Interview: Ask Mandrake Anything 154
Mandrake, AKA Geoff Harrison, is a heavy contributor to the enlightenment project and has also left his mark on Gnome, XFree86, and a bunch of other excellent free software projects. In real life, he works for VA Research as (surprise!) a software developer. Mandrake is, without question, one of the leading lights of the Linux and free software development communities. Check his Web site, and post any question(s) you have for him below. Answers to most or all of the highest-moderated ones will be posted Friday.
Re:GTK/Gnome/E speed (Score:1)
It'll be interesting to see how the QT themes stuff works out speed wise. Anybody already using them ??
Iggy
the future of desktop environments for Linux (Score:2)
I think it's safe to say that Linux users will always demand flexibility and choice.
But there certainly are a lot of popular window managers out there, not to mention our friends KDE & GNOME. What changes, if any, do you foresee in the current Linux model of desktop environments? Will GNOME and KDE agree to some kind of standard? Will each solution specialize further, so as to appeal more to a specific group of users?
Have the GUIs usable with Linux matured to something resembling their final state, or do we have some distance to cover yet?
Re:GTK/Gnome/E speed (Score:3)
Qt 2.0 themes, however, can be quite fast. They don't rely on pixmaps, but just override a virtual drawing function. Very cool stuff.
My one flamebait on the GTK/Qt debate: if you use C++, Qt is a dream: pure, object oriented libraries. Not a wrapper like GTK-- (which isn't bad, though) or MFC in windows. If you use C, stick to GTK.
--JRZ
Re:Smart window placement (Score:2)
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Re:E on Non-Linux Platforms, external libraries (Score:2)
but since raster and I pretty much just use linux that's the way it goes
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Re:You deserve more credit (Score:2)
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Re:Gnome (Score:1)
Re:WM vs. E (Score:1)
(sorry i wasn't very clear).
Re:Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:1)
Yes, wouldn't it be great if you could use ctrl-c to copy text from the telnet session. MS must be really stupid not to implement that.
Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that it is very useful to be able to send ctrl-c to a program you run in the session??? Nah, MS programmers are to stupid to think about that, it's probably just an accident.
The careful reader will notice the tone of sarcasm this post should have.
Re:Two questions (Score:1)
This was the thrust of my question. I realize that E will sit perfectly well on top of any desktop or none at all for that matter. And that it predates gnome and that it used to have an iconbox.
If you look at theme development as a barometer of where the wm is at any given time, there has been a trend away from stand-alone operation and towards integration with gnome. You're seeing fewer themes with slideouts, dropdowns, etc. and more that rely on the gnome panel to do that stuff. However, Raster's departure from RH and the addition of the new features (iconbox, pager, file browser) seem to indicate a move in the opposite direction. Just trying to get some confirmation of that observation from the horse's mouth.
aj
E on Non-Linux Platforms, external libraries (Score:2)
I've always had trouble scrounging up all the requred toolkits in order to compile E - primarily things like all the ImageMagick graphic formats. In the future will there be a way to get all the pieces needed to compile together on one website - or something like kde-shared does? ("the search for imlib" comes to mind.)
My Question (Score:3)
Re:Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:1)
Bruce
Re:Ale (Score:1)
Re:Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:1)
your kidding right? check out the Interface Hall of Shame [iarchitect.com] they show that M$ didnt spend tons of money on anything but ad's!
(rant mode on)
IMHO gnome's "try, untry, ok, cancel" is much better then M$'s "OK, Cancel, Apply" ie WTF does Apply do that's diffrent than Ok? ( dont answer that i know alreadly...)
(rant off)
now, yes M$ is consistent, but not easy to use. i would love to have a consistent way to do things, but thats what gnome and kde are for right?
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
3D desktop support ? (Score:4)
Re:the future of desktop environments for Linux (Score:1)
Re:Ale (Score:1)
Cool stuff. (Score:1)
1) In E-term I like to have a picture as background, but I also
like the picture to be 50% transplant.
2) In Gnome I like to have a gtk theme which is
transplant, not just showing the background but also
the windows placed behind.
3) In Gnome I like to be able to place a picture
in the background on every gnome apps. (Like in E-term)
I know from the E page that imlib 2.0 are RGBA based.
So, would this make 1 and 2 possible?
Re:Two things: (Score:1)
> Linux: the dot in "dot org".
Wonderful signature! (I always thought the "Where do you want to go tomorrow" thing gave the wrong message.)
