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GNOME GUI

Miguel de Icaza Named 'Innovator of the Year' 171

Posted by Roblimo from the another-something-of-the-year-award dept.
Solipsist_Nation writes "John Benditt, Editor-in-Chief of Technology Review, said of their Innovator of the Year, 'De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement, which embodies a creative new mode of innovation: a large-scale collaboration over the Internet. People like Miguel are the future of technology.'"
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De Icaza Innovator of the Year More

De Icaza Innovator of the Year

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  • Did I read that right? Isn't that somewhat ironic? Isn't this the same guy who predicted the death of the Internet, Linux, civilization, etc?
  • Nice one. The OSS "movement" needs high profile stuff like this. Corporate bigwigs _like_ this sort of thing. Anything that can legitimise Open Source in the eyes of the business world can only be a good thing. And it's a breath of fresh air to read about a computing event that's not totally full of FUD... Anybody notice that the FUD is beginning to fly even more thickly of late?
  • I'm really curious about the other names listed in that top 100, can anybody post a link?
    As a comment, it does seem a bit "the thing you have to do" these days to give awards like this to people busy in the hyped up field of linux development. I've heard of quite a lot of significant breakthroughs this year in a variety of scientific disciplines. The human genome project comes to mind as one, but there must be a lot of others too. It seems a bit weird to give this award to a guy working on a window manager in 1999. Can anybody tell me about the innovative aspects of his work?
  • "De Icaza is coordinating the development of a graphical interface called GNOME that makes Linux accessible to all by giving Linux the windows and icons that people have become accustomed to."

    That statement is not really very accurate now is it? Windows and icons? Linux had those way before GNOME. Perhaps MIT is just a little bit in the dark? Besides, what about KDE? That's just as user friendly and not half as buggy. Not that De Icaza didn't do a good job, he is doing a very good one and I think eventually GNOME will kill KDE, but so far, they still have a looooot of bugs to fix.

    "De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement..."

    If De Icaza is anything like RMS, I don't think he'll like the confusion between open-source and free software .

  • Try linux expo or the bazaar. :)

  • The Emperor has got no clothes... (Score:5)

    by JimStoner ( 93831 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @11:19PM (#1437076) Homepage
    Do you remember that story from your youth. Well I think it applies here. Lets read between the lines:

    De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement, which embodies a creative new mode of innovation

    Is what he has contributed to the GNOME project especially "innovative"? Worthy of "Innovator of the year". I've done development, and it is more about common sense than innovation. Choosing him as a "representative" is "off-topic". Also check the language here - Spin doctoring - its all form and no content.

    De Icaza was selected from this distinguished group as Innovator of the Year for his success in leading the team that is simplifying the Linux operating system

    This is management, not innovation.

    I do not wish to detract from Miguel de Icaza's contribution, I accord him much respect. But I do question this award. It is establishment. I say again, the emperor has no clothes.

  • Full top 100 list (Score:4)

    by Asparfame ( 96993 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @11:20PM (#1437077)
    It can be found here http://www.techreview.com /tr100/nominee-info/tr100_2.html [techreview.com]

  • On the Topic of GNOME (Score:3)

    by seaportcasino ( 121045 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @11:21PM (#1437078) Homepage
    What makes GNOME more innovative than say, KDE? I'm sorry, I don't mean to present any bias. I'm just wondering. I've only used KDE and am very happy with it. Or is the "Innovator" part of the award just revolved around the fact it is an open-source project being managed across the internet? If that's the case, then I would guess it was just the luck of the draw who got the award considering how many great open-source projects are out there.

  • Congrats again to Miguel and the other TR100 winners [techreview.com].

    I dont believe his speech at the gala is archived anywhere without charge, but it was worthy of an open source project leader. He gave many thanks and raise to the other volunteers on GNOME and other GNU pioneers. Mostly he was just very excited about the whole thing like the rest of us.

    Miguel recieved funding [slashdot.org] just 10 days after the Nov 4th, 1999 event and him being named the top of the 100.

  • missing in action:
    • Jeff Bezos - guess Time's "man of the year" (*cough* *cough*) isn't held in such high esteem here.
    • Bill Gates - whew! At least they understand that much.
    • RMS - who's more important to the Linux community? RMS or De Izaca?
    • Jeff Bates and Rob Malda - It's downright criminal negligence!

