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GNOME GUI Sun Microsystems

Gnome 2.0 Officially Available For Solaris 246

Posted by chrisd from the gnome-without-hairy-toes dept.
MoonRider writes "Today, Sun Microsystems announced the availability of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris Operating Environment.
You could already download beta versions of the Gnome 2.0 desktop but this is the "official" release that will replace CDE as the default desktop for the Solaris operating system. You can get it on the Sun website."
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Gnome 2.0 Officially Available For Solaris More

Gnome 2.0 Officially Available For Solaris

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  • 2.0? Why, oh why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Furry Ice ( 136126 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:31PM (#5227272)
    Gnome 1.4 is very nice. 2.0 still has a long way to go. I wish they wouldn't turn off so many Solaris users by giving them something half-baked. Then again, if they're willing to put up with CDE, they're probably willing to use _anything_.

    • Re:2.0? Why, oh why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dingleberry ( 144200 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:33PM (#5227289)
      Sun has been working on Gnome 2.0 with the Gnome community. It's not exactly a stock Gnome 2.0 installation. You might want to check it out before giving it the thumbs down...
    • Many gtk2 features, particularly the file selection dialog box, are better.

      A few of the configuration dialogs haven't been finished, but it is definitly worth the upgrade.

      As for giving the something half baked (*cough*SCO UNIX*cough*), why not give them GDM and the choice of using CDE, KDE, GNOME, or TWM?

      I apologize for calling SCO UNIX "half baked." This statement was in error, in fact SCO is such a load of useless non-functional crap that I don't consider it UNIX at all. Even OS X is more complete! (I also apologize for comparing OS X to SCO, winshit(my first choice), sucks nearly as much as SCO.)
    • ummmm, err, well, there's....

      never mind.

  • CDE and SNL (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (CDE walking towards exit on plane, cue SNL bit from a few years ago ...)

    buh-bye

  • Good to see (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fault0 ( 514452 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:32PM (#5227279) Homepage Journal
    That SUN is finally replacing the archaic CDE. However, there seems to be a pretty large gap in release time. GNOME 2.2 is almost out. Will it be "officially" released for Solaris onc GNOME 2.4 comes out? I don't think Sun is doing a service to Solaris users here by using such a old version. One could argue that they made sure that everything is stable, but the fact is that GNOME 2.2 itself has more bug fixes from GNOME 2.0.

    • Re:Good to see (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LarryRiedel ( 141315 )

      I think because this was their first "official" release of any revision of GNOME, there was a lot more that went into it than what they will need to do for an update for the changes in 2.2.

      Larry

    • Re:Good to see (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @07:02PM (#5227485) Homepage Journal
      I know many Sun users who liked CDE because it was stable as a rock.

      Gnome 2.2 is great, but it's not stable. I used Gnome1.2 and 1.4 (Vanilla and Ximian) on a Sun workstation for almost 2 years, and was really annoyed by stability and memory leakage.

      Sun really shouldn't release Gnome2.2 until it's gone through a trial-testing period, and after several patches have been released.
      • Its worth noting that the Sun version of Gnome 2.0 is supposed to have a number of fixes that aren't in the "regular" release of Gnome 2.0, but are in Gnome 2.more. So it's perhaps not so out of date as 2.0 might indicate.
      • Gnome 2.2 is great, but it's not stable.

        Gnome 2.0 is very stable. Gnome 2.2 isn't (quite) out yet.

      • Re:Good to see (Score:3, Informative)

        by mattdm ( 1931 )
        I know many Sun users who liked CDE because it was stable as a rock.

        Oh yeah? Rocks come to my mind when I think of CDE, but for different reasons. For example, I liked it because of all of the gaping security holes [securityfocus.com] in tooltalk that take Sun forever to patch whenever they crop up.
        • I think of smashing my head on a rock when I use CDE.

          Sun was pretty slow when patching CDE. Let's hope things get better now that they are using an OSS solution.
      • "Stable" doesn't exactly describe this release -- I just installed it, and it just crashed.

