Ximian GNOME 1.4: The Monkey Has Landed

By: Michael Hall
Monday, April 30, 2001 04:18:46 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/3287/1/

The long wait is over.

Several weeks after the initial source-only release of GNOME 1.4, and almost a year after its first release of a repackaged GNOME 1.2, Ximian released its own version of the desktop environment: Ximian GNOME 1.4.

Ximian's distribution of GNOME is built around the proposition that in addition to the building blocks of the basic desktop environment, some added polish in the form of easier installation and more user-friendly tools are required to truly complete the end-user experience. To that end, Ximian provides not only an easy-to-use installer that's simple to launch, but a few other add-ons and enhancements designed to ease use and maintenance of a Linux (or Unix) workstation.

To that end, Ximian has to be evaluated not only on the strengths GNOME brings to the table, but how well it succeeds in capitalizing on those strengths and making good on its promise to take them to the next level.

Ximian's former CEO Nat Friedman pointed out several times during the gap between vanilla GNOME 1.4's initial release and Ximian's release of its final product that his company's purpose isn't simply to perform basic quality assurance and binary packages. What end users finally ended up with provides evidence that Ximian is on the right track, though we'll see that in addition to some excellent new features, promising tools, and good usability touches, there's still a little work to be done

On the whole, the GNOME project doesn't place an emphasis on getting binaries out to end users. The release of version 1.4 indicated that, as users were directed to either download and build the source code for themselves, or pay a visit to Ximian for binary packages. Though each of the source tarballs contained a spec file to allow building RPM's using the rpm -tb command, these spec files are generally constructed with a Red Hat-like system in mind and fail to take into account the peculiarities of several other RPM-based distributions. Several users also reported that the spec files had problems that kept them from successfully building a full set of binaries.

While this practice and the problems it had aren't good or bad in their own right, they did keep end users disinterested in compiling their own software away.

Ximian has corrected this shortcoming by providing a fairly comprehensive range of supported platforms with this release:

• Red Hat, versions 6.0 through 7.1
• Mandrake, versions 7.0 through 7.2
• SuSE, versions 6.3 through 7.0 (on x86)
• Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (Potato)
• Linux PPC 2000
• TurboLinux 6.0
• Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server 1.2

Support is forthcoming for SuSE 7.1, Debian Testing (Woody) on x86 machines, Solaris 7 and 8 on UltraSparc machines, and Mandrake 8.0. Missing from the list are any of Caldera's distributions, and Slackware. FreeBSD, an officially recognized platform for GNOME is also not packaged for.

Getting Ximian GNOME 1.4: Red Hat, Debian, Progeny

Getting Ximian GNOME 1.4

There are three methods for getting GNOME 1.4:

• Using a graphical installer (either obtained by piping output from the text-based Lynx web browser through the shell or downloading the installer directly)
• Downloading the packages that comprise the distribution and installing them individually
• For Debian users, adding a line to /etc/apt/sources.list allows the packages to be downloaded and installed with apt-get.

Installing on Red Hat 7.0

The Red Hat installation was performed using the GUI installer, which we downloaded instead of running the Lynx command after we realized there were some severe bandwidth issues during the initial frenzy to obtain the software. It also paid off in the long run because on one occasion we made it through most of the download only to fall victim to a "500 Internal Error" that kept us from downloading the gnome-libs package. Returning a few hours later, the problem had resolved itself, but during a later install on another Red Hat machine, the problem cropped up again.

There are several options using the GUI install tool. Users can opt to download the minimum number of packages, which weighed in at a total of 75.3MB. An option for downloading only productivity applications totalled 92.4MB, a "normal" installation took 136.3MB, and the "everything" option involved 146.8MB of downloads. Adding the development packages to the "everything" option brought the total in to just under 180MB.

Another choice involves how to download the files. Because of the cost of maintaining Akamai server access, Ximian opted to change to a more traditional mirroring approach toward the end of last week. Five mirrors are currently available, plus Ximian's own servers: RPMFind in Cambridge, MA and France (two locations), PlanetMirror in Australia, and a server at Duke University in North Carolina.

Once the download is underway, very little user interaction is required. We encountered several of the aforementioned "500 Internal Error" messages while performing the download. The installer allows users to back up all the way to the beginning of the process, but we found that a package causing that error tended to cause it to happen no matter which mirror we used. We eventually finished the install successfully after a few restarts.

One other issue we did encounter on an additional machine running Red Hat 7 was an unfortunate tendency on the part of the installer to consume all the space on the root partition. Remembering this problem from the release of Helix Code GNOME 1.2, we used the '-d' option to specify a more spacious partition into which the installer could save the downloaded files. Unfortunately, this didn't fix the problem. Though the downloaded packages fit comfortably in the 20GB partition we directed them to, the 80MB we had left in the root partition was consumed and caused the installation to halt after the downloads were completed and the installer had handled the bulk of the dependency checking and package configuration. We didn't resolve the problem by the time this story was ready for publication despite some close examinations of the root filesystem to find what was consuming the space.

