Here are some screenshots of Sun Microsystems’ Mad Hatter Linux-based desktop. The original Mad Hatter was supposed to be based on Red Hat Linux, but these screenshots show that Sun has taken the project in its own hands. The product was created originally so that Sun had a cheap and modern workstation/desktop solution to offer to its existing costumers who were a step from leaving the more expensive Sun Solaris solutions for the overall cheaper and uber-hyped Linux.
Sun’s Mad Hatter Screenshots Available
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It looks like a mishmash. The beauty of Red Hat’s Bluecurve theme is that everything looks unified. This, however, does not. I sure hope they improve it before the final release!
Jared
Are they completely getting rid of CDE? Thank god.
This looks very good. Makes me wish I had the hardware to properly run Solaris.
I like the Sun Mad Hatter desktop, except that TERRIBLE window manager. Having round buttons for the wm, is far away from easy targetting…
I find it actually looks nicer than Blue Curve.
This actually looks like a downgrade by looks from CDE.
Please, Sun, get some professional GUI designers.
I think this looks fantastic. I personally think RH bluecurve along with all its icons looks like ass….IMO. The theme Sun is using here is futuristic enough but not too outrageous and all of the icons are very nice. Note to RH…ditch the pastels.
For what reason are they using Linux for this and Redhat instead of just using Gnome on top of Solaris??????
Because of many reasons that I cant explain here because I use atm a french keyboard and it is gets in my nerves typing into it. But yes, there are many strategical and other reasons why Sun NEEDS a Linux desktop as ONE of its offerings to its customers.
There are already Solaris solutions with Gnome, but these are more expensive solutions, plus not all Linux software is ported or can be ported to Solaris (e.g. apps that need the XRender or 3D graphics drivers etc), while other ports have as main platform Linux and their Solaris ports are not as polished and for many other reasons.
Comical that the background is that of the setting sun.
🙂
For what reason are they using Linux for this and Redhat instead of just using Gnome on top of Solaris??????
While Solaris x86 makes a nice server, and a nice UNIX workstation, it doesn’t have the Gee-whiz desktop features (or makes them difficult to use) to really do a general desktop well. Things like good sound, hardware compatibility, video, etc.
How can you tell it’s not rising?
I, for one, think the screenshots look good. It’s good to see a new and nice professional solution from Sun.
The Mad Hatter stuff looks pretty good. Nothing radical, but just a nice RH9 desktop with some Sun-inspired polishing. This certainly looks a lot better than Gnome 2.0 on Solaris. Why can’t they achieve the same decent look for that?
The awful Solaris desktop experience is giving us major grief, because our users all want Windows now. If they had Linux, Mad Hatter or otherwise, I swear they’d be much happier.
I agree. I think it looks nice and clean.
The sun must be rising. Look at the time on the clock near the “Launch” menu.
😉
IMO… the color schemes and ICONs are way too stock GNOME-like… I’d suggest they hire Everaldo to whip up some nice, new, crystalized icons for them (and integrate those with some of the existing crystal icons).
The color scheme/controls should also be adjusted to fit this type of look. I’m not suggesting that they create something too fanciful, but the basic grey is just old and tiring. It almost makes me depressed to look at (productivity?????).
The window borders also dont fit in well.. especially with the archaic ICONs/Color Scheme used… The only thing that makes it look somewhat consistent is the purple hazed wallpaper… but once someone changes the wallpaper, it will be just plain UGLY. (In my offices, almost everyone has their own wallpaper…)
It’s not that their current configuration isn’t usable… it’s just a bit… well… tiring and old…. From a sales perspective, it’s like trying to sell someone an old, rusty, used ford Tempo… when right next to it, they see a shiny, new Thunderbird for the same pricetag….
Which would you be attracted to?! Sure the tempo might get you from point A to point B, just as the thunderbird would… but a shiny, new car is much more enticing and fun! (btw, gas mileage/cost don’t apply here!)
