“The minders ushered me into the dimly lit hut built of rough wood and palm fronds. They pointed to a place where I could sit. Then we waited. In a few minutes, the elder came in, then one of the chiefs. I was about to be shown something few outsiders had seen. After the ritual discussion of other things, the tall, animated chief motioned for me to approach. And then he showed me the current state of Ximian Desktop 2.0. It is very cool.” Read the preview at LinuxAndMain.
A Glimpse of the Future? I Hope So.
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Where are the screenshots????
Gnome is Kewl!!!
Go Gnome!!!
Go Linux!!!
I still much prefer KDE.
The mention of making OpenOffice integrate into the GUI is interesting, I assume they’re tweaking it’s GUI to fit in with the look and feel of GNOME apps.
The thing I dislike most about Linux is the lack of a consistent GUI, considering the lack of standard UI guidelines it’s probably the hardest thing to fix. Personally I’m quite happy using either KDE or GNOME, for me there’s not much difference between them. But as I use a mix of apps, I have to put up with an inconsistent and inelegant mess of different UIs. Having more consistent apps would be a massive step forwards IMO.
I know I’m probably clutching at straws, but this gives me more confidence that in the next few years, Linux will evolve into an OS that I’ll be happy to use on my desktop.
Hmm the time between releases is a bit long I would say. The last release was great for its day, but has since been overtaken, which is some of us no longer use it. Becos of the time lag, it feels like the Ximian desktop is already dead. Anyways, why don’t Ximian start their own linux dist? Also, all these one-million and one efforts to hit the desktop is duplication of effort. Too much wasted code time. Why don’t they all work together and follow a few basic outlines?
“Why don’t they all work together and follow a few basic outlines?”
Because they are all stuck in there ways…and then most Linux users scream LSB at anyone that suggests cooperation…
but truthfully the LSB dosn’t go far enough to standardize distributions.
I still think the “idea” of United Linux is a good start, having the distro’s share in research and development, creating a standard base for other distro’s to build off of is a brilliant idea, ensuring compatiability between them.
One UL rpm would install on any one of the distro’s…no repackaging for specific cases…
This would make it a lot easier for hardware vendors and software developers alike.
“Hmm the time between releases is a bit long I would say”
Not for anyone who has to upgrade 50 computers for a business and deal with all the questions the users have after that.
I really love the version of Gnome from Xiamian
“The minders ushered me into the dimly lit hut built of rough wood and palm fronds. They pointed to a place where I could sit. Then we waited. In a few minutes, the elder came in, then one of the chiefs. I was about to be shown something few outsiders had seen. After the ritual discussion of other things, the tall, animated chief motioned for me to approach. And then he showed me the current state of Ximian Desktop 2.0. It is very cool.”
He forgot to mention how they passed the pipe around.
> Anyways, why don’t Ximian start their own linux dist?
> Also, all these one-million and one efforts to hit the
> desktop is duplication of effort
That would be even more duplication IMO.
> Why don’t they all work together and follow a few basic
> outlines?
They are working on that issues like common icons … – believe me.
The center of that efforts is located at http://www.freedesktop.org/
Robert
It is the most sophisticated desktop I’ve seen for Linux or any current operating system.
The GNOME 2.2rc’s are very good in their own right. This should be awesome. Can’t wait for a release.
I think they are just taking too long as well. Gnome 2.2 is around the corner with a host of new features and cleanups that should have been in 2.0. Ximian’s product is probably a great piece of software, but it should have been out a couple months ago.
I just went to Ximian’s website and check the features/screenshots. I fail to see what’s the difference between Ximian Desktop and Gnome? All I see are Red Carpet and Evolution as important products that made by Ximian. I don’t like Red Carpet, just because or RPM. I prefer to compile stuff than grab the binary files.
I love Gnome 2.2 so far, I have been using CVS and rc versions for long time by now. So, would like to know what’s advantage of Ximian Desktop.
Each release of Ximian Desktop corresponds to a release of GNOME, but the version numbering system is different. Right now, Ximian is selling version 1.1 of its Desktop, which is based on GNOME 1.4. So, I think that Ximian Desktop 2.0 will be based on GNOME 2.2.