    • Re:Good to see (Score:3, Interesting)

      by borg ( 95568 )

      what i think amazing is that back in the day (1996), the posts on usenet announcing the beginning of the KDE (way back then, it was the 'Kool Desktop Environment') development effort specifically cited CDE as inspiration.

      want proof? check out this article [google.com] from the Google archive.

      then KDE sparked the Gnome effort...

      ...and now Gnome's replacing CDE.

      but i'm left wondering how Kevin Bacon fits into it all

  • what took them so long (Score:3, Insightful)

    by softwave ( 145750 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:32PM (#5227284)
    I really do wonder what took the people at Sun so long to realise they should replace CDE with something "fresher". Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated. Hopefully this'll put Solaris closer to the people ;)

    • Re:what took them so long (Score:5, Funny)

      by ZoneGray ( 168419 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @07:52PM (#5227764) Homepage
      >> CDE was getting a little bit outdated

      Geez, too bad there's no mod option for "understatement".
    • CDE has stunk as a UI for at least five years and possibly longer. I got given an account in a big corporate back in 1997 or so and I was appalled with it even back then. What the hell is so complicated about a glorified clock, calendar and icon bar that it has hardly changed in all that time?


      Frankly it's a wonder that Sun et al in Unix land weren't obliterated by Microsoft for sticking with that piece of shit.


      GNOME should give a welcome boost to commercial *nixes, though knowing Sun they'll probably ship a default GNOME desktop which exactly mimics CDE thereby negating any point in changing at all.

      • Yes, but getting old Sun users to change to Gnome is like getting Windows users to change to OSX or Gnome. They probably should, and we're boggled if they don't - but let's face it people like to use what they know.

        What's another analogy, perhaps if you lived in the US and then moved to the UK and had to drive on the other side of the road. Still all the same functions, just another interface. Yikes.

  • Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ausoleil ( 322752 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:35PM (#5227302) Homepage
    ...not that Solaris is "bad"...

    But who would have ever thought five years ago that the predominant commercial *NIX flavor would be adopting the GUI of it's open source competition?

    Hopefully, little goodies like a Gnome Package Manager, an RPM like interface for package installation will be included or coming shortly.

    Funny thing is that I am bringing a Solaris 8 box up to life as an AMPS (Apache MySQL PHP Solaris) box this week, so I guess this little gem will have to be part of the roll-out!
    • Once Sun brins most of Linux userland it's time to plan to bring whole Linux on Sparc!

      I know, it's already done by Gentoo [gentoo.org], Debian [debian.org], some others. But not by Sun.

      Perhaps, it's time for Sun to rise and shine :)

      • Once Sun brins most of Linux userland it's time to plan to bring whole Linux on Sparc!

        Last time I checked Sun's long term strategy hinged around Linux. Don't they want to add the features in Solaris that aren't in Linux to Linux and phase out Solaris completely? Best to start on the desktop, I guess, with Gnome. Now that Gnome runs on Solaris, when they switch out the kernels they know that whatever extensions are needed to the LInux kernel will work with Gnome pretty quickly. KDE is the one falling behind, now. Crap. I like KDE.

  • Sun and GNOME (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kruetz ( 642175 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:36PM (#5227311) Journal
    Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment? Was it because RedHat has adopted GNOME as their default desktop, or they liked the look of Ximian GNOME? Because I can't really believe that they chose GNOME purely on technical reasons.

    Let me defend my last comment - I'm not a KDE or GNOME user, so I don't see one as being evil and the other as good or anything. But I do think that the duplication of effort is a sad waste of effort (I know why RMS started GNOME, and he kinda had a point, but still...)

    Anyway, did Sun choose GNOME because it's more "enterprise-friendly" (ie, you can get support from Ximian)? I never heard much discussion on this point and I'm rather curious. (I'm also glad that they chose to adopt on of the main-stream Linux desktops.)

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:40PM (#5227348)
      Because Sun didn't want to pay royalties for proprietary non-open applications they developed against KDE, perhaps?
    • Probably "Yes" to the fact that GNOME is more enterprise support, but "No" to Ximian-based support. I think a large part of the decision is based on the fact that GNOME and GTK are LGPL, and thus "friendlier" to ISV's who want to write proprietary apps using them.

