximian’s people are there to implement Novell’s strategy, but then go on about how Ximian’s “business strategy” is critical. Ximian is there to do engineering and desktop design not to give Novell advice on how to run a business. Did you get beat up by an Ximian developer at one time?…because your fixation with them is hilarious.
Novell’s core business is servers, not desktops. Keep your head out of the clouds.
Did you even read the article title? Try a remedial reading course.[/i]
Look on Trolltech’s site for businesses, entire industries and enterprises who use Qt. Then tell me about equivalents that are flocking to GTK and Mono.
We’re talking about the big, bad development world outside which is Novell’s target market for NLD, not a bunch of Gnome/GTK developers.
Yeah, Trolltech tells you that entire industries use QT and you buy it. Hilarious. It’s just a toolkit among many other good toolkits. You sure seem to take a lot of stock in press releases. Qt and Trolltech are just a blip on the screen of the development world.
Windows.Forms is tied to Windows, as will Indigo, Avalon and various other technologies. They will be extended at the time of Longhorn, if these technologies are successful, with a great deal of Windows specific technology – and it will be tied. Learn your history.
You really are a moron aren’t you. Do you even know what Windows.Forms is? It’s just an API. The only way that any .NET/Mono winforms application is tied into the operating system is if the developer pinvokes into a platform specific feature.
Mono does not have ASP.NET, and it is nowhere near usable. Emulating a few assemblies means nothing. As ADO.NET and other components are extended with new drivers and Windows specific extensions it will become impossible to run applications unmodified between Windows and Mono.
Which is it McFly? Do they not have ASP.NET, or is it nowhere near usable, and they’re emulating a few assemblies? Emulating? Pull your head out of your ass. Do you even know the definition of Emulating? They’re implementing an API.
It’s a total pipe-dream, OK? It’s been tried before by IBM when they were fighting Windows 3.0/3.1. It doesn’t bloody work.
Meaningless babble. IBM/Windows 3.0/3.1 has nothing to do with Mono.
‘m not worried about .Net, because no one’s using it. People have too many legacy applications as it is. I would be worried about the potential implications for Mono in Gnome if .Net does take off around Longhorn, but I don’t really care.
Stop embarrassing yourself. .NET is the future of windows and there are tons of people using it. You must be pretty isolated in your linux-fanboy world.
As opposed to Ximian, which never posted a profit in its life? And you want Novell to turn their Linux strategy over to them?
Put down the crackpipe. Your fixation with Ximian is bizarre. Novell is not turning their Linux strategy over to them.
By all means back that up, but you won’t be able to. Adoption of both KDE and Gnome has been hindered by Windows’ monopoly and the mechanisms that keep it in place.
Oh its evil Microsoft’s monopoly that has hindered widerspread Gnome and KDE adoptance. Hehe. Poor fanboy always has excuses on why Linux on the desktop hasn’t skyrocketed. I mean its technically superior and all, but meanie Microsoft keeps it down. Hilarious.
I couldn’t give jack s**t what prompted Sun and Red Hat to choose Gnome. Give me the name of an enterprise that will reject KDE for Gnome based on a development license. Ximian tried for five years and didn’t find one.
Sun and Redhat doesn’t care if you don’t give jack s**t, but they did have reasons and the QT license is one of them. Bury your head in the sand.
For the last time – Ximian are the people who are supposedly, along with Suse, executing Novell’s strategy. Ximian are proven failures – that’s the material point.
You sure are dense aren’t you. Make up your mind is, is it Novell’s strategy or is it Ximian’s strategy? Once again, Ximian was bought for its engineering and desktop design, not because of its business prowess.
Where did you get the “per application” thing from?
If you hadn’t written that you would have managed to post a correct posting about Qt licencing, which is pretty good, usually only developers using Qt in close source settings get this right
http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/license_commercial.html?cid…
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html
Hmm, you might be on to something. Those pages are a bit vague, and it appears that you have to renew on an annual basis, which to me would actually be worse than a per application license. By the way, I didn’t mean a runtime royalty, but a license per application developed.
