At its BrainShare conference, the company says its Novell Linux Desktop 10 will include a new desktop search technology, named Beagle, along with a technology for rendering the desktop using the GPU.
Novell Says Its Next Linux Desktop Will Surpass Windows
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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“2.What does it lack to surpass Windows?” – a $200 fee, the chrashes, the ‘are you really really sure’ button … etc
😉
right again!
http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
OBVIOUSLY has NOTHING to do with gnome.
Since it’s a Mono application and Gnome hasn’t actually adopted Mono, no it isn’t.
You did know Gnome hadn’t adopted Mono, right?
Jesus, don’t you ever get tired of your senseless trolling?
Beagle is hosted on the gnome server, it is developed by many gnome core devs, it integrates with gnome/gtk apps, it uses mono bindings to gtk and gnome-libraries, so what exactly is your point besides trolling?
Please note I am not a beagle developer so the information I provide may be completely inaccurate. The information I provide is just my own understand of beagle from the scraps and pieces I could get my hands on as well as from what I could make of the source code.
Beagles indexing technology is based on Lucene, which is a port of a powerful full-featured text search engine called Jarkata. Whenever a change occurs in the filesystem, Linux provides several mechanism to propagate the changes up the stack (i.e to userland tools). dnotify and, very recently, inotify are watchers that monitor these changes.
Hence, a beagle deamon only needs to listen to notification from either inotify/dnotify to activate its indexer. A change occurs, inotify/dnotify notifies the beagle deamon the beagle activates its indexer. This is just a naive oversimplication of the complexity of the process. But it is intentional. I do not know the algorithms the beagle developers use for things such as ranking, data relativity and data relevance. But if you are interested in such things, the source code is open and free to download.
On another note, I do not believe Beagle was designed to run outside the GNOME platform. And I see no reason why it should. After all, I do not expect Safari, Mail, or Spotlight to run in XP, OS 9, GNOME or KDE.
At the application level, I believe in delibrately designing applications for specific environments, as opposed to multitude of environments. I do not understand why GNOME developers have to worry about KDE users and vice-versa. GNOME and KDE are different desktop platforms just as Windows XP and OS X are different. The fact that they run the same kernel is irrelevant.
You also need to be specific about your categorization of the Linux desktop. You seem to comparing OS X to Linux, GNOME, KDE all at the same time. Do you want to focus of GNOME, or do you want to focus on KDE. GNOME is entirely different from KDE. They use entirely different technologies and will continue to do so for a long while. Again, I have no problem with that.
Will beagle become a core part of GNOME? If it proves useful and it benefits developers, why not? If it doesn’t, then better technologies will be developed. It’s not like Linux or GNOME would not survive without meta-data searching. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, free software does not shove technologies down the throats of developers. Free software hackers will only use a piece of technology if the benefits of doing so outweigh the cost.
As for the politics, I really don’t give a damn about them. I prefer Java to Mono, not because it is better or more powerful or faster or stable or it’s not MS, or patents, or whatever. I just like Java better. And I intend to start a host of Java projects designed for GNOME soon. I just do not have time for politics. And I am not assuring you or anyone that the beagle will be a success, will be widely adopted or will be a core part of GNOME anytime soon. But for those who need meta-data searching, it is there, it does a great job and most of the core applications already support it.
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if other free software hackers are working on their own meta-data technologies. Why should GNOME rely of Beagle alone? There should be more meta-data search technologies. In fact, I find GNOME-Storage a lot more useful and innovative than Spotlight, Beagle or WinFS. If you know much about free software and Linux in general, you’d realize it evolves in ways no one understands. Don’t be surprised if Beagle is made obsolete by a better technology tomorrow.
How easy is it to write plugins for Beagle? I haven’t written one, so I wouldn’t know. But I understand it is relatively easy.
“On another note, I do not believe Beagle was designed to run outside the GNOME platform.”
Why not? Of course it is aimed and integrated into gnome now, but I see no reason why it couldn’t be integrated in KDE. All that would be needed were some plugins for kde apps and a kde searchtool using beagle.
