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Ximian

A Preview of Ximian's Gnome 2.0 Desktop 322

Posted by michael from the monkeying-around dept.
TweetZilla writes "Dennis Powell has a good preview of Ximian's newest desktop. But does anybody care at this point? How many people still use Ximian's desktop? As opposed to Evolution?"
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A Preview of Ximian's Gnome 2.0 Desktop More

A Preview of Ximian's Gnome 2.0 Desktop

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  • Why... (Score:5, Funny)

    by govtcheez ( 524087 ) <govtcheez03@hotmail.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:13PM (#5198013) Homepage
    ... would you submit a story with "Who really gives a flying fuck?" in the summary?

    • Because the "story" is a Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ink ( 4325 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:56PM (#5198379) Homepage
      But does anybody care at this point? How many people still use Ximian's desktop?

      It's either someone who is a rabid GNOME2 user, or a KDE user who has some childish bone to pick with Ximian for some reason. Nevermind all the work from Ximian that can be found at gnome.org. What a loser. I'm using KDE 3.1 myself, but kudos to Ximian for their pending release.

  • I'd forgotten... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ponty ( 15710 ) <awc2NO@SPAMbuyclamsonline.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:13PM (#5198019) Homepage
    I'd totally forgotten that they rebranded Gnome. I tried it when it first came out, but it didn't really offer anything that the 'normal' Gnome didn't do just as well (which isn't saying much.)
    • they added some snazzy graphics, a cleaner menu system and a new file selector widget for gtk/gnome 1.4.
    • The other poster mentioned the eye-candy and improved menu system, which was a big problem when vanilla Gnome 1.2 & 1.4 were released.

      I haven't tried 2.0 out yet, but Ximian1.2 & 1.4 were simple to install and maintain, whereas Gnome1.2 & 1.4 still can still decend into dependancy and library hell.

      I usually just use my desktop for working, and don't want to waste my time dealing with out-of-date libraries for vanilla Gnome.

      (For the record: I use Gnome2 also, but it's under a different directory, and I only use it when I want to help the Gnome folks on bug day).

  • Apples & Oranges? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grauNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:13PM (#5198020) Homepage Journal
    How many people still use Ximian's desktop? As opposed to Evolution?

    Ximian's DESKTOP -> WM
    Evolution -> Mail Client

    What kind of comparison is this? And as a matter of fact, I use both...
    • Exactly.

      I use Evolution + KDE together, it has no bearing on the Ximian desktop whatsoever.

    • Re:Apples & Oranges? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ZxCv ( 6138 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:27PM (#5198148) Homepage
      Somehow I doubt he was confusing the fact that Ximian Gnome and Ximian Evolution are two separate products that do entirely different things. I think his comparison had more to do with the particular popularity of each product, rather than the product itself.
    • "What kind of comparision is this?"

      Indeed. Although you would expect this from SlashDot, it's been my observation that there are no "editors" here who are full-time Gnome users. Unfortunately their advocacy blindly over-rides their sense of journalistic professionalism, which is why you should never consider this site either professional or news.

      Just my opinion.


      (Moderation: -3 Troll.)

    • I for one use Ximian's Gnome because it's the best version I've seen. I'd guess most people using Red Carpet use Ximian Gnome because it's just as easy to install and it sucks much less than the version that comes with most distros.

  • We do... (Score:5, Informative)

    by eyeball ( 17206 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:14PM (#5198034) Journal
    How many people still use Ximian's desktop?

    A lot of Solaris users (including myself) that don't want to spend days downloading and compiling dependencies for Gnome.

    • Gentoo Linux users do not spend days on it. They just type "emerge gnome" and all needed (and only if needed!) will be automatically chosen (according to dependencies), downloaded, patched, compiled and installed.

      The process may take days (of CPU time, not yours! as all done without your interaction) if you prefer to compile from source code, or just minutes if you prefer to use GRP, Gentoo Reference Platform (basically - binary distro).