Just my 0,02 €.
Gnome’s UI has always appealed to me because it represents simplicity. However, those default icons for <- , ->, X, etc, still are too dark. They suck. I dunno why they have’nt changed it yet!
They are also doing mono, which gives people running linux the ability to run programs that were written with C#.Net and some VB.Net.
Ximian is an important part of making linux more viable.
The mono effort is indeed great. I notice that the mono apps shown both use the same look and feel. I wonder if that would mean Mono apps looking the same accross both KDE and Gnome.
Anyhow, I can’t wait for the next Ximian desktop. The last version was great for its time. You have to remember though that it is Gnome 2 which actually adopted the look of Ximian desktop. Before that Gnome looked quite different.
I think Ximian are good at forging ahead with things and showing how it should be done. I like what I read in the article about having things ‘Just work’. This would mean being able to view videos etc out of the box.
You are right, I can’t believe that I just forgot to add this in my previous comment.
Didn’t most of the artwork that became the gnome “look” come from Easel?
OT: So is it correct to say that if I write an app in C#, that app will be cross platform – can run on windows and Linux just like that? I know with .net and mono on those systems, but is that a correct way of thinking about it? To be honest .net and mono have been somewhat confusing to me.
I can’t help but comparing this to RedHat/KDE – isn’t this (at least a little) like what RedHat did with KDE? Modifying it here and there in order to integrate things a little bit more?
I appreciate that.
“I can’t help but comparing this to RedHat/KDE – isn’t this (at least a little) like what RedHat did with KDE? Modifying it here and there in order to integrate things a little bit more? ”
To complete this comparision Ximian Desktop needs to be incompatible with GNOME Desktop. Of course only here and there (some service renaming, etc.) … the casual user who updates via Red Carpet only will never know (or care?) …
OT: Mono is trying to support most of the .NET libraries. MSFT only release about 30% of its libraries for standardization; the Mono team is going to have to try to recreate the remaining 70% which means most .NET programs wont run in Mono any time sone.
Of interest is that .NET is not C# compliant since it has 70% of its APIs non-standard. MSFT also recomments that people call Win32 APIs from .NET programs; this will make true cross platform support next to imposiable (the Mono team is using the Wine package to help here; but that only helps if you’re using x86 hardware).
MSFT only released the C# and CLI runtime evironment to the standards board for PR. They have no plans to limit themselves to the published standards.
Isn’t this guy the same person who was poking at the KDE League a while back and then was accused of the whole bit ’cause of a spat in the KDE-Cafe mailing list?
but truthfully the LSB dosn’t go far enough to standardize distributions.
I don’t know what to think about the LSB really. If you read the specs, their “answer” to making portable binaries is to have:
* their own build process
* their own set of forked libraries
* their own linker to enforce the rules!
* everything _except_ the few libs that have been standardised must be statically linked.
Works for big corporate apps I guess, but not for desktop apps.
Bah. I’m in a foul mood, was just in another IRC flamewar over how it’s supposedly “impossible” to produce portable Linux binaries.
Roll on Mono. The current situation is insane. Pass me the pipe will you…..
>I don’t know what to think about the LSB really. If you read the specs, their “answer” to making portable binaries is to have: . . .
I guess that’s why “meta-platforms” like KDE and GNOME are needed.
>>>Also, all these one-million and one efforts to hit the desktop is duplication of effort. Too much wasted code time.
preface: it’s not one million efforts. if you have stayed on any developer mail lists long enough, there are not that many people. you are over estimating by several decimal places. so your wrong. period.
also
1. It took evolution millions of species before the jackpot was hit and homosapiens sprung out of the bunch. and competition is what got us there. so you are wrong…again. the best desktop will come out of competition. Gnome is pushing KDE is pushing Ximian is pushing …etc etc etc.
2. so what you are saying is that all those developers should stop working on their competing projects and all work on the same project. I’ve got two things to say to that: nine women can’t have a baby in one month, and secondly, competition is mother of creativeness. so you are wrong again.
nice chatting with you, but if your relatives think like you, then it was good to have your gene pool with us while it lasted.
good bye.
competition rules.