  • The correct URL is http://www.techreview.com/tr100/ [techreview.com]

  • I don't see any list there
  • Well, that's a fairly dumb question. :)

    GNOME is part of redhat, which is more known than just about any other distribution. Seriously. If you go down to say, Best Buy, wander over to the OS shelf, you'll see MacOS Whatever-the-hell-they're-up-to, Windows 98(SE), and RedHat 6.1

    Personally, I like gnome's look. I have no idea what it is aside from someone long ago describing KDE as a desktop enviroment, and GNOME as a linux desktop.

    I want a rock.

  • Are GUI/object systems really innovative? (Score:3)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @11:35PM (#1437085) Homepage
    I don't mean to belittle Miguel's (indeed impressive) achievements. However, can we really consider something like GNOME to be a great innovation in this day? GUI systems have been around since Xerox PARC's Alto, and desktop environments with common UI tools and guidelines have many precedents (Macintosh, NeXT, OS/2, Windows). Compound document architectures aren't new either (Wang devised one which MS copied for OLE), and object-oriented application kits date back to Smalltalk.

    Is GNOME really a profound innovation, or merely a case of good engineering using already established techniques to fill a niche?
  • He put the "human" in "human Gnome project".
  • KDE has a different goal. Its main goal is to make a usable, friendly GUI, to be used in a business instead of Windows. GNOME is much more technical oriented. It's like, if you want something that is as much usable as possible, with a painless convert from Windows, use KDE, but if you want to be able to say "Cool!" and if you want to have your friends say "COOL!!!", use GNOME. I use GNOME. :-)

    Yes, I trully believe GNOME is more innovative than KDE. KDE will copy good things the GNOME guys (m/f) come up with and in the end we will have two pretty similar desktops. Hoeray!

    Thimo
    --

  • Re:look who's not on (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ---
    RMS - who's more important to the Linux community? RMS or De Izaca?
    ---

    De Izaca. If RMS would shut up and code, I might change my mind. He's primarily responsible for making the Linux community look like a commune.
  • I don't think he will patent it (;)) but I think he got the reward because of the (semi) unique way he formatted the developers to achieve the current status of enlightment. It's not about enlightment or the obvious stuff that is put into the codebase. It's about the way the project is organised. You can ofcourse discuss if the way he organised the project is unique or not.
  • KDE copies gnome? Uh looks like the other way round considering KDE is a year ahead of Gnome.

    Does gnome have anything as good as KOffice? KDE also uses a nice C++ library which is much easier to use (especially for MFC programmers), it's goal is not only to make things "user friendly", KDE has developed very cool componentization - what has made windows stand out - making apps very easy to write and 'reuse'.
    Gnome will never surpase KDE IMHO.

  • Just look at the facts:

    RMS A beared ubergeek that plays the flute to his Amiga and carries around plastic bags filled with god knows what mind altering herbal substances!

    ESR A gun toting maniac who threatens the lifes of all those that have a contrary opinion. And he writes tons of communistic propaganda, claiming it is in actuality a capitalistic manifesto. Yeah, right, and J Edgar Hoover didn't wear big pink undies...

    Linus Torvalds A big, fat, finnish penguine dude that rulez the kernel development with an iron fist. What ever he doesn't understand (and there is a lot of it) he vetos against for the main kernel tree without any explaination what so ever.

    Miguel de Icaza Instead of putting out a competent desktop he spend all his time spreading FUD about all other efforts. All the while Gnome looks like it is using a pre Macintosh GUI (no matter how you theme it). This guy is about as weak as a tortilla in a washing machine.

    W S B I'm both cute, cuddly and slightly dead...
  • Oof. Close. gdk-pixbuf is to replace imlib, and gtkhtml is in the CVS but not really "out" yet (though probably will be soon). Libart, sources tell me, is for vector based rendering. The rest of what you said seems to be true though, and Miguel definitly deserves this award (wow, he's won a LOT lately =)

    If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit.
  • KDE copies gnome? Uh looks like the other way round considering KDE is a year ahead of Gnome.

    Indeed, you are right when you are considering user-applications. But, I wasn't talking about *that*! I meant things like CORBA, BONOBO, a soundserver, GTK-theming, etc.. KDE is way ahead when it comes to the Office suite, I think GNOME is, or soon is going to be, way ahead of KDE when it comes to the technical layer underneath the GUI.

    I don't think either one will surpase the other one. Both will grow and grow, each in its own direction, with their own audience and each borrowing code and ideas from one other, fitting and playing nicely together (for example the WM-specs).

