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| GNOME Online Desktop: 'We Will Have to Include Windows' |
| By Thom Holwerda, submitted by zaboing on 2007-07-29 18:57:56 |
| "During this years GUADEC Red Hat developer Havoc Pennington proposed his idea of an 'Online Desktop' to the developers of the GNOME project. Through deep integration with web services and 'zero-maintenance' the Open Source client aims to get the 'perfect window to the Internet'. During GUADEC Andreas Proschofsky had the chance to talk to Pennington about advantages and possible problems of the Online Desktop concept, the necessity of Windows-support and about Red Hats 'return to the desktop'." |
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| If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By deb2006 on 2007-07-29 19:26:58 |
|
... then count me out. At the moment I am using GNOME and I am fairly happy with it. However, since the inclusion of Mono I am watching GNOME and I have become very worried. This new approach to desktop computing is - at least in my eyes - another serious mistake: I will never ever deposit my personal things online - no way. What's more, I see absolutely no need at all to move all this online. What for? The browser does everything I need. Edited 2007-07-29 19:29 |
 - Score: 5 |
| RE: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By SlackerJack on 2007-07-29 19:52:48 |
| Since when did GNOME include mono, if your talking about Tomboy it's optional. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By sukru on 2007-07-29 19:58:15 |
|
> I will never ever deposit my personal things online - no way. I second that. Personally I do not object to an optional web based backend (with an open source server that I can host myself). However as I understand they're going for a mandatory path, which doesn't seem to be acceptable. Edited 2007-07-29 19:58 |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By FooBarWidget on 2007-07-29 20:01:01 |
|
I took you seriously until you said "since the inclusion of Mono". It never happened. Despite the fact that Ubuntu, which uses GNOME by default, doesn't list Mono as a mandatory dependency (and therefore proves that Mono is optional), people keep spreading FUD like this. What ridiculous claims will we see next? "Since the inclusion of MS Office in GNOME I've been worried"? Edited 2007-07-29 20:11 |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By zaboing on 2007-07-29 20:07:02 |
|
> However as I understand they're going for a mandatory path, which doesn't seem to be acceptable. No they are not, and Pennington even clearly states that in the interview ;) |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE[2]: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By blablabla on 2007-07-29 20:08:28 |
| Ubuntu installs Mono by default as a dependency for F-Spot. |
| - Score: 4 |
| Not impressed |
| By DeadFishMan on 2007-07-29 20:19:07 |
|
Havoc talks a lot about not forcing users to change their favorites applications to his new vision of online desktop in one hand but at the other hand he keeps saying that default matters and that by having the online apps already available, he would like to make them the default apps thus making new users getting used to that model. Personally, I don't think that this will fly. I think that this could be done already on an application level instead of on a desktop level. Why not add the ability to interact with Flickr to F-Spot, predefined online radio sets to Rythmbox, Firefox extensions specially tailored for the social online communities, blogging, etc, etc? In fact, I believe that this is what they are going to do as this is the only feasible way that they can take this thing. Not to mention that none of the darlings web apps are OSS and therefore one may need to take a risk by trusting their personal data to these online services. Privacy will be a huge a huge concern at a later stage of this project. Or yet, that one of these services might go down with all your data. There are lots of things at stake here... Disclaimer: I am not a GNOME user but I don't think that this GOD :) is in their best interests. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[3]: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By sbergman27 on 2007-07-29 20:45:39 |
|
""" Ubuntu installs Mono by default as a dependency for F-Spot. """ Is F-spot part of standard Gnome? Or just an application available for Gnome? I think it is just an application available for it, like beagle. I am glad that we have mono for compatibility purposes and perhaps to lure .net programmers. But I would never want to see us depend upon it for infrastructure, for a number of reasons. Yes, I know that people have different opinions on the matter. But that's mine. And it is firm. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[4]: If GNOME really follows this path ... |
| By KugelKurt on 2007-07-29 21:11:14 |
| FooBarWidget was argueing that Mono is not default in Ubuntu. Blablabla disputed that. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Wake-up call? |
| By IkeKrull on 2007-07-29 21:19:08 |
|
When the GNOME devs have an epiphany like this and find that there is a major need for extensive internet integration in their API and applications, and precious little support in place - perhaps its time to consider putting their efforts into a different project. After consciously abandoning the 'NOM' part of GNOME back when the switch to 2.x was made, there is now a vague plan to rebuild the 'NOM' around, well, from what I can tell, a bunch of proprietary and constantly changing protocols that will be built into a new GNOME API layer. This, of course, will leave all existing GNOME applications out in the cold (does anyone remember how long it took for gedit to get 'save to gnome-vfs location' support?) for years, and will probably lead directly to a GNOME 3.0 that, like GNOME 2.0, was a complete break with the past and took literally years to achieve performance and feature-equivalence with 1.x The retarded thing about this, is that had the GNOME devs regarded the 'NOM' piece of GNOME as useful and important as they seem to now during the switch to 2.x, this type of 'internet desktop' functionality would be pretty much a no-brainer. For example, KDE has a native web browser and robust support for inter-application communication as well as complete support for kioslave-based VFS by default in it's apps. These factors alone make an 'internet-enabled' desktop simple - Konqueror (as well as desktop shortcuts etc.) will seamlessly access remote storage via DAV, FTP or SSH, as well as having all my KDE apps accept those URLs for opening and saving documents - theres also integrated IM, calendaring and email. My applications can invoke actions in other KDE appsbased on context - e.g. send an IM to someone in my contact list from any app by invoking a KParts call. In fact, i'd say if you want an internet-centric desktop then KDE has 95% of the infrastructure in place. And yet, it hardly seems that having this kind of ability has spawned a 'KDE Online Desktop' - i guess when the core capabilities are already in the base API theres no need for a new project to provide it. However, the major stumbling block - even with KDE, is the complete lack of basic 'all-applications-use-it' API for this stuff. Currently, no matter what the GNOME or KDE devs do, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and Eclipse ( and this is just a short list of the major productivity apps i use) won't play nicely in this 'internet desktop' scenario. Please, don't work on 'GOD', work on (and what a nifty acronym this is - ) 'LOSE' - The Linux Online System Environment'. Edited 2007-07-29 21:19 |
| - Score: 8 |
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