      And (IANAKDEU) but think GNOME's accessibility support _may_ have had something to do with it.

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:44PM (#5227371) Homepage

      If Sun chose KDE, then they'd be in the position of either writing checks to TrollTech with every sale, or telling their customers that they can't develop proprietary apps without buying a separate license from TrollTech.

      In practice, though, a number of software companies are already selling Qt-based apps on Solaris.

      • as far as i recall, you only have to pay trolltech once to be able to develop apps with QT.
        • You missed the "or" part of the "either ... or ...". Either of the two alternatives was unpalatable to Sun.

          And this wasn't exactly a surprise: people have been pointing out that KDE wasn't going to be very attractive to companies like Sun or IBM since the beginnings of the KDE project. If KDE wants to get back into this game, KDE should really aggressively pursue an LGPL clone of Qt. It's not that hard to do.

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Telastyn ( 206146 )
      Stupid question time: why can't you believe that they'd pick gnome for technical reasons. I've never heard or seen anything concrete one way or the other; I've found that they perform similarly, and gnome has a nicer look/feel/layout (imo).

      Any link or direct explination (unbiased preferably) as to the pluses/minuses would be nice.

      • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:2, Interesting)

        by gilesjuk ( 604902 )
        Shame GNOME doesn't have a modern stable integrated filemanager IMHO. Nautilus is flakey, i've tried both Redhat and Debian distros and with both it falls over or refuses to start sometimes. With Debian I had Sawfish problems too, KDE just seems to work better for me.

        At least with KDE you get Konqueror which is fast and stable.

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:48PM (#5227398)

      Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment? Was it because RedHat has adopted GNOME as their default desktop, or they liked the look of Ximian GNOME? Because I can't really believe that they chose GNOME purely on technical reasons.

      There were probably a raft of reasons rather just one. GTK is written in C, so it's an easier task to tie GTK to anything already existing than QT would be. Sun needed to find an architecture with strong accessibility features and they may have felt that GNOME would be easier to get those accessibility features in ...

      Probably the clincher though is the licensing of GTK. It's LGPL, rather than GPL. So Sun can take their proprietary stuff and dynamically link it to the GTK libraries and keep their proprietary stuff proprietary and closed. With QT, they would either have had to completely open their sources up under the GPL or they would have to have licensed the QT libraries from Trolltech. Like it or not, if you are developing proprietary Linux/Windows apps and you want a toolkit, GTK2 looks pretty good, doesn't force you to reveal your stuff and is a capable, accessible toolkit.

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:5, Informative)

      by DeadMoose ( 518744 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:48PM (#5227401)

      Well, first off there's the entry in their FAQ, titled "Why did Sun choose to support GNOME instead of KDE?" [sun.com], but that's a bit light on details.

      A couple years ago I went to a presentation from Sun about Gnome, and they went into more details, but my slides are at home. The couple that leap to mind though: there were the licensing questions with QT. There was also the fact that Gnome's C based rather than C++, and the large portion of Sun folk were much more comfortable working w/ C rather than C++.

      When I get home, I'll dig up my slides, and if they add anything more to this discussion (since lots more people will probably respond by then, and I'm not sure how indepth they went into this particular topic), I'll append something more.

      • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:4, Funny)

        by the_real_tigga ( 568488 ) <nephros&users,sourceforge,net> on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @07:30PM (#5227658) Journal
        Thanks for the link.

        And if you read on, there are two nice other FAQ:

        24.Q. How does GNOME compare to CDE?
        A. CDE [...] provides a consistent graphical user interface for UNIX workstations.
        GNOME leapfrogs CDE in [...] visual design.

        25.Q. How does GNOME compare to Microsoft Windows?
        A. GNOME is an open, free, and productive desktop environment that sparks innovation and excitement among users and developers worldwide.
        Microsoft Windows is not.

        Apples to oranges to the point.

