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hitsinsatry

Gnome, Mozilla and the Challenge of Longhorn

Submitted by mccaffer on Wed, 2004-04-07 05:36. Gnome 2.x

With lots of talk recently about mono/java/python, it seems like a response to Longhorn and XAML is brewing. People at mozilla are talking about how to create an alliance against the hegemon. Co-operation with gnome is discussed on mozillazine. I do hope that gnome can use the XUL language or something like it so that gui programming is easy for us mere mortals. Lets not re-invent the wheel reproducing XAML when we've already got XUL!

Want to fight? Package a SOLUTION

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2004-04-07 10:24.

This dovetails with the recent complaint that linux distros are becoming too complex.

The linux community can't forge a realistic development roadmap because it is too obsessed with being inclusive, supporting everything and hence pointing at nothing. Giant distros installing entire development environments for multiple languages. The mindless, utterly wasteful GNOME/KDE war for users that has been a huge boon to Apple, Microsoft, etc.

Want a compelling development roadmap?

1. Find a way to end the GNEOM/KDE war for good. Maybe the market just lets one win. Maybe we build an interoperability layer between them. I'm not sure, but the environments are now only superficially different but the energy wasted is incredible.

2. Ignore some viable languages. There are a dozen excellent languages with robust libraries out there, clustered into groups: systems languages (C/C++), large application languages (Java/Mono), scripting languages (perl,python,ruby). Distros should install one toolkit per group (exception: C++ comes free with gcc's C support).

3. Pick a browser. Hint: Konqueror - you lost. Konqueror has 10% of the market share of Mozilla and none of the momentum. I don't care about Apple, their direction is their own and they have "picked" already.

4. DOCUMENTATION. Ed is right when he says we need something like MSDN. Finding good programming guides for some of this stuff is like panhandling. Maybe you get something, maybe not.

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