…..On the plus side, the menu is nicely arranged.. and the panel’s default layout is simple, accessible, and functional.
Looks very good, I like it. Better than any other Linux theme I’ve seen.
Look very unprofessional and secretaries using it will think it is ugly.
It looks like an ugly enlightenment theme inspired by the ALIENS film.
I really like the task bar, How are they having the minimized window only show the Icon? I would love that with my current task bar! No text just the Icon.
“I personally think RH bluecurve along with all its icons looks like ass”
Most people would disagree. Bluecurve not only is pleasing to look at and use, but its icons are polished and well done. But then I actually use RH and am not just trolling like so many people here who try to crap on Bluecurve here on a daily basis.
IMO the Sun theme is tacky. the wallpaper is pretty bad and the shiny silver buttons where the shadow covers the actual widgets is bad form.
On Sun in general, it will be interesting to see what these hypocrites do next. It seems there isn’t a week that goes by where Sun doesn’t FUD linux, gives some backhanded compliment, or hint about linux’s potential “legal” troubles via SCO. At the same time in order to keep customers from fleeing to linux they act like they’ve been on the linux bandwagon all the time. What a joke.
Sun sucks. They only use linux when it suits them for PR purposes and then try to discredit it whenever possible. They are no friend to linux and I’d wish they’d just stick to Slowaris and stop FUDing linux when convenient. Sorry but Sun can go to H*ll.
Why is it that all we do is say … “well, I like the look of linux distro X compared to linux distro Y”
People, the ONLY difference is the THEME !!! You can CHANGE IT
Haven’t pretty much all of the majors (RH, Suse, etc.) switched to using KDE by now? Why is Sun using Gnome to build a desktop around?
-Pete
with a big player like Sun developing a refined Linux desktop OS and with red hat now in the game. it will be VERY interesting to see what happens.
“The original Mad Hatter was supposed to be based on Red Hat Linux, but these screenshots show that Sun has taken the project in its own hands. ”
I meant to ask Eug what about these screenshots proves that Sun has “taken the project into its own hands.”? Do you have some sort of insider info about actual under the hood changes? Because IMO taking Red Hat Linux and then changing the theme slightly doesn’t exactly prove that they’ve done anything besides download a new theme and some icons. They are of course well within their right to do so, afterall if they couldn’t it wouldn’t be free.
My overdue point being when you said “supposed” it was hinting that it no longer based on Red Hat Linux, when obviously that is still the case. I think making that clear will let people know what to expect from Sun Mad hatter and let them know that this isn’t some brand new distro that nobody has ever used or seen before.
I do wish the desktop and window manager people would get away from MS Windows gui clones. There is very little redeeming value to them. The icon placements on desktops behind apps are cumbersome. The start menu tree is annoying especially where it’s placed. PLEASE PLEASE stop emulating a crappy UI just because it’s “familiar” to the MS Windows dweebs. Get some originality. Be creative. Stop emulating mediocrity.
Looks better than bluecurve. I like what they are doing with rh Nice and polished.
>>>Haven’t pretty much all of the majors (RH, Suse, etc.) switched to using KDE by now? Why is Sun using Gnome to build a desktop around?<<<<
—Red Hat still defaults to use GNOME, unless otherwise specified. They just unified the two desktop environment’s themes for consistency.
“Available this fall, Project Mad Hatter will offer a new but familiar desktop operating platform based on Linux. A Solaris OS edition will be ready shortly thereafter.”
RTFA
Screenshots look “OK” nothing to get excited about. Kinda boring really. Better name would be “The Bland Mc Hatter”
The icons are decent, they remind me of the clean-but-slightly cartoonish style of Be’s icons. But if they’re gonna use perspective on them, at least be consistent with the bloody default icons (the Network Places icon isn’t in perspective).
The titlebar is kind of fugly though. Round Windows-a-like buttons, blargh.
This is just for presentation for the big “dumb” brass. Of course we all know that you can make Gnome look nothing like windows or os-X if you want too.