In order to try and glean some more information about the licensing I went ahead and filled in an order for 2 developers/Mac/Win/X11/Enterprise. $8960
> In order to try and glean some more information
> about the licensing I went ahead and filled in
> an order for 2 developers/Mac/Win/X11/Enterprise. $8960
That’s what our company bought four months ago after we evaluated
Qt vs. other toolkits. We’ve been happy with Qt so far.
> McLellan said. However, Novell’s integration work is happening only with the GNOME applications, she said.”
That’s such an obvious lie that it’s not funny anymore: OOo is being integrated into KDE, both Kontact and Kopete are being integrated with Novell Groupwise (most of those done be especially for this hired developers).
> when you also factor in the per-OS/per developer/per app licensing fees.
FUD, there is no “per app” licensing fee.
> it appears that you have to renew on an annual basis,
You don’t have to. If you don’t want continued support or free versions upgrade, don’t buy it.
> By the way, I didn’t mean a runtime royalty, but a license per application developed.
Again, there is no “per application” fee. If you have one productive developers doing 10 little tools it’s the same price as if he would be working on one big one.
<<FUD, there is no “per app” licensing fee.>>
Maybe he meant QSA that is licensed on a per-project basis?
From the QSA FAQ:
Q: Who needs a QSA license?
A: The QSA licenses are sold on a per project basis. In order to make your application scriptable, all Qt/C++ developers (those who have a Qt license) who work on an application will also need a QSA license. The licenses entitle you to use QSA to add scripting functionality to your application.
> Maybe he meant QSA that is licensed on a per-project basis?
Possible, if he cannot keep apart Qt and QSA.
Once again, you prove that you know nothing of Novell’s strategy. You even contradict yourself by saying that Ximian’s people are there to implement Novell’s strategy, but then go on about how Ximian’s “business strategy” is critical.
Jesus Christ son. Ximian are employees of Novell – therefore their past business strategy and how they go about doing things is critical because that’s what they are going to do.
People do actually make decisions in organisations – how they do it, and how they have done it in the past is critical as to what they do.
Did you even read the article title? Try a remedial reading course.
Novell’s core business is still servers. It all stems from there. Knowing your core business and starting from there is critical in what you do.
Do some research first please, whatever an article mgiht say.
Yeah, Trolltech tells you that entire industries use QT and you buy it. Hilarious.
They do.
It’s just a toolkit among many other good toolkits. You sure seem to take a lot of stock in press releases. Qt and Trolltech are just a blip on the screen of the development world.
GTK an Mono are so microscopic you need an electron microscope to see them.
You really are a moron aren’t you. Do you even know what Windows.Forms is? It’s just an API.
I wish you luck in the unemployment queue today.
Which is it McFly? Do they not have ASP.NET, or is it nowhere near usable, and they’re emulating a few assemblies?
If it isn’t usable, they ain’t got it.
Meaningless babble. IBM/Windows 3.0/3.1 has nothing to do with Mono.
I hope you’re doing this on purpose. IBM did exactly what Mono is trying to do – interface with Microsoft’s technologies unmodified on another platform. It doesn’t bloody work.
Stop embarrassing yourself. .NET is the future of windows and there are tons of people using it. You must be pretty isolated in your linux-fanboy world.
Get yourself some experience, get out of the dole queue and stop being a .Net fanboy.
Put down the crackpipe. Your fixation with Ximian is bizarre. Novell is not turning their Linux strategy over to them.
I hope not. However, they are employees and the decisions they make are critical.
Emplyees make decisions – something you obviously never do.
Oh its evil Microsoft’s monopoly that has hindered widerspread Gnome and KDE adoptance. Hehe. Poor fanboy always has excuses on why Linux on the desktop hasn’t skyrocketed. I mean its technically superior and all, but meanie Microsoft keeps it down. Hilarious.
