The release of Ximian GNOME 1.4 a couple of weeks ago resulted in a flurry of activity as people downloaded and installed it. (See Resources for a link.) Like the KDE project, Ximian GNOME's success will go a long way toward establishing Linux as a viable desktop OS for an ever-widening circle of users. Just how wide that circle will become depends on a lot of things, such as the conclusion of the antitrust suit against Microsoft, currently being secretly debated by a federal appeals court. My sphere of influence doesn't extend to the appeals court, so this week I'm focusing on Ximian's latest releas
e.
My first attempt to install Ximian GNOME 1.4 -- using the Normal install option -- failed (see Resources for a link) because I had hosed things up by trying to install both Evolution and Nautilus on the previous release of Ximian GNOME. The conflict between the two applications (Evolution is the emerging GNOME mail/contact/calendar package; Nautilus is the cutting-edge file manager from Eazel) had left me unable to run either of them. I sent a note to the folks at Ximian; they said they were aware of the problem and working on a fix. In the meantime, they said I could proceed by installing the Development version of Ximian GNOME. Being the bleeding-edge kind of guy that I am, I decided to give it a whirl.
Installing Ximian GNOME
I visited the Ximian site and started the installation. It takes several hours to download the complete version of Ximian GNOME (at least, it does on my 128-KB ISDN line), so I let it run while I slept. In the morning, I found an error message that said there had been a problem with an RPM package. My choices were to download from another site, try to install a different version of Ximian GNOME, or just forget the whole thing. Out of perversity, I clicked on Normal installation, which I'd attempted before, instead of trying the Development option again.
When asked, I told the installer to use the local copy of all packages whenever it could instead of downloading everything all over again, so it took only a few minutes to grab the one or two packages that it didn't have (or didn't like before) and install them.
Amazingly, the Normal installation completed with no problems. Evidently, starting a Development installation resolved whatever issues the Normal install had balked at a few days earlier, and restarting the failed Development install as a Normal installation repaired whatever ailed the RPM process. Go figure.
MonkeyTalk, the built-in chat support facility, was one of the first things I wanted to play with after the install was complete. I clicked on Help in the top panel, then chose Chat. Voila, I was in a room filled with folks asking questions and getting answers about various problems with their new Ximian GNOME installation.
Now it's true that had I known the server and channel beforehand, I could have started X-Chat and selected monkeytalk.ximian.com as the server, 7000 as the port, and #support as the channel. That would have accomplished the same thing that simply clicking on Chat did. But remember, the goal of GNOME and Ximian is to make free software available and accessible to everyone, even those who have never used anything but Windows and AOL. The Chat support function is a good example of how they are doing that.
The next big item I was curious about was whether the conflicts between Nautilus and Evolution had been solved. The answer was yes, but I am still not running both of them on a regular basis. Evolution is currently available only from daily snapshots. That means you may have a stable version one day, update it via Red Carpet the next, and lose everything you had saved and maybe not even be able to run it at all until the next day's snapshot.
Before I could try Evolution, I had to install it. I had assumed that it would be there after the installation process, but I couldn't find it on any of the Programs submenus. That's because part of the cure for my Ximian GNOME 1.4 install blues was to remove Evolution completely.
So I subscribed to the Evolution channel using Red Carpet, Ximian GNOME's automated software delivery and installation mechanism, but that didn't do the trick either. I sent an email to support@ximian.com and received a quick response. I was instructed to open Red Carpet again and click on Subscribed Channels. A page appeared that showed the Red Hat, Evolution, and Ximian GNOME channels. Those are the only three available at present; more are due in the near future. After selecting Evolution, I saw options for installing, removing, and updating the software. I chose install, and in very short order, Evolution was there.
From the top panel, I chose Programs, Internet, Evolution. Click. A window appeared that noted that I was a first-time Evolution user. I clicked Next and Evolution immediately segfaulted. I tried to start it again, but nothing happened. I decided to see if Evolution had left some tasks running that were preventing it from starting again. Sure enough, ps ax | grep evolution turned up a couple of processes. After killing them, Evolution started up and appeared to be functioning just fine. For now, I am more than satisfied with Sylpheed, the upcoming Japanese email client, so I didn't configure Evolution to handle my mail. I will look at it again when it's closer to a 1.0 release and more stable.
