Ximian has released their long awaited Ximian Desktop 2, their popular Gnome-based desktop, and Evolution, their popular email client and calendar program. They can be found on the main Ftp server. You can also check their mirrors. OSNews featured an interview with Nat Friedman of Ximian recently.
Ximian Desktop 2, Evolution Released
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Eugenia Loli
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That was sort of under the radar.
I was just about to go to bed, and BAM… Ximian Desktop 2 comes out
been waiting for this for a while now, so off to download all over again, brings back memories of KDE3 – > 3.1 upgrade, package after package…
I probably won’t switch from Fluxbox, but I’m really impressed with what they’ve done with Open Office!
And it is sweet. Everything is fast and integrated. Really impressed.
… it’s really fast as described above… I’m gonna d/l it now and go again to bed 😉
Don’t had a really good sleep this night because of XD2 😉 … no, it’s the hot wheater… go to swim people, but first try XD2 this morning!
They have an ebuild for Evolution soon. I’m using the beta and its slick. One thing I would especially like to note for gtk1 Evolution users: the new version is a LOT faster in loading. Exponentially so. It’s not rxvt fast, but you notice the difference if you’ve ever run Evolution before.
Darn, where is the installer.
I don’t just want to download and install the packages because I want to see the installer. 
The wait is killing me.
Please use the mirrors, don’t just do, “dah, I’m going to download off ximian and hog all the bandwidth”. If there is a mirror, do the polite thing and use it. Btw, planetmirror is very fast at the moment.
Installing packages one-by-one is pretty much a recipe for problems. You need to use our graphical installer to end up with a working desktop.
I just found it. Just hope it’s the right one and won’t destroy my system.
It is using their industrial Gtk theme already which kicks ass! Much better than on the screenshots alone.
The installer is bootstrappable off of go.ximian.com. See:
http://www.ximian.com/products/desktop/download.html?distribution=g…
…for more information on how-to. Cheers and thanks all.
-Rupert J. Ximian
Let’s hope that the Ximian version of OOo is upgraded to OOo 1.1 base soon. I can’t stand being unable to move the typist and other window outside the main window.
Ah, I see thanks! Now I downloaded the installer manually already, this is probably the same.
I was wondering whether and when, if applicable, sources will be made available for masochists like me, wanting to compile XD2 from scratch and/or parts of it (OOO, Evolution)
Installing now and I am impressed by the installer’s simplicity =)
HMD: srpms will be made available in the near future (near meaning less than 1 week, I believe).
For sources, check patches.ximian.com
too bad its only for redhat and suse… i would really like to try XD2 on libranet…
=( i hope ti is supported soon.
Just noticed that the “Dependency Resolution” dialog offers normal “Cancel” and “Continue” buttons followed by a license agreement dialog for Bitstream Vera fonts which had “I agree” and “Cancel” buttons. Very confusing to have “Cancel” on different positions and all thanks to the strange button order in the Gnome HIG. 🙁
It shows “Disagree” and “Agree” for me which is completely correct. The installer itself has “Cancel”, “Back”, “Forward”.
i have always wondered why they, ximian, have never tried to go for the distrobution race. they could release their own which could be just a spiffied version of debian or redhat and still include all the extras for the other distros via their webiste. maybe it is just me.
Even better than the features, software that actually comes out when announced
Anyway if it’s as good as all the previous Ximian desktop this is maybe what we’ve all been waiting for…
did they patch the file-selector?
… Eugenia complaining about the Trashcan right mouse button menu having 16 entries. 🙂
No Mandrake rpms? That really sucks…
The file selector has shortcuts to “Home”, “Desktop” and “Docuements”. “New Folder”, “Rename File” and “Delete File” moved their position and got icons. Didn’t notice any other changes.
Darn it, I’m going to have to wait until I go home to try it tonight, I don’t have enough disk space really here at work (not to mention I’m running garnome, which might screw things up).
Anyway, at home I have a shiny new RH9 install that I vowed I wasn’t going to fiddle with. Boo sucks to that! I want my Industrial
The installer bootstrapper is a good idea. I’m not sure why they decided to statically link gtk2 though, considering that the distros they support all have it already.. maybe just to get industrial right from the start.