      By the way, Solaris users cannot even dream about such package management system as Portage. You may try Gentoo on your Sparc some day :)

    • Originally I'd just been trying to find a build of Evolution that supported SSL and TLS (ATT email requires encrypted links; a good idea for email security.) The only way I could resolve the dependencies was to refresh the whole environment via Ximian's RedCarpet installer. As Red Carpet also had the option of pulling in SuSE updates, it's become the central update engine for my SuSE development box.

      I spent many years as a KDE fan, and still like the product a lot, but Gnome has stabilized nicely and with a bit of work you can make the UI more familiar than the default installation is. If you're developing pure (L)GPL, then KDE is the nicer dev kit. If you need to produce products that could be enhanced by your clients, then there are few options other than GTK+mm which don't cost thousands of dollars to support WinXX and Linux clients.

      Trolltech has to be paid up-front to do non-GPL development with KDE, which I can't afford. I have no issue with rolling license costs in to any commercial sales in the future, but I can't buy licenses for initial prototyping because it's all spec work -- I have no guarantees I'll ever have a paying client for the work. (Don't get me wrong, Trolltech's licensing fees are very reasonable, I just don't have the cash to spare right now.)

    • Why not just use the packages provided by Sun then? Even come on CD now, if you get the reskit.
      • Because the CD's contain either unstable or out-of-state software?

        The Preview CD that Sun released last year is way out of date. The packages available via RedCarpet are as up-to-date as 1.4 can be.

        The Preview CD available now contain Gnome 2 beta 3. I need to use my work machine for work, not for testing beta software.
        • So either too old or to new. Tsk, nothing pleases some people :)

          I'm sure it'll sort itself out soon, eventually Sun will change to Gnome as the default desktop.

          I still miss OpenWindows though. Kinda. Actually, I still use it on some data analysis machines. Remembering that I hate it. Argh.
    • Absolutely.

      I prefer olvwm, but when I use Gnome I use Ximian. It Just Works(tm).

  • Two words: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:14PM (#5198039)
    No screenshots.

    Stop reading.

    • Re:Two words: (Score:5, Funny)

      by greechneb ( 574646 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:22PM (#5198102) Journal
      I don't know - there was a screenshot of Microsoft Bob running under linux.

      Who would want to even do that is beyond me, it made me sick to just look at it. Its like putting janet reno in a miss usa contest, for lack of a better description.
      • Who would want to even do that is beyond me, it made me sick to just look at it. Its like putting janet reno in a miss usa contest, for lack of a better description.

        I don't know either, but I bet it was an Ewok.

  • I still use it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bwalling ( 195998 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:15PM (#5198045) Homepage
    I like Ximian, and I like KDE. I find it easier to install Ximian, so I tend to use it. I don't want to go messing with all the RPM dependencies to get KDE going on my RedHat system. Ximian does it for my in a GUI wizard. Call me an idiot if you want.

    • Re:I still use it-Self esteem. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      " Ximian does it for my in a GUI wizard. Call me an idiot if you want."

      OK, you're an idiot. Although I don't know why you'd want to be called one?
    • If you install KDE at a Red Hat install time, up2date will take care of upgrades.

      However, running Ximian Desktop on Red Hat will mess up up2date upgrades of rpm_s common for Ximian Gnome and standard Gnome, included with Red Hat. This was the reason I stopped using Ximian Desktop, although it wasn't bad at all.

    • Your not an idiot, but any moron could just select KDE at install or later on through the nifty add/remove system tool. For future versions, you can a) wait for KDE to put up rpms and then just rpm -Uvh *(or whatever) or b)apt-get it from http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/
      I know what your saying about the ease of installing Ximian, but using KDE for comparsion was a really bad example.

      • Re:I still use it (Score:3, Informative)

        by bwalling ( 195998 )
        I know what your saying about the ease of installing Ximian, but using KDE for comparsion was a really bad example.

        I used KDE on purpose. It astounds me that there is no installer for KDE, nor is there a Red Carpet-like tool. Those are what keep me with Ximian. They are easy to use.