Absolutely! The source code is open. If the KDE hackers are interested, I do not think it will be impossible to adapt Beagle to KDE. I just don’t think the Beagle hackers have KDE high on their priority list at the moment.
A GNOME application does not necessarily need to be adopted by GNOME. There many applications designed for GNOME that are not a core part of GNOME and will never be.
No matter how much KDE fanboys hate it, the QT license is an issue that isn’t going to go away until trolltech gets bought out.
KDE has the superior framework and the superior speed, but many moons from now when linux on the desktop is actually relevant, KDE will be a very great niche desktop.
Anyway, I’m emerging KDE 3.4 right now because Gnome on Hoary just keeps on getting SLOOOWWWWEEER with each update on even a fast machine (p4 3.2, a gig).
P.S.
Gotta love this quote
“We are getting ahead of [Microsoft] Windows for the first time,” he said. “The release of SuSE Linux 9.2 brought a lot of innovative mobility features, while 9.3 has a variety of Mono-based applications.”
Hehe, so he admits that Suse/Novell was behind windows on the desktop until now. Amusing
when did gnome getting adopted by business mean kde going away?
Errrr, you’ve implied it. Nice try
.
i have never implied it. i seriously doubt we will ever hit a point where there is only one ANYTHING in linux.
gnome adds value to NLD, novell sells NLD, hence novell makes money off of gnome.
So it doesn’t make money off Gnome then?
novell has many core gnome devs on the payroll, and as much as they hate to come out and say it, NLD is definately gnome-centric. so yes, they do make money off of gnome.
you obviously arent a java developer.
Wrong.
ok, you are a java developer who has no knowledge about suns ongoing soap opera with ibm, and their refusal to go a more sane route with their toolkit.
awt is awful, swing is god awful, and swt rocks. swt was made by the ibm supported eclipse project, which means sun wont adopt it into java, even though theres no real reason not to, other then refusing to admit that a 100% pure java gui toolkit was a dumb idea.
Meaningless in the context I’ve given. Was there a point here?
your context was fairly meaningless in and of itself. you said that because sun suggested writing guis in swt over gtk (which is what they use all over in jds), that somehow that made gtk bad. i was pointing out that its far from that simple, and sun has been defending their horrible choice in gui technology very publicly for years now. there is no real reason to use swing even in java.
sun will never, ever, tell anyone they should use anything but swing, even though swing is rarely, if ever the best choice.
Sun are a very good Gnome citizen then, aren’t they?
i refer you to my various sarcastic remarks about how companies arent part of the same zealotous horde that make up a nice percentage of the gnome/kde userbase.
well, turns out you arnt a .net developer either.
Wrong again.
.net is the microsoft implementation of the cli standard
No it isn’t. .Net is a heck of a lot more then a CLI implementation.
im so sorry. cli implementation + additional classes.
Nope, Microsoft has always put in strong backwards compatibility. .Net is the first time they’ve really, really broken away.
really? i guess your still using COM, win16, etc then.
That’s blurb from a web site. It doesn’t translate into usage by ordinary Novell employees, and they’re actually having trouble getting people to adopt the NLD internally – hence the adoption of Open Office on Windows and the porting of Evolution to Windows.
well, ive read that adoption is going according to plan. Novell has never ported oo.o (that sun product) to windows. and a novell product doesnt translate into usage by novell employees either, it translates into a product developed and sold by novell, which is OBVIOUS from the product description of NLD.
i mean jeez, its not like mono which is OBVIOUSLY not a novell product
No it isn’t a Novell product. It’s a Novell sponsored project.
oh, ok. so i guess “They’re applications done in the spare time of some Novell employees” was deliberately deceptive?
third parties pledge support to one or the other, based on the crazed ravings of the various priests that will explain why theirs is the one true path to enlightenment.
Wow.
i was trying to be funny.
either that, OR novell is supporting both, to be able to better address the desires of their clients, and give themselves as broad a market as possible. nah… yours sounds much more feasable.