*watching the clock*
I think Miguel is of the opinion that starting Yet Another Distribution would be a stupid thing to do, and I think I agree with him. Best to leverage the work of Red Hat, SuSE etc.
I’m still waiting for the mandrake release… )-:
It just doesn’t want to work for me. Correctly identifies my distro as Redhat 8, then tells me there are no files to retrieve. Then when I try and quit the installer, it hangs.
First impression = not good.
After ~75% of the download the speed suddenly dropped at all mirrors. I got the first 75% under 15 minutes, but now there’s hours left. Damn it! I’m really looking forward to see OOo.
Two crashes in Gnome and OpenOffice.org, some nice touches (file selector, quick alarm, personal settings overview) here and there. Suffers from a GTK1 Gimp and a browser still in rewrite state (just released Galeon 1.3.5 reintroduces some more features) and the x3270’s ugly GUI. Better network/printer integration might be nice for some but otherwise nothing exciting compared to Gnome 2.2 if you don’t greed for some other artwork/style. Not sure why this took so long to be released.
I’m tired of every problem being solved with “let’s make another distribution”. Ximian is not expending loads of resources getting an OS to work, they’re concentrating on making a Desktop only, which means it should have a lot more attention to detail than what the distro makers can do.
I believe that a reference distro should be created (not an actual distro with installer etc, but an extension of the LSB). This distro should specify library versions, compiler version (and flags used), and anything else not specifically stated in the LSB that is need for cross-distribution binary compatibility. It shouldn’t specify things like Kernel version, or specific versions of GNOME, KDE, and various applications etc (this is left up to the distribution makers).
However the official sites for GNOME, KDE, etc can compile reference versions for the reference distro if they wish. Distribution makers should not break binary compatibility with these versions. Software could then be packaged in a distribution independent way (e.g. “Autopackage”), with nice scripted installers. Since they know what you’re running, the installer shouldn’t have too many problems.
The “official reference distro” should not break binary compatibility too often (e.g. less than say 3 years at a time). When it does break, it should provide compatibility libraries (a la BSD).
This way, companies like Ximian (and anybody else wanting to deploy software on GNU/Linux) can concentrate on making a great, bugfree product. Rather than wasting a bunch of time repackaging stuff for every conceivable distro, and putting all sorts of workarounds in the installer for various distroisms.
The LSB by itself wont do, I think a concerted effort to augment the LSB effort with a reference distribution would do great things to improve the quality of open source software and also ease upgrades and installation of new software.
Yes this sounds like “United Linux”, but I don’t believe United Linux is community-friendly. This “official reference distro” will be run by the community (vendors like Red Hat can of course contribute as well), and a “compatibility logo” for vendors to put on their products would not cost anything, the distro would just need to pass a series of tests (with some software, like the LSB testing software).
Question: Is OOo.org 1.0.2 based ??
If so, I’m not bothered to try this..
I’m not sure why this took so long either.
Too bad it doesn’t work with Mdk9.1. I wouldn’t switch distribution just for XD2.
But you can run Evo 1.4 and Red Carpet 2.0 with Mdk9.1!
Which file holds gtk industrial theme? I would like to have it and I don’t need other stuff.
TIA
The ximian-artwork package.
While download the files manually from the mirrors I get as much speed as possible ( 80-90 kb/s), using the installer I get that speed untill it reaches 10 % , then I get 1-4 kb/s. Why is this ?
The install from local hardware or cd doesn’t work either, the forward button isn’t clickable no mather what I type in as path to the files. A browse thingy would help a lot.
Download the rpms you need (or all of them but don’t bother to download the sorce) from a official mirror to “/var/cache/redcarpet/packages”, then run the installation application (installer-i386) and select Ximian Mirror Site, select the options you want and click your way to the point the download begins. This will result in a installation from the harddrive (I guess?).
I have not yet tried this out, please confirm that it works.
>Question: Is OOo.org 1.0.2 based ??
>If so, I’m not bothered to try this..
>I’m not sure why this took so long either.