        Yeah, sure, I can pop open a console and use apt. I don't want to have to. I like clicking on an icon and getting a nice gui with my updates. I have better things to do with my time than to root around looking for information on what to add to my sources file for apt, or to download the ton of RPMS that KDE requires, and then get all the versions right for QT/aRTS. It seems I always have trouble with QT and with aRTS.
        • The methods I described work for most people, and editting you apt sources list and running one command isn't really that big a hassle. For an apt gui there is also something called synaptic. With it you can see what you can install, do updates etc.
          http://distro.conectiva.com.br/projetos/46/

          It really doesn't get any easier than that especially compared just getting linux installed and setup in the first place. If you still think getting kde is too hard, then I suspect you have real bias against KDE. That's fine as well, but you should be honest about it. ;)

        • Re:I still use it (Score:3, Informative)

          by Sokie ( 60732 )
          I just discovered Konstruct with the KDE 3.1 release and I'm very impressed. It's a collection of Makefiles that allow you to use these two commands to install KDE 3.1:

          cd meta/kde
          make install

          That's it. It downloads, checksums, extracts, compiles, and installs everything in the right order. I set it to running (installed a libpcre-dev package when it complained) and let it go overnight. When I woke up in the morning I logged out and logged back in and bam, I was using KDE 3.1. Very slick.

          I was worried that since I had KDE 3.0 installed from packages (RPM's from Mandrake 9) that it would have trouble getting everything installed and working smoothly from sources, but I didn't have to do anything.

          There are other subdirectories that let you do the same thing for koffice, quanta, and several other parts of the new release.

          http://konsole.kde.org/konstruct/ [kde.org]
    • I think stories like this support the proposition that Redhat is doing everything they can to slow the acceptance of KDE. I hesitate to compare RH to Microsoft, because -- really -- it isn't fair to compare RH's petty snipes to Microsoft's heavy-handed monopolistic behaviors; however, this sort of thing is typical of MS behavior. Make the competing software more difficult to use or install than the one you support, and you win mindshare by default.

  • evolution (Score:2, Funny)

    by vexation ( 461906 )
    I use evolution unless you have any better ideas.

  • Screenshots or Specific Info Please? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 00Monkey ( 264977 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:16PM (#5198054) Homepage
    The article doesn't describe anything other than how excited this guy was about the features he saw, which he really didn't go into, and there are no screenshots.

  • well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:17PM (#5198064) Homepage Journal
    my desktop environment can beat up your desktop environment...
  • Thank gopod that they didn't include and screenshots of the new desktop. That could have overwhelmed my fragile sensibilities.

  • What I want to know is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by augros ( 513862 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:25PM (#5198134)
    Will Ximian give me back my view-ports and edge-flipping? Gnome2/metacity/sawfish2 in RedHat 8.0 totally pissed me off with their lack, and opposed stance to such features. Don't they realize how addictive those things are? It's like UI heroine, and I'm jonesing! If Ximian implemented those features along with some other standard missing preferences like user defined key-bindings (right now you have to use gconf-editor to set them), I think a large portion of Gnome users would switch. Go Ximian.

    Oh, and on an aside note, is Michael on crack? Evolution vs. Desktop?!? It must be the lack of viewports that's fucking him up.
    • gnome 2.2 will have a keybindings gui. I'm using the latest GNOME 2.2 rc in Debian unstable and to define keybindings is: Applications->Desktop Preferences-Keyboard Shortcuts.

    • Sawfih wiki (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Go to sawfish wiki [skylab.org], interesting things, like how to emulate it with workspaces, how to get it working as always (so you can have worksaces AND viewports, and sending to hell those who say you are mad for using that or for viewport), how to get a nice pager for sawfish and many more.
    • Will Ximian give me back my view-ports and edge-flipping? Gnome2/metacity/sawfish2 in RedHat 8.0 totally pissed me off with their lack, and opposed stance to such features.

      Yeah, I stuck with gnome for a long time simply because of that feature. But since it wasn't available, I saw no reason to keep from switching to the (IMHO) much prettier KDE.

      And now that I'm here, I ain't going back until gnome gets a better integration with cups printing like KDE has.