-- Div.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Gnome (Score:5)
is: Are there currently any plans for getting kde and gnome to work together, and if so how far
along is the gnome team? Is the gnome team even talking to the kde team?
Re:Cool stuff. (Score:1)
I know it would be a terrible performance hog, but I don't think it's actually impossible. Apps like xv, xwd, and xmag are all capable of snapshotting whatever's already on the screen, and I know I've seen at least one xmag-type program (I forget its name) that does this in realtime.
Why couldn't you make a redraw loop for your GTK rendering engine that does this each time, then overlays (in semi-transparency) its own widgets?
That said, isn't that how some of those hacked transparent xterm/rxvt derivatives work?
-- Div.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
pseudo overlay on 24-bit root (Score:3)
I know this probably gets kicked up the tree to X-level rather than window manager level coding, but you got your hands in that, eh?
your feelings about X (Score:1)
How would you respond to the four most highly moderated comments in "Ask Slashdot: Comparing the GUIs" [slashdot.org]?
To summarize the questions in that link, how do you respond to the feelings of some that X is outdated and should be replaced?
Re:Cool stuff. (Score:1)
You could try to do this :
Before your new window gets mapped, you grab whatever is underneath and save it as a pixmap. The you map your window and draw this pixmap as a background. Theoretically, it could be done but it would be terribly inefficient and very messy bacuse you don't really have any way to track changes in the background. I am telling you, it would be next to impossible to implement this reliably - there is just too much going on behind your back that you don't have a way to track.
Transparent Xterms work in a very simple way.
First of all. XTerm has to have a copy of the background ( that's why you need to set up background using something compatible with eterm)
When you move your xterm around it will basically draw it's background with coresponding part of background image. Notice that when you move your xterm over another window, it still shows only background image and not that underlying window.
It is simple but quite effective trick.
um.. (Score:5)
What features, arenn't in E
Re:Speed up my X experience? (Score:1)
Two things: (Score:2)
2) Isn't it VA Linux systems now?
...nitpicks, I know, but this is Slashdot, for heaven's sake. I expect that > 60% of us keep up with Enlightenment.
And remember, kids: Geoff has nothing to do with Linux-Mandrake.
I, for one, would like to hear about the file browser that they are going to add to the Enlightenment "Desktop Shell". I still haven't found one for Linux that suits my fancy. The new KDE fm may do the trick, though...
--Lenny
Re:improve speed of E & theming in general (Score:2)
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Re:Gnome (Score:1)
You have to be more specific what do you mean by playing together
Re:Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:1)
Yes, there are exceptions where you'd need to send certain control characters, as in Telnet, but I *know* I can rely on "Edit:Copy" on the menu, *AND* paste it in any other app that *CONFORMS TO A GUI STANDARD*.
That's what we're missing. If we can write a bleedin' *KERNEL*, with interfaces to hardware, file systems, etc. etc, why can't some group bash heads and decide on some elementary user interface standards?
No one would *have* to adhere to them, but Damn, it'd be nice if they did, because we'd be able to use this os a *lot* more smoothly!
People, stop pointing out the odd exception as valid reason to not even *form* a rule!
Would you live in a home where every light switch worked differently, the three bathrooms had hot and cold taps on different sides, and no two outlets on the wall were the same?
Why would you use an OS where it's just as difficult and inconsistant?
mindslip
WM vs. E (Score:1)
I have multiple user accounts and tryout both window managers on each. I prefer WM because of the apps that you can use with it (such as wmmon, wmnet, and wmpop3).
E looks the best by far but I feel WM has more functionality. Perhaps E could gain that same functionality such as adding/subtracting virtual desktops on the fly.
E on Non-Linux Platforms, external libraries (Score:1)
Another question - what X accelerations does E take advantage of, and how does that translate into what X server/video cards we should use for the maximum WM performance?
Re:pseudo overlay on 24-bit root (Score:2)
Re:My question: (Score:1)
--
Your name (Score:1)
Mandrake And Amiga (Score:1)
Screenshot @ Enlightenment page - MPEG player (Score:1)
Re:Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:1)
Open up windows telnet, select some text now use the normal keys to cut and pas... er woops.
MS products have about the same level of consistancy in UI that the X desktop does, which is to say, not much at all. Macs have decent consistancy as does BeOS and NeXTSTEP (Open if you please).