The Ximian Edition of OOo is 1.0.3 based.
I manually upgraded to Evolution 1.4 as the installer kept hanging with an error (65) while it tried to download Ximian Connector… even when I unselected it. Upgraded the following packages on my RH9 laptop (YMMV):
evolution-1.4.0-0.ximian.6.4.i386.rpm gtkhtml3.0-3.0.5-0.ximian.6.2.i386.rpm libgal2.0_3-1.99.7-0.ximian.6.2.i386.rpm libgnomecanvas-2.2.0.2-0.ximian.6.2.i386.rpm libgtkhtml3.0_2-3.0.5-0.ximian.6.2.i386.rpm libsoup-1.99.23-0.ximian.6.1.i386.rpm
Evolution starts right up, much faster than 1.2, but the Calendar view is broken. The only thing there is the task list. The various “views” buttons do nothing. I’ve verified that the Calendar module works fine on a “non-upgrade” (fresh account). Hope someone from Ximian is reading this and is ready to update their FAQ regarding upgrades.
-J.
“Evolution starts right up, much faster than 1.2, but the Calendar view is broken. The only thing there is the task list.”
This is a quite common problem (though I didn’t have it). The views aren’t gone, they are just very small.
Look for handles at the side of the taskview and then drag them around to see the other views again.
“While download the files manually from the mirrors I get as much speed as possible ( 80-90 kb/s), using the installer I get that speed untill it reaches 10 % , then I get 1-4 kb/s. Why is this ?”
I had similar problems. I figured that the installer tries to solve dependency issues and whenever it needs a package for your distribution that isn’t part of XD2 (so it’s not on your selected mirror), it would download this from the redcarpet server, which is absolutely hammered right now…
As a work around, I suggest to wait for the package list, then look it through for package which don’t end with “-ximian” and install those packages manually (for example via “up2date packagename” in Red Hat). Then restart the installer and it will not try to install those packages again.
Hmm I notice that after the installation, rcd constantly consumes > 90% of the cpu cycles. Does anyone notice the same?
Good catch Spark, that was it. How in the heck did you ever notice that???
-J.
nice thinking Spark!
That sounds like trouble.
Since the servers are getting so hammered right now, I wonder when it’s going to bomb out on me?
🙂
Hold on, just went up to 340 Min’s. Things are getting better? ;(
I’m not blamming anyone, I know the servers are being taxed, so don’t start yelling at me. I’m just haveing fun!
Good catch Spark, that was it. How in the heck did you ever notice that???
I didn’t, just remembered that I read this somewhere.
Maybe they should integrate bittorrent for the download. That would save them bandwith and it would save users from failed installations.
Just my 0.02 ?
My install halts when downloading the package info for my redhat 7.3.
Jun 9 15:08:59 id=40 BEGIN ‘Downloading http://red-carpet.ximian.com/redhat-73-i386/redhat-73-i386/packagei…‘ (running)
Now, why is it tring to download from ximian.com when i selected a mirror and that package is on the mirror???
Stupid…
After installing XD2.0 a process called “rcd” is taking up 85%-90% CPU at all times. Is anyone else having this problem?
Perhaps I should have read Ronald’s previos post.
I just downloaded the whole thing in about a 1/2 hour… just search around for a good mirror. Now I’m staring at the Dizzy Monkey go round… and round… and round…
…did i whine about the installer doesn’t allowing putting ftp:// on the Other Network Site yet?
If i put there something without the ftp://, it will add a http:// to it… do they even test this?
Same here.
I just removed Suse from my system becuase it sucked, it was bloated as all get out and left me hanging in dependecy hell…. So I went to debian…. Now the propellerheads at Ximian have pulled debian support? jesus, these folk are dim witted……
Until it supports debian, Its still broken software in my book….
Thanks to Spark I finnaly managed to install XD2.
Is it me, beeing all dizzy, or is this alot faster than Redhat 9’s default gnome?
They’ve really surpassed themselves with this one so far! I loved XD1 on RH7 but I couldn’t live with GTK1 forever when RH8 & 9 came out so I had to drop it. Since then I’ve just been waiting … and waiting …
And here it is :o) First impressions:
I love the new user prefs – very MacOSX-ish.