      • No more to add (Score:3, Informative)

        by DeadMoose ( 518744 )

        I dug up my slides, and beyond the dated tutorials of basic GTK+ work, and some ancient screenshots, it doesn't add much.

        They've got a slide with a few buzzwords about why Gnome's so much better than CDE, but I guess all the talk of Gnome/GTK+ versus KDE/QT was done during Q&A

        But if memory serves it was basically what everyone's saying; they liked C more than C++, and they didn't want to worry about QT licensing for themselves or anyone else (since saying "it's free to develop for our platform!" is more enticing than "it's almost free; you just have to pay QT royalties")

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:5, Informative)

      by nslu ( 532403 ) <slashdot DOT org ... myxomop DOT com> on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:48PM (#5227402) Homepage

      sun has predicted this kind of questions and answered in their FAQ

      quoting from http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/faq/genera lfaq.html#4q0 [sun.com]

      Q. Why did Sun choose to support GNOME instead of KDE?

      A. GNOME and KDE are both powerful desktop environments. Sun has completed a comprehensive technical review of both environments and concluded that GNOME's architecture is a better match for Sun's software strategy, which promotes the creation and use of highly distributed, network-savvy software, as well as easy access to data wherever it might be located. One example is GNOME's innovative use of CORBA for network-aware interprocess communication between disparate systems. Others are the Bonobo component architecture, which enables easier creation of compound documents and system-wide scripting while promoting code reuse, and GConf, the network- and component-aware configuration management system.

      • I mean seriously, KDE has all the features as well. And it is not below GNOME despite all the money that was poured into GNOME:

        innovative use of CORBA

        DCOP, kparts? KDE even used CORBA before GNOME-1.0 but they ditched it, because it is too slow and complicated

        easy access to data wherever it might be located

        Sounds like kioslaves to me. Imagine gnome-vfs from the ground up.

        and so on.
    • This is the issue as I understand it -- someone will certainly come along and correct me if I'm wrong.

      Anyway, as you may know, KDE uses a library called "Qt" to implement all of the GUI stuff that you see in KDE. Troll Tech, the company that makes Qt, has licensed it to UNIX users under the GPL. This is good for Free Software developers, but not so good for makers of proprietary software. As I understand it, in order to release a closed-source KDE app, a developer would need to buy a commercial license for the Qt libraries from Troll Tech.

      GNOME uses GTK as its widget library. GTK is licensed under the LGPL, which allows a developer to write closed-source software without having to
      pay licensing fees. I think that, by choosing GNOME over KDE, Sun ias trying to make it more attractive for developers to write software for their platform.

      "But I do think that the duplication of effort is a sad waste of effort"

      Yeah -- and I think the fact that we have two competing desktop standards has done a lot more damage to the free software community than people like to admit. Say that I want to write a GUI application for Linux. Do I make it GNOME app or a KDE app? If I write a GNOME app, I alienate all the KDE users out there. If I release a KDE app, I alienate the GNOME users. The solution seems to be to ignore both APIs, which is what Mozilla and OpenOffice have done. But that defeats the whole point of having a desktop environment. It's a big mess now, but both GNOME and KDE developers have invested too much into their work to expect either project to give way to the other.

      Steve
      • The solution seems to be to ignore both APIs, which is what Mozilla and OpenOffice have done.

        But mozilla uses gtk, so it doesnt completely ignore gnome.

      • Once the KDE and GNOME folks work out the interoperability issues, end users simply aren't going to care which library you used to implement your app: it will be expected to perform properly whether run from a KDE or a GNOME desktop, or from some other window manager.

      • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:4, Informative)

        by Frater 219 ( 1455 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @09:55PM (#5228336) Journal
        If I write a GNOME app, I alienate all the KDE users out there. If I release a KDE app, I alienate the GNOME users.

        Nonsense. The vast majority of people who happen to be running either KDE or GNOME are neither football hooligans nor jingoists about it. They will run whatever applications will help them get their job done. There is after all nothing about the KDE window manager which woukd make GNOME apps quit working, nor vice versa.

