rml@ximian?
I was betting on RedHat. When I read “We have some very interesting
things planned, and I am totally psyched. Desktop
integration…”, I started getting afraid. In-kernel GUI, anyone?
December 16, 2003
rml@ximian
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Muli Ben-Yehuda's journal 
Interesting (I used to work at Novell).
Novell has a huge integration challenge ahead. Ximian/Gnome, SuSE/KDE, their own file and print services for Linux, and converting their sales force from selling Netware to selling Linux. Personally, I think Novell is due to get smaller before they get bigger again, but I wish them the best of luck.
Desktop integration could refer to Ximian’s red carpet software distribution and Novell ZENworks software management. Or not. Apple Expose on Linux, anyone? 🙂
Did you see the Sun Looking Glass demo? Stunning stuff, I just don’t know how much of it was smoke and mirrors (or useful), but still, neat eye candy.
Comment by twid — December 15, 2003 @ 2:28 PM |
I think you are right with regards to Novell. From looking at the sidelines, it looks to me a bit like Novell is clutching at straws and acquiring anything that moves to keep from sinking under. It might work, but it’s going to be hard.
Don’t think I caught the Looking Glass demo? URL?
Comment by mulix — December 15, 2003 @ 11:34 PM |
here’s the demo video (only realmedia, unfortunately) – neat stuff!
http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.html
Comment by twid — December 16, 2003 @ 4:21 PM
amnesia cries out loud.
Comment by ideawerkz — December 15, 2003 @ 8:38 PM |
sorry, didn’t mean to cause you any undue distress 😉
Comment by mulix — December 15, 2003 @ 11:31 PM |
I think this is really great. It seems to me very often that kernel hackers say “no, this can be done in userspace, like this:” and then this never actually gets written. Core things like glibc keep up pretty well, but distribution and GUI authors don’t seem to communicate enough with the kernel developers, and vice versa.
I don’t have any examples though, and some of this might be colored by my choice of distribution; Debian seems to live in its own little world.
I remember Ximian saying they were going to write some GUI system configuration tools (something like 5 years ago) and keep imagining rml showing up with patches a year from now saying “hey, this interface sucks in the real world.”
Comment by jhf — December 15, 2003 @ 10:15 PM |
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an interesting move, and I think wish rml the best of luck. I agree with you that kernel people and desktop people should communicate more, realize each other’s challenges. Interesting times.
By the way, with regards to doing stuff in user space – a good example where things were actually done right is the devfs -> udev transmission. devfs wasn in kernel, udev is purely userspace, and gives the same functionality.
Comment by mulix — December 15, 2003 @ 11:30 PM |
Ximian’s GUI System Configuration Tools
A small correction – these tools were actually written. They even appeared on the beginning of one of the Linux Weekly News pages a couple of years ago.
And these tools aim to be as cross-platform as possible.
Shlomi Fish
Comment by Anonymous — December 23, 2003 @ 8:46 AM |