You could have just said that to start off with
. I don’t know what you think mine is.
you implied over and over that support of kde meant that they werent officially supporting gnome.
yeah, so we ignore sun (the largest contributer to the foundation), novell, redhat… oh hell, we arnt paying attention to reality anyways, lets just ignore that gnome even exists!
Well yer – it hasn’t made any difference over the past five years
.
sun has basically made gnome into a product that is attractive to the enterprise. this is both through financial and code contributions, and in the performing of usability tests.
it seems to fill you with some sort of rage, maybe you were attacked by a gnome as a child, or perhaps big feet simply scare you. regardless, being in touch with reality seems to be low on your list of priorities, while trashing something you know nothing about is high up there.
I hate to point out the obvious, but this all started with a posting of yours some way back
.
i posted another response to a kde troll awhile back, but it was too sarcastic and a whole bunch of people misunderstood. in that post, i described why a handle of good applications dont qualify as “killer apps”, and that just because he could build up a strawman to tear down doesnt mean the same cant be done from a different perspective. your post seems to have claimed (or at least implied)
1) gnome does not receive corporate funding
2) novell doesnt (officially) support gnome in specific, and gtk apps in general
3) novells support of suse makes #2 self-evident
4) gtk sucks and noone uses it
if you feel you have honestly been misunderstood, i will go back and paste parts of your comment that back up those various points. they are all wrong, and the only way someone could think that is if they were pretty clueless. since that is a pretty standard condition in the gnome/kde world (at least by users who post here), i had a bit of fun writing a sarcastic response to that effect.
man, i dont know if its just me, but the gnome/kde trollfest seems more and more childish every day.
What, like your posts? Nice try
.
please point out what i said that could be considered a troll. i think the only one that could be construed that way is the whole Sun/swing thing, but any developer who has worked with swing can at least see where i am comming from on that.
for christs sake, cant you let one article on this site go without trolling? i dont think theres been one ive read in the last month that hasnt been contaminated by your efforts.
No matter how much KDE fanboys hate it, the QT license is an issue that isn’t going to go away until trolltech gets bought out.
what possible reason could you have to believe that? oh right, your a moronic troll.
KDE has the superior framework and the superior speed, but many moons from now when linux on the desktop is actually relevant, KDE will be a very great niche desktop.
what possible reason could you have to believe that? oh right, your a moronic troll.
Anyway, I’m emerging KDE 3.4 right now because Gnome on Hoary just keeps on getting SLOOOWWWWEEER with each update on even a fast machine (p4 3.2, a gig).
contrary to everyone saying that its faster. oh right, your a moronic troll.
P.S.
Gotta love this quote
“We are getting ahead of [Microsoft] Windows for the first time,” he said. “The release of SuSE Linux 9.2 brought a lot of innovative mobility features, while 9.3 has a variety of Mono-based applications.”
Hehe, so he admits that Suse/Novell was behind windows on the desktop until now. Amusing
very amusing. especially since up until now, that is exactly what they have been saying. oh right, your a moronic troll.
do you see the pattern? i have seen you show up in thread after thread doing your best to divert the conversation in any way possible. each and every comment i have seen you write has been both ill informed, and wildly inflamatory. if eugenia ever wanted to tame the comments section around here, the easiest way to do so would be simply to ban your ip.
yes i know this is gonna get modded down, and i dont care. flame me if you like, i dont care. people who regularily read this site know you by now, and those who dont will hopefully read this, and choose not to respond to your trolling. this is the last time i am going to respond to one of your childish comments.
“On another note, I do not believe Beagle was designed to run outside the GNOME platform.”
Why not? Of course it is aimed and integrated into gnome now, but I see no reason why it couldn’t be integrated in KDE. All that would be needed were some plugins for kde apps and a kde searchtool using beagle.
Beagle would be a great konqueror/kio-slave protocol. Just imagine doing “beagle:/My search criteria” in a file dialog and all files matching it would show up.
I’m not surprised you threw a tantrum because my comments probably piss off both KDE and Gnome fanboys. Let’s see what I said.
