Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
News

Sun Announces It Will Ship Solaris With Eazel 154

Posted by timothy from the cooties-cooties dept.
miester writes: "Sun has recently announced that it will take advantage of Eazel's Nautilus software. The article also mentions that Dell has invested in Eazel and will be shipping all Dell Linux workstations with Nautilus as well." The Nautilus previews have been slick and pretty -- you can tell that the Mac folks involved haven't lost their touch. And more hardware vendors installing a nice Open Source file manager can only be good for users.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Sun Announces It Will Ship Solaris with Eazel More

Sun Announces It Will Ship Solaris with Eazel

Comments Filter:
  • They made this decision before Nautilis reached 1.0! What was the last 1.0 release you can remeber that went smoothly? Remeber Gnome? KDE had many issues too, IIRC.

    The Nautilis team is talented, yes...but good software survives the test of time...Nautilis is still wearing diapers. :-)
    --------------------------
  • Grow up troll. Why do you persist?

    Every post of yours is just that much more a cry for help. Laughable.

  • why the hell is this post score 0! Thank you very much.. MOD THIS UP!
  • Sun Announces It Will Ship Solaris With Eazel

    I think you mean 'Eazel with Solaris'.

    That would be pretty funny though. 'Hey, I just bought Eazel and it came with this thing called Solaris.'

    -----
    "People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
  • Then you obviously didn't buy them from sun.com, where, and I just checked this, they do change $75US plus shipping.

    Comments not endorsed by my employer.
  • I expect OSX will have the same "zero click installation" that Windows has: it will be already on the machine when the people buy it.

    Installation is not a good measure of ease of use, it is just a significant (perhaps insurmoutable) hurdle that Linux has that Windows does not. If Linux came pre-installed on machines you can bet that "difficulty of installation" would be WAY down the list of problems, like it is for Windows.

  • What's with the requirements:

    x86 compatible processor (200 mHz minimum)

    Can you compile the source on PPC linux? Is there a deliberate lack of strategy here? Hmm, Mac like interface at the exact moment when PPC linux becomes mature and Apple starts insulting their own userbase. More and more geeks are saying "man, my overpriced Mac really flys when I put a half decent OS on it" whether they are installing PPC linux or installing OS X PB, is really up to us.

    On a completely unrelated note, I wonder if I can port this thing to win32. I could put shell=gnome in my windoze ini's and I wouldn't have to see megabytes of memory wasted on integrated dll's (no, I'd have to see it filled up with mozilla libs).

    So if you talk about strategy, would it be a viable plan to port a superior GUI to win32 + MacOS and get users loving it? Assumably, after using a better GUI on a crappy kernel (for win32 at least) users would start to wish for stability and speed that can only be provided by a real OS.
  • *shrug*

    It's nice, but you still need an installed version of Solaris to build it. "You must have the original Solaris 8 build environment in order to build the Solaris 8 Foundation Source code."


  • maybe you could better spend your time helping the Mozilla team by running test builds and writing bug reports instead of hanging out on /. and complaining about the speed.

    hehehe...I never complained about the speed...I complained that the Mozilla team is all talk ;-)

    FYI, I have submitted bug reports, only to be met by the stupidity of the developers - I find a bug for the Linux version, they said they couldn't reproduce it under Windows NT and therefore, my report is invalid. Lovely bunch of people, those Netscape folk.

    Reading the rest of your comment, you're completely missing the point. Solaris is NOT a desktop environment - its a server! So why are they forcing a desktop onto it? Didn't they learn from how well WinNT Server does w/ all the GUI stuff on top?

    To add to this, they're already promising to use something which isn't finished...yes, I'll agree a replacement for CDE is in order, but why not KDE? Its now got the GPL'd warm-fuzzies all over it. Why not XFCE? Why not some other alternative?

    I would arguem most of the *nix users out there don't care that they can play mp3s w/in their browser/file manager/shell/masterabatory device. If you want it, fine. Your choice. But why is it being imposed on a Operating System designed for a SERVER?

    And your assumption about everyone who wants a GUI has Win or OSX is *very, very wrong.* I want a great, easy to use GUI yet I don't want to give up the control of my software to a single corporation and become a slave to their desires. That's why I'm using free software. That's why I'm here

    Oh god...quit thumping your chest, you look foolish.

    Aren't you doing the same thing with Gnome? The Gnome foundation is a collection of companies steering the direction of Gnome. Yes, they can't hijack the project, but they most definately are influencing the project. If you want true "freedom", you wouldn't be using that, either...

    Party line?! Sounds like your role my friend. You're the one bashing prominent open source projects on /., not me. And the last time I checked, that *is* the party line around here.

    Do you even read slashdot?
    --------------------------

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by gattaca ( 27954 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2000 @02:35AM (#549723)
    Why is a file manager with huge shaded icons, that use up loads of colors and make it harder to see the filename, better?

    When the web first got going properly there were loads of horrific web sites featuring uber-graphic-design that made it really difficult to actually get at the information. Most of them died a death - nowdays we have things that are a lot cleaner, simpler and easier to use (like slashdot).

    As technology becomes a familiar tool - rather than an exciting new thing to play with as well as use, it gets more and more boring. As it should - fading into the background to just do its job, rather than existing up front, to be looked at and impressed by.

    I suspect, that, just as people turn off all the anoying sounds associated with a window manager, until there's just a beep for errors (usually), people using a filemanager such as Nautilus, or KFM, will shrink the icons and make them less 'attractive' until they have a minimal, functional tool that doesn't take up more real estate or perceptual space than it needs to.

    Actually - this is probably wrong. Most users will just say 'I don't like it, it doesn't feel right', and turn to something else...

  • I must be missing something, because all I see in the screenshots are pictures of a green-themed Internet Explorer with improved file icons being used to navigate the directory structure.

    For one thing, it is (of course) theme-able, so if you don't like the green, change it. Already an improvement over MS-explorer. And then, the file icons aren't just improved, there's also varying levels of detail about each file based on how far you "zoom" in or out. So, you can go from just the plane-jane name up to "this file has X items and was last modified at 4:30." I'm not sure, but I'm hoping this level of detail is configurable and maybe you can even get full details in a floating tooltip or something.

    Granted, this isn't exactly revolutionizing the way you interact with your computer, but it is some slick stuff and I dare say better than what we've currently got. Speaking of which:

    Most people don't use this mode, though, because the typical browser is a bad interface choice for system & file operations.

    Okay, now I must be missing something: if most people don't use this mode, what DO they use? Almost everyone I know (all the windows users anyway) uses an interface exactly like this to navigate their filesystems. Why? If nothing else, then because it's the default setup on win98 and ME. Unless you're talking about something totally different, then this Eazel interface should be super intuitive to windows users, as well as having some added benefits like the ones I mentioned above.