        I use KDE chiefly because I like its window manager, its browser, and its flavor of xterm. That doesn't stop me from running GNOME and GTK applications, such as dia or nessus. (And I'm glad it doesn't, since I'm a security technician and would be a little hosed without nessus.)

        If you are concerned about "alienating" the football hooligan type of user -- well, recall the old Chinese parable about the man, his son, and the donkey. You can't please everyone, and if you try to please all the fanatics, you just end up falling in the river.

        (Regarding the mistaken idea that the friendly competition between GNOME and KDE constitutes "wasted effort", I will only direct the reader to the second of my ways to make yourself look stupid [slashdot.org]. The existence of choice is itself valuable, not a waste.)

        • "Nonsense. The vast majority of people who happen to be running either KDE or GNOME are neither football hooligans nor jingoists about it."

          I should have chosen my words better -- I didn't say what I meant to say. I wasn't concerned about KDE and GNOME zealotry, and I do know that GNOME and KDE apps can run on the same desktop at the same time. That said, you can't run Galeon from KDE without first installing the GNOME libraries, and even after you do that, it doesn't have the same look and feel as the rest of your KDE apps. GNOME applications run on KDE, but they don't run as well as KDE applications run on KDE. And the same can be said for KDE applications on GNOME. Developers are still in a bind because if they choose one platform, their application will appear to be less efficient and not as good looking to users of the other. The whole "Linux on the Desktop" thing is a big sprawling mess.

          The problem isn't that there are two competing desktop envrionments, it's that there are two competing APIs for interfacing with a desktop environment. I think it's totally reasonable to fault the GNOME and KDE developers for not working this out when they had the chance. As it stands, a GNOME user needs to install 200 MB of KDE libraries just to use KMail.

          In your journal, you liken those of us who want to see more consolidation and cooperation in the free software community to Soviet economic planners. I think that's a bit far-fetched. Standardization doesn't have to limit freedom of choice at all. SMTP, for instance, is a standard protocol and your MTA has to adhere to it, but because SMTP is a standard, you can run any MTA you want, depending upon your needs and tastes. Likewise, because HTML is standardized, you're free to use whichever web browser you want. Standards actually encourage freedom of choice and promote the creation of different alternatives to choose from.

          Steve

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:2, Insightful)

      by supabeast! ( 84658 )
      "Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment?"

      Sun makes a lot of money selling their hardware to the USA, UK, Candada, and Australia. Much of this hardware goes into military/intelligence systems where software controlled by companies/groups outside the English-speaking nations.

      If Sun had used KDE, the desktop would tie back to a German group. Even with the source readily available, there are plenty of old guys in the English-speaking world who won't want German software near their networks. The last thing Sun needs is Microsoft FUD pushing Solaris as supporting Euro-Socialist-Anti-American stuff.

      Gnome, however, has a huge amount of American work behind it. Gnome gives Sun the ability to point at companies like Ximian as the big American influences, and bring GPL software into the government world. This forces the government to admit that their systems really DO run on open-source/GPL software. BIND, Sendmail, Postfix, Apache and so on are all important apps that the infrastructures of our governments rely on, but they all stay hidden away. In the long run Gnome on Solaris 10 will help change the way the world looks at open-source and GPL software, and we will all benefit.

      Unless, of course, Sun goes bankrupt first ;b

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:3, Interesting)

      by haggar ( 72771 )
      Heck, I don't know why they chose Gnome over KDE: I have installed KDE on my Blade 100, from the applications CD that comes with the Solaris 8 (and 9) media set, I think it's a version 2.x KDE, and it's even faster than CDE, all the while being prettier!

      Yes, sounds unbelievable, but it's true, it's really snappy, compared to CDE. I guess compared to Gnome 2.0 it totally flies.
    • Fuck RMS.

    • Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mattdm ( 1931 )
      You could follow the link in the story and find out what Sun has to say about it -- it's in their FAQ [sun.com]. Basically, the key word is "network-aware".

      From a what-Sun's-not-saying standpoint, I imagine it appeals to them that you can write closed-source software for GNOME without having to pay Trolltech.