    Thimo
    --
  • KDE also uses a nice C++ library which is much easier to use (especially for MFC programmers)

    Okay, an object oriented library is nice, but easier to use for MFC programmers?!?!?! I hope the QT people don't see you saying that!

  • Moderate this up, this is funny!
    --
  • KDE/Qt2.0 already has XML capabilities integrated into the *core* libraries, including DOM support, XML parsing, and the capability to make user defined widget actions. Gnome just has a IDE that can output and convert XML, KDE apps will be able to handle it natively and in any app. KDE just hypes buzzwords less.

  • Hmmm... a Xerox STAR (is that what it was called?) theme.. now there is an idea. If only I knew what it looked like.

  • I agree. I see a small flame-war has already started, and I don't mean to stoke it. But I do have to say that (I'm a bb user myself), last time I tried both, Gnome was a buggy, dis-unified heap of programs.

    Also, what's the deal with the packages? If I wanted to install the latest KDE, I'd have no problem getting the 1.1.2 or whatever packages together. When I go to the Gnome dist, everything is all over the place! There's 1.0.50 for somethings 1.0.31 for this, 1.0.44 for that. I have to take a look at what I do have, then see wat they have, then get it and hope it really works together.

    I'm sorry, Gnome still looks like Redhat's hasty attempt to counter a { once) non-free widget set. That's not innovation in my book.
  • do you have any idea how much of the stuff that you probably use on a daily basis that is written or co-written by rms?

    --bogey
  • Uh, sorry for a minute I didn't notice it was a troll
  • The main problem with this line of thinking, is that it assumes that the people giving out the award (and those bothering to be excited over things like awards, etc.) probably don't know the proper language, the difference between KDE and GNOME quantifiably, etc. They're probably fair neophytes to the situation...so as usual, while we sit back and quibble over the legalese of what just happened, the folks doing the awarding are so far from aware that it would never matter to them. Consider the source before you get your panties in a knot.


  • In the midst of the arising "my gnome is bigger then your kde!" wars, I'll just say congratulations to Miguel, good work.
    back to code...
  • Actually, it's a list of young innovators. Gates and RMS (and Bezos?) are probably above the age 35 limit they used.
  • You obviously have not used libglade. Libglade is a library that can load the interface xml files created by glade, and create a gui from them at _runtime_. This makes for a lot quicker development as it's visual, no need for a recompile in many cases, and allows users to change the interface files and fix UI type bugs in them without _any_ programming experience. Sorry, I believe gnome is futher along in this arena.

  • Nobody.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    expects the GNU inquisition:

    Our chief weapon is Fear.
    Fear and Uncertainty...

    ..ahh..TWO Weapons
    Our TWO main weapons are fear and uncertainty
    Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt....

    ...ahh..THREE Weapons
    Our THREE main weapons are fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
    Fear, uncertainty, doubt, and an almost fanatical devotion to Richard Stallman,

    ...ahh..FOUR Weapons
    Our FOUR main weapons are fear, uncertainty, doubt, an almost fanatical devotion to Richard Stallman, and ripping superior products like KDE.

    and on like that for a while.
  • they've had the opportunity to study and learn from the numerous deficiences in MFC.

    And that, my friends is exactly what I'm talking about.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • He is truly not a nice person. He learned all of his tricks on how to destroy other people's work and trash people from King Richard.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yes, but so many here follow Stallman like sheep.
  • The main problem with this line of thinking, is that it assumes that the people giving out the award ... probably don't know the proper language, the difference between KDE and GNOME quantifiably, etc.

    My line of thinking is that the award is meaningless and empty. This does NOT assume anything about the knowledge of the people giving the award. Consequently your statement is wrong.

    while we sit back and quibble over the legalese of what just happened

    I made no comment about the legality of the award. I only said that I consider it meaningless and empty. Consequently your statement is again wrong.

    the folks doing the awarding are so far from aware that it would never matter to them

    How do you know.

    Consider the source before you get your panties in a knot.

    FUCK YOU YOU IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT. If you're going to try and flame someone, do it properly.

  • What do you really know about XML? :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • FUCK YOU YOU IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT.

    This person had a bad cup of coffee this morning.
  • He's not a Minority, He lives in Mexico, Spanish speakers are the majority there. Now when he moves to the US then he will be a Minority.

    Just to clear things up.
  • I have to agree that gnome on RH6.0 didn't turn my motor over. I used it exclusively for six weeks. I found the performance windows 3.1 like. Netscape, already pretty unwieldy, ground to a near halt. Memory was sucked up like there was no tomorrow.

