Solaris 9 Will Be Updated WIth Gnome 2.0

JAZ writes: "According to this article, 'The newest version of the GNOME open source desktop will not be ready in time to ship with Solaris 9 next year, but it will be included with a subsequent Solaris 9 quarterly update ...' Go Gnome!" I wonder if anyone truly prefers CDE.

Solaris + Gnome?

[CrisTUFR]

Not to bash Gnome, but I've had plenty of troubles getting a clean install of any linux disto w/ Gnome as the default work consistently among more than 2 reboots. Icons disappearing, bitmaps getting corrupted out of the blue, etc... It seems a bit odd that Sun is making Gnome the default desktop just out of the blue like this without first distributing it as simply an 'alternative'. Does anyone agree? Am I misinformed about Gnome becoming the new default. -C "All the world is like cereal. If you're not a fruit or a nut, you're a flake."

fast?

[Yobgod Ababua]

If you really prefer speed over bells, why don't you use something like fvwm?

As an administrator I found CDE to be overly complex, difficult to use and customize, and generally a pain in the ^@$@! Having Gnome availible on Solaris in a pre-packaged, official distribution is nice even if you don't use it as your desktop just for the included applications, which can be a pain to compile properly otherwise.

On my current desktop I'm using Gnome and sawfish and it's quite reasonable. On my Sun cluster (used solely for remote computation) I don't install CDE OR Gnome.

Re:Yes, I Prefer CDE...

[SkullRape]

CDE Small??? What crack are you smoking? CDE is anything but small.

Re:Solaris 9 betas

[Anonymous Coward]

How clever. You can also get them from Sun's site [sun.com]. Regardless, they don't support CD install at the moment, only net installs. I think I'll wait for the real thing.

Re:My decision is made

[sawilson]

It doesn't take that long to learn a new window manager. I suggest looking at as many as you can and then deciding. Get used to the idea that you have a lot of choices, and revel in it. Don't be afraid to try out new stuff. That fear is what keeps certain monopolies in business.

Worth Mentioning...

[Misch]

It should be worth mentioning that this story is an "update" to a previous story here [slashdot.org] on /.

Re:Did they consider KDE?

[the_2nd_coming]

it had more to do with who application developers would have to look to for the tool kit. GTK+ is controled by GNOME and is free and is LGPL so you can link the libs to a proprietar program.

QT is GPL if it is a non-comercial application, comercial apps pay big bucks for the QT licence.
so unless you are going to GPL your app, you will have to buy a licence from QT to link to the QT libs.

CDE

[ixo111]

It depends on what you're after and what you have the time for. CDE is simple and doesn't seem to get in the way. Having been forced to use either CDE or OpenWindows for several years, and having found OpenWindows to be a royal pain, CDE was what i stuck with. I use KDE now, because it most closely resembles CDE for me. I've tried some of the more feature-laden (or ridden) window managers - tho some of my acquaintences may grouse and complain that i don't give things a fair chance, i require two things from a window manager : that it doesn't make me use the mouse any more than necessary, and that it doesn't force me to eat up screen real-estate with whizbangs and visual funthings. I'm definitely a terminal power-user, and would operate in text-mode exclusively were it not that I require a web browser (feh). If you gave me a choice between Gnome and CDE, i'd take CDE, just because i'm not convinced spending X amount of time learning how to deal with another environment will buy me anything - it certainly won't improve my productivity, as I am definitely of the opinion that GUI's hamper productivity (unless you're doing something visual).

Re:Preferring CDE? Compared to what?

[MROD]

Well, OpenWindows was basically a port of the old SunView system, which was the original windowing system, to X11R3. SunView was rather revolutionary at the time and, I think, predates X by a number of years. Hence, it doesn't "follow industry standards" because it pre-dates them.

The Openwindows (or OpenLook) libraries are pretty well call for call compatible with the SunView library calls and look nothing like the normal X library stuff.. and are arguably easier to use, hence they were used quite widely in scientific applications.

For those who are used to the interface, moving to the other windowing systems and desktop environments can be quite a culture shock.

On our systems we have Openwindows, CDE, KDE 1, KDE 2.2 and GNOME 1.4. There are a number of people who I can't get to move from Openwindows, others who PREFER CDE, a lot who prefer KDE 1 to KDE 2 etc.

Each to their own, I say.

Re:Did they consider KDE?

[psavo]

(speaking of KDE) My bet is that their decision to use Gnome has more to do with the geographical location of its core developers than the code itself.