Do you come out with that at interviews? The fact is, Windows is still a monopoly.
Sun and Redhat doesn’t care if you don’t give jack s**t, but they did have reasons and the QT license is one of them. Bury your head in the sand.
No they didn’t. Please feel free to provide links.
Sun and Red Hat are irrelevant because it is enterprises and businesses of all kinds you need to convince them about. Does it make a difference to them? You ain’t answered that one.
You sure are dense aren’t you. Make up your mind is, is it Novell’s strategy or is it Ximian’s strategy? Once again, Ximian was bought for its engineering and desktop design, not because of its business prowess.
I haven’t met you, but already you are the thickest person on Earth.
It’s Novell’s strategy, and the former Ximian people make the decsions to carry it out. What decisions they make on past experience are critical.
Please don’t use phrases like “which is it?” etc. You’re one of these people who think they can talk bollocks and pass it off as knowing what you’re talking about. You can’t, but I expect you know that in real life anyway.
In East Asian country like Korea and Japan, Gnome had been winner of DE…due to Gtk+’s extremely powerful I18N support.
Until KDE2.x, KDE and Qt’s multibyte lang support was, well, LAUGHABLE. Font rendering was uggly, some characters got broken and unreadable…and to make it usable one had to apply special patch to qt and kdelibs…
So, Gnome won DE war in Japan in early days of DE war. In Linux Magazine (Japan’s No.1 Linux magazine) issue July 02 (I believe it is…), in DE War article they used something like “…Gnome the Defender and KDE the Contender…”
However, in Korea, the story is very interesting. At first stage of DE War in Korea, the winner was KDE. Why? Because it looked like Windows. And Korea was late runner in Linux business. So people was switching from Windows98 to Linux and they needed something familiar. So they used KDE.
(And lots of so-called programmer-god-wannabes was overhyped at OOP ideology and worshipped OOP….so they (wrongly) believed C was inferior language and C++ was good. So many people (wrongly) argued that GTK+ was sooo inferior that people should use C++’ed Qt library which (they believed) was super-superior.) While people complained about extra patches and build time required for it, they still used KDE because it looked like Windoze.
However, that situation changed as GTK+ 2.x emerged. Thanks to pango and new font rendering library, Hangul displaying become even more powerful. And, thanks to new advanced Input Method system, all gtk+ apps now fully support unicode hangul…and thanks to imhangul2 module, gtk+ apps no longer requires XIM to enter hangul. So, many users began to convert to GNOME.
Also as KDE matured, the look-and-fill of KDE began to change radically; they dropped the Windoze-wannabe look and feel. That made KDE unappealing to some users who trying to convert from Windoze.
And other thing: to correctly display bold hangul or Kana fonts, you still need to apply a patch to Xft. For Gnome users, pango needs to be patched too. But that takes only just 2~3 minutes or even less. However, for Kde users, you need to apply patch to Qt library and rebuild it. And Qt is notorious for its long build time…
Eclipse is an amazing IDE which uses SWT which can use GTK+2 to render. Much better then any other IDE in the world IMO.
Given the addition of many East Asian languages to KDE, and the incredible number of distributions based on it:
Red Flag Linux
Magic Linux
Asianux (quite large in China, Korea, Japan and in the region and they were busy Koreanifying KDE)
TurboLinux (historically the main commercial distro in the region)
ASP Linux
There are quite a few more. Guess what they all default to and use as their maindesktop?
Sorry, but this just sounds like a bit of desperation. If all the distributions use it and still ship it as their main desktop, it can’t be unpopular.
So, Gnome won DE war in Japan in early days of DE war. In Linux Magazine (Japan’s No.1 Linux magazine) issue July 02 (I believe it is…), in DE War article they used something like “…Gnome the Defender and KDE the Contender…”
Windows won the desktop war worldwide sometime ago. Believing otherwise will doom alternative desktops any kind of wider success. People need to work on the strengths of Linux desktops and gradually convince people over wholesale.