      $.02

    • How to make GNOME 2 kick ass like GNOME 1 (Score:5, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @08:24PM (#5200701) Journal
      Edge-flipping and viewports are both in GNOME 2. Annoyingly enough, the GNOME people took a page from the KDE people and decided that no one would *ever* want one big desktop, so their default now sucks. It's quite easy to get things back, though.

      I use sawfish. Add the following to ~/.sawfishrc: ;; set up viewports
      (setq customize-command-classes '(default viewport))
      (setq viewport-dimensions '(3 . 4))

      (or whatever size you want -- I like 3 across, 4 high.

      For edge flipping, be sure you've turned it on in the sawfish config dialog.

      Finally, a bunch of the kickass features in GNOME 2 are off by default to accomodate less-than-technically-ept Windows users. You probably want them on too.

      Add the following to ~/.gtkrc-2.0:

      gtk-can-change-accels = 1
      gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"

      This will give you emacs style keys back again. Once more, ctrl-a will go to the beginning of the line, ctrl-k will kill, etc. It will also let you rebind menu items by simply hovering the mouse pointer over the item so that it's selected and then hitting the desired key combination.

      And I agree about the Evolution/Desktop thing...how did this ever get on Slashdot?
    • Will Ximian give me back my view-ports and edge-flipping?

      As others have noted, you can get it back by playing with Sawfish's config.

      I have to say, though, that I'm content with the defaults. Edge-flipping is sort of cool, but it annoys me when I do it by mistake. So I always had the delay set at a few hundred milliseconds, so I would drag a window, wait for it, keep dragging. With GNOME and Metacity now, you can just send the app to another workspace. It works for me.

      You can also click on the little representation of the window up in the workspace switcher, and drag it from one workspace to another! That's pretty cool. Windows are represented with little proportional rectangles within the workspace switcher, and you can click on the active one and drag it around, either within the current workspace or to another one.

      It's a pain to drag a small window, since the representation is very very small. They ought to be forgiving about where you click, since you can only drag the active window anyway and there is only one window active at a time.

      steveha
    • No diff, b/c this works in CVS, debian, etc builds...

      In the file src/window.c

      In the function constrain_position(...)

      In the else {} block after the if else (window->maximized) {} block

      After the function call:
      meta_window_get_work_area (window, FALSE, &work_area);

      Add this code: // Mongoose: This is a hack and it's not ideal, however it took me several _minutes_ to make this! // I might make a real patch later, but for now here you go and I'll make it shift window position if asked // Quick and dirty edge flipping hack, // looks for mouse cursor touching edge during window drag

      #define EDGE_FLIPPING_HACK
      #ifdef EDGE_FLIPPING_HACK
      if (1) // turnOnTheEvil
      {
      static int transition = 0;
      int threshold = (window->rect.width/2);
      int left = 0;

      if (transition)
      {
      if (!(x work_area.x + work_area.width - (threshold + 16)))
      transition = 0;
      }
      else if (x work_area.x + work_area.width - threshold)
      {
      MetaWorkspace *workspace;

      transition = 1;
      workspace = window->screen->active_workspace;

      if (workspace)
      {
      int index = meta_workspace_index(workspace);

      if (x work_area.x - threshold - 40)
      {
      ++index;
      left = 1;
      workspace = meta_workspace_get_neighbor(workspace, META_MOTION_LEFT);
      }
      else
      {
      --index;
      if (index 0)index = 3;

      workspace = meta_workspace_get_neighbor(workspace, META_MOTION_RIGHT);
      }
      } // Hack to allow 'ringed' edge flipping needs to use index

      if (workspace)
      {
      meta_window_change_workspace(window, workspace);
      meta_workspace_activate(workspace);
      }
      }
      }
      #endif // Please remember metacity is a pretty poor code base w/o any documentation I could see and this is the quickest entry to produce this // IMHO havoc should take the carrot out of his ass and add features and fixes instead of bitching
  • The article stated that they don't have yet a release date, but they're in testing. I shall start salavating now.

    I feel all hyped up, like when Linux 2.4 was announced. Oh-Yeah.