  • 5 -- Footprint logos are way cooler than green dragons

    4 -- Your KDE installation died

    3 -- 2.0 is the same version number as your Linux kernel installation

    2 -- If Stallman uses it, it's gotta be good

    1 -- You'd rather embrace Evolution than Jesus

    Don't forget to sign-up [starnix.org]

  • Motif/CDE's design philosophy could be boiled down to one phrase: "Make everything look 3D except the menubar!"

    Remember when checkbuttons and radiobuttons could only be differentiated by innie/outtie appearance? (Now let's see ... if it's "in" it must be on, unless the light source is the lower right corner of the screen ... then ... ummm ... wait.)

    I always thought XView was clever and a lot more user-friendly: you'd be paging through a huge document by clicking in the scrollbar. And when the thumb got too close, it'd warp the pointer for you so you didn't have to pay attention to the interface elements, just the content. Smart.

    Oh well, at least GNOME's quite a bit prettier.

  • Performance still needs work (Score:5, Informative)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:50PM (#5227416) Homepage
    I just got done trying out this release of GNOME on a SunBlade 150 (550 MHz UltraSPARC II, 512 MB RAM, PGX-64 graphics). It works and it's kinda snazzy, but it's mighty slow. I don't know if it's the fault of my low end hardware or maybe the software itself, but this beast really makes my machine chug.

    While Motif has often been considered bloated in the past, CDE (which is Motif based) runs like a champ on this machine. The look and feel is pretty stark, but it does the job and is easy on my hardware.

    Hopefully Sun will have GNOME zipping along by the time 2.1 ships. I would imagine there are still many tweaks that can be implemented.

    • Re:Performance still needs work (Score:5, Informative)

      by acoopersmith ( 87160 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:55PM (#5227453) Homepage Journal
      Check out the Sun GNOME 2.0 Performance Troubleshooting Guide [sun.com]. Perhaps it can help you.
    • Installing the medialib packages (not part of Solaris or the GNOME download) should improve peformance. You can download these from here [sun.com]
    • Can anybody explain why Gnome 2.x is reputed to be so slow on Sun boxen, while my (admittedly anecdotal, rather than formally benchmarked) experience with the product on x86 and related machines is that it's much faster than version 1.4?
    • I just got done trying out this release of GNOME on a SunBlade 150 (550 MHz UltraSPARC II, 512 MB RAM, PGX-64 graphics). It works and it's kinda snazzy, but it's mighty slow. I don't know if it's the fault of my low end hardware or maybe the software itself, but this beast really makes my machine chug.


      Your sunblade 150 is a fairly low-end machine, not that you would think it would take much horsepower to make a snappy feeling gui. Basically put, I've used many classes of Sun workstations/servers (from SparcStation IPX to SunFire V880), and the gui 'feels' horribly slow on all of them. The system underneath can do things very quickly and reliably, but nothing 'feels' fast. For example, my workstation at work is a Sun Blade 1000 (essentially a SunFire 280R in a desktop case), dual 750 usparc3's, fc-al disks, and the same old video card as you. Still feels slow. I have a p2-233 at home with a matrox millenium, 128mb of 70ns ram, and a couple crusty narrow-scsi barracudas, and running CDE on it feels a couple orders of magnitude faster than the sun workstation. Granted, any real work being done goes much quicker on the SunBlade.

      I think the problem lies in several areas. First, the pgx-64 has been around for a few years and was probably several generations behind in video acceleration when it came out. Second, I don't think there's too much video acceleration going on with the sun video cards (excluding those that do opengl). I think this is the primary problem. Third, the feel issue. Maybe Xsun is just set up to not update ultra-fast, or maybe it's set by default to make background applications get most of the cycles? Wish I knew how to configure it to try and update the screen at about 10x the current rate...based on the cpu usage of Xsun, it's GOT to be sitting around twiddling it's thumbs between screen updates.