  • Re:Dell and Linux (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ofcause a hardware manufacturer likes a OS that costs nothing, it increases their profit.
  • Sun is the OS in Massive Loss.
  • well the interface may compete in certain areas, but macos/osx has many things which will allow apple to retain its 10% market share. as a designer color control, font and output control, video production, multimedia authoring are incredibly important and difficult to implement through windows. but with osx we can (hopefully) play nice with the networks, which has become incredibly important also. nautilus and network computers will eat into the low end and the developer market, which is more problematic for microsoft.

  • Internet Explorer is the interface of the future? (Score:4)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2000 @02:46AM (#549728) Homepage
    The Nautilus previews have been slick and pretty -- you can tell that the Mac folks involved haven't lost their touch.

    I must be missing something, because all I see in the screenshots are pictures of a green-themed Internet Explorer with improved file icons being used to navigate the directory structure.

    This has been available on PCs since Win95.

    Most people don't use this mode, though, because the typical browser is a bad interface choice for system & file operations.

    I'm guessing that the Nautilus team is composed solely of ex-Apple graphic designers and doesn't include any user-interface experts.

    Maybe I'm just being cranky, but these screenshots are singularly uninspiring. I dare say if the MS folks announced this as the foundation of their next-gen GUI, they'd be laughed off the stage.
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • The Nautilus is not just a file manager, but also a package installer..

    I think you can port the file manager part quite easily, but the package installer (it downloads the packages from their database) is a whole new ball game, and unless somone wants to put all the effort (and it's a HUGE effort) to create a new database with all the packages - then chances are slim..
  • Yes... ship fashionable free-software with a proprietary operating-system, apply all the license stuff so you can... earn money! I think all Linux makers should do that as well to earn more money.

  • Re:MacOS Comparison (Score:3)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Monday December 18, 2000 @08:04PM (#549731)
    A GUI is more than a file manager it's more than a desktop. It's a way work can be done. It's more than drag n drop. It's more than scripting. It's more than application communication services. Look at Windows. Each feature by itself is not problemmatic. How they interact with each other is the problem. I have a Windows. I'm write this on it. It's internet service is provide via PPP shared by natd on MacOS X PB. I can tell you this. MacOS X may not have an Apple menu (which most users don't ever use anyways), or an Application menu, but all the elements of a good GUI are there. Everything flows. I have yet to see a SINGLE error message. It's been on for 65 days. Daily use. Everything behaves EXACTLY like it did in MacOS 9 (with the exception that in the PB Bluebox isn't so transparent with copy/paste drag/drop). From what I've seen of what Eazel is doing, it's better than Gnome, but it isn't a MacOS yet. Mac users aren't going to switch to Linux when MacOS X PB is more usefull than RedHat7 and still much easier to use than Windows, and most likely Nautilus 1.0.
  • Getting stuff here from the States
    a) takes a year and a half
    b) costs a hell of a lot in tariffs ...

    As an American living in Quebec, I am allowed to complain. :p

    enslaving the quebecois, one cranky wino at a time ...
  • Metcalf's Law was that the value of a network rises in proportion to the square of the number of nodes. Sun's decision to use GNOME will raise the number of nodes using GNOME technologies - hence, GNOME will be more valuable than KDE.

    Thanks to the GNOME foundation, I think that it's fair to say that GNOME is approaching "critical mass" on the *u*x* desktop front. I myself use and prefer to use KDE2, but GNOME looks like it will just have the numbers.

    If this is the case, we can expect to see a steady marginalisation, RedHat-style, of non-GNOME desktop systems. Eventually GNOME will be the target platform for commercial systems relying on object frameworks (bonobo, named for promiscuous monkeys) versus KDE (KParts/DCOP).

    KDE's ace-in-the-hole is Kylix, which may yet keep it breathing in the face of a growing GNOME juggernaut. I still think that it is a tragic shame that neither Red Hat or VA Linux bought up TrollTech and GPL'd Qt when they had the cash to do so. It would have resolved the license issue much sooner.

    We'll see.

    --
    "Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.

  • Is it possible to run both evolution and nautilus yet? I had heard there were problems
  • If you actually look at the icons, many of them are pretty good previews of what the file contains. Instead of one icon used for every document, they use partial contents to form a dynamic "icon."

    That, plus the zooming interface brings to mind the excellent book "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin (also a Mac guy). The book points to the above ideas and more as a better GUI, with plenty of theory and practice to back it up.

    Maybe eazel isn't going far enough to make it hang together properly, but if it's done well it could be the next big thing. I'll be the first to admit that big, static icons are useless, but this looks interesting and I plan to try it out soon.

    Dismissing this project without trying it or doing any research is just an exercise in "thinking inside the box."
  • Thanks you.
    I was looking at the screen shots going "Hmm that looks familiar". I thought I was loosing my mind.
    Personlly I think its a screen real estate nightmare.
  • And hippocampus ramulosus Is also known as the sea horse, but that doesn't make it black beauty. :)

    1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.

  • An eyesore (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Eazel has been hyped quite a bit on Slashdot, so I've been surprised and intensely disappointed with the screenshots I've seen.

    Graphic design-wise it is a shambles. What's the deal with those mammoth icons ? Dammit, all the icons are skewed and halfbaked. The type isn't even properly vertically centered on the toolbars.

    It looks like a bad mix of Windows 95 and Lotus Notes. Eazel seriously needs a makeover.

    I see two good trends in interface design as of now:

    1) The clean, 'small-iconed' applications that become de-facto standards because they are so cool and usable. Winamp is one example. Compare it with the messy, quirky, too large 'Microsoft Media Player'.

    2) Seriously talented design getting thrown into UIs. Apple may have gone a bit too far down the bubble-gum road with the graphic look of OS X, but there's no denying it: They lead the industry. One Redmond company has been seen all through the 90s to do its best to rip every single innovation off.

    Just because the 'Eazel'designers have worked at Apple doesn't mean they have the touch.

    Just because the icons are huge doesn't mean the graphic design kicks butt.

    -Sune Watts
  • ...I was talking about GNOME & Eazel. ;> Besides, you still can't just "download Solaris"
  • No, no your not. I think we should start a club.
    We could call it: "People Against Screen Real Estate Nightmares".
  • I find it very interesting how seriously Dell appears to be taking the Linux crowd as of late. I think that slower sales are part of the motivation, but also the thought of having to deal with the likes of IBM taking away some of their market share is also a concern. At any rate, whether it is purely by choice or by shove, I am glad to see a good hardware vendor move on over to help out the Linux community.
  • Why not just add a deb/rpm wrapper to it?