The QT license is an issue:
Linux on the desktop now is pretty much irrelevant, but in the future it might not be. Look at it this way, if glibc was straight GPL then there would have to be a replacement. Check
KDE has the superior framework and the superior speed:
I don’t think there’s ever been much controversy about that. Gnome has always had integration issues. Just look at what the KDE developers have been able to achieve with their framework. Check
Gnome on Hoary has been getting slower:
Well documented over at the ubuntu forums. I’m not talking about warty which was always pretty speedy, but after big X/Gnome updates the whole desktop has gotten sluggish until kinks have been worked out.
which is why i think it would be a fantastic candidate for a fd.o project. unfortunately though, this isnt the case. hopefully the kde guys will at least work with the same datastore, but history has shown us that the two projects tend to start from scratch rather then build on each others work.
Actually the GTK/GNOME is slow thingy is a troll. And frankly, I don’t see anything superior about the KDE technologies. I also don’t see any killer KDE applications from these superior technologies. KDE doesn’t do anything amazingly superior to GNOME, nor does it run faster on my box.
*sigh* ok, fine.
#1 kde liscence
completely and totally ot in every way possible. has nothing to do with the article, or discussion. has been known to start huge flamewars. both windows and linux are dual liscenced, you can go gpl for oss, or non gpl for commercial liscences. how in the hell is that a problem? the only problem i can see, is that if you are a company you have to pay a (totally reasonable) liscence fee, which is per developer. explain to me how this is a “problem”
#2 kde speeds & framework
once again, completely off topic in every way. once again, a topic that is sure to start a flame war. saying that the kde framework is superior is a subjective statement, especially considering you are talking about two different frameworks in two different languages.
#3 gnome speeds
once again, completely off topic in every wawy. once again, a topic that is sure to start a flame war. gtk has gotten faster with every release. you did say it was on hoary, but implied it was a gnome, not hoary specific issue.
#4 windows/linux superiority bs
whats really funny about this one is it both the most ill informed, and the most on topic. novell actually broke with tradition by saying that one of their products (nld) isnt superior to windows and will inevitably take it over. that little blurb is more in tune with a typical novell press release. your agreeing with novells ceo isnt really amusing, its more ironic.
each part of your post was designed to provoke emotional responses by the fairly zealotous osnews readership. you contributed nothing to the conversation, offered no insight, and did what you could to keep others from doing the same. if this was the first time, i would assume you were ill informed. as i have NEVER seen you do anything but troll, i responded the way i did, and stand by it. you responded in a rational manner, which means that you diserve a rational response. however, after this i will be ignoring you (the best way to deal with a troll), and hope that others do the same. of course, if you begin posting informed, rational, intelligent, or comments that are useful in any way, shape, or form, that will change. but as it stands, i have seen no evidence to support you being anything but a troll of mediocre talents (trolling osnews is like shooting fish in a barrel)
I guess you’re one of the fish I shot in the barrel then
In any case, the issues I pointed out are still valid.
And to the guy that stated that Gtk+ wasn’t slow (relatively speaking), I just have to laugh
Beagles indexing technology is based on Lucene, which is a port of a powerful full-featured text search engine called Jarkata. Whenever a change occurs in the filesystem, Linux provides several mechanism to propagate the changes up the stack (i.e to userland tools). dnotify and, very recently, inotify are watchers that monitor these changes.
well, a small correction. jakarta is a java project linked to the apache group. tomcat is the most well known app to come out of it, its the free j2ee appserver. lucerne is one of the technologies they have come up with, lucerne.net is a .net/mono port of it.
Hence, a beagle deamon only needs to listen to notification from either inotify/dnotify to activate its indexer. A change occurs, inotify/dnotify notifies the beagle deamon the beagle activates its indexer. This is just a naive oversimplication of the complexity of the process. But it is intentional. I do not know the algorithms the beagle developers use for things such as ranking, data relativity and data relevance. But if you are interested in such things, the source code is open and free to download.
