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Google Releases Desktop Gadgets For Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Jun 04, 2008 09:27 AM
from the more-time-wasters-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at dept.
Businesses Google The Internet Software Linux
mstrom writes "Google announced it has ported its Google Desktop Gadgets platform to Linux, making it the first cross-platform [desktop] gadgets framework. In a sign that Google is fully embracing the open source model, it admits the product is not feature-complete and has opened up the code base hosted on Google Code 'to give everyone a chance to tinker with the code powering the gadgets.' According to Google: "Gadget support is not just a single feature, but rather an entire platform for miniature applications.'"
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Submission: Google releases Desktop Gadgets for Linux by mstrom (1060158)
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  • It's about time... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheRedSeven (1234758) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:30AM (#23652067) Homepage
    For all the Google talk about organizing information and their 'open platform' push with Android, it's about time they start taking Linux platforms seriously.

  • What about Opera? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:38AM (#23652217)
    If you count Opera's widgets, this isn't the first cross-platform widget/gadget system.

    • Re:What about Opera? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dsparil (844576) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @10:10AM (#23652887)
      Plus, it runs on the most platforms; Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Symbian* and Windows Mobile*; and it's just vanilla HTML, JS and SVG zipped up.
      *Once Opera Mobile 9.5 ships.

  • Konfabulator? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PainMeds (1301879) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:39AM (#23652265)
    making it the first cross-platform [desktop] gadgets framework

    Wasn't Konfabulator the first? It supported both Mac and Windows, and was the tool of choice until Apple decided to release the Dashboard.
  • Although KDE4.1(?) was planning to impliment the ability to run Apple Widgets (or whatever they're called).

    Of course, Apple didn't design them to work cross-platform, though.

  • Gagdets, Widgets, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MistrBlank (1183469) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:41AM (#23652297)
    Do people really use them? I don't use any of the widgets on my Mac OSX system. I sort of used the calculator, but do I really need one in the background all the time? On Vista I shut down the sidebar, what a huge waste of resources. And why do I need a clock gadget when there's one already in the system tray? This just seems like a gimmick to waste collective time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Chyeld (713439)
      I don't use the Google versions, but I do have Confabulator/Yahoo! Widgets installed and do actually USE some of the widgets for more than eyecandy.

      Granted 90% of the widgets out there are useless, and the other 10% probably have alternatives to them that don't involve running in a widget engine. But the fact that there are other ways to skin the cat doesn't immediately invalidate the way you prefer.

      That said, when I'm expecting to do heavy duty work that will probably peg the resourse on my aging computer,

    • Re:Gagdets, Widgets, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by qoncept (599709) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:58AM (#23652627) Homepage
      There are a whole bunch of things that make you think they'd be useful. "Oh man, that would be so cool if only I [insert something you don't do, and realize that even then it probably wouldn't be very useful]." I used it for a while, mostly for the weather and and to keep an eye on my network activity. Huge waste of space and now that I'm in Linux there are much better options.

      For the most part, you get blocks that staticly show one unimportant thing, or tickers. Tickers aren't convenient. You have to wait to see what you are interested in, or actively watch it. If you're going to actively watch it, you might as well visit whatever site the RSS feed is coming from.
    • I like the side bar in Vista. I keep the weather up, sometimes the notes and I installed sphere clock (which I use as a very loud alarm when I simply must not oversleep). The only gadget I wish they had was a simple tell me how hot my cpu is.

    • As an RSS reader, sure. Mostly it's just the obvious news feeds from the likes of the BBC and Engadget, but additionally I have a couple of other less usual ones - one is a box for the latest posts on a forum I moderate, and the other is a script that takes any interesting activity (code errors, spikes in CPU usage, etc) in the logs for the servers I maintain code on and pipes them to my sidebar (and soon a sideshow-enabled display :) ). Admittedly emails would work just as well (better perhaps, I have a te

    • Re:Gagdets, Widgets, etc. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mascot (120795) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @10:03AM (#23652727)
      Huge waste of resources? Waste, ok, but huge? The default sidebar thingiemajigs don't exactly drain a few CPU cores and gigs of ram.

      Anyhoo, yes, some people do really use them (Yahoo's in my case). While I could perfectly well live without it, I do find having the free space of all my partitions readily visible, along with CPU, harddrive and network usage and some other tidbits to be handy. When I played Eve Online for a bit I also found the Eve skill/training monitor rather nice.

      At work I find a world clock widget to be very useful when it comes to keep tracking of the local time at our various offices. Before we changed our presence system I also had a self-created widget that listed the activity and phone numbers of people key to whatever I was working on at the moment.

      Sure, all this information is available elsewhere. It's just not as convenient as the always present always updated desktop widgets. It's not for everybody, but it does have its uses.
    • My Windows desktop has Clock, Running Programs, Tooltray Icons ... and nothing else

      No Desktop Icons
      No 'Start' Button
      Nothing!

      My Linux desktop is the same!

      Why would I want gadgets that either take up valuable screen space or hide beneath windows?

    • Do people really use them? I don't use any of the widgets on my Mac OSX system.

      I used to be in the same boat as you. Right up until 10.5, widgets seemed to use up too many resources to make them worthwhile. Since 10.5, however, they are a lot better about being idle in the background, but still coming up quickly enough when desired. I regularly use the white and yellow pages widgets, a widget to track time I put in on various projects, a weather report widget, and a simple timer.

