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GNOME GUI

Helix Code Profiled in Boston Globe 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hot-shots-popping-up dept.
bluebomber writes "The Boston Globe profiled Helix Code this morning on the front page of the business section. Here's the online version." Interesting tidbits: 250,000 copies of helix gnome downloaded so far. Also talks about how Helix hopes to make money.
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Helix Code Profiled in Boston Globe More

Helix Code Profiled in Boston Globe

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  • Helix Gnome has ben my favorite for a while. I'm glad to see them getting some positive press. Especially saying it's "it works like windows". Those are the kind of quotes that allow PHB's to want to switch over without as much fear of retraining.

    EHA

  • whats the difference?
  • Not only "works like Windows" but also "has personal information manager that looks like Outlook" -- and the whole *cough*FREE*cough* thing adds to the attractiveness of it all.

    Can mass corporate acceptance be far behind?

  • Two great things coming out of Helix (Score:5)

    by Lucretius ( 110272 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @05:54AM (#833411)

    Helix is doing two great things from what I can tell here. The first, and one that most people will see, is that they are producing a product (or at least helping produce a product) that is doing good for the whole community, or for any computer user actually -- assuming they will eventually use the product, or indirectly through competition. Even though Gnome isn't completely their baby, they are doing alot work for it.

    The second thing that I see them doing, which is perhaps more important, is offering another example of the open source buisiness model. They are producing something open source and giving it away for free, yet they have a model for making money, which attracts investors. If they succeed this does nothing but give credibility to open source as a viable option for buisinesses and start ups. If they fail, this could have some repercusions, but then again, its not going to hurt open sources look to the buisiness world.

  • I had honestly never heard of them until the blurb a few weeks ago on here about their admin tools they were working on.

    I headed over, saw one screen shot, and thought it was the coolest looking thing I had seen. So I grabbed it. Then I grabbed it for my other boxen.

    The thing is slick. It correctly shuts down the LCD on my laptop when the screen saver kicks in - unlike KDE which just turns the screen black but does not turn off the backlight. It has not crashed once on me. It comes with gnapster, which totally rocks. And it has the coolest install/updating method in existance.

    I love it.


  • hehe.

    I should have about 1000 of those downloads. The ftp site burped on me quite a few times. It was probably the connection between us.

    It's great to see them getting some coverage in the Globe.
  • Packaging, installer, defaults.
    --
  • Their Helix Gnome software masks the drab, complex text interface of Linux with rich and colorful images that let users control Linux by clicking a mouse, just as they do with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software.

    Now how long has X been around? How long have window managers been there? How long have window managers had icons? Anyone remember fvwm95?

    Friedman says "There's nothing new about any of this technology," - and he's right.

    wish
    Vote for freedom! [harrybrowne2000.org]
    ---

  • 30 million a quarter??? (Score:3)

    by slam smith ( 61863 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:01AM (#833416) Homepage
    I think these guys are wildly optomistic if they think that they can get 30 mil a quarter by 2002. I went and looked at redhat and they only did 16 mil their last quarter. I think redhat will be doing good to reach the 30 mil target by 2002.

    I certainly hope they succeed though. HelixCode Gnome sure has impressed me. Maybe with any luck these big guys will license Helix Gnome for thier boxs. (maybe that's how they might reach 30 mil)
  • It is great to see that Gnome is getting some publicity. I don't say this to get Gnome all the credit, but as a precursor to open software acceptablity. I personally use KDE. For business the bottom line is always revenue, and this is a great way to get it... with the free code. Also, getting De Icaza in the spotlight is great to hear, as he is such a hard lined, straight talking man. Brings a little structure and authority to the Linux spotlight.

    Remember, publicity=numbers.

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • Their Helix Gnome software
    masks the drab, complex text interface of Linux with rich and colorful images     [...]

    Pssh. Obviously they've never heard of bashprompt [current.nu].

    (Actually, also an example of why complex is good too.)

    --

  • Mmmmmm. Here are some screenshots Screenshots [helixcode.com]. Looks like the phoneline is going to be busy tonight.

    You are a unique individual...just like everyone else.


    -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
  • I'm always glad to see mainstream press pick up a positive story - other Linux companies should learn from them. Not necessarily how to make something, but how to talk to press people and get a positive impression on the FRONT page :)

  • LinuxWorld Demos (Score:3)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <jason.nashNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:05AM (#833421)
    They were showing Evolution and the new "red carpet" installer at LinuxWorld. They both look GREAT. They mentioned that native Exchange server support would be in the second release of Evolution and the first release would use IMAP.

    The new installer is very nice. True point and click app install. While not to everyone's liking, I'm sure it will help a lot of new users. They also gave out cool shirts and some stuffed Helix monkeys. :)
  • Helix, Eazel, .Net, aren't these companies business models curiously the same? Make the money from the service not the software! Oh that's right .Net is M$oft and wants to make money from the software and the service. Actually, I loaded Helix Gnome and Eazel's Nautilus a couple days ago, pretty nice.
  • I would like to know too. From the explanation it seems like it's based on Gnome but looks much better, but the screenshots on http://www.helixgnome.com/deskto p/screenshots.php3 [helixgnome.com] look exactly the same. So - I really wonder: what is all the fuss about? What *is* the difference? Please please someone enlighten me!
  • Does anybody know where to find tarballs of Helix Gnome? I can't seem to find them on the ftp server.
    --
    then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way

  • Stars in piles (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The "bitter" feudoid attitudoid from KDE vs Helix/Gnome should heaten up. However, even if don't like soaps on tv, they are getting worryingly amusing on the GNU/Free Software/Open Source/Whatever-Licence scene.

    Also, when Richard M. Stallman [a.k.a. RMS], on behalf the Free Software Foundation, received the Linus Torvalds Award (25,000 USD) he said: "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance".

    See a more recent interview at http://www.upside.com/Open_Season/39a2aea70.html

    First, I didn't really get what he meant. I was never a big StarWars fan, and had thought Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford) was a good guy. Anyhow, I check up Han Solo on one of the dedicated(!) Han Solo fansites. Here is what I read:

    =============================
    Most people, when they think of Han Solo, would describe him to be a "complete scoundrel", and true, this is what Leia calls him, and he says he likes "the sound of that". In A New Hope, we get the impression that he is "quite a mercenary", as Leia describes him, as he says "I ain't in it for your revolution...I'm in it for the money..." but then, the infamous rogue turns out to have a heart of gold when he returns to help Luke destory the Death Star.