Menu editing via nautilus works in RH9 at last.
New CUPS stuff is a vast improvement.
Oo.o looks so much better.
SMB: integration in some apps makes life a bit easier but could do much better.
Theme – gorgeous!
Galeon – much better than it was (I moved to epiphany because the old galeon was too heavyweight).
File chooser – better, but needs some more work on integrating SMB:/NFS: browsing.
Menupanel menus – up to Ximian’s usual high standard.
Red carpet – been using this release for a few weeks already , and it’s SOOOooo much better!
Evolution – Love it, much faster.
I could go on but I’ve got work to do.
Great job Ximian guys – keep the improvements coming.
I would like to see a Favorites list in the file chooser, but I guess symlinks will do the trick until then.
Is it possible to omit all XD2 components (Gnome, Mozilla, OO, Galeon etc) on a new fresh RH 9 system? I planned a full XD2 install after the RH install.
Some comments about the menus (on SuSE): Two character maps are offered, two versions of Glade and Galeon has also two entries in the same menu. On the other side taking snapshots in the “System” menu is missing.
Any chance this will be in the ports collection soon?
X1mian 1.x doesn’t even show up on freshports or freebsd.org/ports.
Of the whole package with the installer. That would be sweet. Downloading packages one at a time sucks at times.
XD2 going to include. Is is anything more than just a theme?
I guess it doesn’t add more than a modified version of Gnome with a few improved ways to handle things, like printing, networking. It doesn’t add any unike features but makes it easier to use a few old onces.
I downloaded it mainly because the improved open/save window and the GTK version of OpenOffice.org
Thanks to Spark I finnaly managed to install XD2.
Great!
Is it me, beeing all dizzy, or is this alot faster than Redhat 9’s default gnome?
I have the same feeling. The heavy rcd daemon is a bummer though. Hope they fix it soon, or I always have to kill it before starting Quake.
…How do I install local packages. I have even put them into /var/cache/redcarpet/packages/ but it won’t see them.
You have to be logged in as root.
If you’re using nautilus, you have to start nautilus in su mode.
i just installed XD2, but my openoffice remains same as RH9. is OO on Ximian only fro red-carpet express users???
I was just downloading everything with the installer, sth wasn’t at the mirror, and with 90% downloaded, now it said that it is going to start from the begining, what the??, what can I do?
I think its working now. I did not want to install them manually as Nat said it is not advisable.
It not skips the downloaded packages. thanks
To install the Ximian version of Open Office.org, do the following:
– Start red-carpet
– Go to the ‘Available Software’ tab
– Select the ‘xd2’ channel from the combo-box
– choose the packages you want to install
JP
Any chance this will be in the ports collection soon?
X1mian 1.x doesn’t even show up on freshports or freebsd.org/ports.
You can port it by yourself and be a maintainer for it if you want to. Please note that, you can’t call it Ximian in the ports tree and even you will have to create the patches to remove all copyright, images (ex: monkey and etc) and etc of Ximian. It’s what Ximian told to the Gentoo folks.
At one point they pledged not to release anything until it worked on FreeBSD….then reality set in. I like it on RH but, like Opera, I wouldn’t pay for it unless there was a FreeBSD-specific version.
Thanks , i’just downloading to testing.
.. but not enough differences from vanilla GNOME to make me switch from KDE
All I have to say is this is really awesome. Everything really just seems to work.
Not sure if this is a SuSe thing, but and I never noticed it before, I can access my Windows Home network. Never done that before. What is even better is that it is easier to do than in Windows. In windows you answer a bunch of trivial questions, but with XD2 it was just there, working.
XD2 is going to make me switch to Gnome.
Awesome job Ximian!
…These days I say nothing will make me switch to KDE from GNOME.
…(very close) to installing it without using the provided installer. What complications can this cause. I have all the packages it should install but it keeps saying some are not downloaded. What do I do. How badly could it turn out if I did this. Could I install using red-carpet. What is the difference?
Instalation sux, but desktop is great.