I used to think that one desktop (ala Windows) would be the key to accelerate the growth of Linux. I just realised that it’s not true. I would like to see the competition (friendly) between projects like GNOME and KDE. They are not sending each other death-threats, by the way.
Take, for example, the Bitsream Fonts.
Inspite of two projects (or more) I like what RH did with Bluecurve (as a theme). I hope to see more such integration. If RH were to kick out KDE tommorow, that’s their problem, not a fault of KDE or GNOME.
Personally I think Mac OS X and Windows provide plenty of competition on the desktop. If Linux GUI projects weren’t competing against each other then they would still be trying to beat other OSes.
I suppose it’s possible that if there was just one desktop environment developed for Linux it’s progress would have been slower. But at least there would be consistency, you wouldn’t have the horrible UI mess of running apps designed for different environments together. Each with their own set of dialog boxes, text selection methods, cut/copy/paste, menu design, drag and drop, etc.
As most of my time is spent using apps, how well apps work together is much more important to me than the design of the desktop. Personally I don’t think that any number of neat little touches and clever features in KDE and GNOME can make up for the lack of consistency. That’s the main reason I still much prefer working in Windows, despite the quality of a lot of Linux software.
“As most of my time is spent using apps, how well apps work together is much more important to me than the design of the desktop. Personally I don’t think that any number of neat little touches and clever features in KDE and GNOME can make up for the lack of consistency. That’s the main reason I still much prefer working in Windows, despite the quality of a lot of Linux software.”
Who’s “consistency” should we pick? Apple’s, Microsoft’s, Amiga’s. To paraphrase: “There’s plenty of consistency, pick any one”. How about this? Linux develop it’s own consistency, just as all the other platforms throught history has. Now the questions that need answering is, what, and were needs to be consistent, and what, and were can one diverge? There’s were wisdoms needed. Anyone?
How about in a Gnome app selecting Edit->Copy then going to a app in KDE and going edit-paste.. IT DOES NOT WORK! Thats what people complaining about when they speak of linux conistency or lack there of in this case. Its things like that which keep linux from becoming a main stream OS to rival windows on the desktop (or OSX) for that matter
Most of the Gnome look was from Tigert. Gnome 1 looked like this: http://tigert.gimp.org/gnome/gnome-stock/ and Gnome 2 from http://primates.ximian.com/~tigert/new_stock_project/
Re: Consistency, I haven’t had a problem cutting plain text to and from KDE3 & Gnome2. What specific scenario is it broken in (I’d like to test this)
Yes. But I don’t think it works with older apps that only support libraries such as GTK1.2. At least my expirence with this comes from trying to copy and paste things from GAIM to some KDE app. Though I could be wrong.
I have to agree with you there since i use a myriad of toolkits and applications for the different tk’s.
easy example, I have -no- problems cutting and pasting (or even selecting the text and pasting it with the click of a button) back and forth between evolution (gtk1.2) and Koffice (qt3)
neither Have I stumbled upon -any- problems related to cutting and pasting, so far atleast.
So Me thinks that “Mark” was fishing and i bit the hook.
What I really want to see is a universal skinning and decorating system that works with both KDE and Gnome TKs. I want ONE look not four.
Try Keramik/Geramik.
I’ve found a lot of inconsistency with cut/copy/paste in Linux, mainly because some apps use the mouse button method, while some more recent apps use the keyboard. Some seem to have separate clipboards for mouse and keyboard and sometimes a different clipboard for cut text, while others just have one. If I’ve copied some text using ctrl+c then selected some text, in some apps pressing ctrl+v would paste the text I copied with the keyboard shortcut, in others it would paste the selected text. I also had some trouble copying and pasting text from OpenOffice into some other applications. Copying text from the Opera web browser also caused problems and there were a few others that didn’t work very well.
Copy/paste between gnome/kde works fine on my RedHat 8 system.
Besides, I have always thought of them as different OS’s, in a way. If I am using KDE, I tend to just use KDE based programs, for example. What really gets on my nerves are these ported windows programs (mozilla) which don’t go with anything.
You could check out recent mozilla which supports gtk themes.