    In the past, Bria Tharen has described him to be "the ultimate pragmatist", and Han says: "I'm a simple guy" and "I ain't dumb, I know that I never pretended to be a philosopher or something". Han is good at self preservation...in the original, unaltered Star Wars trilogy, Han Solo kills Greedo in a kind of shoot-first ask questions later way. This portrays him to be a cold-blooded killer, although he did what he did for self-preservation. In Han Solo Trilogy: The Hutt Gambit, Han is said to hate killing people. Perhaps this is why, in the Special Edition Star Wars Trilogy, it is Greedo who shoots first. But I guess this *does* still show his self-preservation, although he is not portrayed as the cold-blooded killer.

    Overall, Han is, despite appearing cocky and overconfident, really sensitive underneath. Its just a damn shame that he is portayed as being "respectable" in the post Return of the Jedi books by Bantham. Paul Honeyford, author of Harrison Ford: A biography refers to Han by saying: "And anyone who falls in love with a princess has to be a total square". Watch out Honeyford... there are a lot of angry Solo-ists on your tail now!
    =======================================

    Whaddya think... "the ultimate pragmatist" I think RMS' had planned that remark well.

    Anyhow, stop these sandpile wars!

  • How about an add-on that lets you order airline tickets from inside your Evolution program, with arrival and departure times automatically loaded into your schedule?

    Oh yeah, don't you just love the shop button on netscape and all the crap in the bookmarks? Looks like gnome desktop will start to remind the deja [deja.com] portal slowly...

  • Anyone remember fvwm95?

    I do :-P

    I always thought all the different fvwm-like window managers were really really *really* confusing... I mean, fvwm, fvwm2, fvwm95, AnotherLevel, blah blah blah... tiring to figure out which one is which, and about 100 different initialization scripts that startx runs... ugh. nightmare.

  • It's a valid concern. After all, they're giving away all their products free, gratis and for nothing. You have to, really. Unless you've got a kick-ass game, it's tough to sell Linux software.

    It sounds like they want to be a combination of portal and information pusher (remember Pointcast?). I think if they can get almost all free information, plus some exclusive information, assembled in one point they can succeed. If I want to know when Courtney Love is coming to town (per the article) I can check hole.com [hole.com]. However, if they want to tell me that Courtney Love is coming to town on the 17th, I have no plans that evening (according to Evolution [helixcode.com]), I have enough in my bank account (according to Gnucash [gnucash.org]) to buy a ticket from TicketMaster [ticketmaster.com], and it was all done on my box so their server didn't have to know any of that stuff, that might be useful.

    --
  • "how they hope to make money". 250k downloads and making money is still a question? ha ha ha ha Maybe RMS's communist government will take over in November and support GNOME developers on a collective farm.

  • How much more "news"?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'v been a gnome user for about 18 months now. I have never used KDE as default but I do like some of their apps...My comment is this: why is there so much news about Gnome on slashdot.? It seems that the smallest little bit of movement, which is most of the time irrelevant, is praised and shown on slashdot. For every 1 article on KDE there must be about 5 about gnome and none about KDE. Hmmm? what is the motive behind this? And for adding services to pay for in either the download program or as a message in evolution....I will never stand for that...I will use something else where I dont have to look at it. Besides.. has Helix code ever considered how many of their users will be based in the USA in future? or are they planning to provide a GLOBAL service? Not even AOL or Mickysoft could pull that one off...
  • ...E? Did it just fall off the face of the earth? Last I heard whatshisname left RedHat in a huff and moved to California. Does GNOME still use E? Does anyone?
    --

  • IMHO... (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:15AM (#833432) Homepage Journal
    This could be extremely interesting. There's nothing to stop KDE and GNOME developers trading ideas/code, as both are GPLed. Yes, one's C, the other's C++, but algorithms are algorithms, no matter what the language.

    IMHO, the publicity of GNOME and Helix could lead to a maintaining (or even an increase) in the rate of growth of Linux, currently standing at about 100% per year.

    This still hasn't varied significantly, for many years now, which prompts me to repeat my prediction that Linux will overtake all versions of Windows combined as the most popular platform within 4-5 years.

    In the end, it's the growth in Linux that'll make or break GNOME, Helix, KDE or any other Linux project. People burn out, die, develop new interests, etc. New blood fuels Open Source. Without that, the Open Source movement will die, in time.

    By boosting interest, publicity and quality, GNOME may get that new blood in. And, with the hostility between KDE and GNOME fading (finally! - did Tux knock sense into them?), we might see code borrowing and idea exchange - the very essence of the Bazaar model.

  • They should also learn how to put some polish on their product ;)
  • Their Helix Gnome software masks the drab, complex text interface of Linux with rich and colorful images that let users control Linux by clicking a mouse, just as they do with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software.

    Yay!

    We are just like windows now!

    I stopped reading the article right there.

    BTE: I think HELIX is great, and it will shake up the other linux desktop solutions

  • Not a bad read, Hiawatha Bray wrote very well for a newpaper tech piece. Lucky people in Boston.

    The tie-in for Gnome to all these services sounds wonderful, but, really for 0.25 million people, is anyone seriously thinking they can put up servers and make this kind of money off this group?

    It's a great idea and I fully expect Redmond Trolls to rip it off as soon as possible. I hope someone's got some patents to stave off the Bill-beast.

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
  • This is the media's POV. It's always surrounded by a reality distortion field. Get used to it.
  • Actually, due to all the differences between KDE and GNOME, they can easily be considered two different OSs. In corner you've got KDE/Linux, and in the other, GNOME/Linux. Let the fights begin!

  • Re:gnome vs helix gnome (Score:3)

    by supine ( 94843 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:21AM (#833438) Homepage
    gnome is a desktop, with underlying infrastructure of libraries and gui tool kit, plus some applications based on said libraries and tool kit (gnucash, gnumeric, gedit etc. etc.), it has been around a while now (refer www.gnome.org [gnome.org])

    helixcode, which hasn't been around so long, is a distribution of gnome (much like redhat is a distro of gnu/linux) so it bundles up the desktop, libraries, tool kit, apps etc. etc. checks for dependencies and then offers you a nice gui based update mechanism to make your life *so* much easier... (refer www.helixcode.com [helixcode.com])

    tell me, when was the last time you checked what updates were available for your distro / desktop ??

    HTH
    marty
  • Try deja.com/=dnc/ [deja.com]. Works much better.
    --
  • Another text-tools hardliner? When you can do 3D modeling more efficiently in text, please call me back so I can throw away 3D Studio.
  • What are these guys smoking? The only company on the internet making any money at all is Yahoo. The biggest on-line retailer--Amazon.com--hasn't made a dime, and is piling up losses in the hundreds of millions. And Helix Code is giving away their product!