    KDE on the other hand, has performed better for me. The multimedia was more stable and the netscape was noticably better behaved. Is it *way* better than gnome? No. But, I like the performance more.

    However, the gnome/E combination is very interesting. E is very pretty and very flexible.
    unfortunately, I don't rate those things very highly.

    The MOST IMPORTANT THING about KDE and gnome is that they offer the USER choice. Therefore, I support both. I hope that users get more choices not less.
  • I agree. It seems from many of the posters, there appears to be ignorance of the significance of awards to the community. It doesn't just benefit Miguel, it benefits free software as a whole. Consider it a stamp of approval on the work Miguel has helped with. It is this work that my parents can run Linux and with some awards to dispell the FUD, my employer might be next to benefit from running a better computing environment.

    I feel there is a lot of unjustified hecklers lately that are even going far as making personal threats against those who contribute. They appear very disturbed. Maybe its because they are threatened by Linux?

  • thanks for posting the link to the full list!

    it's allowed us all to discover the grandest tragedy of the whole debacle--john romero wasn't chosen as the final winner.

    his startling innovative new game, daikatana, is a model for the future. he's so busy innovating, he's got no time to ship product. now there is an example for the (so-called) open source community to follow.

  • A lot of people are going to object to this but what's so Innovative about Gnome ? I have sean it read the docs, dissected the specifications used and customized the interface to death ( literally ) and it still isn't a radical concept.

    The whole "OSS is way to make software concept is of corse old news. Yes Miguel is a nice guy and frankly I think he should get a medal but not for innovation. This isn't even M$Inovative since it wasn't intended to hurt customers or competitors.
  • My coffee list for the day (in order):

    A nescafe instant with a side order of silk-cut ultra, sitting at home - nice in that it delayed the underground journey to work (in London).

    A gorgeous cafe latte from Costa before entering work - first time here as Pret a Manger is closed for the holiday. I may yet switch.

    A instant decaffeinated coffee from the office vending machine, with the "strong", "extra white" and "whipped" options taken. Warm and bland - I have it whipped for the excitement. Yes you can quote me *laughs*.

    So yes I did have a bad cup of coffee today. My comment had little to do with this though. It is just that some days I just don't suffer fools gladly. To quote the Godfather of Funk (that being Mr Brown to you and me), I felt that Phule77 was...

    "Talking loud but saying nothing"

  • ...and please call me Jim, "this person" is just so impersonal.
  • I've done devlopment, I, I, I," talk about stroking one's ego, flaming everyone other than yourself is lesser than you, or a fool, and talking about your self nonstop

    I think grammar and spelling came in a poor second here. How I lament the decline of the English language. Opps - talking about myself again. Worse still, sounding like Prince Charles too. Sorry. One will not let it happen again.

  • Moderate this up, this is funny!

    Its not even factual and offtopic character assassination at best. I have met three of the above mentioned people and this appears to be a work of fiction by a newbie.

  • There you go again... what an ego!

  • Re:Perhaps... (Score:3)

    by #include ( 130485 ) on Wednesday December 29, 1999 @03:50AM (#1437156) Homepage Journal
    1) Oh for fucks sake... how long do we have to deal with this childish angry ego crap. IT'S NOT GNU/LINUX, sheesh. Yes we all give thanks to RMS for all of the great GNU stuff. I love emacs, i get a friggin hard-on just watching it come up. And yes... Linux would not have the popularity it has today without all of the great gnu tools... Yes RMS has made a great contribution to the *nix commmunity...Here... I'll shout it out for you:

    THANKS RICHARD, I AM FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT !!!

    There.. now can we just get on with it.

    2) Gnome is great, KDE is great. So everybody can just shut the fuck up and use the one you like the most. Competition is healthy, it's good for both sides, so lets act like friggin adults here and build those puppies to the best of your ablilities and be a fucking adult about it and the whole world will benefit from 2 great open source products.

    Christ, sometimes you fucking 12 year old pissant angry geeks just make me wanna install Win95 again .
  • Surely this is a cue for some troll out there to start posting
    MIGUEL DE ICAZA NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!

