Comments on: People of openSUSE: JP Rosevear

By: Benjamin Weber

Benjamin Weber — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:46:01 +0000

YaST wasn’t re-written in GTK, YaST is designed to be toolkit independent so one “only” has to implement all the widgets for gtk and YaST can display with GTK too. Hence we have ncurses version too. Not that it wasn’t a lot of work. A lot of the work was done by a summer of code student too. Just because someone is working on something you don’t want doesn’t mean they’d be working on something else if they wern’t working on that, especially when you’re dealing with community development rather than simple Novell driven development.

By: jospoortvliet

jospoortvliet — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:22:01 +0000

If Novell wants to be the future, they really need to start making some sane decisions on where to put their resources. Choosing the best technologies and not wasting time on stuff like rewriting Qt apps in GKT (Yast!) just because someone doesn’t like Qt. If they would’ve spend half the time improving the normal version they would’ve had a better Yast. Wasting time on rewriting a good application in an inferior toolkit, WTF?

After two years of no KDE release, Gnome is still catching up – the release announcements still read like a timemachine from the KDE 3.3 era (wow, Evolution warns you about a missing attachment?). When will Novell management realize they are wasting time and money? If you want to get ahead of the game, and be really competitive to Apple and Microsoft, KDE is your only chance. It lacks the polish, but is technically already ahead (and has been for a long time) while Gnome would need insane amounts of work to be lifted to even the same level, let alone be better.

Same goes for OpenOffice, btw – there is no ambition there! Just wanting to recreate MS Office 2000 or MS Windows 2000 won’t bring the Linux Desktop any further. Projects like KOffice and KDE 4 are innovating, renewing the underlying technology of the Free Desktop to enable real progress. Not joining them but wasting resources on obsolete technology is the biggest mistake one can make.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:51:41 +0000

JP, your GNOME desktop seriously kicks ass. I find the default setup is a little rough around the edges though. But after moving menus around and doing a couple of UI tweaks, I have it looking minimalistic and clean. I use it everyday as much as I can. I’m Rails nut, and I love working with openSUSE to do my coding (as well as just about every other task). It bugs me, though, that the default install tries to look a little like Windows. You guys should try a little more to develop your own style. Look at the Mac … they have their own style, and it actually attracts people away from Windows. I believe you guys have the potential to surpass even them.
That said, I do love the Chlorophyll theme that Novell came up with, and that you’ve used green a lot (helps distinguish from other Desktops). And I do believe that Novell is the future of the desktop. Just keep up with the kaizan! You guys have made enormous strides in the last few years, and I can’t wait to see what you can do in the future!
/Brad.

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:58:10 +0000

because anon, most people have wanted a forum on opensuse.org, for a long time, and to have one here, just ads to the promoting of opensuse. You need to think outside of your box, instead of always being negative, and too gutless to post anything except as anon

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 07:17:17 +0000

Why do you think that a new forum will people from other forums, or even from non-web based news groups, make switch? And that just because of the domain name?

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:12:18 +0000

I would love for Novell to port Evoultion to KDE. Kmail just isn’t up tot he same standard :(

I think what is missing is an opensuse forum on opensuse.org. Through that a community can be stronger, shearing information on new releases, screenshots, etc, linking to blogs, hosts on opensuse.org. That is where the real promotion of opensuse will come from. Right now there is no real community, it is fractured on news groups, other forums, etc.

By: Justin Haygood

Justin Haygood — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:18:27 +0000

How’s the snow? My fiance (who lives close-ish to you) says its pretty heavy right now.

By: AlbertoP

AlbertoP — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:50:57 +0000

Great interview! :-)