    Oh but wait. They have an idea for getting people to subscribe to a "service." Then they will be rolling in the dough. Riiiiiiight....

  • The Helixcode Business Model (Score:5)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:24AM (#833442)

    Friedman says. ''We hope to make no money off the software.''

    It's a great statement. It runs so counter to the current software industry that I couldn't resist quoting it. But it is a sign of the changing world model for IT business. Even here at IBM, that amount of money made from software and hardware is starting to be dwarfed by the income generated by the Services sector, and that seems to be where Helix Gnome is heading.

    I used to have the impression that there would be some sort of subscription service to use Helix Gnomes update features or some integrated help-desk type solution. Reading this article seems to suggest a different path - it looks like the revenue stream that Helixcode is aiming for (they are a company after all) is based around providing a convenient integration layer between the user and whatever business out there exists trying to sell the user something, be it technical support, event tickets, book sellers or whatever. Handled right, this could be a fairly amazing utility - imagine planning a holiday trip by selecting the dates in your calendar and then calling up a travel planner which integrates buying plane tickets for the right days, booking hotels in the destination cities using advance search tools and having all that information written back into your electronic diary, along with maybe even collating responding emails from booked events as links. Then click the "Print Itinery" and get the complete information at the touch of a button (working printer not withstanding :-) ).

    Why is this important? This is the sort of integration that MS's .NET project dreams about - complete integration of the available technology to make handling information more integrated and easier to access. Having an alternative to this underway NOW strikes me as of critical importance as Linux works its way onto more and more people's computers in order to prevent the .NET integration turning the commercial internet into a closed-off MS-only zone. We already see the spread of IE-only sites - I don't want a balkanized internet.

    And if you don't want all those services, Helix Codes' extremely well organised and structured Gnome distribution will still be for free, complete with source code. So we can have the best of both worlds.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • The tarballs for all of the GNOME code we ship is on ftp.gnome.org. Our SRPMs are available from ftp://ftp.helixcode.com/pub/helix/distributions/<d istro>/SRPMS/.
  • I did when I first started using Linux a while back. But I found it to just be slow as hell, so I switched to KDE. When I started using Helix a few weeks ago I tried E again just for the hell of it. Looks very good and it is tons faster than it used to be.

    There are still some things I don't like, but those are the funky way the UI works, not performance issues.

  • Re:gnome vs helix gnome (Score:4)

    by Skeezix ( 14602 ) <jamin@pubcrawler.org> on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:25AM (#833445) Homepage
    Helix Gnome [helixcode.com] is a Gnome [gnome.org] distribution. It's analogous to the concept of Linux distributions, where vendors customize the kernel, integrate everything, do bug fixes, decide what packages they wish to include, and make it easy to install and use. That's what Helix Code is doing for Gnome. They've written utilities like the installer and updater to facilitate the installation/upgrading process. They've decided which packages they wish to include in their distribution of the Gnome Environment. And they're doing application development. They have some of the best Gnome hackers around working for them, writing Evolution [helixcode.com] (the Fifth Preview Release [helixcode.com] is out now, btw!), the Helix Setup Tools [helixcode.com], and improving the desktop and development environment in general.
    ----
  • Will a GNOME application run on KDE? (Without compatibility libraries.) Can you write an entire GNOME application without making a single POSIX call? Does GNOME include a VFS layer? I rest my case.

    PS> If you include compatibility layers, then you can consider Linux and FreeBSD the same OS because FreeBSD can run Linux apps using a compatibility library.
  • Dude, you didn't even read the article did you?
    Helix Gnome includes an update program much like that in Windows, and does it in a way that encourages its users to check for updates regularly. This process gives the Helix Code Inc. an opportunity each and every time to try and sell the user something. An example given was to have an offer for a program that would tell you when (insert your favorite actor/band/etc) was in town, and add it to your schedule so you know. Such a service some fanatics would easily pay $5 a month for the announcements, while the software of course would still be free.
  • ...rasterman and mandrake ??

    www.valinux.com [valinux.com] is what...

    marty

  • Re:media is so dumb (Score:4)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:30AM (#833449) Journal
    You know, this is what I find so distasteful about the Gnome project. They do some nice work, and arguably some superior work, but they feel compelled to give the impression that everything they do is a revolutionary and unprecedented breakthrough courtesy of Miguel de Icaza's genius. This article reminds me of the scores of interviews with Gnome developers back when Red Hat was cranking up the hype machine for 1.0. I understand that reporters can misunderstand or misquote you -- but every single one of those interviews left the reporter with the impression that Gnome was the first ever attempt to give Unix a user-friendly desktop. And quite a few of them, like today's article, implied or stated that Gnome was the first GUI for Unix. I can't see that as anything but dishonest and irresponsible.

    Round II of that is starting now, with all the hype about the Gnome object model. Miguel says code should be reusable! Eazel embeds an MP3 player in a file browser! What will they think of next!?!

    Hello, this is 1990's stuff! Nextstep, Microsoft and Be have been doing this stuff for years, and KDE is delivering it to the Linux desktop today. But in the Slashdot universe, nothing exists until it's in Gnome.

    I can sort of understand when Microsoft does this stuff. They're in it for the money. But in free software, where the currency is recognition and respect, failing to give credit seems like outright theft. I'm not saying that the Gnome developers should preface every sentence with "Of course, XXX did this first." -- just that they should stop giving the impression that they innovated everything under the sun.
    -----------
  • I worries me that Helix-Code want's to make money of placing advertisements and other stuff right into my personal calendar. This article raises some doubt about the intention of this company. Do the want to produce and store user-profiles and then making money out of it.

    Is this the brave new gnome world?
  • Just remember, not everyone does 3D modelling.

    Posing an argument like that is silly because 3D is graphics. Text processing is text. Pushing a GUI on a text processor might give the illusion that a GUI is superior (since it can encapsulate a text-based paradigm inside it), but it becomes silly when you realize how you have to redesign the whole tire factory, not just the wheel. If you're assuming this guy is trying to push "text tools for everything!", ignore either his naivety or yours and don't feed the fire :)

  • actually he raised a valid point. what prevents any larger company from running their own servers, advertising like hell, taking the helix gnome code and relabelling it and providing the same or more services ? and in that case do you think helix is going to go anywhere with that ? what makes you think content is easier to provide than software ? or whether its a valid business model ? and why would anyone pay $5/mo for it when the same info is easy to find using google ?
  • I have to admit, Helixcode screenshots do look very pretty and slick. Unfortunately I think somehow I have been spoiled with all these pretty GUIs(KDE, GNOME, Aqua etc.), because none of these "desktop environments" excites me anymore: I am bored of the same old conventional GUI, I want something different.