Installing on Progeny and Debian GNU/Linux 2.2

We opted to use the apt-get for our Progeny and Debian 2.2 installations. We added the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://red-carpet.ximian.com/debian stable main

Though Progeny's distribution is largely based on Debian Woody (testing), we opted to use the Potato (stable) directory for this installation.

According to the download page for Debian-based systems, the process should be as simple as executing the command

apt-get update && apt-get install task-helix-gnome

Unfortunately, task-helix-gnome didn't appear to be available, so we were left with working out how to best collect everything on our own. For the Potato installation, which already had Ximian GNOME 1.2 on it, we used 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to update the bulk of our GNOME installation, and then followed up with a few specific file acquisitions for things we didn't already have installed (such as the Nautilus file manager.) Using dselect at this stage so as to identify packages that are recognized as new additions to the available database is recommended.

In both cases, the missing 'task-helix-gnome' package was something of a hindrance, though it only took a few sessions with dselect to straighten the matter out.

To get the full Ximian experience, Debian users will want to make sure they use the command:

apt-get install ximian-doorman nautilus nautilus-mozilla monkeytalk to pull in Ximian's configuration tool, the Nautilus filemanager, and monkeytalk - the online help chat system.

In addition, users who haven't been tracking Ximian GNOME before now may need to get the oaf package with apt-get, as well. Some GNOME distributions don't come with it.

Finally, in a thread on Debian Planet, several Progeny enthusiasts discussed what it took to get all the binaries (including Red Carpet) working correctly on their machines. Results appear to vary.

Wrapping up on the installation process, meeting the doorman.

The Ximian installer is a friendly, easy-to-use tool that does a very good job of sorting out how to best move over 100MB of files onto a machine and install them with very little interaction. The error messages we received usually "just went away," though we'd count ourselves as "unusually persistent" on that score. Whatever their source, we hope they weren't a widespread issue for many others, as they'd quickly back an end user off with frustration.

One other minor problem we'd note is the lack of flexibility when it comes to package selection. Very little user choice is involved here, especially considering that the contents of each of the package sets available is never documen1ted. We'd prefer a little more control of this part of the installation, though the installer does, at least, note what packages are about to be installed. This deficiency is more than taken care of by Red Carpet, as we'll see later on, and we're willing to credit Ximian's distribution designers with a desire to keep options simple enough to keep things smooth during installation.

Our inability to simply grab a single package with apt-get under Debian was a genuine gaff, though, and made installation much more problematic. Though the upgrade went smoothly, this is the less preferred method until the package is added to the apt archives.

Setting Up the GNOME Desktop With the Ximian Doorman

Once the installation is complete, Ximian launches the GNOME display manager (gdm). We restarted it by hand on our Debian machine by using /etc/init.d/gdm restart from the console. The next time a user logs in, the Ximian Doorman program is invoked.

Doorman is designed to make getting a basic, somewhat personalized GNOME desktop in place. A non-mandatory registration screen is presented that offers users a chance to register and sign up for Ximian announcement mailing lists. It then steps the user through customizing the GNOME desktop.

The three broad choices offered are a "Redmond-like" panel configuration, with a single, small (24 pixel tall) panel at the bottom of the screen and the traditional GNOME G/foot menu; a CDE-like approach where the full-sized (48 pixel) panel sits in the bottom center of the display and provides a few basic icons and a pager; and the Ximian GNOME look, which provides a menu bar at the bottom with task list and pager, plus a menu bar at the top that includes program, configuration, and help menus, plus a clock that links to the GNOME calendar and a new feature to GNOME 1.4: a drop down task list in the upper right corner of the screen that indicates both the task that has focus at the moment as well as a drop down list of all tasks on all desktops.

Doorman offers a choice of file managers: users may either select Eazel's Nautilus, which is a real highlight of the larger GNOME 1.4 release; or the traditional GNOME Midnight Commander (gmc); or even no file manager at all

There's also a choice of themes for Sawfish (the default window manager), and GTK, the GNOME toolkit. Eazel chipped in both a GTK and Sawfish theme that complement each other, and there's a wide range of others to choose from from the fairly staid to some garish GTK themes.

Finally, Doorman offers a small collection of wallpapers to choose from.

We liked Doorman a lot because it not only served to provide a customized environment, but because it gently introduces users to a few key concepts they'll need to explore making things fit them better in the future by demonstrating how flexible GNOME is when it comes to individual preferences.

Next Installment

In the second part of this review, we'll delve into the Ximian GNOME desktop proper. Not only have they repackaged GNOME, they've added some interesting packages of their own and released Red Carpet as an integral part of the overall environment. In addition, they've branched away from the core GNOME distribution in terms of menu configuration and some features they've decided to leave out. We'll take a look at all of this, plus Monkeytalk: Ximian's live help chat feature, which we couldn't help but stress test a little.