FreeBSD GNOME Project Site Open For Business 41
Joe Marcus Clarke writes: "The FreeBSD GNOME project is proud to announce the opening of our
project site. This site
is devoted to the GNOME desktop and its development on FreeBSD." While the port is an ongoing project, quite a few applications are ready, as are instructions on putting GNOME on your FreeBSD box.
.Net? On FreeBSD?!? (Score:2)
Yes, but a port from Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
So what ... big deal. (Score:2, Funny)
anyway?
(jfb)
Re:So what ... big deal. (Score:1)
%ls -d
/var/db/pkg/gnomeaudio-1.4.0
/var/db/pkg/gnomedb-0.2.90_3
/var/db/pkg/gnomecanvas-0.14.0
/var/db/pkg/gnomelibs-1.4.1.2_2
/var/db/pkg/gnomecontrolcenter-1.4.0.1
/var/db/pkg/gnomeprint-0.29
/var/db/pkg/gnomecore-1.4.0.4_2
/var/db/pkg/gnomevfs-1.0.3
mind you I've never tried to run Gnome proper, enlightenment is my WM and I feel no compunction to change.
Re:So what ... big deal. (Score:1)
hehe oh yeah well never mind
whatever it is I don't run it
I prefer diet coke too
Re:So what ... big deal. (Score:4, Interesting)
Difficulty #2: Gnome is written for Linux. Linuxisms abound in Gnome. To be fair, they abound in KDE as well, thus the existence of the FreeBSD KDE Project. Instead of submitting endless bug reports to Gnome, only to see them closed as "not a problem on my Debian box", I suspect the FGP will do much of this work fixing themselves, then submitting the patches to Gnome.
Difficulty #3: This is still FreeBSD, after all. Someone has to maintain these ports. Since there's quite a few of them (and more being gobbled up by the 'g' prefix every day) it only stands to reason to have a central point of portage.
Re:So what ... big deal. (Score:1)
2. Could you please point out some "Linuxisms"? I'm curious.
Re:So what ... big deal. (Score:1)
Nautilus compiles and runs afaik, but is a bit shaky.
I ran make install in and Gnumric and Nautilus ports trees just to see it, and it compiled instantly and
ran. Both of them, with no Gnome installed before.
(about a month ago btw)
However IMAP functionality of Nautilus crashed, GNumeric ran fine.
As a FreeBSD power user... (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:As a FreeBSD power user... (Score:1, Funny)
Nobody who calls himself a "power user" is actually a real "power user."
Re:As a FreeBSD power user... (Score:1)
C'mon lads! (Score:1)
(intended to be funny, not insulting)...
Re:C'mon lads! (Score:2)
Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
One good example is the nautilus port. Not only did it take a long time to appear in the ports tree it still has a few problems (especially stability) on my FreeBSD-4.x systems.
I think this site will also benefit Linux users because patches will most probably flow back into GNOME and make it more portable for other systems and expand the user base of many important projects, i.e. nautilus, evolution, etc.
cheers
Portable code. (Score:1, Insightful)
You get bloated, non-portable code.
Re:Portable code. (Score:3, Interesting)
This makes no sense, in a non sequitur way that pretends to know about software development.
In actuality, the reason Gnome is bloated is that making modular reusable code isn't easy. How general/compatible do you make the component functions/classes? How autonomous/integrated should you make your application? Which libraries should you depend on, and which should you rewrite? The reason Gnome isn't portable is that in order to simplify the above problem, inadvertently or on purpose, developers tend to forget about other platforms (system dependencies) and concentrate on application dependencies. It's a symptom of just how hard these problems are. We have some lofty goals for our software these days, please pardon them for getting it somewhat wrong while they figure out how to do things.Oh, the pain of installing or upgrading. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hard times for *BSD (Score:1)
The frequent inbetween releases for linux kernels
are to be able to have some more broad testing, since
keeping a "make world" environment working is somewhat more complicated with that much
distributions, embedded use etc.
But BSD isn't doing that bad. Yesterday installed FreeBSD 4.5 on my laptop, and to my surprise it detected all devices of both laptop and docking station.
It's an older laptop, but still....