    Something that's designed completely different from the ground up, something that incorporates real cutting-edge concepts that have incredible usability and makes everything I do as a programmer/sysadmin/enduser efficient and powerful. Is it possible to have a user interface that's both powerful like bash yet still slick looking and built on modern computer concepts like OO? I have been thinking about this issue for quite a long time now yet it is really hard to think outside of the box that is the GUI we have today.

    One thing I have been pondering about is windows. Really, why do we need windows on a GUI? I can understand if it was a CAD program for example because you need to look at different views at once or something like that; but for day to day tasks I have always thought that the concept of "virtual consoles"(Ctrl+F1-6) is far more powerful and intuitive. Personally 99% of the time when I have multiple programs running at the same time, I never look outside the focused window I am using anyways, and when I want to switch between them I almost never use the mouse to select them. Instead I use the hotkey combo I have set up, which now I think of is really just a emulation of virtual consoles!!

    That bring me to another thing about modern GUI: the mouse. I really really hate that thing. Like hate it with a passion. It is just not a very good designed piece of hardware in my opinion. And I don't think it's because I am a fast typer; I have seen my mom(who has no computer experience whatsoever) struggle with the mouse, and my conclusion is people who are afraid of the keyboard are even more afraid of the little rolly thing that controls that tiny cursor which always seem to move either too fast or too slow. And there seems to be a trend toward abandoning the keyboard even in the Open Source world recently. I don't understand it. Why can't there be a GUI that will still be 100% functional even when you unplug that damn rodent from your desktop without turning into Emac?

    Anyways previewing this post I realize it has gone way off topic, but just something to think about. Maybe I should just stop complaining and start coding ;)....

  • ...Barf.

    Some greedy jerk will turn this into a push system one day. No, thanks.

  • coding 3D models using opengl and using a plugin raytracer is a helluva lot easier than forking out for 3d studio, building primitive models in its limited environment and then trying to export the damn thing to a decent fast real time raytracer. ever wonder why most raytracers are command line only ? just thought you should know.
  • No, you've got Gnome confused with Emacs again. Gnome is a very large program with pretentions to be Windows 98.

  • Try managing hundreds of computers w/ helix-update (Score:4)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @06:41AM (#833458) Journal
    Their graphical update and secondary xml files which track installed updates makes automated systems management of Helix-gnome systems a complete nightmare. I need scriptable tools. The Helix web page makes no attempt to provide easy access to the .rpm files. They use a secondary database, other than rpm, to track which packages are installed with the helix-updater. They don't document how this all works in plain english. And finally, they plan to use this system to force ads down my throat.

    I'm planning a large rollout of Helix at a University, and frankly, I'm not impressed. Where do I find a complete list of updates? Where might I find those rpm files? Where is the helix-updater database located? Why is it separate from rpm? Why do I need yet another package manager???

    I want scriptable tools so that I can maintain consistency across a large number of workstations. I don't need a cute GUI updater, and I DON'T want to force my userbase to manage this stuff by hand.

  • ...E? Did it just fall off the face of the earth? Last I heard whatshisname left RedHat in a huff and moved to California.

    Yeah, Mandrake and Raster wound up playing David Lee Roth to Gnome's Van Halen. Remember how Slashdot used to cover their every move? Celebrity is so fleeting...

    I get a kick out of how the Slashbots who used to declare that Gnome 1.0 was the best thing ever because of Enlightenment now are saying, "Well, 1.0 sucked but that was all E's fault." You ever get the impression that "the best" == Whatever Red Hat installs by default ?
    -----------
  • I ordered Helix Code's Gnome on CD, and I was impressed with the broad support of many Linux distributions. (As an aside it's gotten to the point where I order rather than download, primarily because it makes for a high-quality convenient storage medium. Too many large downloads result in some minor corruption somewhere, causing installation problems later.) I was very impressed with 1.2 over 1.1 and earlier, specifically with its installation, usablity, and overall stability. This release makes up for the first Gnome release. I was not at all happy with that release, believing it had been pushed out the door far too soon.

    In comparison to KDE 1.x and the soon-to-be released KDE 2, I believe Gnome has a much better look-and-feel. The look, in particular, is very professionally done, reminding me of Irix and the MacOS. However, I find that programatically I prefer the KDE APIs over the Gnome APIs. There is nothing wrong with QT, C++, or OO design and programming in general.

    It is interesting to me that Motif/X/CDE gave us a butt-ugly UI and API. Now Gnome and KDE have split that 'paradigm', with Gnome giving us a very good UI and a merely ugly API, while KDE gives us a merely ugly UI and a very good API.

    And finally, on the support of various Unixes, it would be nice if a Gnome package for OpenBSD were there along with the others. If Helix Code can support Solaris, then perhaps they could support OpenBSD and ship that as well.
  • Helix might just be one if the coolest Linux things around. Maybe it will be one of the key players in making Linux a universally acceptable desktop OS.

    Until that happens, though, Helix code isn't going to make much money. I know plenty of free software users who rejoice in the freedom from market-spin and consumerism that seems so abundant in the popular desktop OS of today.

    Using technology used to be so simple. Now when we install a program or use a browser we have to deal with sales pitch, banner adds, gimmicks and tickers. We are presented with every possible opportunity to buy, buy, buy. Some of us just want to use our PC.

    I find this akin to the various free Internet providers out there. They provide the access in hopes that the end user will eventually be interested by some of the constant ads.

    Not that I think this is wrong, I just don't see the current Linux community buying it. Helix needs a new sort of Linux user before they get their millions. They need people who are more interested in using their PC as a consumer's tool rather than as an intellectual tool.

  • I did not say they did write it. I said it was part of the package.

    If it was not for me installing Helix I would not even know that gnapster existed.

    I also did not say that Helix was a better gnome. I said I liked the way it ran compared to KDE but that is more of an eye candy issue. Helix just looks better. The icons on the desktop are smooth around the edges and they just look professional - not like some of the icons in KDE that, to be honest, look like something you would find on a website of an AOLer. (KDE 2.0 has much better icons than they did in the 1.x series, so I know they are working on it and it is really looking sharp!)