yeah, theres actually not too much documentation on how everything works. i thought i had a better idea then i actually do, and theres some things i wanna get a better idea of. first of all, if you cant guarentee that the file will not be accessed again before the indexers fire, then theres a chance of data corruption, which in something like this is extremely bad. i know beagle was spun off from the backend to dashboard, and i remember reading quite a bit about the ranking work that went into that. hopefully that stuff was carried over, or modularized at least. dont really need to read the source code, just looking for something more along the lines of tech specs 😉
On another note, I do not believe Beagle was designed to run outside the GNOME platform. And I see no reason why it should. After all, I do not expect Safari, Mail, or Spotlight to run in XP, OS 9, GNOME or KDE.
there is two problems. one is that app integration with non gnome apps is going to be trying. since the majority of apps out there werent written for gnome, that means that we wont really be able to count of project maintainers to write their own metadata plugins. also, if kde goes their own way, with their own db with an incompatible datamodel, it will be copy/paste all over again. such things should only be done once, and should be a standard for others to plug into.
At the application level, I believe in delibrately designing applications for specific environments, as opposed to multitude of environments. I do not understand why GNOME developers have to worry about KDE users and vice-versa. GNOME and KDE are different desktop platforms just as Windows XP and OS X are different. The fact that they run the same kernel is irrelevant.
in a perfect world, i agree with you. but how would you class wxwindows apps? or fltk apps? or gtk apps that dont use gnome libs, like the gimp? then there are alwas places where one environment will have something more mature then the other, and half the user base will have foreign apps in their environment (im thinking k3b).
You also need to be specific about your categorization of the Linux desktop. You seem to comparing OS X to Linux, GNOME, KDE all at the same time. Do you want to focus of GNOME, or do you want to focus on KDE. GNOME is entirely different from KDE. They use entirely different technologies and will continue to do so for a long while. Again, I have no problem with that.
neither do i. but again, lets look at the reality of the situation. what happens in kde has a big impact on gnome, and vice versa, when compared to the impact on say, windows.
osx application interoperability is impossible, but theres no real reason that gnome and kde cant play nice together, and there are things where having a common backend would make alot of sense. that is the rationale behind fd.o, and i happen to agree with it.
Will beagle become a core part of GNOME? If it proves useful and it benefits developers, why not? If it doesn’t, then better technologies will be developed. It’s not like Linux or GNOME would not survive without meta-data searching. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, free software does not shove technologies down the throats of developers. Free software hackers will only use a piece of technology if the benefits of doing so outweigh the cost.
i agree. i would argue that gnome will not survive, or at least flourish, without something more modern then c. mono is pretty garbage compared to java, but we’ve seen some of the most innovative gnome apps in years start to spring up left right and center ever since it was released. beagle, f-spot, tomboy, muine, etc. if not mono, then something, but we need it and we need it now.
As for the politics, I really don’t give a damn about them. I prefer Java to Mono, not because it is better or more powerful or faster or stable or it’s not MS, or patents, or whatever. I just like Java better. And I intend to start a host of Java projects designed for GNOME soon. I just do not have time for politics. And I am not assuring you or anyone that the beagle will be a success, will be widely adopted or will be a core part of GNOME anytime soon. But for those who need meta-data searching, it is there, it does a great job and most of the core applications already support it.
when you do, send me an email ;-). ever since the liscence change by sun, i have been really wanting to jump into java-gnome. with intellij giving free liscences to opensource projects, its starting to look real sexy to write oss java.
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if other free software hackers are working on their own meta-data technologies. Why should GNOME rely of Beagle alone? There should be more meta-data search technologies. In fact, I find GNOME-Storage a lot more useful and innovative than Spotlight, Beagle or WinFS. If you know much about free software and Linux in general, you’d realize it evolves in ways no one understands. Don’t be surprised if Beagle is made obsolete by a better technology tomorrow.
yeah, storage is very, very interesting stuff. but seth announced it, then didnt do much for a few years, so everyone kinda assumed it was dead. beagle is alot closer to being done then storage, but when it comes out we will have a true competitor to winfs.
How easy is it to write plugins for Beagle? I haven’t written one, so I wouldn’t know. But I understand it is relatively easy.
yeah, i poked around on the offficial site and found the code for it. not quite as neat as for spotlight, but far from difficult.