Then I tried Nautilus to make sure it worked after Evolution was installed. It sure did. As you can see in the image below, Nautilus can display thumbnails of any images it finds in the current directory. If, like me, you have a digital camera and a litter of kittens, that can be more than a few. The first time you start Nautilus in a directory with a lot of images, it takes a few minutes for it to create the thumbnails. As it builds them, you see an icon for each image. As the thumbnails become available, Nautilus replaces the icons with the thumbnails. If you go back to the same directory later, you don't have to endure the same delay. It's not instantaneous, but it is only a second or two instead of minutes.
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Figure 1. Nautilus replaces the icons with the thumbnails |
This was my first experience with Nautilus; it looks like Eazel has done a lot of good work. I'm not sure that I will use it regularly, but the value it offers to those just moving to Linux is obvious. Like the Ximian chat function and GNOME itself, Nautilus is all about accessibility to the masses.
Ximian GNOME 1.4 comes with the latest version of the Mozilla browser, so I decided to take a look. I've been using Mozilla regularly, but still haven't decided whether I will go back to Netscape or not. Netscape crashes a lot more often (Mozilla hasn't crashed on me yet), but offers more plug-ins. Both are too bloated for my taste, in any event. Perhaps Galeon or Opera will become my browser of choice. I have a theory that the coders who worked on Mozilla and Netscape early in their development used Emacs. The result was code that carried the we-must-provide-everything meme. Remember what Linus Torvalds said about ugly operating systems? (See Resources for a link to my review of his autobiography if you've forgotten.) I think the same holds true for browsers. Netscape and Mozilla seem to be vying for Best of Breed, but unfortunately, they are doing it for multiple breeds.
Since my favorite email client (Sylpheed) didn't appear on any of Ximian GNOME's menus, one of the first things I needed to learn to do was to edit menus. The GNOME 1.4 user manual instructed me to find the menu editor under Settings in the Global Main Menu. But Settings on my system didn't offer such an option. I tried to find the answer using MonkeyTalk, but nobody seemed to know the answer. I sent another note to support@ximian.com and very quickly got a couple of responses, each of which allowed me to edit the menu. Of the two solutions offered, the easiest approach was to open a terminal, su to root, and enter gmenu. It took about a minute to add Sylpheed to the Internet menu, and another minute to locate its icon and add it to the top panel.
AbiWord 0.7 is also part of Ximian GNOME 1.4. This is a good thing, especially since there is a known bug in gedit, the editor I normally use to type my columns. Gedit let me open a new file, work on it for a while, and save it, but any existing file that I opened was read-only. Another query to support@ximian.com yielded another quick response. A fix for the gedit bug in GNOME 1.4 is coming. In the meantime, AbiWord is doing the job just fine. I also used AbiWord to open a Microsoft Word document a PR firm had sent to me, and it quickly and correctly displayed the document. It was much faster than starting StarOffice would have been: another reason to eschew bloated applications.
Ximian GNOME 1.4 is an incremental advance. It's not a Hail Mary touchdown pass to the desktop end zone, but it does make Linux easier to use than ever before. Yes, GNOME still has some rough edges. Yes, major components of fundamental desktop applications are still not ready. But you can see progress in all areas.
I have two concerns, though. While I understand the need to make Linux accessible to my aunts in Oklahoma, I don't necessarily want my desktop to look or feel like theirs, nor do I want it to bog down under the weight of all those training wheels. I worry that Ximian GNOME might lose power users in its quest to reach new users.
Next, it appears that there is too much overlap between Eazel and Ximian. Eazel provides services like software updating mechanisms for registered users of Nautilus. Eazel's Software Catalog is in direct competition with Ximian's Red Carpet. Eazel also offers access to Red Hat's update software. Given Eazel's recent layoffs and dot-com cash crunch, I think that less overlap between Ximian's and Eazel's offerings would result in greater efficiency for both companies. I wish Eazel would focus solely on its core product, the Nautilus file manager, and leave software updating to others.
Have you given Ximian GNOME 1.4 a try yet? If so, drop me an email or visit the Version Control forum and share your experience.
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