I read this some tim ago on KDE KT Cousin [zork.net], basically they say that KDE isn't that portable, and port to Sun asch is going to take a while. GNOME is plain C and has ran on Sun for a long time, so there's not so much trouble to go through.
Consider also that KDE uses C++, and Sun's own compilers isn't maybe so good at C++ and g++ sucks on Sun too...
And.. If Sun used KDE on their arch, they'd had to pay Qt $$. That's pretty hard to explain to shareholders when there's equivalent totally FREE option available.
I'm not talking about government however ;P

Re:Did they consider KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

My bet is that their decision to use Gnome has more to do with the geographical location of its core developers than the code itself.

...and you base this on WHAT?

Oh, just a hunch, right?

Sure, it probably has nothing to do with the fact that Sun's developers are more familiar with C (GNOME) than they are with C++ (KDE) [linuxpower.org].

From that link: This came down to a comparison of QT to GTK+. We favoured GTK+ mainly because it was C based. We have more experience with C, it is more portable, we wouldn't be exposing C++ interfaces that might cause problems with different compilers and we would still get a nice object framework to work with which is well suited to GUI development.

You said... you really have to ask whether Sun gave KDE fair consideration in making their decision

No you don't. All you have to do is a little bit of reading. Again, read above referenced article, which was posted some time ago.

If you keep making "bets" on shit you know absolutely nothing about, you're gonna lose.

Re:Double Nope

[big.ears]

Although QT does not have to be licensed for 'commercial development', it does need to be licensed for non-Free (non-gpl) development. (see this link [trolltech.com].)

On the other hand, gnome libraries are licensed under the LGPL, which allows non-gpl (closed source) development based on it.

Although I believe this was one of the deciding factors--potential software partners would not need to depend on an external company to develop, this is currently true with Motif, so it probably wasn't the only factor in their decision.
Probably Sun engineers felt Gnome was more true to unix traditions than KDE, felt more comfortable with it, and felt they would have a bigger say in the direction it ultimately took.

Re:me, too

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're running Solaris, try the Ximian version. For some reason, Sun's version seems to be pretty unstable and buggy. Also, unlike in CDE you shouldn't have to really edit config files in GNOME 1.4. I can't help with the slowness though. If it's any consolation, KDE is even worse.

Re:Did they consider KDE?

[mill]

AFAIK Sun's core GNOME developer is located in Ireland so using that logic KDE would be the preferred choice.

Of course that is not the reason they chose GNOME. The license of gtk+, use of CORBA, influence over the implementation of gtk+, and C instead of C++ are probable reason.

/mill

Re:Yes, I Prefer CDE...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hilarious to say CDE is "smaller and faster>' BTW, in comparison to Gnome, I guess it is, but remember CDE is a pig! Oink, oink, ttsession, ttdb problems, ack ack.

The area where CDE shines is the ability to modify color cube saturation. So many old Suns have 8-bit cg6-derived video, which dithers like hell and looks like crap in GNOME, KDE, and other color intensive window managers.

I use CDE on my SPARC20 712, with GNOME installed but not executing a gnome-session. So I can keep decent color modulation without color flashing, and still call up Gedit or Dia as needed. And, of course, GKrellm is the utility that all *NIX boxen must have, and now it monitors all CPUs and drives on my Sun.

Dithering is evil. CDE helps overcome that evil.

AC

Re:Yes, I Prefer CDE...

[SCHecklerX]

GNOME's switch to Nautilus is even more retarded. While GMC wasn't the greatest file manager in the world, it certainly kicked Nautilus's ass in terms of speed and stability. Starting GNOME with Nautilus adds at LEAST 10+ seconds to the splash screen. Is it really that difficult to write a file manager that shows desktop icons without it being slow? Microsoft seems to have done a good job with Windows 9x.

Yeah, really. OS/2's WPS is STILL far more advanced in the way all GUI (OOI) objects interact...and they did this in 1994, on 486's with *ONLY 4 MEGABYTES* of memory!!!

Now...back to the subject of nice environments in X11. Here's what you do:

1. Pick a nice windowmanager (Windowmaker, XFCE, Blackbox, Sawfish, ICEWM, whatever)
2. Use ROX-Filer [sourceforge.net] as a file manager and also to display desktop icons (pinboard) and taskbars (if you like those dumb things)
3. Go to my site and get my ROX Filter [homeip.net] and my ROX Mime Stuff [homeip.net] if you want a prettier (IMHO) look.