      Something is just skewed with X's response time. Granted, gnome will use more cycles to display the fancy graphics, but what I'm talking about is very noticiable even with CDE. CDE feels fast on HP workstations, such as the B2000, which is fairly old. Feels fine on alphas too. I have mixed emotions of ibm/aix. X HAULS on SGI from r4400 based workstations and up (early 90's). Sun.....just feels slow for the gui, everything else runs just dandy!

      p.s. In case you're interested, the sunblade you have most likely uses the same pc133 ECC SDRAM DIMMS (cas 3) as a sunblade 100, a seagate barracuda IDE disk, and has a slightly higher-clocked CrippleSparc(tm) processor, which has significantly less cache than the 'real' server-model UltraSparc IIs. My favorite part is running a 'prtdiag' and have it say '1-way memory interleaving'! :-)

  • Security Hole in Solaris GNOME 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)

    by dananderson ( 1880 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @06:55PM (#5227449) Homepage
    Please read this message at http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/get/#downl oad [sun.com]:
    a security vulnerability in the GNOME Print Manager could allow unauthorized reading of files. To resolve this issue, after installation of GNOME 2.0, execute the following command (as root user):
    chmod u-s /usr/lib/gnome-print-manager-remote

  • on a sunray config? no way! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hummer357 ( 545850 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @07:42PM (#5227715)
    as much as i applaud the possibility of using gnome2 on solaris (i've been using the beta3 for a long time, and i will upgrade my sunblade workstation to the gnome2 final release), it really wouldn't work well in all possible situations...

    for example:
    at work we have a very large number of sunray workstations, which use a chunky 6800 as server (the largest sunray install base in europe!). we use them primarily for managing our data network (as our country's larges telco & isp).

    since gnome2 uses A LOT more ram and cpu cycles than good old cde, we won't be using it anytime soon. it kind of isn't justifiable to order a 15k to use a new gui.
    and then some.
    a lot of the applications we use are very usable in cde (eg: alcatel/newbridge's atm node management software), so using gnome would actually make the thing less user friendly!

    h357

  • Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2003 @07:42PM (#5227716) Homepage Journal

    It's only just recently that I've tried to understand the vagaries of windowing systems and GUI kits under X. (My previous attempt was by reading the Xlib reference manual. Ugh.) There appears to be a mostly-unstated assumption on which bits of your windowed app are handled by what.

    What I've learned so far is that the functional separation seems to based on the "conceptual boundaries" established by the window(s). This appears to have led to the establishment of three major components on X desktops:

    • Inside The Window: The Widget Toolkit
      This is the piece that's responsible for rendering the various buttons, sliders, textboxes, labels, etc. Applications describe in abstract terms what widgets they want and how they want them laid out, and the toolkit is responsible for actually making it happen. An example of a widget toolkit is GTK.
    • Around The Window: The Window Manager
      The Window Manager is responsible for operations on the window proper, allowing the user to depth-arrange, drag, resize, minimize, etc. the windows appearing on the display. To facilitate this, the Window Manager (typically) decorates the borders of the window with control glyphs to accomplish these various tasks. Examples of window managers include WindowMaker and SawMill.
    • Outside The Windows: The Desktop Manager
      The space not occupied by visible windows is the Desktop. The Desktop Manager gives functionality to the regions of the screen not occupied by windows. This might include setting the background image, drawing shortcut icons, displaying pop-up menus to launch applications, etc.

    Near as I can tell, each of these components exists (mostly) independently of each other -- you can have an app using the GTK toolkit running in the KDE Window Manager on an unmanaged desktop. As such, there appears to be a huge opportunity for similar or duplicate code to accomplish the smae thing.

    Each component appears to be independently and variably "theme-able". For example, WindowMaker has relatively little theme flexibility, whereas SawMill apparently has tons. Each manager accomplishes theme-ability in its own way, further contributing to duplicated code.

    Further confusing the issue is the use of a single term to refer to all of these components in aggregate. For example, "GNOME" typically refers collectively to the Widget Toolkit, the Window Manager, and the Desktop Manager. ...Except that GNOME actually seems to be mostly an API specification. It is possible for Window Managers to be GNOME-compliant without actually being part of GNOME. Nautilus, SawMill, and WindowMaker are all GNOME-compliant, but not all of them are officially part of GNOME.