I wrote Novell the other day to suggest they rewrite the Linux kernel as an exokernel, moving far away from the monolithic and microkernel structure, and go after the increase of flexibility and speed that such a move would result in. At minimum, 4x faster than Windows and Mac OS; but in general 8x to 16x times faster. Faster loads, a more moduler system in the LibOS, more portable. Scaleable. They could still use Xen on top.
Maybe they’re looking into it 😉 If so, it would certainly “surpass Windows”. It would also mean other Linux distros could benefit (those who took up the new model, that is).
Time will tell. Love Novell SuSe. Have good feelings about it. Such a charmer.
–EyeAm
http://s87767106.onlinehome.us
you turn more people away from Linux
by creating such high expectations.
sure Linux is nice and all.
but there are still many grounds to cover for it to be a prime reason for people not wanting to return to Windows.
IBM, Novell are not being at all strategical about this.
But utterly dumb and clueless.
Ask any Linux/Windows person what needs to be done:
1. Fucking invest in the Linux GAMING industry you stupid morons!
2. Pressurize and make sure Windows hardware/gadgets are easily compatible in Linux:
Palm PDAs don’t sync;
ADSL USB modem requires a computer novice to recompile the kernel?? wtf
I thought IBM had influence??
3. Cater for the “DESKTOP” user,
these are the average Joe Bloggs who drives a lorry on a Sunday.
Don’t put a LDAP/Exchange Connector on his mail client expecting him to go “Wow”,
or worse don’t send him “Linux Middleware Demo CDs” –
he has enough beer mats.
The strategy should be from bottom-up not from top-down.
And lastly “Learn from Thy Enemies!”
Damn it
Just research and see what MS did.
From bottom (MS-DOS, games, education),
upwards (Servers and now SuperComputers even)
Quoting The MESMERIC (edited):
“1. invest in the Linux GAMING industry”
Excellent.
“2. Pressurize and make sure Windows hardware/gadgets are easily compatible in Linux: Palm PDAs don’t sync; ADSL USB modem requires a computer novice to recompile the kernel?? wtf”
I would suggest pooling such efforts with WINE at first (for Windows-compatible related stuff), and let there be a unified effort behind such things, to more rapidly develop solutions.
The interesting thing about the exokernel is no longer would Linux have to recompile for additions of hardware or components to take effect. If you wanted to add that new mouse, you’d install its drivers and it would run immediately. No recompile.
“3. Cater for the “DESKTOP” user,
these are the average Joe Bloggs who drives a lorry on a Sunday. Don’t put a LDAP/Exchange Connector on his mail client expecting him to go “Wow”, or worse don’t send him “Linux Middleware Demo CDs” – he has enough beer mats.”
Yes. The 64-Bit Desktop 😉
“The strategy should be from bottom-up not from top-down.”
Rewrite the kernel, Novell 😉 Alpha example already downloadable from MIT. (psst, it can run other OSes as ‘applications’).
Beagle is hosted on the gnome server, it is developed by many gnome core devs, it integrates with gnome/gtk apps, it uses mono bindings to gtk and gnome-libraries, so what exactly is your point besides trolling?
It’s a Mono application, and therefore isn’t in Gnome. If Mono is adopted by Gnome then it will be.
Am I missing something?
No matter how much KDE fanboys hate it, the QT license is an issue that isn’t going to go away until trolltech gets bought out.
It’s an issue that will get solved when Linux desktops have a market.
KDE has the superior framework and the superior speed, but many moons from now when linux on the desktop is actually relevant, KDE will be a very great niche desktop.
As I’ve said many times – if you ain’t go the technology, you ain’t going anywhere, because people won’t use it. LGPL’d toolkit or not.
i have never implied it.
What’s all this about then?
novell has many core gnome devs on the payroll, and as much as they hate to come out and say it, NLD is definately gnome-centric. so yes, they do make money off of gnome.
So they don’t make any money off it then? Obviously you’ve never seen the part where you choose your desktop in the NLD, or where kde-su comes up in Gnome or the continued use of YaST. Yer – really Gnome-centric, or so certain people want you to believe.
ok, you are a java developer who has no knowledge about suns ongoing soap opera with ibm, and their refusal to go a more sane route with their toolkit.