  • As technology becomes a familiar tool - rather than an exciting new thing to play with as well as use, it gets more and more boring. As it should - fading into the background to just do its job, rather than existing up front, to be looked at and impressed by.

    Just like when my friends make their first presentation using MS Powerpoint. They put so many effects that you simply can't concentrate on the subject they are talking about. With time they learn to focus on the subject.

    I suspect, that, just as people turn off all the anoying sounds associated with a window manager, until there's just a beep for errors (usually), people using a filemanager such as Nautilus, or KFM, will shrink the icons and make them less 'attractive' until they have a minimal, functional tool that doesn't take up more real estate or perceptual space than it needs to.

    Perhaps it's just to make a good "first impression". People will, indeed, turn off all the bells and whistles with time, but if you just gave them a simple file manager to start with, they would never use it. The bad thing is, advanced users will consider these optional features as "bloat" -- and stay away from Nautilus.

    I'm downloading Nautilus right now... I want to see if my parents and my sister will start using Linux after I install Helix GNOME + Nautilus. I believe it will be a good start for them.

    --

  • Umm, well we are doing that.

    i think the best part about this new sig is all the idiots who completely miss the point.

    - j

  • Jesus H Christ, am I the only one that doesn't give two monkey turds about seeing big, huge massive, eye-candied, screen realestate hogging icons representing all of my files? I mean come on, some of those screen shots show all of 4 files in a window that is presumedly running in at least 800x600 resolution. This is user friendly? I just want to find and launch my files.

    Well, a few things come to mind. The first one is that the Eazel folks are trying to design in the idea of expertise in the interface. So most of the screenshots I've seen, some of which are really silly, are from the novice view. I haven't seen much of the so-called Intermediate and Advanced views, but I suspect that they use available screen real estate much differently.

    It's also clear that Eazel is way easier to customize than current desktoppy environments; I've never seen a screen shot that didn't let you view as things other than icons.

    They're also claiming, and this will be the interesting part, that they can also give you easy access to content and attribute-based views of your file system. OK, so I've got 166 pdf files, 496 postscript files, and 75 other EPS files in my personal account alone. The problem is, of course, that they're scattered all over the directory hierarchy, and it can be tricky to find (or remember) exactly where any one document is. It would be great to have a view of my files that would bring together all the "postscripty" files, or just the non-graphical postscripty files, or all postscripty files that belong with research projects, or what have you. Now, you can do that with a standard unix file system through clever, deliberate, and pre-planned thinking about your directory structure (and maybe the use of symbolic links), but almost nobody does this. And, if they do, they then find the nth plus one way they *really* want to look at stuff, but which is difficult with their pre-calculated layout and the available tools.

    And there really are situations where a standard hierarchical view of my files just gets in the way. Now that most of us have thousands of little twisty files hanging around, there has to be an answer somewhere. One idea is to change our filesystems to something more flexible (based perhaps on a relational model). Another idea, which I take to be similar to Eazel's, is to layer (and in some cases, infer) an additional attribute database over the file system so that you can see what you've got in the way most relevant to you at the moment. Now, it's possible that they forgot to make this part sufficiently scriptable for the common geek, but I severely doubt it.

    So I'm not sure whether Eazel's stuff will be the bee's knees, but I'm encouraged that they've figured out that different views for different purposes and users is the key concept to implement, rather than (merely) nicer looking icons or pin-striped menubars.

  • >KDE's ace-in-the-hole is Kylix

    Wrong. The Linux Desktop's ace-in-the-hole is Kylix.

    Because Kylix is not tied to KDE. Not tied to Gnome. Not tied to anything - not even a *window manager*

    Borland is a member of both the Gnome Foundation and the KDE League. And this should tell you a lot about the platform agenda of Borland: No Platform Agenda. Just The Best Tools.

  • MacOS Comparison (Score:3)

    by Mr. Fusion ( 235351 ) on Monday December 18, 2000 @07:26PM (#549747)
    Does anyone think that Nautilus might be taking away from the MacOS crowd when it goes mainstream (eventually)? After all, you have a pretty nice GUI, plus Apple is really confusing people w/ the interface for OS X to the point that even the beta testers are modifying it. Perhaps Mac is putting itself into a very uncomfortable place. (What, like the backseat of a Volkswagon?)

    -Mr. Fusion

  • Re:An eyesore (Score:3)

    by gattaca ( 27954 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2000 @03:51AM (#549748)
    I quite agree. Whatever happened to the Bauhaus principle of 'form follows function?'.

    I think this point is really important, it disturbes me the way things are going.

    Surely, the point of a GUI front ent to an OS is:
    i) to give you the relevant information quickly, efficiently and as unobtrusively as possible.
    ii) to let you navigate the data and apps to get the job done as easily as you can.

    This sounds to me exactly the same demands placed on the signs we take for granted in metros and streets. Taking Harry Beck's fantastic, London Underground map [thetube.com] as an example, it takes the complex tangled mess of underground lines and represents it with a clean and simple diagram. Sans serif fonts, no complex shading, straight lines and a complete lack of unnecessary clutter.
    The same is true for road signs and the direction signs around public spaces. No beautifully shaded pictures of toilets or telephones, just a few distilled strokes that are enough to clearly represent the concept. I dread to think how many more people would die in fires if these simple design principles weren't stuck to by the graphic designers responsible for 'Fire-Exit' signs...
  • I am glad that Sun is taking on such an effort to become part of the free world... This and Helix Gnome... They are taking into account that people want the best of both worlds... The robustness of Sun Hardware, the security, and the look and feel of a good GUI...

  • Why would you want to do this? OSX is more than BSD+Aqua. You'd be missing all kinds of neat stuff (like Cocoa, WebObjects, and Quartz) that is not available (nor will ever be available for that matter) in Darwin.

    well it was actually more of a joke than anything. but after using Nautilus i've realized that i'd love to see some of the components make it into a Finder replacement for OS X, but not as a replacement for the Quartz engine.

    - j

  • Considering that Villanova is right next door to Ardmore, I'd think one of the developers either attends school a VU, or lives in the area :)
  • Perhaps Mac is putting itself into a very uncomfortable place.

    Bingo. The Mac is going downhill, and it's Apple's own fault.

    MacOS 8/9 have lots of neat little features which make it a great GUI, still better than anything I've seen on UNIX. However, MacOS X throws out many of these features, apparnetly for no real reason. MacOS X thankfully adds preemptive multitasking and memory protection, which the mac has needed for years, but unnecessarily destroys much of what makes the Mac GUI so great for end users. It's sad really. And according to some people [slashdot.org], it doesn't have to be that way.