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
Re:WM vs. E (Score:1)
I hope that answers your question, if i missed a point regarding wharfs, co(rr|nn)ect me.
Re:Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:1)
Priorities (Score:2)
Do you spend 50% of your time on enlightenment,25% on gnome, and the rest on other projects.
We all know the strenghs of Enlightenment(customization and etc), but what weaknesses do you see in Enlightenment that you are itching to fix?
Re:GTK/Gnome/E speed (Score:1)
You should try creating Widgets in Qt and see how sweet and easy it is
Re:Ale (Score:1)
I think that's in my sig, but I just love saying it.
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
Re:WM vs. E (Score:1)
or maybe pointers to documentation.
ta..
OT: KOM/Bonobo (Score:3)
However, I'd take issue with your comments on the core technology and the object model. Bonobo and ORBit have a lot of good features, but they inherently suffer from GNOME's focus on C-programming and ORBit doesn't even have C++ bindings! While MICO is a very large ORB, KDE 2.0 will actually use tinyMICO, a scaled-down version that cuts out the unnecessary crap. MICO is a very serious CORBA 2.2 implementation, with many more features than ORBit. ORBIT, however, is clearly the faster ORB, much as MySQL is faster than, say, Oracle (ooh, nice tie-in to a recent "Ask
I don't mean to start a flame war. But it is important to look at the details of these implementations. Ideally, we'll get a level of object interoperability in the near future.
--JRZ
Re:Ale (Score:2)
Smart window placement (Score:1)
I used to use fvwm, and the feature I miss the most is smart window placement. Enlightenment 0.15.5 only offers the choice of manual or automatic placement.
I don't like the idea of manually placing every window that pops up. On the other hand, automatic placement just puts everything in the upper-left corner, which means that my terminals cover each other up unless I move them -- a confusing situation at times. Java windows actually have their title bars off the screen.
A smart placement option, which tries to put new windows in un-used desktop space (or at least offsets them by a little bit so that they don't exactly overlap) would be a welcome feature. It's nothing too fancy, but it would help get rid of one minor annoyance.
Thanks for an excellent WM!
Two questions (Score:3)
Secondly, while I think e is the coolest wm out there due to its almost infinite configurability, its weakness right now is the lack of documentation. I understand that it's still under intense development and it's hard to document a moving target. But I hope that when we get closer to the 1.0 release and things settle down a little, you guys will think about putting together a good doc package. Any comments?
Thanks for your time.
aj
Most annoying thing about X (Score:3)
Future of E and Gnome (Score:1)
When Raster left Red Hat, he made several statements that seemed to indicate that E was going to become a full "desktop environment" in it's own right. Does this mean that E's gnome support may disappear in some later release? Or do you plan to continue to support gnome with-in E?
improve speed of E & theming in general (Score:2)
How about optimizing the code and getting it to really perform on older hardware? I know that the pace of CPUs make some people think that it's OK to require a 200+ mhz cpu... but reality is that many people have older systems. E on my sparc20 is a bit sluggish. I used WM up until recently for the sole reason that E (and gnome...) made my system too slow...
THEMING and CUSTOMIZING X
How about making E pick up it's theme from a GTK theme. It's really getting confusing to have a GTK theme, a gnome theme, an E theme, etc. Or... better yet, how about reviving
also, how about shipping with a default theme that is completely stripped down and has all animation, funky cursors, tooltips, etc. turned off?
(We really need to come up with better standards for global and user prefs so that every app doesn't need it's own dotfile... also apps should be able to infer setting from the config files of other apps.)
Re:KDE support in Enlightenment (Score:1)
--
David Coulson (TechNoir)
themes.org Senior Developer
Re:the future of desktop environments for Linux (Score:1)
Re:KDE support in Enlightenment (Score:1)
--
David Coulson (TechNoir)
themes.org Senior Developer
Re:Diff (Score:1)
(apache is one that comes to mind)
I don't have anything against GTK except maybe that it is C based which is simply terrible idea when one considers techniques for GUI based development. I know, I know it tries to follow object oriented code but it will always be ugly hack for the simple reason that C was not designed to handle this kind of stuff in an elegant manner.
Re:E on Non-Linux Platforms, external libraries (Score:1)
It's kinds cool havin' all the OpenWindows and CDE guys asking me "What the hell is THAT?!"
