Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page All in one big page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekLinuxBridge is a project which aims to "work to identify and eliminate the technical and educational barriers that prevent mainstream computer users from using Linux." They intend to work mostly with developers in the hope of creating a friendlier, more desktop-suitable system. They are taking an interesting approach; we wish them success. (Thanks to Ariel Faigon). Even hard-core Linux users often end up booting up that other operating system when it comes time to manage their finances. The GnuCash project is working on changing that. They recently put out a new release, and the feature set appears to be getting to the point where it is a truly useable system. Yet another longstanding Linux software gap is closing. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
July 22, 1999 |
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Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 15:22:29 -0700 From: Anand Srivastava <anand@nmi.stpn.soft.net> To: aerogems@netins.net, letters@lwn.net Subject: Re: Where's The Creativity? Hi, I don't get it why does everybody think that point and click or rather storm in a room and open a drawer and search into files for a particular program is faster than just typing the name of the program to run, and let the system find the file for you. I don't say roaming into a room won't be cool. It will be but it will be only that, cool. It won't be efficient. Everything is good in moderation, over do it and you loose the benefits. Similarly. GUIs are cool, immersive VR is great, but the command line is necessary. Enlightenment is cool, but it doesn't take away your freedom to use the command line. If you want immersive VR, you will have to wait, till the time developers have machines that can do those things and there are 3D libraries that are comprehensive enough to do these development fast enough and they are free. I guess that will take anywhere from 2 to 5 years. Incidently I don't even know a use for this kind of a UI. Care to enlighten me on some probable uses where the other ones won't be faster. In the meantime you can just use E. You have some problems thinking of finding new ideas in Linux Community. If you say linux community, you have already put yourself into a small spectrum which tries to be compatible with POSIX. Why not ask for the Open Source community, you will find many new ideas. Why, the internet was an open source idea. Unix was also an open source idea, in that it wasn't sponsored by any company, and was developed by the developers for their personal itch. Heard of HURD that is also an open source idea. There are many more, ever used Emacs. You know what I think is the perfect UI. It will be one when the computer would know what I am talking about. It will listen to my spoken words, and do things accordingly. If I say, "I want to buy a PC.", It will know that I mean a personal computer. And then it will ask me what brand, it will already know my priorities. But it will ask me if I want anything special. It will not assume what is good for me but allow me to give it directions and also cross check if necessary. It won't do everything itself, it will connect to the net and go to a site that contains information about all kinds of computers, or it may do a search on one of the search engines. Then using these information it will find the best PC for me and tell me about it. It will do all this within seconds. Then I can approve of it. If I don't like its idea of what is good it will allow me to take the matters into my own hands, and it will provide me a browser, with which I can go to the sites and do the search myself. I will use the intelligent interface if it is correct most of the time, otherwise there is no use. I want efficiency, not cool UIs. I would much prefer my voice operated computer which will be also my watch which, but that will only be useful if it is correct most of the time. I don't want an MS OS which gets broken and then you have to reboot and hope that it executes the correctly the next time and you need to lug the whole crate of RAM with it. This thing will take time but it will be the ultimate. -anand | ||
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 18:33:16 -0600 From: Jeffery Cann <jccann@home.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: All is well in Linux Land... I remember a month or two ago when Metrowerks announce a partnership with Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT). There was significant outcry from the Community. It was great to see the following announcement on this week's LWN: Metrowerks, Inc. and SuSE, Inc. announced their partnership to provide CodeWarrior software development tools for the SuSE Linux operating system. I guess RHAT really won't take over the world quite yet! (BTW - I am a Slackware user). Food for thought... Jeffery Cann jccann@home.com | ||
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 18:03:48 -0400 From: Derek Glidden <dglidden@illusionary.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Re: Lotus Notes on Linux In the 7/15 edition of LWN, there's a letter from Tom Adeltstein about Notes client on Linux in which he mentions regarding the Notes client running on Linux, "... One of our consultants has a Lotus Notes client running on Linux and we'll post the how-to very soon. ... Also, several references within IBM internal forums exist discussing Lotus Notes running on Linux desktops ..." Well, that's all very well and good for the people with the know-how to Do It Yourself, but unless Lotus changes their stance, they are not going to be _offering for sale_, nor are they going to be _officially supporting_ Lotus Notes running as a client on Linux platforms and there is an important distinction between "being able to" and "supported" in the world that Lotus Notes lives in. Lotus Notes is not GNOME. (No offense to the GNOME guys...) Big companies run Lotus Notes; big multinational companies with big IT departments filled with corporately-trained MIS people who don't want to have to dig around on the 'net to find HOWTOs and install new versions of system libraries and modify startup scripts. Even if installation of Notes-client-on-Linux is no more difficult than downloading a file and clicking an icon, the first time the IT department gets an "I'm sorry, we don't support that" response, guess what's going to happen? That Notes-client-on-Linux install is going to get wiped out and replaced with Notes-client-on-Windows because that's a supported platform that won't get an "I'm sorry, we don't support that" from the Lotus call center. In the Big Giant Corporate World, "Corporate Standard" is the only way to go, and unless you can show official support so the IT department has someone to call when your workstation craps out, your platform has a Snowball's Chance in Hell of getting into the list of "Corporate Standard" platforms. Sure, you'll find a few smart cookies who have their own little Linux desktop going and have bothered to read the HOWTOs off the 'Net and get Notes installed in client-mode on their desktop and if it breaks, they'll fix it themselves, but that's a very far cry from Lotus selling it as a shrinkwrap package and offering official support for it. Take as a case study Oracle's support for Linux. For years before Oracle announced official support for their database server running natively on Linux, it was possible (although quite a chore) to get the SCO UNIX version of Oracle to run on Linux through the iBCS emulation layer, but you just really didn't hear of too many people doing it and you certainly didn't hear of Big Business doing it. When Oracle announced the availability of Oracle 8 natively built for Linux, the 10,000 Beta CDs they offered were claimed in a matter of hours and, while it didn't exactly take the corporate world by storm, you did hear a lot of press about larger companies willing to try it out. It's not that it couldn't be made to work before the official offering, but if you're running an "Enterprise" class application like Oracle or Notes, the money guys want to be able to buy a support contract and the money guys usually have the final word in the sorts of environments that run Oracle or Notes. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- With Microsoft products, failure is not Derek Glidden an option - it's a standard component. http://3dlinux.org/ Choose your life. Choose your http://www.tbcpc.org/ future. Choose Linux. http://www.illusionary.com/ | ||
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