  • MacOS X? (Score:1)

    by iso ( 87585 )

    man, i hope somebody eventually makes Easel available for MacOS X. now that would be an operating system environment worth using!

    - j

  • "Since Win95" is a bad choice of words...the default IE installed by the earlier releases of Win95 was absolutely depressingly pitiful, and didn't have all the all-in-one features you're talking about. That didn't really happen till IE 4.0.

    Ahh, those wonderful days when it was actually better to use Netscape instead of IE...

  • as I've been really wanting to set up a Solaris box at home, this could be just the excuse I needed. Actually, being a bit of a Mac freak (amongst other things), I've been looking forward to Eazel's software - sadly, I haven't been too up on it as of late (5 month old kid and all), but hearing this really seems to be a good thing. If Eazel's product weren't worth it, I doubt we'd be seeing 2 big companies announcing their use of it.

    anyway, you now have my trivial opinion. Enjoy!

  • From what I've seen of what Eazel is doing, it's better than Gnome

    What Eazel is doing is Gnome. A next-generation file manager has been planned for the Gnome Project for a long time. Eazel came along and decided to implement it [eazel.com]. Nautilus is the file manager for Gnome 1.4. The Eazel developers are entirely a part of the Gnome community. Just hang out on #gnome or #nautilus on gimpnet for a while to see what I mean.
    ----

  • Main Entry: easel
    Pronunciation: 'E-z&l
    Function: noun
    Etymology: Dutch ezel, literally, ass, from Middle Dutch esel; akin to Old English esol ass; both from a prehistoric East Germanic-West Germanic word borrowed from Latin asinus ass
    Date: 1596
    : a frame for supporting something (as an artist's canvas)

    It's good to know it's not just a play on "easy", don't you think :-)

  • Finally, no Openlook or CDE (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18, 2000 @08:28PM (#549758)

    I use SPARC/Solaris as my primary development setup. While I prefer the setup in Linux, thye development tools are still much better under Solaris (though Linux is gaining ground); for example, dbx under Solaris runs circles around gdb. There are also some commercial/legacy things that come with it that aren't as simple to set up under an open source environment (e.g., Display Postscript, Motif, etc.). Lots of the APIs and the like are also better documented (see the Linker and Libraries guide). New Java VMs are also released more quickly. And, best of all, it is close enough to Linux, etc. that porting is trivial.

    Unfortunately, Sun has really flubbed the default interface. There is an odd melange of CDE-style tools and ugly Openlook stuff that makes lots of assuptions about how you have your window manager set up and whose mouse controls and menus work differently than every other UI package in the world. To make it usable, you have to strip it of all that stuff and build the various programs that your typical Linux distro sets up (fvwm2, etc.) If Sun has come to its senses and has realized that rather than making embarassing attempts at UI, it should just outsource the job to someone who cares, the difference will become even more transparent.

  • Re:Dell and Linux (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I thought about the same thing and have a viewpoint which is not as nice... during the last Linux World Expo, Michael Dell was the keynote speaker. After the speech, somebody asked him the question, "What have you givin back to the free software community (code and project wise)?" He couldn't give a clear answer and went on about how they are just a hardware company, etc... I bet he was embarassed and after the show, he went to his people and asked them to find a niche in the software community they could hitch onto and say that they contributed. My fear is that they are not genuinely interested in Linux...
  • That depends on what one wants to do with the GPL'd software in question. If the idea is to try to make money directly from GPL'd software, then one may have a problem. If however, one is trying to create a standard software infrastructure on which to build that everyone holds in common, then GPL'd and LGPL'd software is a good way to go. The latter seems to be Sun is going.
  • The Media is thoroughly confused, but this isn't news to anyone. I'm tired, too, of hearing about the "Eazel" desktop environment. Don't get me wrong. I love what Eazel, and other companies are doing for open source projects such as Gnome [gnome.org]. I just dislike the Media's gross misunderstanding of the relationship between the Community and the Corporation. One wonders of the Media will ever really grasp the beast known as the Open Source/Free Software Community and how it integrates with the business models of companies such as Red Hat [redhat.com], Eazel [eazel.com], and Helix Code [helixcode.com]. "They" don't seem to fully grasp the idea that the Community (project, source, forums) is an entity separate from the Corporation, yet a part of it with a powerful relationship. The Corporation may enhance the Community, providing resources that the Community might not be able to provide on it's own, yet if the Corporation were to die, the Community would live on. And the Corporation very much feeds on the Community.
    ----
  • Be released their file management system under a BSDoid license. If they released their app-server component under the same license, you might have a good foundation for a window manager, at least.

    (While the reasons that BeOS as a whole won't be open-sourced have been hashed out here recently, it makes perfect sense for them to open-source the app server - for one thing, there's themeability locked in there somewhere. OSS hackers could unlock it and then some. And, of course, I'm talking about BeOS code that would have to be ported. But hey.)

  • Reading the rest of your comment, you're completely missing the point. Solaris is NOT a desktop environment - its a server! So why are they forcing a desktop onto it?

    Wrong. Solaris is used for both desktop computing and serving--at my employer, just in my particular division, we have 300 workstations in constant use by engineers as desktop machines. Based on the fact that you don't even know how Solaris can be used and think freedom can only be had through an individually run project, it's not worth my time to continue this discussion.

  • And what a crappy desktop it makes, no? Right tool for the right job, chief :-P
    --------------------------
  • This is what I was asking myself ... this thing doesn't look Mac'ish, it looks Explorer'ish. And what's with the giant ugly as buttfuck icons. Goddamn this thing is ugly.

    And the reason why I turn off this behaviour in windoze (it's becoming harder though with subsequent windoze 'upgrades') is that it takes ages just to open and list the folders and files in a directory.

    Of course, that could just be M$'s brute force approach to computing at work.

  • For one thing, it is (of course) theme-able, so if you don't like the green, change it. Already an improvement over MS-explorer.
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Sorry, no dice. There are a bunch of themers for Windows.

    And then, the file icons aren't just improved,
    there's also varying levels of detail about each file based on how far you "zoom" in or out. So, you can go from just the plane-jane name up to "this file has X items and was last
    modified at 4:30."
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Tracker, Explorer, and just about every file manager ever written allows you to set the attributes you want to show.

    I dare say better than what we've currently got
    >>>>>>>>>>
    That's because most of what you currently have is pretty bad.
  • Up north of the US border, that amounts to about $175 by the time it gets to my door.