I have a question: source code or education? (Score:3)
Re:WM vs. E (Score:2)
I have to say that in the past I was not a real big fan of enlightenment. However, I have started to enjoy working in this environment (gnome/E). I haven't had any real problems ever since I disabled the tapping function of the touchpad.
What? (Score:1)
Have you remembered to take your medicine lately?
Rambling incoherently about elves when the rest of us are talking about X11, Gnome and E.
I don't really care what kind of guy this Mandrake fellow is. He could be a very very naughty boy, and I would still use X11, Gnome and E.
Why are people always so intent on juding by appearance and not on merit?
I guess you conviced a lot of people not to run out and install E though. It's always nice to acomplish something, isn't it? Good boy Kevin.
Talking all that jazz.
Re:the future of desktop environments for Linux (Score:1)
RPM's are much more friendly
KDE is fast (Score:1)
There was no real point to this comment, was there? Oh yes, how can GTK and E be streamlined? Vector-based widget drawing?
Re:perl/gtk book? (Score:1)
> sale!!!
Make that two guaranteed sales. Too bad I can't moderate that one up...
Re:Speed up my X experience? (Score:1)
I suggest a 3dfx Banshee -- you can get them for about $40 (if you know where to look) -- they have very nice 2d acceleration, acceptable (for my purposes) 3d, and a reasonably large amount of memory.
I went from my Stealth 3d 2000 with 4/megs of memory to my Banshee with 16, and the speed has skyrocketed. I'm not even sure that the X server runs in main memory anymore.
Re:Gnome (Score:2)
In MS it is automatically enforced by MS and I think it is a good thing - for better or worse at least there is some sort of standard behaviour that user might expect from every application.
X is missing many things in this area. As an app developer I can't event find out what is the real size of my window ( including WM decorations). Say I want to open Help Window that will behave just like the one on Windows ( right side of screen from top to bottom) . Can't do that...
There are many other things that are very hard to do on X .
Coding Style (Score:2)
Linux pride at its closest layers (Score:3)
Which underwear do you find most linux compatible? Boxers? Briefs? Hanes? Calvin Klein?
Are you aware of any open source underware projects?
Re:Speed up my X experience? (Score:1)
Well, don't leave me hanging. .
Re:Diff (Score:1)
In fact KDE is fully free software, as defined by the debian free software guidelines.
There are valid criticisms of the KDE licensing scheme that need to be heard (GPL/QPL incompatibility), by repeating these incorrect assertions you are simply causing unnecessary confusion.
Please read the QPL http://www.troll.no/qpl/plaintext.txt it is a very simple license.
Re:Two questions (Score:1)
As far as documentation, that is already getting better. e.t.o and enlightenment.org have a lot more documentation than, say, a couple months ago, though there still is a long way to go. I don't get the feeling 1.0 is coming out any time soon, but hopefully the documentation is getting better.
Re:Two questions (Score:1)
2. E was started waaaaay before gnome was, and E had an iconbox in the previous (0.14) version.
3. The miniviews in the new pager ROCK!!! and have nothing to do with the gnome pager.
In short, E has always been "standalone". I do think that they are trying to distance E from Gnome a little more, though.
OT: Xoom link (Score:2)
How do I delete a stupid post of mine? :) (Score:1)
I apologize profusely from every pore...
Ale (Score:5)
Xinerama on heterogenous displays? (Score:4)
Can Xinerama run on two monitors at different resolutions? I know they have to be the same bit-depth, but it would be nice to be able to buy a 19" monitor and use it alongside my existing 17".
Re:Ale (Score:1)
If you're using Propietary Ale, have you contacted the manufacturer and asked if it's compatible with Enlightenment, and if it isn't, can you have the specs?
George
How could you?! (Score:1)
GTK/Gnome/E speed (Score:5)
It can be oddly reminiscient of my old 25Mhz Amiga running a 3rd party widget toolkit like MUI.
My questions for Mandrake are:
1) Where does the fault lie - X, GTK, E, the application, or "all of the above"
2) What efforts are being made to increase performance?
3) Do you think we'll ever see optimisations like hand-tweaked assembly in the GTK event loop, or in the widget redraw code?
DG
SlashNET forum (Score:3)
Re:Gnome (Score:1)
Currently you can't do that, both kde and gnome would have to be working together on a standard
docking interface. A standard DND proticol that works well between the two would be nice as well.