Dead Ugly.
I haven’t found much that works better (though I prefer the standard Gnome layout). What exactly would you do differently? You obviously have some ideas…
RE: Why GNOME
First, RedHat uses Gnome by default. SuSe and Mandrake use KDE by default. I think they all allow you to choose whichever you want. Ximian (and now Novell) uses Gnome, though they aren’t exaclty a distribution. I don’t think the industry has “decided” yet.
As for Sun, my guess is that they didn’t like the QT licensing. They are a proprietary company. Since their software isn’t all “free”, they’d have to pay to use QT. Gnome is LGPL, so they can use it without paying license fees. Whether or not this is a smart decision is debatable, but it was probably a factor in the decision.
It’s mimicking M$ Win…. That’s not innovative. Bad. Sad.
BTW, I think there’s no need for the word “Launch” for at the bottom of the panel. Just simply put Sun’s logo, like Red Hat, KDE, SuSe….
>>
BTW, I think there’s no need for the word “Launch” for at the bottom of the panel. Just simply put Sun’s logo, like Red Hat, KDE, SuSe….
>>
IMHO, “launch” is more user friendly than having an icon there. The icon will not mean much to new users.
They haven’t shown much in these screen shots, plus the images are really poor quality. I can’t read the text clearly on any of them.
I can’t believe Lindows can come up with a better default theme than Sun. This looks like a WindowBlinds theme created by a 14-year-old.
In my opinion Gnome is alot nicer to use than kde and I find it to be alot faster.
>>>
They haven’t shown much in these screen shots, plus the images are really poor quality. I can’t read the text clearly on any of them.
>>>
Get some damn glasses the text is absolutely clear in the images moron.
when is this actually coming out ?? any news on a beta ?
Snake
well, word ‘Start’ has already been used buy other company
but lets just copy …err..mean clone the function…while we at it..we should also ‘clone’ the taskbar, desktop, tray, explorer. windows ….
Just had a look and IMHO, its nice, however, it is going to cause problems, believe me. It is too Windows like and as a net result, the user is going to assume that it is going to run like Windows.
Yes, a small amount of elbow grease in terms of cleaning some parts up, however, one has to remember, this is an early shot. What some people don’t realise is that STSF, the replacement for XFT/Fontconfig isn’t ready yet, wait until SUN has released a version tuned for STSF and you’ll see an improvement.
As for Linux vs. Solaris x86. SUN is making and effort to improve x86 Solaris, however, it is going to take time. They’ve licensed all the drivers and x86 parts off SCO so that they can have better hardware support, however, ultimately, as I said, it will take time.
Linux is a solution ready today for the desktop and I am sure once Solaris x86 is matured enough, they’ll push that as an altnertive to Linux on the desktop, however, until that happens, Linux is here.
As for the look ‘n feel, if it were me, I would grab GNOME and remodel it around the Apple HIG look ‘n feel and HIG.
Most people I know have no issues with the way the Mac organises its GUI so why not copy it? and no, they won’t be sued as previous legal threats were based on people copying the look ‘n feel, aka Aqua and using the Apple logos. What I propose is using the standard GNOME widgets but instead lay out the whole GUI like how Apple does for MacOS X.
“OMG..they suck cause they copied windows”
I hate comments like that. This is for corporate desktops, and the little touches that make it more familiar at first glance go a long way to user satisfaction. I like their “launch” button, and I think it looks quite professional.
Some users in my office are lost enough in windows, and they’re still scared to even click the windows start button. All the apps we use are configured to start automatically from the startup folder. Sometimes they have to use the menu, and if it’s clearly marked as someting similar to what they already sorta know, they won’t resist it as much.
People in my office would go nuts if they had to use something like xfce or blackbox.
It’s not about pure innovation, it’s about getting the job done as easily as possile for all concerned..help desk, end users, etc…..