    Thats odd. I live in Europe, also ordered Solaris 8 and it took them only 3 days to deliver. Considering the fact that I had to pay more for shipping & handling I think you're exagurating big time here.

    That's a lot of money for a free OS on 2 CDs plus 6 CDs worth of junk that I don't want.

    Read the site and that license again. Its not free software (yet?); "There are no fees for the right to use the software on computers with a capacity of eight or fewer processors", so it isn't free.

    You "only need to register for your Solaris 8 Free 1-8 way license for Intel here [sun.com] and Sparc here [sun.com] ". I would not be surprised if you didn't even read the site properly and are now "illigally" using the software. I think you're coming close to trolling; you had all the options to see [sun.com] what you were buying, you could have read the FAQ [sun.com] to see that you are not getting a free OS so basicly I see no reason to start whining afterwards.

    Besides; 2 CD's & 6 worth of junk? It somehow figures; I'd expect a reaction such as yours from someone who would call CD's filled with buttloads of documentation (docserver2), Staroffice, Oracle 8i SQL server (trial), JAVA tools and much utilities (GNU extras) junk.

    IMHO you got no one to kick but yourself if you are unsatisfied.

  • Does it really matter? IMO what's important is that PCs with pre-installed Linux are becoming easy to find, removing a major barrier for potential newcomers.

    I would agree. I recently got a flier from Dell, and the little words printed below their server machines 'Red Hat Linux available pre-installed at no extra charge' is a big deal when it comes to getting acceptance from corporate america. I personally wasn't too impressed with their prices compared to the Penguin Computing machines we've been getting lately, but a Dell is a much more recognized name than Penguin at this time. Dell's prices aren't bad compared to other 'big name' vendors either.

  • No.
    Nautilus is essentially feature compatible with IE6. In other words, its a tuning of what has been done (better) before. OS X, on the other hand has three things going for it...

    A) It looks orgasmically good. And its themable!
    B) Quartz wipes the floor with X (except remote display)
    C) Mac users would never use anything resembling IE.
  • Or as Stewart Brand says (in How Buildings Learn : What Happens After They're Built [amazon.com]) "Function melts form". Real users will bend any "grand" design forced upon them when it intefers with simply getting their work done. If Eazel's UI proves too cumbersome, power users will create themes to detour around annoying Eazel "features".


  • GNOME is approaching critical mass? Sure they're getting lots of backing recently, but KDE is still way in the lead as far as who is using what. KDE is the default on just about every distribution except for RedHat.

    GNOME has quite a few things going for it: Nautilis, StarOffice, etc, but then so does KDE: Konqueror, KOffice. KOffice isn't quite finished, but then neither is Nautilis. I wouldn't be choosing any sides just yet.

    -Justin
  • simple users can modify the OS" the main mantra behind Linux????
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    Actually, the new distros are going AGAINST that idea. By creating a held-together-by-thumbtacks-and-bubblegum miasma of proprietory perl scripts and config files and package layouts and dependency files, ad nauseum, they are making it impossible to tweek the system beyond the "out-of-box" configuration. Instead of making the underlying system more elegant and logical, they are simply adding incoherent and non-uniform tools on top of a incoherent and non-uniform system. If a standard GUI interface was created, for say, the Slackware config files, something that would configure everything from sound to X to the kernel, then you'd end up with an elegant, modifable system. (Well, after they clean out /etc) Currently, however, you have tools, but none of them make sense. You go to KDE to look at the configuration, LinuxConf to deal with some config files, Xconfigurator to config X, XConfig to configure the kernel, sndconfig to configure sound, etc, etc. And when the tools leave something out, you have to hand-edit a set of underlying config files that have asnine layouts and are more suitable for editing programatically.
  • Here are their latest (Dec 7) screenshots: http://www.eazel.com/screenshots/dec-07-2000 [eazel.com]
    ------------
  • Not true at all. An OS that *can* be configured is different from an OS that *must* be configured. There is no problem in allow the user the option to change the configuration, as long as the configuration program is logically laid out, well documented (preferably in-program documentation), scalable to the user's level, and totally unnecessary. For an example of the former type of OS, take a look at Linux. For an example of the latter, take a look at BeOS or QNX RtP.
  • Go to gtk.themes.org and choose a theme with radio buttons you like.

    It's a sad thing, really, that so many people equate look with feel. It leads to bad interface design.

    Lots of people claim that if the interface of a window manager, toolkit, desktop environment, &c is deficient, well, that's ok because they're themable.

    The fact is that themability doesn't do much at all. A different theme can change the look of an application, but I've yet to come across a themable application where a theme can change the feel.

    Each toolkit (or window manager) has a certain feel to it: the mousing threshhold is generally different. Themes do not change this. Consequently, gtk's radio buttons will feel like gtk's radio buttons no matter what theme you're using.

    Similarly, the various Xaw hacks (Xaw-3d, Xaw-xpm) are not very useful since nearly all Xaw applications have the same (user-unfriendly) feel to them. Changing a few colours doesn't buy much.

    Whether this is good or bad is certainly debatable, but claiming that a theme can modify look and feel is very misleading and ultimately damaging.


    --

  • They aren't shipping Gnome (and consequently Nautilus) until version 2.0. Gnome 1.4, which we're hoping to release some time around early March (really whenever Nautilus is ready), will be the first release of Gnome to include Nautilus. There will be plenty of time during the lifecycle of Gnome 1.4 (which I expect will be at least 6 months) to iron out issues with Nautilus. Nautilus is quite usable now. I've been running it in place of gmc for a few weeks now. Granted it still needs some work, but to say that Sun is making a decision on a product that is vapor is absurd. What Sun is committing to is Gnome, really, not Eazel's nautilus in particular, since Nautilus is the future file manager (and so much more) for Gnome. If anything you should blame Gnome for commiting to using Nautilus before 1.0, which of course is absurd, since Nautilus is part of the Gnome project. It takes a certain level of commitment in order to begin development at all.
    ----
  • "I think that it's fair to say that GNOME is approaching "critical mass" on the *u*x* desktop front. I myself use and prefer to use KDE2, but GNOME looks like it will just have the numbers."

    Maybe yes, maybe no. I highly doubt that we will know which desktop will become the most popular until it happens, if it happens. Remember, Sun is waiting until GNOME 2.0 comes out before it starts putting it on its machines, which will be quite some time from now, at least a year. A lot can happen in a year. Wait and see.
  • that use up loads of colors
    >>>>>>>
    Good god! Please don't tell me you're using 256 colors. We should set up a fund to pay for new (post '80s) graphics cards for people still using pallatized modes.
  • He was complaining about the look, not the feel, so changing themes is the correct solution here.

