Re: [TCLUG:7019] Speaking of the GNOME Demo...

[Christopher McKinley <lamfada@lugh.net>]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Joel A. Koepp wrote:

> Hopefully it will be safe for me to post this...I haven't detected much of a
> potential on this list for vitriolic responses so far. :)
> 
> I brought a friend (NT user) to the Radisson on Friday, and we were both hoping
> to hear and see some cool stuff. The talk and demo were not really what I
> expected, and I couldn't quite tell what audience they were aiming at. My
> feeling at the time was that what they were doing with GNOME really undersold
> the capabilities of Linux. My friend made a comment along the lines of: "Well,
> I guess with Linux you can change your background and the color of windows,
> huh?" A little flippant, perhaps, but understandable given what he saw.
> Thankfully there were some things displayed that set GNOME apart from Micros~1
> graphical features. Perhaps a more impressive display of Linux features would
> have taken too long. 
> 
> Maybe it was unreasonable to expect to learn anything new and cool there. The
> talk was ok, a little heavy on rhetoric and perhaps old news to most people in
> attendance. The question and answer session was the best part to me, because I
> got to hear what kinds of issues other people are interested in. 
> 
> In short: I think it's great that RedHat came to the Cities, and it certainly
> didn't do any harm--publicizing Linux is a good thing. But I was a bit
> underwhelmed and felt like I was hearing lots of stuff I already knew. On the
> other hand, I got a free T-shirt. :)
> 
> Anyone have other ideas or comments? 

Yeah, I felt the same way about it, from the standpoint of being a GNOME
user anyway.  I think that RedHat really underplayed the other features
that they had added, perhaps as a result of some of the criticism they
have received, but the session management and other features sound good.  

Frankly, if they want to push Linux on the desktop, I think they should
have played up the apps more.  What were they using for the slideshow?
StarOffice? Applixware? They did not mention it, and I think this is one
of the main concerns in using Linux on the desktop.  Also, what about
addressing some of the concerns which have popped up recently because of
enterprise computing benchmarks (not Mindcraft)?  Things like journaling
file systems, high availability, etc., these are what will make Linux
successful in the long run in the server market, and there is no reason we
can not have a strong presence in both markets, as they stated.

Anyway, thats just my $0.02, rounded up.
-Chris