    I used Enlightenment about a year ago and found it to be very slow and CPU intensive. I did try it about 2 weeks ago and was impressed that it had progressed so much. It is really looking sharp. However, the themes that I have installed are not all that whoopie to me and I find the UI to just be kind of hard to use. That is me. I happen to like the general layout of Windows 9x - that is, with a panel at the bottom, a system tray, and icons on the desktop. KDE and Helix both have that in the themes they come with.

    And yes, it is all eye candy no matter what you use. So?

    Part of using anything is to have something nice to look at that stimulates the senses. People buy cars based on looks. People look through telescopes to see pretty things in the sky. Does that therefore mean that nothing can be learned while doing so? Hell no. So why is or should the UI I am using any different?
  • folks,

    am i the only person who noticed that the helix gnome office does not include abi word anymore? see helix's webpage if you dont believe me. they even say that their next project will be a word processor for gnome (!!!!).

    i am all up for this foundation thing but what will happen if someone decides to do a nifty spreadsheet or mailer? will they still get included in gnome even though there is a *default* one?? the foundation will watch over us but who will watch them, an unspecified number of "gnome hackers"?

    i know gnome will kick (even more) arse and i think the gpl will protects us from almost all evil - but lets get this small issues clear before taking the jump, heh? better to be safe...

    soup
  • looks like Outlook

    Dude, Evolution doesn't just look like outlook, its as if they have taken screenshots of outlook, and then made them work.

    This is a Good Thing(tm), I use outlook everyday at work, and it is actually pretty good. But Evolution will be better because it will be easier to script with, plug things into etc etc.

    I seem to recall that the people who coded Gnumeric open admitted that they copied the interface directly from Excel.

    Because lets face it, some MS apps are actually pretty good, untill they fail, and then they suck. But in terms of UI, they mostly have it right, so why re-invent the wheel?

  • They aren't going to make a dime off of this user, until they start to support slackware. Harumph.

    It isn't that hard to work with slackware. Honestly, all the installer needs to do is suck down tarballs (or even RPMs, since that comes with slackware, too), and untar them! It's easy! Viva la Slackware!

  • You have a small thing you are not taking into account here - market growth. More and more people are using linux every day. By the time 2002 rolls around, the market is going to be even bigger.
  • The way I do it is to run rsync every night to pick up any new packages. That way, I see in my email each morning whether new packages are available, and I then have the actual RPMs that anyone else in the office can use if they want.

    It wouldn't be hard to write a script that then noticed the new packages and installed them on all your machines.

    The rsync URL I use is :

    rsync://www.helixcode.com/http/distributions/Red Hat-6

  • Since Apple has trademarked the look of the Imac, has Microsoft trademarked the look of Windows programs?

    If Gnumeric looks just like Excel, and Evolution like Outlook, can a lawsuit be far behind?
  • No, you really can't write any sizeable app without using a POSIX call. And many of GTK+/Gnome's wrapper calls just aren't always flexible enough to use. And you confuse VFS layers. The Gnome's layer is completely different from an OS. Their layer is to give you the same filesystem on different protocols ... i.e. ftp and http. They still need the OS to actually access a disk.

    And the whole compatibility layer comment is bullshit. Show me how to run mysql without a threads library. Show me how to run any X app without the X libraries. Does that mean they are compatility libraries? No, certain apps rely on certain libraries to run. To run a Gnome app you need the Gnome libraries, to run a KDE app you need the KDE libraries (or statically link either and that goes away). Either way, you can run Gnome apps under KDE and KDE apps under Gnome without any problems, assuming you have the libraries that they require installed.

    Your FreeBSD comment falls apart under the same logic. FreeBSD has a linux loader/executor. But, linux apps need glibc and company to run. They aren't compatibility libaries, they are just the standard libraries an app needs to run cause that's how their author ran them.

    If you really want to give a good example, Wine is a compatibility library. Now, do you want to say that Windows and Linux are the same OS with linux running Wine?

  • Re:How much more "news"?? (Score:4)

    by LizardKing ( 5245 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @07:21AM (#833482)
    I think it's fallout from the GNOME Foundation announcement of a week or so ago. The backing of big names like Sun means that GNOME is suddenly an editorial hot topic.

    This is raising the hackles of some in the Qt/KDE camp. Most notably TrollTech, with their infantile comments on the Qt Developer page, and Matthias Ettrich, with his off the mark comments in a recent interview. This is a shame, because both projects should benefit from each others publicity. As long as both projects are producing great things, then people will want to use them both, if only to be different. Perhaps this is the only benefit of the `tribalism' that often surrounds software. The BSD's benefit because they're seen as a different `tribe' to Linux, and the same happens with KDE and GNOME. In the long run, they each feed of off the popularity of the other.

    Chris
  • I worries me that Helix-Code want's to make money of placing advertisements and other stuff right into my personal calendar. This article raises some doubt about the intention of this company.

    So don't use their software. KDE isn't going away anytime soon, and, there will still likely still be a "pure" GNOME distribution out there, maybe something controlled or sponsored by the GNOME Consortium.

    Or, better yet, since it's all GPLed, pull out the offending modules and make a "Helix-free" GNOME distribution. In the article Nat Friedman says that the software itself is a commodity and unimportant to their business model.

    Jay (=
  • Am I the only one who thinks the embed a blah in a foo has been taken way too far? Yes, being able to post a spreadsheet in a word doc is nice, but who really needs a file manager that can embed everything?!? I miss the days where file managers managed files. :-)
    --------------------------
  • Actually, Gnumeric doesn't look just like Excel. And Evolution doesn't look just like Outlook.

    They're close, yes, but not that close.

  • IMHO, this is pretty iffy. Sounds a lot like web banners if you ask me. (Yeah, I know, you didn't ask me.) Also, it depends on people needing to spend a lot of time on system maintenance downloading and installing updates, like Windows. The problem with that is that Open Source software tends to eventually get pretty well debugged. What are the Helix guys going to do when their code finally works? Why will people keep coming back for more ads?

    I'm pretty sceptical that Helix's investors are going to get their money back. I hope they have some other tricks up their sleeves as part of their "open source business model", because the revenue sources that were mentioned in the article, aren't going to work. Good luck, Miguel, you're going to need it.


    ---

  • Re:Try managing hundreds of computers w/ helix-upd (Score:3)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @07:35AM (#833490)
    They use a secondary database, other than rpm, to track which packages are installed with the helix-updater.

    I'm afraid this just isn't true. The current updater uses the rpm database alone, and the next generation updater we demoed at LWE uses either your rpm database or the /var/lib/dpkg/status file, depending on what type of system you are on.