    Not quite. As quoted below, he was talking about usability.

    Just don't confuse 'pretty' with 'usable'. Those stupid radio button widgets that GTK uses are ridiculously unusable compared to those of Windows... that's NOT 'usable', though they do look nice.

    Feel is nothing if not a usability issue. Was the original poster's problem a look one or a feel one? I'm still not entirely sure. However, I feel that my points on look and feel, and how they're not the same thing, stand well enough in their own right. Everyone that I've discussed the issue with agrees with me that themes buy very little, for what that's worth.
    --

  • The . in '.com' started for the simple reason that SUN stands for "(S)tandford (U)niversity (N)etworks" which was one of the original networks... And probably the largest of its time... Those two sysadmins (cant remember their names) branched off to create Sun Microsystems and in time, was the largest vendor of the .com world... You are right about Network Solutions running Sun boxes, but you are wrong as to why the slogan was created...but actually if I remember correctly, they were not 450's, they were E10K's... But because IBM made their RS/6000's bigger and the ability for more processors, memory... etc... Network Solutions went with IBM... (WHAT A MISTAKE)

    I bet you alot of money that they were not using those E10K's the way they should have been... Remember that E10K's have the ability for a 14gigabit backplane... 14 device paths, each at 1 gigabit... They hold what? 16 system boards, each with 4 processors... And with Sun coming out with the 512mb simms (the ablility to have a max memory of 16 x 4gig (64gig total), and when Solaris 8/Ultra 3 processors (gighertz speed) become Enterprise stable, I bet that Network Solutions will wish they hadnt switched...

    Go SUN!!!

  • Great, now dump the rest of that legacy crap (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2000 @05:05AM (#549781) Homepage Journal
    Every commercial UNIX I go to, I always have to compile bash and tar and grep and all those other goodies because the old UNIX equivalents of those programs invariably have fewer features and more bugs. Dump everything but the Solaris kernel and possibly the compiler and you'll have a great UNIX. Of course, the FSF will make you change the name to Gnu/Solaris, but it's a small price to pay.
  • as an eazel employee (though not a nautilus developer), i felt the need to point out a thing or two.

    file managers are indeed old technology. nautilus, while not yet perfect, is by far the best i have used. it includes networking enhancements, groovy document handling via component programs, and impressive customization. we try to make it useful for both beginners and experts, and do not intend to replace the command line.

    the company includes top-flight graphic designers, UI experts, and GNOME hackers. my admittedly biased view is that the ratio is appropriate and the synthesis useful.

    playing with nautilus is a much better evaluation than looking at screenshots. :-)

    aaron.

  • Bonobos are Chimpanzees, not monkeys. And who is to say they are "promiscuous"? A sexually repressed homo sapiens sapiens?

    LOL! I sense a new .signature coming on...

  • You know, once upon a time the point of all this open source stuff was to ensure that people had a choice. They could pick and choose the pieces that they wanted/needed to do their work or their play. If you wanted vi, you could use vi. If you wanted emacs, you could use emacs. There was little of the "you should use only this or die" attitude that seems so previlent through today's user community.

    I like openlook. It has everything I want in a window manager (clean, simple, a configurable menu for launching programs, and a Front key) and does not impose on me anything that I don't want (icons, buttons, an icon panel, sounds, flaming widgets/applets/epplets or any of that other eye-candy crap). It is a perfect display mechanism for the xterms that make up my day. The best part about it is that it runs identically on both my Sun at the office and my Linux system at home -- I don't have to think about how to do something, I just do it.

    Unfortunately for me, Sun appears to be abandoning the olwm world -- when you log into a Solaris 8 system, it warns you: OpenLook may not be shipped in future versions, do you want to change to CDE? CDE?! Ick. I'd sooner use KDE. But I don't want to use either.

    Choice, man -- it should all be about choice.
    --

  • Besides, wasn't the fact that "simple users can modify the OS" the main mantra behind Linux???? I thought so.

    I don't know about that - I like the high level of configurability, but I'm a power user. People like my wife, who want things to "just work", don't change any of the settings of the desktop.

    Gnome is simpler for a new user to modify than most window managers IMHO, since it has a GUI setup tool (which is almost, but not quite, internally logically consistent). But most "simple users" don't want to see that configurability and don't get comfortable with it for quite a while.

  • Hey, I've got no problem with optional configurability; that's what allows my wife and I to use the same machine in very different ways.

    But the original poster was arguing that simple users can modify the way that Linux operates, and in my experience, simple users don't want to do so. The Gnome desktop preferences tool can be configured to only display preferences relative to the experience level of the user, which is a good start. But to change really anything around requires some understanding of what those changes would do, and to most folks like Grandma the risk of not being able to log onto AOL and chat with the grandkids far outweighs the potential usability advance from making the desktop font bigger, etc.

    I guess my point is that there are some people who are uncomfortable with any sort of configuration, and will avoid it at all costs. I don't think Linux has made configuring your machine easier for these people, and I don't hold out much hope for anything else to do so in the near future. Once we have natural language voice recognition help systems built into all machines, then maybe some sort of semi-smart digital assistant could ask about some configuration options and get feedback from Grandma.

    No, wait, that's what that damn paperclip does. Never mind :)

  • Jesus H Christ, am I the only one that doesn't give two monkey turds about seeing big, huge massive, eye-candied, screen realestate hogging icons representing all of my files? I mean come on, some of those screen shots show all of 4 files in a window that is presumedly running in at least 800x600 resolution. This is user friendly? I just want to find and launch my files.

    These bozo's think that somehow showing a text file's contents in the icon is going to help me find what I want? Yes, maybe if there are two files in a directory, but come on, what if I have a directory with 1000 documents? They are on crack.

    I understand the desire to do something different, to strike out in new directions and not create yet another windows explorer or Mac Finder clone, but what they have done instead is create a gross parody of existing user interfaces, ala Aqua.

    I think that Eazel will perhaps be marginally more successful that Microsoft's Bob, it looks just about as usable.

    -josh


  • All the other serious Linux players deliver working code, watch the userbase grow and then maybe say yes when big vendors come knocking. These guys have got the order a little mixed up.

    Nautilus isn't as good as Konquorer yet but the promoters talk up it's future features impressively. It isn't stable enough for regular work yet but alas, it's still alpha. So why is Sun committing to use this particular solution now?

    It's called marketing. Basically if two companies can get together and announce something which sounds positive for both with only minimal long term risks, they will. That's why some of these guys are in both the KDE League and the Gnome Foundation. That's why the Gnome Foundation is not nearly as dangerous as most people make out. I.e. It will likely end up doing the same marketing job as the KDE League ( just more efficiently :).