Exactly. And Sun is never going to try to lead the market in GUI design. They create solutions for the corporate desktop/network. They will spend time making a job for end users, sysadmins, and programmers easier to do. They will not spend time to make dancing/flashing icons with curves.
to earlier comment about sun are just back stabbers to linux community.. thats not intirley true they have provided a heck of a lot to the linux community in general.. Put it this way i have a lot more respect for sun than i do microsoft.. Dont forget it was sun who opensourced staroffice and gave it to the community to develop.. Sun as a whole does good.. although its pr department have shot themselves in the foot a few times.. I truly dont want to see the sun set
The gui why the f*ck are you copying microsoft ? sun go in collaboration with gnome form a nice hig ruleset.. then for this desktop they bloody well copy windows screw windows gui placements..
get rid of this computer etc.. just f*cking pointless..
overall yeah it looks ok as someone mentioned earlier the grey aint a good idea looks like win95
and comparing it to my kde desktop which takes influence from gnome gorilla theme u can see it aint brilliant http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk..
kde really needs to do something about kicker it works well but the applets etc when they come in makes it look shite.
anyway.. i would tell them to look more upon the gorilla theme and other gnome themes and develop something original..
the name mad hatter if u think about it redhat derived ? redhat gone mad
all true back bacon.. but no !
your saying if you cant beat em join them..
a recent study was done i was reading somewhere forget where. Windows users were put in front both gnome and kde.. kde in appearance looks similar to windows so all of the windows users were expecting kde to behave like windows.. they infact had less trouble with gnome.. as it doesnt look that similar to windows.. gnome by default looks better than windows by default.. and i use kde.
having the same look is misleading they should have their own look to distinguish it.. but of course it should be intuitive.. and to say that windows look should be used because its familiar is bullshit.. these aint windows boxes and the user should immediately know that.. thats how you learn fast.. instead of trying to mimic a design that the underlying os does not behave the same as..
my 2 pence worth
a recent study was done i was reading somewhere forget where. Windows users were put in front both gnome and kde.. kde in appearance looks similar to windows so all of the windows users were expecting kde to behave like windows.. they infact had less trouble with gnome.. as it doesnt look that similar to windows.. gnome by default looks better than windows by default.. and i use kde.
can u point us to the study ?
thanks
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/08/13/1424212
“Siemens has no “religious” attachment to a particular distro or desktop environment. Before settling on Ximian, Siemens evaluated plain vanilla Gnome and KDE as well. Siemens found KDE to be more “Windows-like” than Gnome, but that led to problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian’s version, was “different enough” to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems.”
They should ditch the hideous “launch” icon and make the whole thing a lighter shade. Grey is sooooo 1995.
This does not look excellent, but surely more consistent than Red Hat’s Bluecurve. And a lot better than what they seem to be offering Solaris 10 users by default.
Great news for Java fans, my take:
Sun will work out how to write native Gnome apps using C leading to replacement of the ancient, ***ugly*** motif AWT classes. No dependency on this non FSF lib either.
With theme integration this will mean that AWT apps will look like native Linux apps, complete with UI advances of the last 7-8 years since Java 1.0 was in development.
Currently there’s flakey support for integration with native things such as D&D, copy-paste, sound and window-managers. These things are there to some degree under Linux but not satisfactorily. 100% – not likely 90% would be nice.
Further, the emulated Swing L&F can use a gnome-native rendering engine for an authentic experience. Their lightweight nature means they’ll still be drawn in Java using Java2D. However, they ought to look like authentic gnome apps, for the most part. I believe that this is how Sun does the WinXP L&F and Apple does the OSX L&F under Swing. Modest speed gains are plausible.
Sun desperately needs this, sooner rather than later, for their own self-confidence. They’ve copped a battering from the IBM/Eclipse factions recently.
Having programmed in the Swing API for 5 years, it’s a pretty nice API. Not perfect, but no toolkit is. It does the job and a number of Java features are built around the AWT/Swing. As such, I’ve no desire to learn SWT/wx4j/Java Cocoa. If Sun gets its head around gnome, I won’t have to.