    If you need technical assistance, please send mail to spidermonkey@helixcode.com.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • I'm not entirely sure what you mean. AbiSuite [abisource.com] is included with the Helix Code distribution, along with dia, gnumeric, and gnucash as part of the Gnome office section. See the list of packages [helixcode.com] if you don't believe me. Now, what the future holds is still uncertain. Especially since it seems now that Star Office will be modularized, bonoboized, and become Gnome Office in one form or another. Still, there may be high enough demand for a lightweight, fast word processor like AbiWord for Helix Code to include it in their distribution of Gnome. And that'll be sweet. Think of the choices you'll have! But either way, even if they choose to remove AbiWord from their distribution of Gnome, you can always download it and install it yourself. AbiWord isn't part of Gnome proper, anyway. It's really an add-on application by a third-part free software developer, AbiSource.

    As far as your comments regarding the Gnome Foundation go, I would encourage you to read the Draft Charter [decrem.com]. There's a lot of good stuff in there. It's heavily modeled on the Apache Foundation. The Foundation isn't just a bunch of companies dictating policy. In fact, that's precisely what it isn't. I, for one, happen to be a member of the Gnome Foundation, and I have contributed relatively little. They're very open to letting contributors be voting members, and very opposed to the Foundation being dictated by corporate policy. I'll give you some quotations from the charter to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

    In almost every sense of the word, GNOME is an open project. This is one of our greatest strengths, has always been, and should be the balefire by which we plot our course into the future.

    The foundation should not be exclusionary or elitist. Every GNOME contributor, however small his or her contribution, must have the opportunity to participate in determining the direction and actions of the project.

    The openness of GNOME has always been a point of pride for us, and an important characteristic which distinguishes us from many of the other open source projects out there. Anyone can become a contributor, write access to our CVS does not involve trial by fire or other masonic rituals, we don't use Access Control Lists, and we've always been exceedingly good about folding talented newcomers in our arms and welcoming them to the project. No resume required.

    Participation in the foundation is intended only for those people who are responsible for actual contributions to the software which makes up GNOME. A corporation, organization or individual should not be granted a place in the foundation unless its presence is justified by the merits of its contribution. Money cannot buy influence in the GNOME project: show us the code (or documentation, or translations, or leadership, or webmastering...).

    The foundation must act in the best interests of GNOME, independent of influence from outside organizations and corporations. No single entity should have the ability to direct GNOME to its own ends.

    I hope some of this helps...
    ----

  • E Released 0.16.4 a few months ago and is now doing development for the next release. It's getting quit cool.

    --Ben

  • You might want to take a look at EFM (Enlightenment File Manager). EFM will become intigrated into the Enlightenment window manager, turning E into a ``desktop shell''. One UI feature EFM has is the ``typebuffer'' which is a text box that pops up when you start typing into a file manager window. You can run bash commands, etc.

    It's a combination of bash and sexy graphics which is what you seem to want.

    --Ben

  • Re: Secondary Helix-update database:

    I'm afraid this just isn't true. The current updater uses the rpm database alone, and the next generation updater we demoed at LWE uses either your rpm database or the /var/lib/dpkg/status file, depending on what type of system you are on.
    itp: Thank you for your quick response to my post. If there is no secondary database for helix-update, then I ask: how is it that helix-update tool doesn't know if one manually installs a helix update via rpm? I've tried this and then run helix-update to find that the updater doesn't recognize that my previous install with rpm just occurred, and then blindly presents the update as one among the list of available packages. If selected, the updater will then download the package and attempt to install it again. This suggests to me that helix-update is keeping track of what packages it downloads in a separate database from rpm (even though it downloads rpm files and installs them through the rpm tool). I recognize that I may be factually incorrect about this assumption, so please inform me and everyone else how the updater works with written documentation published on your web site.

    Second: Where do I download current updates? I notice that not all the mirror sites are in sync with Helix's Akamai site. I'd like to know a URL for exactly where to download current rpm files for helix packages.

    I don't expect Helix to write my tool, if that's not in your business model. I DO expect Helix to provide adequate documentation so that I can easily write this tool.

  • For offical stable releases, KDE almost always has KDE PowerPC RedHat packages at the time of the offical release. Debian, on the other hand -- well the packages alienate fairly well :)

    Many PowerPC users use KDE, if you don't believe me, stop into irc.kde.org's KDE development channel - #kde, you will see several PowerPC Linux users.

    Nobody is currently making up cvs-snapshots of KDE 2.0 right now, mainly because it takes alot of time and effort to do so, and nobody exactly wants to bother.

    Don't worry, I can almost assure you that there will be PowerPC binaries on the offical day of the KDE 2.0 release.

    Ian Gerser had made up ppc.rpm for 1.91 soon after the release, he never did get 1.92 up, but he may do 1.93 packages (I don't know).

    At any rate, KDE 2.0 is near, doing beta snapshots all of the time is almost a waste of effort.

  • actually, my wifes computer crashed, and mine was in dire need of some new parts, so i had to comprimise with her... ....damnable windows box... since she can't play her games under linux.....soon though...oh yes...very soon i will have my linux box back....

    erm...sorry bout that. Little bit of frustration surfacing.

    I Will definatly be checking out Helix then very soon as well...but first I have to get a linux box up again.

  • Re:Try managing hundreds of computers w/ helix-upd (Score:5)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @08:38AM (#833502)
    You've stumbled across one of the limitations of the current updater system. The current "updates" we ship are represented as a group of packages inside of an xml file. Unfortunately, this means the updater may continue to represent some updates as still being available for your system when you've already installed everything you're interested in from that update.

    The new updater we're currently finishing up, Red Carpet, takes care of this calculating full tree dependencies for packages, making it a full package management tool. In addition, we plan to add features to support your type of situation, namely, a single person managing a large number of machines which should be kept in sync.

    If you're looking for our files, check out our ftp site (ftp.helixcode.com), which contains packages for all the distributions we support (this is where akamai comes to get them), along with the xml metafiles we use to describe them. If you're not already, subscribe to the updates@helixcode.com mailing list, which is where we post a message any time we push new updates.

    I'd also like to ask you to subscribe and contribute to the spidermonkey@helixcode.com list. Getting GNOME onto as many systems as possible is the core of our business model, and we'd always like to hear feedback from our users about how we can make that process easier.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • rsync is a great tool for this, agreed. In case anyone doesn't want to work out the details of how to get it to work, here's what I have worked out. I have a directory, ~/helix/RedHat-6/ where I store my RPMS...then I do the following:

    cd ~/helix
    rsync -vau --exclude="*.src.rpm" rsync://www.helixcode.com/http/distributions/RedHa t-6 .
    rpm -Fvh *.rpm

    Seems to work well for me...
    ----

  • whoops, I meant: "rpm -Fvh RedHat-6/*.rpm"

    :)
    ----

  • - Linux is not pretty - at least not in its natural state.