  • Yes I really like KDE 3.1, but you can only do so much to an environment to get a different experience.

    StarTux

  • Probably quite a few (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr_Person ( 162211 ) <mr_person@@@mrperson...org> on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:30PM (#5198177) Journal
    Well, considering that Ximian is the only easily installable version of the GNOME desktop (unless you stick with what comes default with your distro), I would say probably quite a few. And Evolution is a mail client, so that comparison doesn't make much sense.
    • Slackware users should check out Dropline [dropline.net] Gnome.
      The maintainer Todd Kulesza has done an awesome job with it. It is installed as easily as any other Slackware package.
      Updates are easy as cheese too.
      Highly recommended for Slackers.

  • clue. lack of. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by almaw ( 444279 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:31PM (#5198188) Homepage
    > a number of very nice looking typefaces that exactly coincide with the ones Microsoft ships;
    > as a result, their browser renders pages "best viewed in Internet Explorer," as the incompaibility
    > is euphemistically called, exactly as if in Internet Explorer.

    Erm, fonts != web rendering technology. If it's broke in Gecko [mozilla.org] it's broke in Gecko, and having the right fonts won't make any difference. Or does he mean, "best viewed in Windows"?

    What's euphemistic about it? And why does the author call it an "incompatibility" when he means a "recommendation"? Euphemism, n.: "an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive".

    As another user points out, the article offers so salient points regarding any actual new features or improvements, just a general mish-mash. Then to round off it sounds off on a whole load of random mismatched arguements about how free software's wonderful. We've heard it all a thousand times before.

    I get so annoyed by people writing pretentious twaddle using words they don't understand because they think it looks impressive, while simultaneously making grammatical, spelling and typographical errors all over the shop. You ain't fooling no one...

    Next please.
    • "an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive".

      Which describes the statement "best viewed in IE". Maybe you don't remember when HTML came around and people actually wrote pages. By hand. And you wrote it not knowing how the end user was going to view the page on their machine. Or what OS, or browser. And you didn't care, because HTML is SUPPOSED to separate the content from the presentation.

      The fact that any web site has a 'best viewed in..' statement means it's broke and the web desingers use crutches instead of good web design.
    • Erm, fonts != web rendering technology. If it's broke in Gecko [mozilla.org] it's broke in Gecko, and having the right fonts won't make any difference. Or does he mean, "best viewed in Windows"?

      I think he means font sizes. Windows and Linux interpret font sizes differently, which means that when web designers embed absolute font sizes, what looks good on windows just looks too small on Linux, and we have to zoom in to the page. So I think that's what they're talking about here.

      As another user points out, the article offers so salient points regarding any actual new features or improvements, just a general mish-mash.

      Er, because it's not done yet, and Ximian don't want a load of ignorant slashdotters arguing about it before it's even out?

      I get so annoyed by people writing pretentious twaddle

      Me too :)

      • Re:clue. lack of. (Score:3, Informative)

        by schon ( 31600 )
        Windows and Linux interpret font sizes differently

        Actually, no. Internet Explorer interprets font sizes differently than everything else..

        what looks good on windows just looks too small on Linux, and we have to zoom in to the page

        Again, what looks good on IE looks too small on Netscape.. it's a result of the browser wars.. MS deliberately made the equivalent font sizes one size larger, so if someone was designing a page and viewing it only with IE, they'd make the fonts too small to be readable on Netscape, to 'encourage' Netscape users to switch.
        • FUD. Sorry, but it doesn't. I just whipped out an HTML editor, and various word processors. IE displays the font exactly the same as MS Word, Wordpad, and Wordperfect.

          Interestingly enough, it looks the same in Netscape 6.2.3 as well.

          Oh, yeah... then I opened up the same page in Netscape 4.79 and, guess what? The font looked markedly smaller than IE, any of the text editors, and Netscape 6.2.3--which all looked identical.

          -Jayde
    • Perhaps he thinks that "If you use anything other than Internet Explorer, f$#@ off" is an offensive expression and/or sentiment, and that "best viewed in Internet Explorer" is substituted for it. Furthermore, Gecko renders just about anything without trouble these days, but if it doesn't have the right fonts, not only will the appearance of the text be other than the designer intended, but spacing could be messed up, breaking sections of the page up.