      I think widgets are a reflection of improvements in multitasking and resource allocation. Back in the d

  • From TFA:
    [Google] admits the product is not feature-complete and has opened up the code base ...to give everyone a chance to tinker with the code

    Since when was "open source" just an excuse for releasing a half-finished product? Google is a multi-million-dollar company. Surely they can afford to pay some programmers and testers to produce a finished product before they release it?

    • Re:Not feature complete (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ciaohound (118419) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:57AM (#23652601)
      Are there any apps that Google has released in the traditional sense? Seems like they stay beta forever.

    • Re:Not feature complete (Score:5, Informative)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @10:14AM (#23652971)

      Since when was "open source" just an excuse for releasing a half-finished product? Google is a multi-million-dollar company. Surely they can afford to pay some programmers and testers to produce a finished product before they release it?

      Google's development methods are quite different than other companies. Many of these beta services and products they release are not something the company is using to make money, but are the individual projects of the engineers. Each engineer gets 20% of their time where they must work on their own thing. A lot of those "things" eventually get tossed out for the public to play with, usually as betas and often as OSS projects. Sure, Google could pay engineers to work on this full time, but it isn't clear that is really going to make them money. Linux on the desktop improvements aren't exactly a goldmine. Rather, I think it is nice they let the engineer donate this code to Linux and let people help him integrate it into Linux.

      • As long as stuff is in beta you're not responsible in a product liability sense. If you're computer goes up in smoke because you tinkered with unreleased software - you should have read the fine print on "beta software".

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Bandman (86149)
          No, it started as a pet project. Like Google Maps, which also produces income.

    • Since when was "open source" just an excuse for releasing a half-finished product?
      Since about the same time "free" gave you the right to bitch about the quality of it.
  • the first cross-platform [desktop] gadgets framework

    So, this Konfabulator thing I've been running for years isn't cross-platform after all? Thanks for clearing that up, Slashdot!
  • How long until a .deb file is made. good news all around.

  • Java 6u10 (beta) came first (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nicopa (87617) <`ra.moc.ocoler' `ta' `kcin'> on Wednesday June 04 2008, @01:35PM (#23656519)
    This new release rewrites the plugin used to provide applet support to browsers. One of the new features is the ability of dragging an applet to the desktop, and the applet would stat there. It's really simple and it's very cool. This is coupled with the newly added support for abitrarily shaped applets.

    Sun is trying to revitalize applets. There's no reason a Java applet should be slower than flash, and the language is much more powerful.

    • Re:Google gadgets? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:36AM (#23652171)
      42 I guess
    • Think bigger. Gadgets can be more than just the typical fare that you download. Imagine all those pointless reports with executive gauges ... they can now be gadgets!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Djatha (848102)

      Good question. On the other hand, I often enough see desktops littered with widgets, programs with extra toolbars, the start menu with all kinds of shitware, etc. So I guess, for a substantial part of the population yet another gadget/toolbar/thingie is just what one always wanted ...

      What is wrong with superkaramba/Plasma/etc already existing on teh Linux desktop? I mean, what extra value adds the allmighty Google, speak its name with reference, to the desktop widget landscape for a typical Linux user who

    • Re:Google gadgets? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by D Ninja (825055) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:44AM (#23652343)
      I don't know - however many you want?

      Seriously, whatever Google is actually making is not the point here. What is notable here is the fact that they are providing serious application development for the Linux platform. With so many "big name" companies somewhat ignoring the *nix platform, this is a good thing.

      With that said, I don't know if you were trolling, but have you tried out Google Gadgets (for Windows presumably)? There is some great stuff there. RSS feed readers, weather, traffic reports, etc. Yes, I agree, none of it is terribly important, and you can always head to a website to get that information, but it's always nice to have that information right at your fingertips. And, just because you don't have a use for something doesn't mean other people don't need it.
      • It was aimed at "funny". I didn't try it because I don't typically use windows (only at work). I've tried some weather reports, but none have yet worked form me (Poland, small city) and it is impossible to find traffic information here (Poland, small city), not that it would be really useful (Poland, small city). Otherwise, I agree with you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Hatta (162192)
        But we already have tons of dock apps [dockapps.org] that work with just about any window manager. Why is Google reinventing the wheel here?

        • Re:Google gadgets? (Score:5, Informative)

          by D Ninja (825055) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @11:33AM (#23654487)
          That's because they want you to use their product - not one of the other dock apps that exist. That's just smart business strategy there. First, Google looks great because they are supporting Linux when so many big companies don't touch it with a ten foot pole. Second, they get the "common geek" using their tools/APIs/etc. And third, they get more mindshare [wikipedia.org] which is huge for any company.

          And, honestly, you could make this argument for any piece of open source software. Why do people make their own? Because they can. One of the best things about OSS.
    • I guess none if it's really open-source?

    • Re:Google gadgets? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2008, @09:51AM (#23652475)
      better question:

      How much spying on your data, surfing, searches, and miscellany does one need on your computer?

      Oh, I forgot. Do no evil.

      Mod me down, but it's true.

    • Re:Google gadgets? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Rob_Bryerton (606093) on Wednesday June 04 2008, @10:20AM (#23653079) Homepage
      If they correct grammar and spelling, the answer is "more than you're currently using."

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Benley (102665)
      afaik, only Picasa for linux is the wine crap. google desktop and earth are native ports. Earth already used QT on windows so the port was probably easier than Picasa.

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