    I may be an idiot but I always thought KDE looked just as good as Windows.
  • A linux glibc is a compatibility library when uses on a FreeBSD system. A compatibility library is anything that allows an application meant for one system to be run on another. My FreeBSD comment is SUPPOSED to fall apart. I was using it to show that Linux/KDE and Linux/GNOME are two different OSs. Instead of thinking about it from a technical standpoint, think about it from a user's standpoint. You cannot run a GNOME application on KDE without using the GNOME libraries. Since the GNOME libraries form such an abstraction layer around the application, it can be said that running a GNOME app on KDE/Linux using the GNOME compatibility libraries is similar to running a Linux app on FreeBSD using the Linux compatibility libraries. As for the WINE example, you prove my point. If you say that a GNOME application running with compatibility libraries under KDE still constitutes the same OS (from a functional, not technical standpoint) then you have to say that Linux running a Windows app using Windows compatibility libraries also constitutes the two being the same OS. Obviously that's not true.
  • Just thought people might be interested to know that the new beta of kde has just been released and is available here [kde.org].

    There is also a nice bit of flame war starting journalism about the whole thing available here [linuxplanet.com]. Interesting reading...

  • My comment is aimed at the more general problem that GNOME and KDE apps are not compatible. They are not just seperate tool kits, but entirely seperate operating environemnts. Compare this to Windows's MFC which is just a wrapper over Win32. A Win32 app and an MFC app are fully compatible. They interchange data using the same formats, they share a common clipboard, they share the same object model, they use the same underlying OS services, etc. You can say that GNOME is just a GUI, but then you have to explain how a GUI can take up 20MB+ of harddrive space. WindowMaker is just a GUI. FVWM is just a GUI. BlackBox is just a GUI. An application written for BlackBox is totally compatible with windowmaker without any extra libraries. GNOME (and KDE) is not just a GUI. To the user, it's a desktop environment. To the application, it provieds nost only an entirely new API, but totally new services that are only acessible to apps written for GNOME. I say, at that point, an application goes from being a GUI, to becoming a "mini operating system." These projects, like enlightenment and EMacs have caught the "I am an OS" syndrome, and it does not really make sense to consider them "just GUIs" anymore. Certainly, they split the market. A GNOME app is no longer a Linux app, it's a GNOME app. Sure you can run it on KDE/Linux using extra libraries, but then again, you can run Linux apps on FreeBSD using extra libraries. Programmers now have to choose one or the other. Users have to choose one or the other. (Users can do both, but it is a less than ideal solution because of extra libraries, and the lack of interoperability between applications for the two DEs.) None of this was every a problem with the prolifiration window managers. In fact, I dare say that "freedom of choice" has actually DECREASED with the coming of KDE and GNOME. Wheras you could choose any window manager and still be able to run any app, now you have to run either GNOME or KDE (or both.) You don't do the choosing, the application developers do.
  • "They were showing Evolution and the new "red carpet" installer at LinuxWorld. They both look GREAT. They mentioned that native Exchange server support would be in the second release of Evolution and the first release would use IMAP. "

    Luke of WINE fame is working on REing Exchange Server format right now, so it may end up supporting Exchange server in about a month or so, as opposed to version 1.0 ..

    Tom M.
    TomM@pentstar.com

  • 99% of 3D artists use GUI tools. Just thought you should know. Seriously though, you can't possibly be advocating using a text-based raytracer over using 3DStudio, can you? But hey, if you can figure out all the verticies that go into a 3D dinosaur, that's great. If you can make a realistic 3D scene only by positioning objects according to their coordinates, wonderful. If you can do 3D animation entirely based on the physics of the system (instead of using the physics engines built into most 3D modelers) wonderful.

    PS> What the hell are you doing calling 3D Studio "limited?"
  • Exactly how was I supposed to interpret "Text tools work better, trust me" as a non-inflamatory comment?
  • I know the reason *I* became a Linux convert was because I was tired of having commerical entities dictate how *I* should use *my* computer. I don't believe the companies you mentioned (btw, Linux is no company) can or will force any software on anyone. And if it did, I for one would start looking for other OS alternatives...
    --
  • Can you embed KDE apps into GNOME apps?
  • This article is unusually clueful for mainstream media.
    • It remembers to mention that other projects are doing the same thing (kde)
    • It mentions that Qt was semi-closed when GNOME started, but has since gone open source
    • It even credits GNU as the beginning of the free software movement, not Linux
    Details like these are often missed by mainstream media.
    --
  • Of course, GNU was not the beginning of the free software movement.

    People were distributing free software ever since the begining of computers. Larry Wall distributing patch, BSD distributing a set of patches for Unix, and even "here's your rk05, love Dennis", all preceed GNU by years.

  • I have used Alias's Maya, but while there is a lot of stuff you can do using MEL, all of them relate to tools in the GUI. If your dino doesn't yet exist, then good luck using a laser scanner to capture those vertecies. Lastly, sure rendering may be command line-batch proessed, but I don't see anything in Maya that lets you model anything from the command line. And for my purposes, 3D Studio MAX is quite all right. I don't do a lot of animation, it's mostly 3D modeling to use in OpenGL programs and on website or publishing.

  • Either the little guy offers services like Helix and MS, or he doesn't, which means he's not offering the best value. This is going to happen with or without Helix. Either MS gets the whole market, or it gets split between MS, Helix, and whoever else manages to come up with something good. With Gnome and KDE being open source, Helix and MS could very well get a another competitor or three. If there's money in it, they probably will.

    Additionally, the software isn't being given away free in the sense that IE5 is given away free. The source is available free as well. It's the services that will make the money. Whoever can provide the best services for the lowest cost will get the customers. This could very well lead to some serious fragmentation as each service provider tinkers with the software and offers their own updates. Unless the software is made to be completely independent of the service providers, we're likely heading down a bumpy road.

  • So Ticketmaster is making money off the phone company and their ISP?

  • There's nothing to stop KDE and GNOME developers trading ideas/code, as both are GPLed.

    To quote an earlier post of mine:

    That's what I thought - but apparantly, that's not true.

    Although both projects are GPL'ed, Gnome can use KDE code (their html widget came from KDE 1.1), but KDE can't use Gnome code (the classic example is the threatened lawsuits over kgimp).

    For more (admittedly one-sided and rather frustrated in tone) information, read this thread [kde.org] off of the KDE general mailing list.