  • Ximian Gnome & Red Hat 8 (Score:4, Informative)

    by the_rev_matt ( 239420 ) <slashbot@revmat[ ]om ['t.c' in gap]> on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:33PM (#5198206) Homepage
    I used Ximian Desktop right up to the day I installed Red Hat 8.0. Which Ximian doesn't support yet. As soon as XD supports RH8, I'm using it again.

    • Re:Ximian Gnome & Red Hat 8 (Score:5, Informative)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <{ajs} {at} {ajs.com}> on Friday January 31, 2003 @04:50PM (#5198932) Homepage Journal
      Ditto on that front.

      If you're running RH8.0 and want to use a version of Gnome that's a little more current, may I suggest that you check out Garnome [gnome.org]? It's a very nice ports-based Gnome distribution based (currently) on the latest 2.2RC1 (2.1.90)

      I installed it on my Laptop which is running RH80, and it fixed a lot of things that were pissing me off. Upgrading galeon from their site didn't hurt either.
  • You see when I go to a link that's going to tell me about some booth at a linux I want some graphical content.

  • What's wrong with Ximian? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:37PM (#5198234) Journal
    When I first started using linux GUI's, Ximian's Gnome desktop was one of the early one's I ran through and tried.
    Even now, it's still rather impressive: nice themes, runs fairly quick/smooth, interesting suite of applications. Changing settings was also quite easy.

    I've since tried running RedHat 8.0's packaged Gnome, and was considerable less impressed. The thing runs like a wounded Yak, and it's not nearly as pretty as Ximian.

    Oh, and as a really nice point for GUI newbies... installing Ximian Gnome was "extremely" painless on RedHat, using a webpage piped through a shell: (substitute "links" for "lynx' as needed):
    lynx -source http://go-gnome.com/ | sh

  • Who cares? (Score:2, Informative)

    by SiliconJesus ( 1407 )
    I do and others like me who use non-Linux X servers like Solaris. I use Ximian Desktop because Evolution isn't well suited for a Ultra Sparc IIi 400 mhz with 128 mb of RAM, whereas the Ximian desktop is.

    Think before you spout.

  • File Dialog... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ElGuapoGolf ( 600734 )

    Can anyone tell me if they've fixed the file chooser dialog? If they haven't, they have 2 options...

    (1) Fix the file chooser dialog. It's horrible. I've used DOS applications from the 80s which had better faux file chooser dialogs. QT 1.x had a better file chooser box.

    (2) Give up. They haven't gotten it fixed yet, when will they.

    Seriously, it's horrible. I've never had to interact with such a horribly designed file chooser box as much as I do because I use evolution. I love how when you change directories; the filename of whatever you're trying to save disappears. Great feature guys.

    Seriously. Give me something with a "up a level button". And put the directories and files in one window, with "icons" so I can tell the difference between the two.

    • There will be a new file picker in GTK2.4 guaranteed.

      I'm not surprised Ximian want to keep a lid on it. Keeping us in suspense is a good way to get good marketing if the end result is good (and i'd bet anything it will be), and in the meantime they avoid flames.

    • This bit has puzzled me, as well. How can something so simple - with so many examples of that are done right - be implemented so poorly?

      I run Mandrake, and have tried both KDE and Gnome. I really like the look of Gnome, but the file selector literally drove from Gnome and back to KDE. It sounds petty, but it's not. (OK, maybe it is petty.)

      The decision to move the "OK" button to the left side hasn't garnered any brownie points, either.

      Of course, The KDE file selector has problems, too. When it loads icons, it first displays them, then shimmys them around a bit, reordering them. Quite often, I'll have hit one icon, only to have it moved and another one be selected.

      I'm looking forward to seeing Gnome with more polish, especially since my favorite toolkit (wxWindows [wxwindows.org]) doesn't have bindings to Qt/KDE.