I'd love it if kde were to make their window manager "gnome aware". Currently the only wm
that's aware enough of gnome is E (not to say that E is bad, but it runs a tad slow for me), perhaps
I should be spending time working on a wm that's 100% gnome compliant. But still, there are some
nice applets for kde that I'd like to "dock" on my gnome panel.
Tim
Re:GTK/Gnome/E speed (Score:2)
Re:Intelligence_of_some_Slashdot_posters == -1 (Score:1)
3D Accelerator Support (Score:1)
Which is easier to grasp? I'd say ... (Score:1)
I don't say this to be contrary, either -- I agree with you that it's a shame that cut-and-paste (among other things) is less consistent in Linux / Unix / various graphical interfaces than in Windows, but as people have pointed out, Windows has a lot of inconsistencies / inexplicables which (and this is the important part!) it's harder to find answers clarifying than with Linux.
I mean, "In order to End your session, go to the button labeled 'Start'" is pretty offensive.
I'd certainly say that Linux, as embodied in RH / Mandrake 6.0 (can't speak for others) is on par with Windows in intelligibility, *once installed*. And that is from a person who can find electronic devices very frustrating.
timothy
Berlin (Score:5)
-Pos
What where you doing at AMIGA ? (Score:1)
where you at AMIGA HQ ?
(some office somewhere kids)
if so where they wanting to know about E ?
or where they after you for all your other work !
if so can you tell us what they wanted to discuss was it a job or advice ?
cheers
john (have a beer) jones
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Re:Cool stuff. (Score:1)
2) Can't do that
3) Huge resource hit
Re:Speed up my X experience? (Score:1)
I am talking from my experience (laptop).
Re:Speed up my X experience? (Score:1)
Get Enlightenment 16 out of the daily snaps (ftp.enlightenment.org). It has a pager, so you can scrap GNOME, which is where SLOW is originating. You'll need freetype-devel installed to compile it.
Being GNOME-free has been a real relief to me. Then pick a nice simple theme like clean, E-SGI, eStep, Sensible, ... and you should be on your way.
With an absolutely standard RH-6 install, just logging in and starting X worked up 57 megs of memory. That is purely unforgivable. Just running enlightenment, though, expends about 10. The difference will not be lost on you.
Re:WM vs. E (Score:1)
Yes, you can also add/sub virtual desktops on the fly, you should check out e-0.15.5 at least, if you don't wanna play with CVS and snapshots.
perl/gtk book? (Score:4)
Questions (Score:2)
1) How do you cope with having to read Rasterman's code?
2) Are the groovy features of the G400 (like DualHead, TV Out, etc) going to be supported in XFree 4?
3) Can you swing me a job at VA?
(OK, you can forget #3)
Bonobo (Score:2)
How important do you think a component object model is for Linux, and do you think that Bonobo will be the answer for developers looking for an activeX type infrastructure for linux?
Re:GTK/Gnome/E speed (Score:1)
I have a P5/200MMX, 128MB RAM, and a Matrox Millenium II video card. The system is running on ultra fast SCSI with 10k RPM drives and I can also watch the screen draw things. It goes away when I use fvwm, but so does a lot of my functionality.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Intelligence_of_some_Slashdot_posters == -1 (Score:5)
My question: (Score:4)
Re:Elfs... (Score:2)
in fact, the only way you got my email address was by whois'ing intellimedia.com.
in fact, I had absolutely nothing to do with that - most of what I did at intellimedia involved writing code for airtran (an eastern seaboard airline). I don't know (nor do I care) why you got spammed about it - but I can promise you I had nothing to do with it other than forwarding each of the emails you sent me to other people who were actually involved with it.
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Re:Wheeeee! (Score:2)
I never really asked for anyone to pay attention to me. I get a real big kick out of it, though.
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Useability / Human Interface Design (Score:5)
I can rely on the same keystrokes, the same mouse clicks, a consistant Clipboard, the same file dialogs, etc. etc., no matter what Windows app I run.
Linux apps, be they for KDE or Enlightement, or any WM, seem to be as different from one another as possible. This is all in the name of "We're Unique!", which seems to translate to "We're Unusable and have a HUGE learning curve!"
What, if anything, is going to make Enlightenment/Gnome/KDE/Anything else, more usable than one another? Themes are lovely, but a pretty face is only skin deep.
Can we at *least* "steal" some of MS's better ideas for use in "our" environment?
Comments?
mindslip
Now the major question... (Score:2)
I need this information for a current scientific endeavor.
+--
stack. the off