    --
    Evan

  • You mean, Luke of Samba fame, don't you? Unless he has a background with the WINE project that I wasn't aware of...
  • Actually, the Debian package doesn't use that silly Helix updater thing. Since Debian's packaging system already provides all the functionality they need, they don't need to install another app to provide functionality missing from RPMs (ignore the trolling ;) ), so there's simply a standard Debian archive we can use.

    Put it in your apt sources.list, and apt-get update/upgrade as usual, using all of Debian's tools.

    Problem solved. *grin*
  • Yes, those "dumb" users are wanted. How else are we going to shrink Microsoft back down to size (preferrably 0 IMHO)? Also, just remember that some of those "dumb" users are "dumb" only because of lack of opportunity to "be smart". Linux gives those users a chance to learn if they {choose,are able} to. You never know, one of those "dumb" users might be the next Alan Cox or Linus Torvalds.

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • Unfortunately, we haven't had time to build Slackware packages yet. It is on our list of things to support when we get the time.

    For what it's worth, the Red Hat 6.2 RPMS seem to work fine with Slackware.

    Yeah, but that perty GUI installer doesn't. And that's really all that we Slack users want anyway...

    Unless I'm horribly mistaken. In which case, you should ignore everything that I say. But I know that I wanted the installer when I first heard about it... something like this occurred:

    <friend> did you see the announcement about Helix GNOME and the spiffy installer?
    <me> what?
    <friend> some company called Helix has released a cool GUI installer for GNOME that takes care of dependencies and shit. it's pretty cool. works great on my RedHat box.
    <me> awesome. I'll go check it out. (gui, eh? .... well, maybe it'll be cool)

    /me downloads the go-gnome script, gets it running, and is confronted by a pretty GUI box which says "Sorry, your distribution is not supported by Helix GNOME." /me cries. Then /me says 'Screw GNOME, I liked KDE better anyway!' and /me figured out how to compile KDE from scratch.

    I'm much happier now. (KDE2 betas compile VERY well on Slackware7.) And besides, I like PKGs and source better, and KDEs dependencies seem much more sane than GNOMEs any day of the week.

  • Re:gnome vs helix gnome (Score:3)

    by nitehorse ( 58425 ) <clee@c133.org> on Wednesday August 23, 2000 @04:08PM (#833551)
    No, but you can embed GTK apps into KDE apps [kde.org]. : )

    Just email Simon [mailto] and ask him for that tarball.
  • Even here at IBM, that amount of money made from software and hardware is starting to be dwarfed by the income generated by the Services sector, and that seems to be where Helix Gnome is heading.

    This is great for free software, but it's absolutely horrible for anybody interested in making Linux consumer-friendly. I don't think you can't have really happy users/customers and really successful support-revenue-based businesses. The two don't mix. There's clearly a conflict of interest (whether conscious or not) between making software really easy to use and expecting to make money from support. Personally, I would much rather pay for the software and have it work the first time, than have something break and have to invest the time/money looking at manuals, man pages, web sites or calling someone for help. Other than hard-core hackers, nobody really wants to have to read a manual. I know this concern isn't exactly new, but I don't think it's being taken seriously enough.

    Why is this important? This is the sort of integration that MS's .NET project dreams about - [...] Having an alternative to this underway NOW strikes me as of critical importance as Linux works its way onto more and more people's computers in order to prevent the .NET integration turning the commercial internet into a closed-off MS-only zone.

    But as has been prove time and time again, technology alone will not win the battle. The truth is Microsoft has essentially inifinite resources. It can use these resources to market to end users, setup exclusive partnerships, and essential buy its way into acceptance. This is how Microsoft works.

    All these great ideas and technology, including those from Helix Code, will mean nothing if they can't get the message out to the appropriate people.

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Why would I want a gnome distribution?

    That's kind of like saying, "Why would I want a Linux distribution?" Now granted, it's a bit different. A Linux distribution does a lot for you that would be *very* difficult to do on your own if you were not experienced, such as installation, setting up the file system, etc. But the analogy is still a good one. A distribution bundles everything together nicely. You don't just get the applications in their default state as written by each individual developer. You get an integrated set of applications that work well together because they were customized and designed in that way. You also get a desktop environment that is well-tested. If you just upgrade individual packages, that's great, but they won't necessarily work well together. Helix Code does for Gnome, what Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, et. al. do for the GNU/Linux operating system. Installation and upgrading is easy. You have a set of applications that have been tested to work well together and have been packaged accordingly, placed in one central location and "stamped," if you will, with company's seal of approval. Now, if that means nothing to you, then don't use it. But for a lot of users, this is a dream come true. All they have to do is run the simple installer and they have a complete desktop, development environment at their fingertips. When there are updates and bug fixes all they have to do is run the upgrade utility. All the applications are tested and set up so they are easy to find and launch. Bug Buddy is a click away to report problems they find with the system. As new appications become available, they don't have to go out searching high and low for them. Helix Code adds applications to their distribution regularly, improving the user experience.
    ----

  • It is a suprising fact that you possess the mental facilities to type yet don't possess the ability to think clearly. A good deal of the most sucessful and valuated companies in the world are service companies. You better hurry up and tell MediaOne and AOL that people aren't REALLY going to pay for service and they will be out of business when VC money runs out. Of course the Linux start-ups that do the same thing as everyone else with merely a different logo and shell command for printing will die quickly and painlessly. There are companies however that have been around or just starting that will make alot of money because they're going something different. Helix is one of those companies. Helix is just the front end for the services they plan to offer on a subscription basis as the article (if you read it, remember top to bottom and left to right). The biggest arena for Helix is in the Application Service business which is just now starting to pop up and turn into a viable industry. While HTML frontends work decently for ASPs for now, they will really become popular if they are transparent to the user.
    One posibility is a photo editing ASP, you have your collection of pictures which you highlight and click the button to send them to an ASP that will perform certain filters and such on and then store them online so your grandparents can type in the URL and see Junior's first birthday party. Using a web based front end would work but if you could click a button on your desktop and have everything taken care of you'd be much more apt to use it. GNOME's design allows for this sort of networked object handling and can do a pretty good job of it. A small monthly service fee for a variety of performed services is a very successful business model, it has worked for AOL for years now making them billions of dollars.

  • I think you're making the two things (helix software and phone service) out to be more different than they really are in this case. The software is just a facilitation device for helix to deliver its services. You can use the software for free and never purchase a single service from them, and that's ok. So they really aren't making money on the software, but they do need to have a delivery method for services, which is the role that the software fills.

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