    Watch the humour deficient moderators pull this one down...
    Ah well, karma is like a hurried lover... It comes, and goes...
  • Please elaborate. Why do you think this? What do you suggest I do about it?
  • Hmmm, I'm more of a naked NP / MLM sort of chap... And I also would much prefer to leave out the "petrified" bit, being more of a fan of "oiled and breathless with anticipation", hehehehe :)
    But in the interests of equality, and dare I say it; humour, I felt this had to be posted...
    As far as "up all night", do you mean recompiling Linux on a slow machine? :)
  • Congratulations Miguel.
    Gnome is coming along splendid and many of us are anxious to see what you and Nat come up with in your Helix effort.
    Keep tearing it up!
  • Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters??
  • Hackers aren't always male, either, you fumbduck. I used to work with an amazing hacker woman who frankly, would recompile your kernel any day...
    Although having said that, I'd say most trolls _are_ male.....
    And seeing that /. _does_ have a few female readers (hopefully more by the day), I though it would be nice for them to have a laugh at a N&P post...
  • Congrats once again, Miguel! I'm happy to see someone who has worked so hard get their recognition. I've truly enjoyed Gnome, and hope to watch it evolve even more in the future. Keep up the good work.

  • Christ, sometimes you fucking 12 year old pissant angry geeks just make me wanna install Win95 again

    most of the twelve year olds that i know have better senses of humor than Your Average Slashdot Poster.

    i don't really have anything against anger, definitely don't have anything against geekdom, and i'm still not sure what a pissant is, but um where was this going?

    oh! the point is, you should all get over yourselves. there was a world before /., and there will be a world afterwards. luckily, in the meantime, there are geek communities around where people don't use phrases like "bearded one" or have their days ruined by news about gui toolkit contributors.

  • Let's have a look at a snippet of info about one of the judges....

    Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com (see "Invention Is a Flower, Innovation Is a Weed,") offered a telegraphic listing of his criteria: "signs of early success, some sign of a struggle, some sign of interim approval from the real world, something exciting, something big."

    Is this not the same Bob Metcalfe who just a few months ago was blasting Linux and the open-source model? The same model that Miguel de Icaza is being honored for enhancing and perpetuating?
  • So perhaps they fall into the category of "Old folk coders" as mentioned here [slashdot.org].
  • Hey, I have no problem with unix - I've used it since 91 both as an admin at sgi, and with computational neurosci now. I just refuse to install 32 different packages for a desktop with the hope that one package somewhere may make it less bug-ridden. I've just got better things to do with my time.
  • Maybe you should update yourself on the status of GNOME development before you litter your post with shameless KDE plugs.

    There several fronts on which GNOME is giving KDE a run for it's.. well.. download time..

    1. Pango - GTK+ 1.4, universal text layout
    2. GTK+ - Win32 port
    3. GDK-pixbuf, improved image handling, alpha support
    4. Gnome-vfs, virtual filesystem layer
    5. lib-glade, dynamically loads a UI from XML

    These are some, and there are more, fronts in which GNOME is taking the initative, most of which is work on the infrastructure. Yes KDE is futher along in applications, but there is no need to denounce GNOME because it uses esound. They decided to junk that long ago and they need a simple lightweight solution, not aRts.
  • If you compare bleeding edge Gnome with 1-year-old KDE 1.1x, this may sound sensible, but with KDE 2 technology, this is absolutely ridiculous.

    This is a sensable thing to say. Both desktops are pretty equal if you compare similar releases (if you substitute October GNOME instead of GNOME 1.0.x). GNOME 2, IIRC, will sport much of things KDE has. It isn't as far developed though but look for some things in GNOME 2 that KDE won't have for a while.

    It is pretty clear that KDE is more Windows-like, I think it has also borrowed some UI from the Mac and OS/2... but it is still heavily Windows like. GNOME gets its UI from NEXT, Motif, CDE, and some Windows influence as well.

    Overall, I like the GTK widget set better than QT. This has nothing to do with theming either. I use GTK's default theme. The buttons are a little larger. The gray is a little lighter. The widgets are spaced apart a little more. I think GTK has a more pleasant feel to it.

    But, really now. The differences betweek KDE and GNOME isn't much more than personal preference.

    (I won't comment on the untrue comments about CORBA.)

  • 6. Multiple Language Bindings. C, C++, Perl, and many many more than i can think of right now :)

  • Funny (Score:1)

    by warmi ( 13527 )
    Supposedly, this whole OS thing is about better software so where is KDE ? Where are the awards for KDE ? If anything, Gnome was created to duplicate KDE funcionality which was't considered "free enough". There is nothing innovative about it.
  • Hahaha. Well.. I have, I just haven't use kde-2.0 much at all, assuming that is where this xml functionality is coming from? I never said that kde didn't have this functionality, just that gnome seems to be further along.
  • How is KDE Unix hostile ? You can still open xterm , can you ?
    And really, Unix is not much more than xterm from the GUI perspective.
  • GUI systems have been around since Xerox PARC's Alto, and desktop environments with common UI tools and guidelines have many precedents (Macintosh, NeXT, OS/2, Windows).

