[KLUG Members] Re: RH 7.3...two more cents worth

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sat, 2002-05-11 at 08:46, Adam Williams wrote:
> GNOME does not do this (or as bad).

Ximian Gnome 1.4 has been rock stable for me.  I do everything in Linux,
from development to gaming to general apps.  It stays up almost
endlessless.  I even NFS mount my home directory from another system --
although GConf _does_ seem to have an issue with logging into more than
one system where the home directory is the same (e.g., NFS mounted).

The only "kicker" is that I recommend 192MB of RAM.  If you turn off a
lot of junk, you can probably get down to 64-96MB.  But if you have
256MB, just use it "as-is."  I have everything from an Athlon 650MHz
w/256MB RAM to a dual-Athlon 1.4GHz w/1GB RAM and RAID-0 and both
scream.

As far as Ximian Gnome not being available for RedHat 7.3 yet, there are
three options I see:

Easiest:  Just use the expanded number of Gnome 1.4 components that come
with RedHat 7.3 (until Ximian Gnome becomes available)

Moderate:  RPM upgrade select packages from 7.2 to 7.3 instead of CD
boot upgrade (this is what I usually do)

Difficult:  Rebuild Ximian Gnome from SRPMS (although you might want to
just wait for they to do so)

I usually and selectively RPM upgrade packages in any same major version
RedHat release (i.e. X.Y to X.Z where X=X and Y<Z).

> Ask over on the LTSP list about KDE.  It fumbles badly and
> locks up in multi-user environments,  and several of its
> subsystems leak memory like a sieve.

Ouch, sorry to hear that.  Is that just KDE 3?  Or KDE 2.2.x as well?

I'm sure Gnome 2 is going to have some issues for awhile too.  In fact,
Beta 5 is due out anyday and the formal release target has been pushed
back to late June.  It was originally slated for a March 31st release.

> Using KDE for production work where one stays logged on, hammering
> the system, for 8-10 hours straight is nearly impossible.  The
> focus of GNOME is to share! share !share! which has the pleasent
> affect of GNOME getting lighter (more or less) and definitely
> faster as time goes on.

A number of uses have said that GTK+ 2.x is a bit "bloated" in areas,
although code review is improving that.

> KDE seem (IMHO) to be getting slower and heavier as time goes on.
> Of course, I'm a pro bonobo bigot... go see:
> http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/evolution-abi2.png
> http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/abi-in-gnumeric.png

Ximian's been talking about how Bonobo isn't perfect and is considering
using the "Mono" (Ximian's .NET) approach instead in a future Gnome 3 or
4.  CORBA support will still be included, but Mono framework would be
the preferred implementation.  It's just talk right now though, it
really depends on how much of Mono is completed.  With help from Intel
and HP, this is actually happening faster than Miguel planned.

People argue this is bad.  I differ greatly.  The Mono .NET
implementation will only be a developer one (API) with possibly some
binary compatibility (ABI), depending on how close Microsoft keeps its
implementation from the EMCA's (probably not very close).  So in the
"worst case," it becomes what WINELIB is now, a porting kit for Windows
applications to Gnome -- only much more native.  In the best case, Mono
can use remote system components, even on Windows, and can run some
Windows binaries.  It that's actually a good thing.

> I can't wait till the OpenOffice to Bonobo bridge is complete.

I actually cannot wait until AbiWord can read/write Open/StarWriter. 
Damn if AbiWord isn't becoming the best damn word processor, and I don't
like word processors in general!  It does LaTeX, DocBook/XML, HTML/XHTML
and other goodies.  I heard Vi/Emacs bindings are coming too.

> Editing an OO spreadsheet from a message right in evolution,
> and then replying it back the the sender......sweeeeet.


> Me too!  Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin.
> Yep,  if I ever get frustrating with something in GNOME I switch
> over to KDE for a little while.  Then I switch back.

A few KDE applications are notable.  Although I wouldn't mind having a
100% Gnome distribution that was lighter and fit on a single CD.  But is
near-100% RedHat at the same time.

> And lots of very subtle and nice things about fonts too.

GTK+ 2/Gnome 2 brings anti-aliasing to the table, finally.  I'll
probably stop using pre-rendered PDFs as my primary presentation format
and switch back to Open/StarImpress (which I used to use from 1996-2000
for presentations).

> I have tried.  By I don't know anything about the concepts of true
> project management,  so I didn't get anything out of it except some
> cool graphs.  Anyone want to do a presentation on MrProject?

Since Microsoft is now charging between $500-$1,000 for MS Project,
largely because it doesn't have a competitor on the Windows platform,
the sooner this gets out, the better.  I know engineers that would
switch to the Gnome platform if it had something -- especially if the
Calendar component integrated with Evolution perfectly.  And Sun's
adoption of Gnome 2 only makes it better too.

> I have, works great.  My VOIP client of choice.

> Long live Ximian!

Yes, long live Ximian!  Miguel & co. know what they are doing.

> > Maybe there's something I can do to the X configuration
> > to tell it I have two monitors...laptop and external?
> > Hmmm, sounds like a good weekend reading project. :)
> I don't have a laptop yet,  or I'm certain I'd have an opinion
> about this too. :)

That's _exactly_ what I do on my Toshiba laptop with the nVidia GeForce2
Go Mobile chipset.  I nVidia's nView (fka TwinView) that I have two
monitors and they should be a clone of each other.  I then download the
independent nVidia utilities (has lots of goodies) and use the
"tbacklight" utility to control whether the backlight is on or not.

This is why I buy Toshiba for Linux notebooks -- at least until another
vendor supports Linux better.  IBM does NOT seem to be supporting Linux
on the desktop well, and the notebook is no exception (although they are
having Windows troubles with their notebooks too).

As far as the Toshiba Satellite 5000-series, I saw one running Linux
_perfectly_ just the other week.  It pays to read the HOWTOs out there
to deal with the BIOS-less crap that Microsoft is pushing around.  God
my year-old Satellite 2805-S402 seems old -- I should have waited just a
few months but NO, I had to have the very first model with the very
first nVidia GeForce2 Go Mobile chip.  ;-P

-- Bryan

-- 
The US government could be 100x more effective, and 1/100th the
Constitutional worry, if it dictated its policy to Microsoft as
THE MAJOR CUSTOMER it is, and not THE REGULATOR it fails to be.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals     http://www.SmithConcepts.com