Am So, den 08.02.2004 schrieb Tim Kossack um 00:44: > 1. sun (us - based company) ships with all the other plugs, means media > player, java, mp3 (not sure about flash) > http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/index.html > they also don't seem to have that "oss-compliance-problem" that red hat > seems to have: Sun is a per seat licence and you are not allowed to freely redistribute it as with fedora. And you can not freely download the sources and redistribute it (after replacing all RH branding stuff) as with RHEL. So licensing issues are quit different. Again: apples and peaches > > Some plugins you are talking about (e.g. mp3) are rarely essential > > ingredients of a commercial desktop. Others are available (e.g. Java). > > again - sun, lindows, mandrake and partly suse are strongly disagreeing > with you (and red hat). Doesn't matter. Proof of the pudding is in the eating: How many enterprises will but RHEL, how many Lindows, how many .... > > > my impression is basically that red hat hasn't at all understood (or > > > needs to show it yet that they have) what makes a really polished > > > desktop distribution. i don't make any difference between a good desktop > > > for home use and a good desktop for businesses. neither does market > > > leader microsoft. .... > > Hm, MS offers a XP home and a XP Pro > > i'm curious -what are the differences between xp home and xp pro besides > that one is up to dual-cpu and the other just for single cpu, and > especially reg. plugs and usability? Don't know. But obviously MS does differentiate between home and corporate (may be they are wrong in the details, but they see a difference) > > > getting in danger to sound circular, a good desktop is a good desktop > > > because it's a good overall desktop. > > > > You need a good "desktop basic infrastructure", which may be the same > > for home and corporate usage (but populated with different pieces). As I > > argued in my previous post, Red Hat is the one who heavily invested in > > development of such a "desktop basic infrastructure" (using existent OSS > > components and combining them in a new way). And they are the only one > > of the big Linux distributors (but I don't know Lindows) > > i don't know what you exactly mean by "desktop basic infrastructure". if > we both mean the same, i' d say that suse, sun, ximian are at least as > heavily involved in developing the "d.b.i"-parts as red hat is. also, > they all rely on those same projects as core for their desktop > offerings - can't see red hat doing anything "new" or different here! have a look at freedesktop.org and its history. RH did a lot of development to integrate gnome's and kde's DE (e.g. menu infrastructure) > as far as usability and plugs are concerned, i already stated that for > the life of me i can't figure out why there should be any difference > between home and corporate usage (neither do microsoft, sun, lindows, > mandrake and to a lesser extent suse), and that i regard that > "difference" an artificial one, a poor excuse for poor usability (or > lack of plugs). I don't like my staff watching dvds and playing games while they should get their work done. Therefore I don't care wether xine, mp3, ... is included or not (better not :-) ) > > They try to extend the KDE menue and you > > find a SuSE menue inside a (hidden) KDE menue, but the menue editor > > shows you the kde menue first, menue entries are doubled, they install a > > lot of software which does not show up in the menue, the don't obey > > different context (e.g. the configuration menue entry in their Gnome > > menue opens the Kde configuration). And there are many more examples of > > the un-usability of the SuSE desktop (or Mandrake - not so bad as SuSE). > > just because the other distros might no be perfect, it doesn't mean that they > not at least having recognized how important usability/plugs are, But they don't take action. RH did by developing the before mentioned things. > > In short: I can't see any proof for your theses that SuSE (or others) > > have a better polished desktop (desktop - not quantity of delivered > > software) > > look - leaving this plugin issue aside (which, again, _does_ make a huge > difference) - they're tons of reviews out there which are outlining the > pros and cons of the various desktops. my impression is that red hat's > desktop offerings (up2 red hat 9, rhpw seems not to be much different > reg. usability - maybe partly in plugs) are - in terms of overall > desktop experience - _last_, and that the gap is widening, not closing. Unfortunately I don't know those tons of reviews. Again, the tons doesn't matter, but the arguments. I see a lot of ridiculous arguments out there. All of those are looking for "the best desktop", but don't realize that their target does not exist and will never do. There is no "best desktop" but only a best desktop for a specified purpose. > (can't get sun for free) Do you see the difference by yourself? > over the next few weeks and > post the findings. Good idea, looking forward to it. > can't see the contradiction you seem to see here, to the contrary, both > "feature richness" as well as "integration" are two requirements to > achieve good usability. But can't being achived at the same time (look at SuSE). Or at least it's very expensive and time consuming. As I see RH's recent decisions they abandoned the idea of a "general purpose distribution" (which you are still looking for) and produce two distributions for two different and specialized types of users. These two type doesn't cover the whole range of possible users, leaving room for other distros to find their user base. Peter