    Remember that it was 5 years between committing to CDE and actually shipping it for SUN. Even assuming a speedup for the open source arena we still won't see Gnome on your shiny new ultra 10 anytime soon. Unless you install it. By then Sun will likely ship 4 desktop environments. CDE, Open Windows, Gnome & KDE and that's the barest minimum.

    You see these big old vendors are not stupid. At least no stupider than Mandrake and RedHat. Both of whom openly and loudly promote one desktop environment over all others yet ship all the popular free ones.
  • Wasn't Gnome 1.4 supposed to be out a while ago?

    Honestly, the Gnome team has proved they can't hold to a schedule at all. That's fine in the Open Source world where its done when its done, but Sun is a buisness. Shipping betaware sounds like...like...Microsoft ;-)
    --------------------------
  • How hard would it be to port Nautilus on Darwin, since Darwin is just a strange BSD variant? I noticed on Eazel's web site that it only runs on intel platforms, so it's not trivial...

    Apple says that they're porting Darwin to intel, but who know how long that'll take...
  • Yes, it just became possible recently. If you use the Helix Installer, point the mirror to the "Evolution Preview" and grab the latest packages. The most recent packages of Evolution 0.8 fix problems with Bonobo and gtkhtml as well. Then you can grab the latest builds of Nautilus [eazel.com] and it should work. Nautilus and Evolution both now use Bonobo 0.30. It's a beautiful thing. Hope it works for you. Questions? Email me and I can probably help.
    ----
  • I just checked out the December screenshots [eazel.com] of Eazel, and continue to be amazed at how slick it looks. This is good software written by people who understand how to cater to the end user. No one can accuse Nautilus of having a "built by programmers" look.

    Truly intuitive user interface, combined with intergration with StarOffice and Mozilla ... it looks like we're going to see Linux sail past Windows in terms of plain old usability very soon.
    --
  • hate to be pessimistic, but with all the failures, layoffs, share prices plummeting...i hope Sun has a big war chest.

    Here's the plan : Sun makes their OS look like Linux, and sells all the hardware they can make, even though you pay roughly 5x the cost of a Lintel solution. Granted, some of the Sun clustering and services are mind-blowing, but they won't be selling many 1s/2s this way. Although I'm sure the entrenched solaris shops will welcome the changes.

    But will it be "in time"? 3dfx? Gone. Aetna? Thousands laid off. GM? Thousands laid off, oldsmobile line ended.Sun, MS? share prices plummet. Son of a Bush (SOB) is not even in the oval office yet, and the economy is already cratering. Has the republican feeding frenzy begun, after 6 years of incredible prosperity?

    At least IBM has pledged 1B. to Linux endeavours. With the loss of the dot com money, a lot of people might not be able to do free software work anymore.

    Or perhaps they will be doing a lot more?


  • It's hardly vaporware. Download it [eazel.com] and give it a test drive--it's easily one of the best open source projects going right now. The easy install option for software from their online catalog is going to make a big difference in how new Linux users feel when they log in for the first time and want to upgrade stuff. Not only does it download the RPM you selected, it checks for dependencies and downloads those as well. A cool feature IMO. The only real drawback in running Nautilus as this time is sluggishness, but that is a problem I'm sure they'll fix.

    Frankly, I'm glad Andy and a bunch of former Apple and Be engineers are bringing their expertise to Linux and GNOME. It says a lot about the direction we're headed.

  • I have no intention on starting a flame war, but why are so many "big names" putting their faith in a product that won't be released for some time, when there are so many viable alternatives already available (*cough*, Konqueror).

    I know Sun is an active member of the Gnome foundation, but they, along with many others are assuming that Eazel will be the best thing since sliced bread. Had it been released prior to KDE 2, I'd have probably agreed, but now it seems they're just putting all their eggs in one basket.

  • Consider for a moment...
    • The GIMP
    • Linux kernel
    • Apache
    .. Just a very few examples of OSS that has done quite well for themselves for years w/o much/any support from the comerical sector.

    I think you are slightly off. Most successful Open Source projects benefit in one way or the other from corporate sponsorship either from developers being hired to hack the kernel full-time (like RedHat does with Alan Cox and a bunch of other Linux kernel hackers or like Netscape does for Mozilla) or contibuting code and/or advice (like IBM and Sun have done for the Apache project or Sun does with GNOME). Once most projects get large enough, there is usually positive corporate involvement.

    I have never taken a particular interest in the GIMP project so I'm not sure if it bucks the trend or not.

    Grabel's Law
  • Anybody remember NeXTStep?

    Sun pledged to use it for their primary user interface after Openlook but then ended up doing the Motif/CDE thing instead.

    I'll believe it when it ships.
  • on the page: http://www.eazel.com/screenshots/dec-07-2000

    Just curious, I happen to live in that general area now... I guess one of the developers is from here or something?

  • Re:But how much will it cost??? (Score:3)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2000 @06:46AM (#549830) Journal
    OK, first the price. I should have been clear that that $175 was in local currency (Canadian dollars). $75 + shipping + GST + duty comes out to very very close to $175. (I think it was $172 and change)

    And you must have a different meaning of free than I do. The right to use it on up to eight processor machines is free. There is no licensing fee for those computers. Sun throws the word "FREE!!!" around their site like popcorn, and yet you can't actually install it unless _you_ own the media. Can't borrow it from a friend, don't forget--that's a violation of the license agreement.

    Believe me, I've read the FAQ.

    For the record, I'm not running it on my own machines, legally or illegally. Once I get the console wired up, I'll be installing NetBSD until I acquire a legal copy of Solaris 8.

    As for the six CDs of junk, they're junk. Why would I want to pay for a CD containing an OLD VERSION of a (crappy!) office suite? Besides, everything on those CDs is available for free and unrestricted download from one site or another. I've got the docs I need, I don't need a demo of Oracle 8i, and I will suffer through thumbscrews before using StarOffice 5.x (especially 5.1!) again.

    My point is that it's a lot more expensive to get Solaris now that the license is free than it was when companies had to pay big bucks ($500--not that big!) for the license. Furthermore, claiming that the cost of the media is $75 is absurd. If they'd just be honest and say, "for a moderate fee" or the like, then I'd be happier.

    Also, they've been promising a download option RSN, for about three months.