Plus the circa 1997 metal l&f is destined for the scrapheap too.
Hasn’t it recently been announced that Sun will use SuSE + Gnome for Mad Hatter? Yet, everybody here is only talking about RH.. So what’s the deal on that?
but I’ve never expected anything else from Sun on the Desktop, not even on the corporate Desktop, their meat is the server. Windows98+Gnome “art” = Go Sun! ;P
I liked this bit “The desktop also includes some features unique to Linux such as the Workspace Switcher in the lower right-hand corner that enables users to set up four different work spaces.” woooo… workspace switcher… and a whole FOUR workspaces..
Seriously… it looks nice but.. well, it’s Linux. But, they’re going the “alternative” way, which is good. Good luck to them, most definitely.
I think Sun stated the reason was a C vs. C++ thing. Solaris/SunOS is built with C. The API’s are all in C, then they thought a desktop beuilt using the C language would be a better choice. (GNOME is primarily built with C, while KDE is primarily built with C++, plain gtk uses C, while Qt uses C++).
Nothing against GNOME, but but this reasoning shows lack of forsight, and even retroactive.
To all you people bashing the MadHatter GUI, I ask you this:
HAVE YOU EVER USED CDE? HAD TO USE IT FOR WORK?
If you answered yes, to either one of these, you would definitely not complain about MH. It is light years ahead of CDE. Heck, in many ways OpenWindows was ahead of CDE.
As long as I work at a Sun shop, I eagerly await the day we can put that desktop on our machines. Question is, will they port it to Solaris?
~S
“Nothing against GNOME, but but this reasoning shows lack of forsight, and even retroactive.”
I don’t necessarily agree with Sun’s reasoning, but there are some good business points to it. Sun’s software engineers may be more competent in C than in C++.
I kinda see C as the “lowest common denominator”. Basically, if you have a C interface, you can build bindings on top of that for whatever language you want (C++, C#, Java, Python…). Now, whether or not the bindings produce and acceptable interface is obviously very dependent on the quality of these bindings. My instincts tell me that it is possible to produce nice C++ bindings for Gnome/GTK+.
Does anyone with experience in both the KDE/Qt libraries and the Gnome/GTK+ C++ bindings (gnomemm/gtkmm) have any info on comparisons between the two? Does the fact that it is built on top of C rather than C++ cause gnomemm/gtkmm problems?
Does anyone know much about the quality of the Gnome/GTK+ C#(Mono) bindings?
Also, I don’t necessarily see C++ as the future of GUI development. Sure, its better than C, but I imagine higher level languages such as C# and Java (and possibly Python and Ruby…) will become more prevalent in the future as performance becomes less of an issue (vs. development time).
No.. Sun is rewriting AWT to not using Motif, but to use xlib directly. They aren’t using any gtk-look-and-feel crap with AWT, but making it look like motif. There are slides on javaONE describing this.
Swing will continue to have better GTK-l and feel.
But I am sure they have themes so you can change the look. Will this work on intel & amd?
Hmm, add a clock, change “launch” to “start”, and you’ve got windows 95.
Just joking everyone, I actually LIKE programmers to steal ideas from eachother, it means better programs. If company A has good idea X and company B has good idea Y, company C steals both and has a kick ass product. I think most people are against copyrighting GUI elements, they just can’t figure out a way to make a law only apply to MS so they pretend to be against all copying.
Brings to mind the saying “cutting off one’s nose to spite his face”.
They should have stuck with OpenStep.
Why why why? Why did they kill it?
“Some users in my office are lost enough in windows, and they’re still scared to even click the windows start button. All the apps we use are configured to start automatically from the startup folder. Sometimes they have to use the menu, and if it’s clearly marked as someting similar to what they already sorta know, they won’t resist it as much.”
Do these people not get any computer training at all?