Everyone else is simply jockeying for position, and trying to find compelling reasons for people to get off Windows. Those reasons are there, but unfortunately there are too many idiots around promoting exactly the sorts of ideals that simply don’t matter in the wider world. Unfortunately, most of them come from the wrong side of the fence.
(And lots of so-called programmer-god-wannabes was overhyped at OOP ideology and worshipped OOP….so they (wrongly) believed C was inferior language and C++ was good.
OOP is a fact of life in graphical applications these days – end of story. It is grossly misused sometimes, but nevertheless, you need good programming tools and languages to do it. C++ together with a good toolkit like Qt has evolved into that combination. I’m sure more languages will be added to Qt over time.
So many people (wrongly) argued that GTK+ was sooo inferior that people should use C++’ed Qt library which (they believed) was super-superior.)
Now why would they believe that?
However, that situation changed as GTK+ 2.x emerged. Thanks to pango and new font rendering library, Hangul displaying become even more powerful. And, thanks to new advanced Input Method system, all gtk+ apps now fully support unicode hangul…and thanks to imhangul2 module, gtk+ apps no longer requires XIM to enter hangul. So, many users began to convert to GNOME.
GTK’s font and multi-language handling is indeed excellent, but saying that people move around because of such things is a stretch (given the distributions listed above, they didn’t move). KDE and Qt’s font handling on X11 is pretty much near perfect now.
Also as KDE matured, the look-and-fill of KDE began to change radically; they dropped the Windoze-wannabe look and feel. That made KDE unappealing to some users who trying to convert from Windoze.
Eh? KDE still looks more like Windows than anything else (that’s not by design but the way things have worked out as it has built up), but it does take some Mac inspiration as well and can be set up to look like a Mac. People didn’t get turned off from KDE because it stopped looking like Windows, which it quite clearly hasn’t.
Besides, if you think people didn’t like KDE because it didn’t look like Windows, where does that leave Gnome?
I think you’re stirring around, trying to find something that isn’t there here.
But that takes only just 2~3 minutes or even less. However, for Kde users, you need to apply patch to Qt library and rebuild it.
Nope – I never needed to apply a patch.
And Qt is notorious for its long build time…
Not that simple. Yes, Qt is larger (it’s a complete platform for heaven’s sake) and is written in C++ so takes longer to compile.
However, it is question of what you save in terms of development time, and the quality of the software produced. Since end users don’t compile software, this is pretty much irrelevant and the distributors above think so too.
I’m still never cease to be shocked at the number of people who talk about Linux and Gnome (and KDE to a lesser extent) on corporate desktops, but have no clue as to what is required or what actually matters in those environments.
kde’s extended font support isn’t even close to perfect. the most glaringly obvious hole is this. fonts are divided into sets of characters. if a font provides *any* characters in one large set, kde assumes that font can provide the whole set, and for any character that isn’t in fact in the font it simply renders an empty space. GNOME, on the other hand, goes and pulls the character from the next available font that *does* contain it. KDE will only do this if the font you’re using contains *no* characters from that font set.
GNOME is a long way ahead in this area, and it does have an impact. on the distro I use, Mandrake, most of the Asian users use GNOME over KDE.
> it appears that you have to renew on an annual basis
No, the licence does not expire, only the right for free (gratis) updates.
> By the way, I didn’t mean a runtime royalty, but a license per application developed
I never assumed anything different, but there isn’t such a restriction.
You might be mixing this with the terms of the Qt/embedded licence, which has some fees per sold unit, which is very common in the embedded business as far as I know.
> That’s such an obvious lie that it’s not funny anymore
I don’t think it is a lie.
It just means that the relevant integration on KDE side is either already finished (for example IM<->MUA communication) or being worked on by the KDE developers themselves (additional server support for KDE’s PIM applications)
> It just means that the relevant integration on KDE side is either already finished
Not the case.