  • Does it really matter? IMO what's important is that PCs with pre-installed Linux are becoming easy to find, removing a major barrier for potential newcomers.
  • Just don't confuse 'pretty' with 'usable'. Those stupid radio button widgets that GTK uses are ridiculously unusable compared to those of Windows. I'm considering learning C just to be able to replace that one thing, I think they're so bad. Not that they invented those crappy radio buttons - I think Motif uses/used them, too. You know the ones I'm talking about - the diamond ones that you can't really tell if they've been selected or not? Gimme a break - that's NOT 'usable', though they do look nice. *shrug*
  • I'm curious at to why Metcalf's law would apply to desktop environments really. I guess I can see some points where it makes some sense, but I don't see the "law" applying to Gnome/KDE anywhere close to how it applies to something like instant messenging systems, OSes or that sort of thing.

    sig:

  • Uh, hate to burst your bubble, but there is a flaw in your logic.

    Metcalf's Law was that the value of a network rises in proportion to the square of the number of nodes. Sun's decision to use GNOME will raise the number of nodes using GNOME technologies - hence, GNOME will be more valuable than KDE.

    This assumes that the square of the nodes in the "Gnome network" after Suns annoucement is "more valuable" than the square of the number of nodes in the "KDE network." Last time I checked, Sun was big in the server and high-end workstation arena, not desktop space which is what Nautilus is targeting. You also assume that comercial software targeting GNOME has much of any effect on the KDE developer base. This is just absurd. Consider for a moment...
    • The GIMP
    • Linux kernel
    • Apache
      • ... Just a very few examples of OSS that has done quite well for themselves for years w/o much/any support from the comerical sector.

  • Over a remote X session Nautilus is totally worthless and I'd say a large chuck of Solaris desktop users are doing remote sessions a la eXceed. Can you downgrade that thing to 256 colors? I hope so because over X it takes a LONG time for that thing to paint all those pretty icons. Doesn't it use Mozilla libs for crips sake!

    I wish someone would focus on the fundamentals rather than making it look great. Someone should make a file manager that works as well as WINFILE.EXE the old Windows file manager!

  • Whatever. Like the Windows GUI has changed much in the past 5 years.

  • Sun is the dot in .com (Score:3)

    by Primer 55 ( 263965 ) on Monday December 18, 2000 @07:40PM (#549850)
    Looking at what's happening to tech stocks, I predict that Sun will have a new slogan very soon...

  • But how much will it cost??? (Score:3)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Monday December 18, 2000 @07:48PM (#549852) Journal
    Call me an old curmudgeon if you will, and I won't necessarily deny it. However...

    When is Sun going to get off their asses and allow Solaris to be downloaded, as they've been promising for months now? I know all about the 'free binary license' as long as you buy the media for $75USD plus shipping and handling. Up north of the US border, that amounts to about $175 by the time it gets to my door. That's a lot of money for a free OS on 2 CDs plus 6 CDs worth of junk that I don't want. Not bad for work, admittedly, but for my Sparc at home it's just silly, and a long ways from "FREE!!!"

  • So I gather they are actually shipping a full Gnome 2.0. Why refer to it as just Eazel, there is a lot more to Gnome than just the file manager.
  • I wasn't quoting... I agree that Sullivan said it first.... But, it is also quite clear that the phrase 'Form Follows function' is a defining one for the whole Bauhaus Movement. Form follows function came into general use as a phrase in the 30's in the States and the 40's in Europe. Gropius and his friends moved to the US around that time to get away from Nazi germany.
    However, some people have argued that the general concepts can be traced back much further - to the Italian jesuit monk Carlo Lodoli. The cornerstone of Lodoli's teaching was the maxim that nothing should be put on show (in rapresentazione) that was not in function (in funzione), that is, a working part of the structure.

    (Good OO design/ Abstract Data Types ?)....

    http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2360/jm-eng.fff-ha i.html [geocities.com]
    So, arguably Lodoli said it first, in Italian, in 1750..

    These ideas, plus the idea of organic architecture were all kicking around in the mid 18th century with people like Horatio Greenough writing about them. Mix in the purity of Asian and Japanese art that was getting seen in the west for the first time and it's not surprising that the same ideas were sprouting in different places at the same time (e.g. Charles Rennie Macintosh in Glasgow as he rejected the decoration of Art Nouveau for a more elegant simplicity).

  • You can't really call nautilus bloatware, for reasons of infrastructure. It uses bonobo to componentize everything, and calls each component when needed. So, when you start up nautilus, you're not actually running all of these things at once. This is pretty much exactly how explorer does it, and no one calls that bloated.
  • Sun's only real problem just now is that it can't recruit fast enough, and can't expand fast enough to keep up with demand, but it is trying incredibly hard to do both, whilst continuing to introduce new technologies. I've only just started working for Sun (not sales/pr/marketing, I'm a systems engineer), and I have to say I'm very impressed.

    Whilst all these .com companies are coming and going, when they were coming a good number of them
    bought Sun kit, so are large numbers of brick-and-mortar concerns who are going online, as well as the usual in-house stuff. Big companies are still "internet-enabling" their enterprise systems. It is of little importance whether the .com boom is over, big companies are still moving to the internet as an enabling technology for all sorts of things. Just look at the profits and growth of Sun, and to a lesser extent Cisco, to see what I mean. The stock market is jittery? So what? Look beyond the stock prices and you will see that Sun is still doing excedingly well (60% revenue growth in the last published figures).

    The other thing to bear in mind is that Sun is all about big, backend servers these days, the workstations are a relatively small part of its business, although still impressive and important, it has most of the workstation market!

    PS If anyone wants a job with Sun in Scotland, I get a bonus if I introduce you, so send those CV's in to me! :->

    steven at azimov dot demon dot co dot uk

    I do not speak for Sun Microsystems, these comments are mine and not endorsed by my employer.

  • Re:MacOS Comparison (Score:3)

    by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Monday December 18, 2000 @07:58PM (#549864)
    Does anyone think that Nautilus might be taking away from the MacOS crowd when it goes mainstream (eventually)? After all, you have a pretty nice GUI, plus Apple is really confusing people w/ the interface for OS X to the point that even the beta testers are modifying it.

    It's my belief that the OSX interface is only confusing to previus mac users because it's a bit different than the old look and feel. I'm writing this on OSX right now, and I don't find it awkward, but I had not used a mac in 5 or 6 years before this.

    If that's the case, then moving to Nautilis would seem to be more confusing as it's even more different from older macos.

    $0.02

  • It's Eazel, as in "ease". It's just as cutesy as idiotic Mac names like Finder, Chooser, IRCle, and Fetch, along with stupid concepts like "suitcase" and "trash". Of course, every Mac user is also familiar with such dirty terms as "software conflicts", "need more RAM", and "troubleshoot". In any general conversation about computers with a stranger, you can sniff out a Mac user withing fifteen seconds because one of the above terms will fly out of their mouth.

Slashdot Top Deals

"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll

Close