    So. Does that sound right, or am I completely off-base?

    Schwab

    • What I've learned so far is that the functional separation seems to based on the "conceptual boundaries" established by the window(s). This appears to have led to the establishment of three major components on X desktops:

      If you like to componentize your GUI that way, you can. But X11 doesn't care. Traditionally, X11 has a window manager, which also does some limited things with the desktop, and applications would use lots of different widget set. X11 is really more like Macintosh Quartz or Windows GDI, with a wide range of choices for GUIs built on top of it.

      Many commercial X11 applications (bank terminals, etc.) use the X11 server completely differently.

      Further confusing the issue is the use of a single term to refer to all of these components in aggregate. For example, "GNOME" typically refers collectively to the Widget Toolkit, the Window Manager, and the Desktop Manager.

      It's basically an attempt to bring a Windows view of the world to the UNIX environment. Technically, I don't think it's the best approach. However, environments like Gnome and KDE give Windows refugees a warm and fuzzy feeling.

      You might well want to consider weaning yourself off Gnome or KDE--give window managers like IceWM or blackbox a try.

  • And remeber if you liked the look of CDE - then with Gnome you can install XFce and configure to look just like CDE running under Solaris.
  • but I won't be impressed until I see GNOME on an Atari 2600.
  • May seem a crazy question, but it seems like half the packages for Gnome are still versioned 1.4.x and half are 2.x (at least as far as what's in Debian).

    I've been using KDE for a while now because I think I've got some weird half-and-half Gnome install despite all my packages being called up-to-date.

  • Sun Linux (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fdawg ( 22521 )
    I didnt realize until today that Sun actually has a version of linux.

    http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/lx50/?redirect= fa lse&refurl=http://wwws.sun.com/software/linux/inde x.html

    Check out the OSes available and you will notice an option for sun linux 5.0. What window manager comes default with that?

    • Re:Sun Linux (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's basically re-branded RedHat (7.x if I remember correctly) meant to run on their Cobalt rack-mounted blades (up to 2 Intel CPUs; 2 ethernet cards; 6GB of RAM (4GB segmented), up to SCSI drives, etc.)

  • PERFORMANCE FIXES! (Score:3, Informative)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @12:47AM (#5229286) Journal
    OK, here's the disclaimer. I've been using the betas (1, 2, and 3) since they were first released. I don't know how much of the following is still valid information, although I suspect all of it is.

    To MASSIVELY increase performance of Gnome 2.0 on Solaris...
    1) Install the mlib libraries.
    2) Do a CUSTOM installation, and make sure that 64 bit libraries are included if your hardware is 64 bit. (they weren't by default in the betas)
    3) Don't use transparent windows.
    4) Don't use a fancy bitmapped background.
    5) If you do, store it on your local drive. (we had problems with NIS/autoFS users keeping their bitmaps in their home directories--on the server)
    5) Add more memory.
    6) Add more memory.

    I was using the Beta3 on a blade100/550MHz with 128MB of RAM. It was almost unusable, when Mozilla was running. Now I have a Blade150/650MHz with 512MHz of RAM, and it's fast. Faster than CDE ever was on anything that existed when CDE was first introduced. With Gnome 2.0, Mozilla, Staroffice/Openoffice, Acroread, and mediaplayer, I can get away from Windows for all non-game requirements.

  • Am I alone? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GS11_Pus ( 578643 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @09:00AM (#5230660)

    Am I the only one out there who likes CDE? It seems like so many people are bashing it because it's... boring? Outdated? Ugly?

    Huh?

    I'm a UNIX Sys Admin, and I do 99% of my work on... drumroll... a TERMINAL WINDOW. What difference does it make if I have CDE or GNOME or whatever... I'm still using text commands to do my work. VI won't open any prettier in GNOME than CDE.

    Anyone out there who actually uses Solaris for a living have a major problem with CDE?

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