Will “Mad Hatter” be more than just yet another skinned over Linux distro? Will it actually solve the shortcomings of RH and SuSE and all the rest? Will I be able to install programs without constant dependency issues? Will I be able to easily plug in and pull pictures of my digital camera? Will I be able to change the screen resolution without having to edit the XF86Config file? This is what I care about. Too many other Linux developers waste too much time reinventing the wheel instead of taking other people’s GPL-licenced code and using that as a foundation.
BTW, why didn’t they use GNUstep instead? At least we could have Mac OS X apps (which are designed much better IMO) ported to it and get a decent supply of quality software.
Sun is proud to announce that their i386 products are certified compatible with RedHat. They should be ashamed of themselves, bragging about their technical excellence but failing to convince customers that Sparc can be a good platform for a desktop running Mad Hatter. All they are offering now to those interested in Linux are two lines of Sparc servers, the desktop line is being …, well, let’s just say they regret they sold it in the first place. Why are they incapable of offering a Sun Blade that would cost around US $600 ? Don’t you tell me R&D is expensive, they’ve been in business for what, 20 years ? I hope they don’t expect IT-employees to spend time looking for Ultras on Ebay.
SGI isn’t interested in MIPS anymore, HP has jettisoned the Alpha and is feverishly hiding PA-RISC in the garbage bin (as if it were some nefarious item), Sun is busy selling pentiums or AMD chips, IBM is a great Intel reseller. Dear God, how did all these potent RISC guys succumb to such a servility toward a competitor (Intel) they used to make fun of ?
This desktop looks awesome. I like the purple Sun style theme, and also the start button. With Support and Staroffice Sun might just have what it now needs to compete with the many other players.
Still, default Solaris CDE at least looks better than MH.
>>Will “Mad Hatter” be more than just yet another skinned over Linux distro? Will it actually solve the shortcomings of RH and SuSE and all the rest? Will I be able to install programs without constant dependency issues? Will I be able to easily plug in and pull pictures of my digital camera? Will I be able to change the screen resolution without having to edit the XF86Config file?
Sownds like you haven’t used Linux in at least two, probably three years, if ever. Edit the XFree86 config file to change the screen resolution? Please! Perhaps you should look into the Control Panel sometime. And if you don’t like solving dependencies when you install software, use apt (Debian), apt-get (Red Hat), urpmi (Mandrake), Iris (Lycoris), or Click-n-Run (Lindows). Using any of these tools automatically resolves all dependencies and makes it easier to install software in Linux than it is in Windows.
This must be one of the ugliest themes I have ever seen! WTF were they thinking, this is ugly and ont top of it a usability mess.
Those widgets have poor contrast and making the window decoration buttons so small round and hard to distinguish defintely doesen’t help.
This has to be the most fucked up looking “recent” Linux desktop.
Since RH is the #1 GNOME distribution and SUn is also a GNOME distribution I will just give a screenshots of both.
Redhat: http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-prev…
SUN: http://www.sun.com/2003-0805/feature/images/defaultevolution_scrnsh…
But, comparing that crap to just about any default theme is ugly, Mandrake Galaxy looks light years ahead as does Alloy, ThinKeramik,Blue Curve, Plastik, Liquid, Elmo 3, etc.
I really hope these aren’t going to be the defaults, tehy should of just stuck with Blue curve. If it ain’t broken DON’T FUCK IT UP!
In addition, why use GNOME? Except the licensing which I agree isa major plus GNOME 2.4 B sucks compared to KDE 3.2 A, and architecturally it sucks even more than for the user.
It ought to do the job, but so does CDE. Yes, I use CDE (both on SOlaris and HP). I personally much more like KDE, mostly because of the bugs I continue to find in Gnome. Do Gnome developers have no honor?
Mad Hatter is aiming at Sun shops so they won’t go using Windows or other hats’ Linux. Surely the theme should appeal to *them*, not to general trolling public. And I believe that appeals to them.
And even more: GNOME fits nicely on this aim, thanks to the HIG dictatorship that make some people so angry with the developers.
Sun must have really dedicated programmers…look at the hour.