InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
March 15, 1999
The Future Linux Front End: There's No Place Like GnomeBy Sean Gallagher
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he hype surrounding Linux is reaching a frenzied pitch now that the open-source operating system
has drawn the attention of most of the major hardware and software vendors. Linux even has its
own trade show. And for the most part, Linux lives up to the hype -- as I noted in my last column, Linux at least measures up to the scalability of
Microsoft's current version of Windows NT, and it has a lot going for it besides.
But for Linux to become a true enterprise operating system, it needs to have a few things that until recently clearly weren't there -- namely full-blown customer technical support, a variety of commercially supported applications and tools, and better ease of use. The first is here, the second is coming, and the third...well, the Linux community is working on it.
Gnome (GNU Network Object Model Environment), the open-source graphical user interface now being hyped as the future of the Linux front end, became available in its first incarnation as LinuxWorld began this month. The interface, being developed in true open-source fashion as a collaborative project among volunteers, offers dramatically improved usability over some of the X Windows-based interfaces that are used with Linux, FreeBSD and other Unix-like operating systems. It is also highly customizable. Unfortunately, it's still a 1.0 release, and it's not exactly a walk in the park to configure.
Gnome is based on X Windows, so it's compatible with all of the X-based GUI applications that are currently out there (including commercial ones such as Netscape Communicator and Corel WordPerfect). It's also based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture -- that's right, Corba -- and includes a COM emulator, providing developers with a fairly substantial underlying object model on which to build applications. And as far as look and feel goes, it combines the best of Windows and the Mac operating system, with tones of NextStep thrown in. In other words, it's cool.
Because Red Hat Software's Red Hat Advanced Development Laboratories is heavily involved in the development of the Gnome GUI, it's natural that it's already available as a set of package files for the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). I downloaded the latest set of RPMs from one of the many mirror FTP sites that host the Gnome 1.0 distribution, and installed it on a system. Installing the packages only took a few minutes with an RPM command line; starting Gnome from within Red Hat's default Window Manager took care of editing all the configuration files required.
Of course, the Corba architecture adds a little bit of overhead. It takes a while to get Gnome started, and you shouldn't expect a Corba-based interface to perform as well as a pure X application. And for the moment, I wouldn't even think about running a Gnome application from a remote session. And while I had an easy time (relatively speaking) getting it installed, I did run into some stability problems. Though I never experienced a Windows-like "blue screen of death," I did experience some memory faults and, on one occasion, a complete system freeze.
Even so, Gnome has some things that the early versions of Windows didn't have going for them, including an almost bulletproof underlying kernel and a whole bunch of development tools and applications that essentially already work natively with the interface. If the Gnome "movement" can keep focused, it's just a matter of time before Gnome is a real desktop contender.
Of course, that's a big if. Some Gnome developers I talked to complained of a lack of focus, and that current development was going off in every direction. That could change, however, if the vendors now supporting Linux start throwing some of their development talent (and money) at the project. And based on the reaction that the interface is already getting, they're bound to.
Sean Gallagher is managing editor of InformationWeek Labs.
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