Yer – what’s that got to do with Gnome’s APIs? Java/Swing is how Sun recommends you go.
your context was fairly meaningless in and of itself. you said that because sun suggested writing guis in swt over gtk (which is what they use all over in jds), that somehow that made gtk bad.
Errrr, no. The point was that Sun are not promoting the use of Gnome or its APIs in any way. They recommend you use Java/Swing, which isn’t integrated one iota.
i refer you to my various sarcastic remarks about how companies arent part of the same zealotous horde that make up a nice percentage of the gnome/kde userbase.
Oh, that’s sarcasm? Well, my point was that Sun aren’t doing anything with Gnome if they continue to promote Java as the only way of programming on JDS.
really? i guess your still using COM, win16, etc then.
Let me guess. You’re not employed are you? In case you hadn’t heard, no one is re-writing everything in .Net. It’s not possible I’m afraid. People have these things called legacy systems that actually do things.
i was trying to be funny.
Wow.
you implied over and over that support of kde meant that they werent officially supporting gnome.
Errr, no – never said that. You implied to start off with, like everyone for the past five years, that Gnome is taking over this that and the other, blah, blah, blah. I’ve given you ample evidence to chew on that says that is just not happening I’m afraid. The support both, but unfortunately, KDE is where the money is.
sun has basically made gnome into a product that is attractive to the enterprise. this is both through financial and code contributions, and in the performing of usability tests.
Unfortunately, it ain’t Gnome as I’ve pointed out with Sun’s promotion of Java, and not being able to develop for Gnome through their development tools. Sun do Gnome a disservice in that.
1) gnome does not receive corporate funding
It does, but some people seem to think that means that Gnome is on the road to world domination. It doesn’t mean as much as you would like to think it does.
2) novell doesnt (officially) support gnome in specific, and gtk apps in general
They do, but some people seem to believe that they support only GTK and Gnome applications and think that Novell is becoming Gnome-centric. It isn’t – the stuff that makes the money isn’t GTK or Gnome-based.
3) novells support of suse makes #2 self-evident
Nope – the fact is that all of the stuff that makes the money, Suse Linux professional and SLES (Suse/Novell’s core business – servers), use KDE primarily. That’s the way it is – I’m not making that stuff up I’m afraid.
4) gtk sucks and noone uses it
Nope, never said that.
How a topic on Novell Suse surpassing Windows has turned into a OSX/Gnome/KDE bashing contest.
“The only person who finds beagle slow is AdamW”
I find that hard to believe. beagle is just *visibly* slower than every other app I run daily. It feels like an app being run over ssh from a remote host on a wireless LAN, is the best way I can put it – not unusably slow, but just irritating. It takes a noticeable time to open itself after you click on the tray icon, it takes time to quit when you tell it to, all the search results take a little annoying time to show up…it just feels sluggish.
“I use mono-1.1.4, and beagle has yet to fall over or get confused. Prior to 1.1.4, it used to consume a lot of RAM, but I have only 256MB of RAM and I have two other mono apps(muine and tomboy) running 24/7. With 1.1.4 the memory issues have almost disappeared.”
How long do you run it for? The devs themselves noted with 0.0.7 that it still has significant memory leaks but they now take a day or so to become really noticeable (instead of about half an hour, as previously). That’s an improvement, but for a proper app it’s still not remotely acceptable. Oh, and 1.1.4? That would be the, uh, development branch. Yes, I know the developers say people should use it instead of 1.0.6, but it’s still the development branch. To me, a 0.7 app that the developers say in their blogs and release notes is unstable, leaky and works best when running on a bleeding-edge development version of mono is…a pretty perfect picture of an app that ain’t ready for primetime. To be clear, I’m not saying that Beagle sucks, I *like* it. I’m saying it’s a very cool piece of software that is currently in, roughly, alpha state, and relying on it to be at a level where it can be released and trumpeted as a central feature in a month or so’s time is bold.