Dave Miner wrote: > I'm doubtful that we're interested in it for Solaris installation. > We're moving in the direction of providing a full Gnome desktop > instead that lets you try things out before installing or while the > install is happening. Other distributions might make other choices, I > suppose, but that's what we're looking at for Sun's.
To hear this really, really concerns me. At a cursory glance it seems Sun is pushing JDS/Gnome as a "universal desktop environment," (please correct me if I'm wrong here, as I really don't want to draw wrong conclusions). Most UNIX/Linux vendors have always made a distinction between a light-weight desktop environment and a workstation/desktop environment, like JDS. While HP and IBM have said over the years they support Gnome or KDE in their operating systems, you certainly don't see them pushing it into the install process or expecting system administrators to carry out system administration tasks in it. Rather, for example, on IBM's HMC (which is really an xSeries running some Linux distribution), a very thin windowing environment (I'm almost certain it's Blackbox) has a menu that contains shortcuts to applications that any administrator on the HMC will most likely find of interest and nothing more. There's no need for a file manager (as the HMC is merely used to manage other, larger servers -- sort of a centralized point of administration), applets, etc. It's a very targeted solution to the problem of what the system is meant to do, and furthermore, what the user of that system needs in order to accomplish the task at hand. Pushing JDS into such a wide space seems contradictory to one of the Solaris hallmarks -- scalability. How can a user with a small memory machine (one that is say, still supported by Sun) be expected to run a massive desktop environment like JDS if he or she only wants a graphical environment to perform simplistic administrative tasks? By pushing JDS as a "universal desktop environment" Sun is thrusting a very bloated, workstation-like mindset onto all sorts of systems -- from machines with small amounts of physical memory to huge monolithic servers that Sun sells. (I think this is really what Garrett is getting at). If Sun does continue to advocate usage of JDS in this nature, I think it will be safe to say that scalability is no longer a primary development goal of Solaris. It's really a shame to think that a choice in desktop environments could effect this when there's so much infrastructure within Solaris that says otherwise, but consider what scalability means to a user that's blinded by the bloatedness of JDS -- it's non-existent. I also think it's worth noting that I have no problems with JDS, provided it's limited to an audience who benefits from using it and the type of hardware it's meant to run on -- workstations and desktop systems with sufficient resources and users that prefer a very intuitive, productive environment. In fact, I'm currently running JDS on my Sun Blade 1000, which serves as my primary workstation. Garrett and others that are advocating for a small, light-weight "desktop environment" aren't really asking for all that much. Sure, whatever window manager (Window Maker, fvwm, etc.) will have to undergo extensive QA before it becomes the primary, light-weight window manager, it'll be worth it in the long run, as the Solaris hallmark -- scalability -- will still have truth to it. -- Derek E. Lewis delewis at acm.org http://riemann.solnetworks.net/~dlewis