1) You see, Ximian is targeting the corporate market, not geeks that don’t like the default feel of GNOME 2.0. So geeks isn’t their primary concern. Right now, even GNOME 1.4 is ready enough for the corporate market, what is needed is services and applications. So if Ximian releases GNOME 2, it makes no difference to corporate users.
2) Ximian is way better off not getting into the desktop business. Especially since most of their revenue comes from those making distributions (Sun and Red Hat). Competing directly with them is stupid. Plus, it is much easier not to maintain the distribution, only the desktop. And they can get the job done just as well.
For many corporates, many times Red Hat is better. Many times SuSE is better. Many times Some-other-distro-some-teen-made is better. Now in order to supply to them, they would have to best each of these companies. Not a good plan, IMHO. Besides, why must every Linux company be making a distribution? Makes no sense to me.
Now, to Kreek, I too prefer KDE. But no god-damn corporate cares about that. To date, there isn’t a company doing what Ximian is doing to GNOME. So until such a company appears, nobody cares who you prefer.
Well, I just CTRL-C’ed your post in Konqueror, and CTRL-V’ed it into GEdit. It worked just fine, but GEdit didn’t like your post any more than I did…
The answer to your question regarding Cut/Copy/Paste functions in Linux can be found at this link http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.txt .
Methinks it funny that KDE users initially could not be convinced that Cut/Copy/Paste functionality was broken in KDE 2.x. And now that the bug has been corrected in KDE 3.x, they can’t be convinced that it was fixed.
—
Best Regards
Remove CAPS to email me.
Using themes to make the UIs look more consistent is a lame solution. Why? There are far more inconsistencies between KDE and GNOME apps. For example, the file dialog. Or the toolbar editor (if GNOME has one of its own that is default). And stuff like that.
I would really like to call Keramik/Geramik and Bluecurve consistent, but until apps not only look the same, but act the same, I wouldn’t call it consistent. The only way it would be consistent is for both KDE and GNOME working on a HI guideline, a standardized one. So that programs that follow the guideline would be consistent on both GNOME AND KDE and other desktops that decided to follow the guideline.
But of course, this happen is next to impossible in the nearest forseable future. KDE and GNOME see their UI as something of their competitive egde. For example, KDE developers reason that most KDE apps are consistent with each other’s in comparison with GNOME. GNOME on the other hand likes to reason that its new HI Guide is vastly more superior than KDE’s (which IMHO is bullshit).
Care to post specific examples of how Ximian gets their income from Redhat and Sun?
It is true that one can paste text from KDE->Gnome, but one cannot paste images or objects from KDE to Gnome. It is true the other way, too.
This is a huge problem which the two operating environments need to resolve. That is why, IMHO, a distribution should NEVER make non-native apps the default of any environment. That is to say that in Gnome, Abiword should be default. In KDE, Kword should be default. OpenOffice.org should also be participating in the development of the clipboard standard, too. It’s so big&fat plus the clipboard problem that it’s just not acceptable for day to day use. On my systems, the only time I’ve had the whole thing go down was when I was using OOo.
You know, in any operating system, you can’t really expect apps to ACT the same because they are all designed for different use. Look at Windows. I’m quite sure not ever dialog in each application is exactly the same nor is the saving feature sometimes. The only true consistency I’ve seen in an operating system is in MacOS and BeOS, and even then, there is tiny variations in each app.
Just to name a few
http://ximian.com/about_us/press_center/press_releases/index.html?p…
http://ximian.com/about_us/press_center/press_releases/index.html?p…
http://ximian.com/about_us/press_center/press_releases/index.html?p…
And I haven’t even started searching deep….
Windows is a inconsistent platform. Hell, I’m telling the truth. Reason being that not many programs uses Win32 fully for their UI for that when Microsoft changes the UI, many apps don’t follow. Take file dialogs for example, Microsoft changed the UI for XP, yet even Office doesn’t follow it. Windows is a bad example to follow.
As for other apps, my point is consistency, not 100% similarity. In other words, applications can be flexible with their UI, but on key stuff like the toolbar manager/editor, file dialogs, menus, etc, they should be consistent with other apps if you want *real* consistency not a skin-deep one.