"This article will briefly discuss the new features found within Gutsy Gibbon and hopefully give you a better idea of what to expect when the final version of Gutsy Gibbons is released in October. Some of the more notable new features are a Graphical Configuration tool for X, improvements in plug-in handling for Mozilla Firefox, revamped printing system with PDF printing by default, fast user switching, new desktop search (Tracker) application and the new AppArmor security framework."
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Member since:2007-02-17
Umm, NO! That would be the worst thing ever to happen to linux. X is as powerful as it is for a reason. It's not X's fault that there was a divergence in toolkits, blame that on trolltech and their licensing back in the early days. The only reason we have gnome is because people didn't agree with the license. Besides that the "layering " as you say is what makes Linux powerful. Have an errant x server, kill the process and restart x without affecting the whole system. You can't do that in Windows, I'm not sure about OSX but I think the same holds true. If it was such a bad thing why is MS trying to copy the model in their next release of windows server allowing the OS to run without the UI, though without the UI what is windows, DOS? The other thing I want to point out is that this "skinning" thing is exactly what is happening at the moment. The X server allows for a program to look like anything it wants without being tied to a specific format or look. The only thing is that it's far less abstracted as you have to actually tell X how to draw and handle said application. Most developers make it easier on themselves by writing a toolkit that would do all the drawing for them and abstract the underlying X layer to make it easier to develop.
Member since:2006-04-20
It is not relevant who is at fault, what matters is that the Linux userland is fractured with incompatible standards, which makes it very difficult for developers of hardware and software to support.
MS is not trying to copy the Linux model. In Vista, if the display driver crashes, it automatically restarts and brings back the GUI. There is no DOS, there is no CLI (well, future versions of Windows Server might be a different story, but not the desktop version).
Having the X server, the OS and the GUI separated into layers makes perfect sense for servers, but is a disastrously bad idea for a desktop OS. End users don't want to see CLIs if the GUI crashes, they want the computer to restart the GUI seamlessly.
This is the wrong approach. The toolkit should be integrated into the X server, and there should be only one standardised toolkit for developers to, so that all applications behave consistently with the GUI. This might make X harder to develop, but it makes applications easier to develop, particularly commercial applications.
There is a massive difference between the requirements of a server OS and a desktop OS, and Linux userland is still waking up to this fact. At the moment, Linux distros suffer from a lack of integration and consistency, which is due in no small part to the different DEs that use different toolkits, which forces developers to make choices they shouldn't have to make.
Layering in the context of a server is powerful; layering in the context of a desktop is crippling.
Until Linux devs realise and accept this, Linux will linger on the periphery of the OS ecosystem, with Windows and OSX dominating as usual, and with OSs like Syllable and SkyOS overtaking Linux in terms of installed userbase. If Ubuntu takes of in a big way, perhaps Gnome will marginalise KDE - developers will develop for the most common system, ignoring others, which would pave the way for integration between gnome and X.
Member since:
2006-04-20
And? So?
I have no problems with Mono - why do you?
KDE suffers too much from featuritis for me to enjoy using it - it gets in my way with its obnoxious configuration options and needlessly bulky menus, but that is just me. Gnome has much nicer defaults, but I have issues with all Linux DEs. The problem is that applications are written using toolkits for a specific DE, when the correct way to do it is to have a standard API that allows applications to behave consistently regardless of DE.
For Linux to succeed on the desktop it needs to break away from the server paradigm of having the X server, OS and DE separated into layers - they should all be integrated into a cohesive whole. Kinda like the way OSX, Windows, SkyOS, Syllable, Haiku etc do it...
KDE and Gnome et al are both barking up the wrong tree. Don't get me wrong, they are great for what they are, but a Gnome distro and a KDE distro behave like completely different OSs when they shouldn't - they should be more like a skin or theme on top of the OS, and seamlessly handle applications without any inconsistencies.