I apologize for the formatting -- the textrite formatting module for blosxom can sometimes be 'too helpful'
This evening Havoc Pennington gave a RedHat Desktop presentation to the GNHLUG. We meet at Martha's Exchangein Nashua -- the Belgian Ale as well as the steak tips with Gorgonzola were excellent!
Havoc brought three other desktop engineers from RedHat's Westford, MA office, but I didn't catch their names. Attendance was good, perhaps about three dozen people.
Slides:
Ready for the Desktop?
- Now -- many using it now.
- Three years much improved for more types of people. "Don't want
people who aren't ready for desktop trying to use it. We are focused
migration from Solaris/HP-UX workstations" - Next step is for limited corporate managed desktops and starting
to move into general purpose corporate desktop, not home yet. - Today have RedHat desktop (Launched May 2004) which is a variant
of RHEL 3 with corporate desktop pricing only in 10 seat minimum.
Includes Gnome, Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice and Bluecurve user
interface. Targeting technical workstation (UNIX replacement), single
user client (eg: Call centers, Point of Sale, Thin clients),
enterprise desk (managed desktop) - The RH desktop dev team will be expanded 5x by end of year.
Fedora Project
Fedora/RHEL distinction does not correspond to desktop/server split.
They are for 2 different audiences
Fedora will be essential part of Red Hat operating system, one part is
the desktop interface.
Audience Question: What is the Java stategy for desktop? It is on the
'extras' cd which is 3rd party, proprietery stuff. It includes
multiple JVMS (IBM is the default JVM), but also BEA JRocket, maybe
Sun's also.
But discussion about porting solaris apps to linux. redhat not
possitioned for it. I suggested that hardware vendors are happy to
help the migration.
Open Source Architecture
See the Red Hat Technology roadmap http://www.redhat.com/software/architecture/
Describes whole 'enterprise stack' and components
One of the components is desktop OS.
Other components: directory services, single signon/authentication,
security features, management tools, etc
Support in all critial areas to create complete architecture.
Work on three development fronts
- Usability & features
- Interop and (windows) migration path
- Mgmt & security
Usablity
- Gnome 2.6 and 2.8
- openoffice.org 1.1.1 and 2.0
- Mozilla/Firefox/Epiphany
- Evolution 1.4 & 2.0
- Server side: file/print share/mail/collaboration/directory
Interop/Migration
- Linux clients dropping into microsoft infrastructure
- exchange
- active directory
- file/print sharing
- linux servers replacing microsoft infrastructure
- file formats and proto
- running windows apps
Misc questions and comments from the meeting:
Will probably use 'cairo' X server graphics (when?) that Keith
Packard.
Bunch of questions about accelerated X drivers - not writing them,
ATI/NVidia are releasing some proprietary stuff.
Discuss about needing good style guides for Gnome
Mention new 'self discovery' of things on network (OpenSLP?)
'DBUS' for plug-in play infra for storage
Working on automatically configuring printer in CUPS