    Is GNOME really a profound innovation, or merely a case of good engineering using already established techniques to fill a niche?


    Operating systems have been around since ENIAC, and OSs with common APIs and tools have many precedents.

    Is GNU/Linux really a profound innovation, or merely a case of good engineering using already established techniques to fill a niche?

    (and since when is good engineering merely good engineering?)
  • Right here: The GUI Gallery [pla-netx.com]. For all your mock-OS-theming needs. ;)

    Sure, it's offtopic, but so is the parent...

  • Only Innovator of the Year? These days I would have expected him to get Innovator of the Millennium (okay, maybe he'd be pipped to the post by Britney Spears or something).
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • A lot of people talk about the desktop but not that many people are out there developing. Just look at the dev lists to see what a tiny pool of people are involved, (there are a lot of transients but very few people stay around for more than a few months).

    This is even more true in application land. I estimate Linux has 1% of the number of active application develops as Win32.

    If you look at the number of application development teams than Linux has 1% of 1% of the raw manpower compared to Win32.

    (I suspect the quality of Linux developers is substantially higher though).

    So to answer your question it's not that everyone has abandoned the enterprise to go developing linux apps it's just that there aren't many people doing either, and even less people doing either in coordinated teams.
  • I'm assumming you're a different AC. I was replying to comments by an AC about Linux and the enterprise:

    Linux is missing the opportunity in areas where it COULD excel -- enterprise and application servers

    Perhaps you are in the wrong discussion?
  • Whatever. Stop being so nitpicky about details... grrrrrrrrrrrr.

    His meaning came across loud and clear, no? So what's the big deal?
    --
    - Sean
  • Bob must like the taste of processed wood pulp. Otherwise he'd stop this "I'll eat my column if I'm wrong" business. Or actually try being right for once.
    --
  • How come Slashdot idiots get so hung up on spelling? Did you understand what he said? What's the problem?
    --
    - Sean
  • heh.. I think american society likes to slam people.. I was like hmmn something nice about someone else.. The top comments will probably be ones that SLAM him.. Guess im a psychic now huh? heh..

  • Re:On the Topic of GNOME (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Wednesday December 29, 1999 @07:36PM (#1437236) Homepage Journal
    No, that is not the "standard way to do things in unix". Programs that are part of the same project may have different version numbers, but the project still has it's own version. KDE 1.1.2 contains KMail 1.0.28, KFM 1.167.2.21, etc., but all the user needs to do is to download KDE 1.1.2.

    However, with Gnome, it can be very frustrating to download. Don't just use it off of a distro, but go out and actually download all the parts. Say, you're trying to upgrade to a fictious "december Gnome". Do you need to upgrade libxml as well? What about ORBit? If you're one of the fortunate people with fast connections, you'll probably just download it all, but those of us with 56K or slower modems (I reckon the majority) don't want to spend five hours downloading everything in the repository.

    I haven't downloaded Gnome in a few months, but the last time I did, I checked the online documentation that listed what was required, downloaded it all, and then found out that several packages were too old.
  • Your argument is well thoght out. I have but one response.
    tthhhhhhhppppppppppppppppppppptttttt.

  • Larry Wall isn't weird? Yeah, right!!! The dude is a flamming christian for fucks sake! You think that is normal? No, I didn't think so... Being a jesusfreak is totally gay!

    W S B Injecting some well needed insanity into your stream of conscience
  • Linux in itself is not particularly technically innovative. it is based on a classic monolithic kernel design like traditional unices, and modelled on SysV (and to a lesser extent BSD). This is opposed to systems such as the HURD, which is considerably more novel, and countless weird concept OSes that never get a large installed base because few people are willing to get their heads around an alien paradigm.

    More novel is the open-source concept and the distributed ("bazaar") development model, though again, that derives from the GNU project, and the hacker culture in general.
  • Linux in itself is not particularly technically innovative. it is based on a classic monolithic kernel design like traditional unices, and modelled on SysV (and to a lesser extent BSD). This is opposed to systems such as the HURD, which is considerably more novel, and countless weird concept OSes that never get a large installed base because few people are willing to get their heads around an alien paradigm.

    More novel is the open-source concept and the distributed ("bazaar") development model, though again, that derives from the GNU project, and the hacker culture in general.

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