> or being worked on by the KDE developers themselves
Not the case.
> > It just means that the relevant integration on KDE side is either already finished
> Not the case.
Hmm? At the time the interview in question was published, the integration of KDE’s PIM applications was a lot better than the integration of the respective GNOME applications (addressbook sharing, showing online status along email contacts, etc)
So no need for Novell to put developer resources into those parts of KDE integration.
> > or being worked on by the KDE developers themselves
> Not the case.
So I guess all those people committing to kdepim/kresources/groupwise either do not exist or aren’t KDE developers?
Jesus Christ son. Ximian are employees of Novell – therefore their past business strategy and how they go about doing things is critical because that’s what they are going to do.
People do actually make decisions in organisations – how they do it, and how they have done it in the past is critical as to what they do.
Jesus Christ, we have to go over this over and over again. Are you that naive that you think that Novell said “Hey guys, let’s buy Ximian and then see what their views on how to run a business are”? Obviously, Nat Friedman and de Icaza don’t know how to run a business, but they do know how to lead teams that implement desktop applications. They’re doing evolution, the OO-gnome work, and other desktop polish on Gnome. At least they’re focusing on business apps and its one of the reasons that Gnome is the business DE, and not KDE.
GTK an Mono are so microscopic you need an electron microscope to see them.
Gtk+ is not any more microscopic than QT, and considering that Mono is an implementation of the .NET framework, by defacto, it’s API is being used more than the QT/KDE API now or ever will be.
I wish you luck in the unemployment queue today.
Haha, so you embarrased yourself by calling Winforms a “emulation” on Mono, realized that you were wrong, and then lashed out like a child. Sorry, but I have more programming work than I can possibly even handle, and have had to turn away contracts.
If it isn’t usable, they ain’t got it.
Hey moron, better tell that to the city of Munich. http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;2103806279;fp;2;fpid;1
I hope you’re doing this on purpose. IBM did exactly what Mono is trying to do – interface with Microsoft’s technologies unmodified on another platform. It doesn’t bloody work.
Once again, you show your complete lack of knowledge of anything related to Mono. Mono is an implementation of ECMA 335 and 336, with some other APIs implemented as well – which have been structured to be pulled out of the ECMA core if Microsoft pulls some kind of patent move.
http://www.mono-project.com/about/whymono.html.
Mono developers aren’t under any illusion that MS Office is going to run on top of Mono anytime soon. By the way, Mono run on Unix, Mac, and Windows so it will be crossplatform binary compatible if not totally binary compatible with .NET, but if certain assemblies happen to be then that’s just gravy.
Do you come out with that at interviews? The fact is, Windows is still a monopoly.
Did Microsoft come to your house and put a gun to your head and make you buy its products. Are you incapable of making software purchasing decisions on your own or incapable of walking down to your local PC shop to pick up a PC without an OS on it? Poor fanboy, it’s not good enough that linux is free and technically “superior”, it’s Microsoft’s fault that Linux doesn’t make better inroads on the desktop. Take it to slashdweeb, you idiot.
The rest of your babble is something about Ximian somehow making critical business decisions for Novell now, which anybody with half a brain knows it’s nonsense. All they do is work on the desktop.
Hello folks,
Man, there is a lot of speculation on this newsgroup.
David sounds like a right-wing talk-show host, making bold
statements about things he believes are true but has little
or no evidence about it.
Novell will ship and support Gnome and Kde on the upcoming
Novell Linux Desktop, that is what has been announced, and
that is what we are currently executing on.
Ximian was far from having a failed business model, we
had two components: free software and proprietary software
that tended to work together (Red Carpet and the Red Carpet
enteprise server; And Evolution and the connector). A
model that is continued to be used at Novell: enterprise
users will pay for enterprise-level products for IT groups
but most of the public will just benefit from the open
source software that Novell puts out.