It’s the fastest gnome 2.x I’ve ever seen.
Does the installer support the resume download?
Yes. However, when the installation already started (it had everything downloaded), failed because of RPM conflicts (sigh but almost expected, my system isn’t that clean anymore :/) and I then restarted, it didn’t resume but download again. I did a rpm -Uvh * in /var/cache/redcarpet then which worked fairly well. I have some problems though which might be caused by my chaotic system and installation. Maybe I’ll re-install Red Hat 9 and then Ximian from scratch.
I keep loosing the connection after 1 hour circa (tried different mirrors), then I restart the download but doesn’t keep track of the downloaded RPMs.. this sucks
need a better Installer!
That’s what it said for most mirrors I tried and none have successfully installed it.
Holy crap! This DE is AWESOME! I never liked XD 1.4, but this thing is amazing. I never thought I’d find something that I like more than RH’s Bluecurve, but this is it.
because currently servers are totally overloaded, i installed xd2 themes and vera fonts manually.
if i’m not mistaken, they seem to be sharper than the original rh9 ones, but unfortunatly, mozilla continues to use the default ones…? nevertheless, it seems to me that in comparison, mozilla fonts now seem to be much more blurry, and i’m getting headaches from surfing!
anyone any idea what i could change (switched already between serif and sans serif, prefer serif)?
Just installed XD2 on Redhat 9 . First off let me say that its pretty amazing. Polish-wise. But everything that XD2 offers by way of system tools I could have done without XD2.
My point is redhat amd suse already come with a very nifty set system tools to manage ur stuff.
Wont it make more sense to release XD2 for say Debian or Gentoo or even Slackware which dont have all these handy system tools like printer config and the like.
Anyway just thought about this so thought I’d post it.
As far XD2 goes though Ximian has again outdone itself.
Thanx
see ya.
If you are using Slackware then Dropline Gnome is a pretty nice Gnome environment. Look on http://www.dropline.net.
No because they aren’t targeting general geeks but big corporations which will usually run distributions supported by big corporations (mostly Red Hat and SuSE).
The system configuration isn’t the most important point of XD2 anyway, don’t forget that they have dumped the Ximian Setup Tools (which are now the GNOME Setup Tools). Today they are concentrating more on adding missing pieces than to duplicate existing work.
I gave up and used wget to grab all the rpm files. The installed timed out around 300 of 375MB about 5 times and never started another 10 times. That things needs a more graceful restart.
i downloaded all the rpms from the ftp, but i can’t click on “continue” after i typed the path to the rpms in the ximian-installer.
so how can i install all those rpms automatically?
thx.
Idem… same problem here
….The installer was not working nicely. I downloaded all the packages and installed red-carpet. Then I made links to the packages in the /var/cache/redcarpet/packages/ directory using
ln –symbolic /path/to/rpms /var/cache/redcarpet/packages/
I then used added the ximian desktop channel to my red-carpet and selected the packages in the channel and installed them. It will not download the packages you have downloaded already(if they are in /var/cache/redcarpet/packages/), and if any dependencies are also in that directory, it will automatically install them.
Not the official installation routine, but it seems to have worked.
It may also help to totally remove the GNOME installation too. I have also noticed I cannot use apt anymore because of conflicts.
I’m just using their sucky installer without a resume , but will installing XD 2 destroy your redhat tools? I don’t really care, I have SUSE, but I’m still wondering.
It does not want the Redhat’s printing tool, it uses its own. So that will have to go. Otherwise it plays nice with Redhat. Except for the apt thingy. But red carpet is very good and fits the bill better than apt imho. Maybe the freshrpms guys should make a red-carpet channel.
An alternative to apt is yum… works great with RH 9 & XD2:
http://www.linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/
Matthias Saou’s freshrpms site also has a yum repository so any RH9 freshrpm that you can get thru apt you can also get thru yum.
red carpet doesn’t work for me, it says “starting daemon”, then comes the first screen again and so on…
i must say, ximian’s installation is a real PITA!
Are we saying that APT no longer works? Does Ximian break it? That’s not good. Has anyone tried YUM with Ximian? Is it also broke?