      Still, I suspect that KDE will end up my desktop of choice. But I'm willing to be pursuaded otherwise.

  • Evolution 1.2 was a nightmare,
    not being able to access setup details because for a mail account because that mail account was 'busy' ahhhh...... And don't even bother editing the XML files.

    1.2 was better but still a right pain, things went funny all the time, I never found out how to prevent line truncation and well, and it doesn't work on the 2.5 kernel..

    Anyhow I though I'd give kmail another go, the last time I used it was more than a year ago and it qas quite poor.
    kmail is great, there are a couple of quirks, but it's quick and easy to use/configure.

    I never used the desktop and I don't intend to use evolution again, unless it get a re-write.
  • "One of the strengths and simultaneously one of the weaknesses of free software has been that developers develop what they want to develop, not necessarily things that users want. It is possible, and it is often the case, that developers get great pleasure from producing a popular application or feature, and so are motivated largely by that as a goal. But the market gets distorted a little by that slight disconnect between user desires and developer production, even as it has been distorted (to a greater extent) on the non-free software side by Microsoft's monopoly."

    I wouldn't say this is consistantly true. Infact I would say it's primarily true with free software for the simple reason that no one wanted it in the first place. Most of the time the developer made it because they wanted to.

    With purchased software there was a need before the developer started. And when the developer is being payed, they tend to listen to the customer a bit more. See Adobe [adobe.com] for an example.

  • As an Evolution and Red Carpet User... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Landaras ( 159892 ) <neil@@@wehneman...com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:51PM (#5198339) Homepage
    I'm willing to give their Desktop 2.0 a try when it comes out. Why? Because they've shown with Evolution and Red Carpet that they can write a quality product, and I appreciate the service that Red Carpet provides. Therefore I don't mind giving a little bit of my time to try out their new offering.

    Even though I'm in the process of switching to Debian and KDE 3.1 right now, (apt-get makes Red Carpet redundant), I also want to test Ximian Desktop out in order to get a feel for the tools that might be of service to some of my clients who aren't ready for Debian.

  • I do not use Ximian, but I only have qt installed for one cad program, no kde anything. I have this option using gentoo. I am a very happy gnome user. Ximian directly affects gnome, so I would be interested.

    You really need to pull you head out of your ass.

  • I run Ximian on my Sparc (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord Kestrel ( 91395 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @04:12PM (#5198499)
    Running on top of Solaris 8, it runs very well. It uses quite a few more resources than OpenWindows or CDE, but it also looks a hell of a lot nicer, and I feel it's easier to get work done in. I'm pretty sure that there is a memory hole in it, but I haven't taken the time to debug it (it won't show up for 3+ months, so it's not the easiest thing to diagnose.

    That being said, I wish Evolution supported Exchange 6.5. I really hate having to have a SunPCI window open all the time just to check the appointment calender on the Exchange server.

  • one meaningless opinion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slide-rule ( 153968 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @04:23PM (#5198640)
    At risk of sounding too "me too"-ish... I tried Ximians repackage of Gnome way back when they were calling themselves "helix code" (I think). Given the issues -- at the time -- of getting all the proper gnome packages for my system (which I admit were as much my own fault as anyone else's... as I had little idea what I was doing), the helix-code version just went in nicer and felt more "polished" and "stable". Well... I finally hosed that whole install (linux in general, X, gnome, you name it ;). So I refreshed with RH 6.? on a new system, and put ximian back in, mainly since I liked what they did and was awaiting evolution. Since then, I've upgraded my machine to RH 7.3. Now, this being my first "official" upgrade, it was my first collision with the RH installer complaining about third-party (e.g. "ximian") packages. Not wanting to fight it that way, I then noticed that ximian didn't have any method of uninstalling (or, maybe more correctly, regressing -- gnome itself doesn't have a convenient uninstall option either, just to be fair) its version of the packages, it created for me a decent size headache. I finally just blew away all the *-ximian-* packages, upgraded, and left ximian off my self. (Since at this point, evolution now works w/out needing ximian). So for me, wanting a clean, workable system where upgrades are completely painless (or at least very close), ximian is a no-go. (I just don't have the time anymore to "tinker" around with making it all work... and don't give me any "buy a mac" smack, either ;)
  • ...what's the matter with everybody moaning "who cares? who uses this anyway?" when some project makes a release? KDE, Gnome, Ximian, doesn't matter, now it's even in the news item itself.