There are clearly in the world those who think that
the Qt license is just fine and that paying for it is fine
and another group of people who think it is not. Trying
to convince the other half that they are wrong is going to
get you nowhere. Unless you are David, and you have nothing
better to do than unwind on the forums.
As for Nat, he is in charge of the desktop strategy
and execution at Novell. I know that this is a hard pill
to swallow, but he has nothing against KDE, and he is not
“out to get it”, so you can go to sleep happily tonight.
The new software being built is using Mono and Gtk#:
f-spot, iFolder, Beagle, Dashboard and a couple of others.
Other pieces continue to be Qt components like Yast, as it
turns out (surprise David!) you can run both at the same
time. Man, that is truly visionary.
That being said, I do not personally believe that there
will be a consolidation of toolkits any time soon. If
anything the needs of people are expanding.
I can see Gtk+ and Qt continue to play an important role
but we are also implementing Windows.Forms (which will play
a role for Windows developers) and Wine is available for
Win32 developers. As they both mature they will bring more
to the table.
And then we got the next-generation toolkits coming:
Avalon from Microsoft and most likely something out from
the Mozilla foundation in the form of Xul or a NextGen
Xul.
Pretending that everything will use a single toolkit
and the attempts at world domination from that perspective
are fruitless, we must be all working towards standards
that the various elements on the desktop can use, because
from an implementation perspective there is not likely
going to be a consolidation. There is too much code
invested in each toolkit, and you wont kill those projects
even with an intensive posting campain to OSNews.
Love,
Miguel.
It does not really matter to me what desktop they will use or if they will use mono. I think penicillian will cure it.
Will I use their desktop? Not unless my company does! Its a possiblity as we use Novell already for servers. But to me it does not matter. I see a possible opportunity as I did several years ago. Apple was having a tough time, stock was in the can and being in the industry I went on a hunch and bought a bunch of stock in Apple, sold it for a nice increase. I see similar things happening and I am going to buy a bunch of stock in Novell.
So I guess while everyone is daabaiting about what desktop and gnashing about mono I hopefully will be giggling with some green.
So when you have a moment to stop scatchin at each other eyes, buy some stock instead.
later
What’s Asianux?? I am a Korean and live in Korea and never heard about it. In Korea most people use Fedora Core3 and Hancom Linux. And Fedora C3 users use GNOME. And Hancom Linux is a KDE based Desktop linux, and it uses its own specially patched and modified KDE (called hKDE) since plain vanilla KDE sucks in Hangul environment.
You try to be sound like a east asian…but you are just nothing but a Foreigner…you need to be born and live as east asian to understand the issue…sorry.
>>What’s Asianux??
It was created by RedFlag Linux/MiracleLinux/Oracle as the standard Linux platform for enterprise systems in Asia.
Last time I checked it was DE neutral.
I looked up an article for Asianux. This project was lead by Miracle Linux (an Japanese distribution company) and HanCom Linux (Korean dist co.) and Redflag Linux (Chinese co.) And OS part will be developed by Miracle and Redflag while desktop apps part will be developed my HanCom. (HanCom has its own Linux Office Suite called HanCom Office)
However, I don’t like HanCom Linux…its not my taste. And HanCom is KDE desktop linux. (However, one big archivement of HanCom is hKDE…a completely localized KDE without much of bugs and glitches of original KDE for hangul i/o)
However, most users in Korea uses HanCom, Fedora and Mizi (another Korean linux distro) O
The majority at this time in Korea is RedHat and Fedora…and it’s basically gnomecentric.
By the way…the tremendous efforts people poured to KDE to Koreanify proves that KDE and Qt’s Hangul support is terrible. On other hand, GTK+ and Gnome is used w/o any patch or special thingies (one exception is Pango’s bold text font handling which is incompatible with Asian fonts, and needs to be patched to display bold asian fonts correctly)…it’s light year way ahead in Hangul I/O…with integrated IME support (Now we got ImHangul2 and Iimf2) and of course, PANGO!
Western people may curse and denounce Pango for slow text rendering…but to East Asian people, Pango is beyond any blessing.
On more thing. The popular distros in Korea are (not sorted in popularity):
RedHat/Fedora (DE neutral)
HanCom (KDEcentric(almost KDEexclusive…with specially modified hKDE)
Mizi (KDEcentric)
WOW (DE neutral)
SuSE (pro-KDE)
Mandrake (pro-KDE)
Gentoo (DE neutral)
Debian (DE neutral but most users in usergroup uses gnome)
An interesting thing to note is Turbo Linux, which used widely in Japan, is virtually non-existance in Korea…very few people use Turbo Linux. Most web server company use RedHat or WOW.
Also, Asianux has not been released yet. Hancom plans to release detailed release schedule in middle of this month.
Once again, to be a native and to try to be a native is totally different. Leave the matter to locals.
At least Mandrake can be called a DE neutral linux distro….
And the purchase price for this little jewel is?????
Haha, so you embarrased yourself by calling Winforms a “emulation” on Mono, realized that you were wrong, and then lashed out like a child. Sorry, but I have more programming work than I can possibly even handle, and have had to turn away contracts.
Emulation in English means copying, but not quite doing it in the same way. This is especially true if you are trying to run things unmodified.
The rest of your comments speak for themselves.
There are clearly in the world those who think that
the Qt license is just fine and that paying for it is fine
and another group of people who think it is not.
Certainly. Novell may want to look at what commercially funded software they can bring to Mono. Enterprises will pay for it.
And then we got the next-generation toolkits coming:
Avalon from Microsoft
Avalon will only be realistic if it the Microsoft specific bits can be re-produced away from Windows. Whether that is possible as Microsoft adds to the technology is anyone’s guess and there are precedents that says it won’t. Will XAML be a W3C standard? I highly doubt it.
Other pieces continue to be Qt components like Yast, as it turns out (surprise David!) you can run both at the same time.
Of course you can. How integrated that all turns out to be – well we’ll see. As much as it pains me to see it, only Microsoft have succeeded at that in the world today.
I can see Gtk+ and Qt continue to play an important role
but we are also implementing Windows.Forms (which will play
a role for Windows developers) and Wine is available for
Win32 developers. As they both mature they will bring more
to the table.
As someone at the coal face who uses .Net every day, I have seen some of the terrible things happening with it. The biggest one is integration of legacy systems, and it is hampering .Net nevermind Mono. This means calling and creating COM components from .Net, and even vice versa. The Winforms stuff is a step forward but it needs to be more complete and needs to take account of how people are using .Net today. Look at the reasons why .Net has not been as successful as Microsoft hoped and you will prosper.
Pretending that everything will use a single toolkit
and the attempts at world domination from that perspective
are fruitless, we must be all working towards standards
that the various elements on the desktop can use, because
from an implementation perspective there is not likely
going to be a consolidation. There is too much code
invested in each toolkit, and you wont kill those projects even with an intensive posting campain to OSNews.
That’s the best thing I have ever seen you write. However, in the context of Novell you have to ask yourself just how realistic that strategy is. Mind you, underneath Windows is the biggest collection of convoluted and incompatible technologies imaginable panel beaten together. However, Microsoft have the resources to do it. It’s a balance.
These aren’t religious arguments – they are economic ones I’m afraid, and not always very nice to swallow. It has got to the point now where I want to see the Linux desktop succeed, but I see nothing concrete that will make it.
Hey, if any of you have any question about Novell Linux Desktop just ask. I support the project. We just released canidate 1. My email address is [email protected]
This is an amazing product
HEY… I have NLD on 5 machines. SO all of you that are talking about Novell going with Gnome don’t know what you are talking about. When you install it, you have the option for kde or gnome. Also, you can install both of them and switch back in forth.
puaatane