  • Lots of people use Ximian's Desktop and Evolution. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBug ( 200913 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:17PM (#5199234) Homepage Journal
    It's not like Ximian's desktop is *bad*. It's certainly a nicely polished interface for those of us who like to have a constant and stable desktop, with simple ways to change things we'd like.
    Ximian certainly offers that, but IMHO, Gnome2's desktop framework offers this as well. Ximian though, in contrast to just Gnome2, is a bit easier for most Windows converts than just plain Gnome/Gnome2. Also, Ximian's desktop is rather inclusive of some pretty "user-friendly" tools.

    I think KDE and Ximian's Gnome2 are going to be the usual first-used desktops by most converts. This is important for those who care about making Linux a more "popular" desktop for the general populous. We should always try to encourage this type of activity, because it inspires choice.

    After a convert learns about all the features, and shortcomings of their "starter" environment, they will inevitably change something, or just find something they like more.
    Without a "starter" type desktop though, they wouldn't be as encouraged to find something they like more, thus stifling the overall acceptance of Linux as a general purpose desktop.

    We should always try to change the negative to be positive, if it is possible. A good Linux desktop, which wins converts from Windows, will increase the popularity of Linux, thus increasing the acceptance of OpenSource software, thus increasing how much people rely on OSS, and then people will care more about it than they previously had. At least a little.

    It's a chain of events that will lead more use of OSS software in general, and something we should continue to help the growth of. Not say "why the hell would anyone use that shit? I use WindowMaker and it's just fine!". Maybe once those converts are on Linux for a while, they may agree. Give'm the opportunity.
    • Why do people always assume that after using KDE or Gnome for a awhile they move to something else like WindowMaker etc? Thats just shit.

      I know and have worked with enough long term Linux people that their tastes are varied enough that they will choose environments which they like (and all environments have shortcomings, each one tickles you in a different way).

      You like an environment you really enhoy, good for you and the same for anyone else that tries new things :). But don't ever fall into the trap that what you're using is the best for everyone.

      StarTux
  • Not to defend the idiocy of comparing the Desktop (Ximian) to the Mail Client (Evolution), I feel that it was made due to a situation that was present about a year ago. Before redhat 7.3, you could not get Ximian Evolution without having Ximian's gnome rpms or without compiling from source. The former screwed up much of the automatic update mechanisms of certain distros and the latter delved the user into dependency hell, usually requiring a .01 increase in a library version number. When distros started to include Evolution as a standalone, many users just ditched Ximian entirely, as for many, Evolution was the *only* reason to go with them. Just a thought...

  • screenshots here (Score:3, Funny)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <{aaaaa} {at} {SPAM.yahoo.com}> on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:42PM (#5199512) Journal
    click here to see a Ximian Gnome 2 preview [linuxandmain.com]
    as a Kde 3.1 user myself, i think it doesnt quite compare..

  • Easy... (Score:2, Informative)

    by DarkDust ( 239124 )

    How many people still use Ximian's desktop? As opposed to Evolution?

    Ask corporations which use Linux on the desktop and want some support :-) My company is doing a roll out of Linux based workstations (actually thinclients) to a health related organisation, and if budget would be higher it'd be nice to have more software for which you pay but get support when some problems occur...

  • Before I got Redhat 7.3 I was compiling GNOME myself which was interesting and educational at the start but got boring after a while and was certainly time consuming. It's certainly true that source based distribution mechanisms have improved a great deal since those days but I still think I'd be loath to give up the ease and speed of Red Carpet. I'm impressed by a lot of the software the GNOME project and cousins have produced and seeing as I don't contribute in any practical sense I'm more than happy to throw Ximian some bucks for Red Carpet Express and maybe some to the GNOME foundation this year too.

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