June 2005 Archives
Fri Jun 24 22:31:57 CEST 2005
On the release date of OpenOffice.org 2.0
One of the questions I get asked -
very - frequently is: When is OpenOffice.org 2.0 going to be
released? The only answer I can give is: Honestly, I don't know.
OOo releases follow the StarOffice release schedule, until now SUN
has been saying they are going to release StarOffice 8 in mid-July,
which should have resulted in OOo 2.0 some weeks later. But that's
a thing of the past now, today SUN announced at the
LinuxTag (article in german only, sorry) that they have pushed
back the release date for StarOffice 8 to the "end of summer". So,
until there are major changes to the release process this
translates into: No OOo 2.0 for quite some time.
As unfortunate as this might be for the ones who can't wait for the final release, on the positive side of things - which I tend to prefer - it also should result in more features and hopefully less bugs, as development is going ahead at full speed at the moment.
As unfortunate as this might be for the ones who can't wait for the final release, on the positive side of things - which I tend to prefer - it also should result in more features and hopefully less bugs, as development is going ahead at full speed at the moment.
Fri Jun 17 20:25:39 CEST 2005
tiny bits of info
In response to Seemants Post: Actually the images in my last
blog entry where from ooo-ximian-2.0pre (1.9.108 to be exact)
;)
As to what the difference between the vanilla OOo release and openoffice-ximian (to be more correct: the ooo-build-patchset) will be: That's still very much up in the air. It depends on how many of these patches are being accepted upstream before the release of OOo 2.0, at the moment everything is still moving at quite a fast pace, patches seem to be pushed (and accepted) upstream a lot quicker than before, so we will see. Just to get a hint what the difference is at the moment, you can take a look at the current patchset of ooo-build, that's still some 250 patches or so.
About AMD64 support: I sincerely hope that it gets finished in time for OOo 2.0, atm there are still some issues, I think it all depends on when OOo 2.0 actually does get released ;)
As to what the difference between the vanilla OOo release and openoffice-ximian (to be more correct: the ooo-build-patchset) will be: That's still very much up in the air. It depends on how many of these patches are being accepted upstream before the release of OOo 2.0, at the moment everything is still moving at quite a fast pace, patches seem to be pushed (and accepted) upstream a lot quicker than before, so we will see. Just to get a hint what the difference is at the moment, you can take a look at the current patchset of ooo-build, that's still some 250 patches or so.
About AMD64 support: I sincerely hope that it gets finished in time for OOo 2.0, atm there are still some issues, I think it all depends on when OOo 2.0 actually does get released ;)
Posted by | Permanent Link
Tue Jun 14 08:53:50 CEST 2005
Work, Life and Gentoo
Had a very stressful last week at
work, everyone on vacation but me. The bad thing: Not much time for
anything else. The good thing: Well, it's over.
Still managed to get some work done in preperation for OpenOffice.org 2.0, lot's of improved things to look forward, though still quite a few nasty bugs too, but that's to be expected from a beta version. From a maintainers perspective the biggest plus is the death of the old install method, no more autoresponse files, yeah! From a users perspective, there really is too much stuff to mention it all, still one big bonus is the much improved Impress, also the possibility to install multiple Icon sets (and soon to be easily able to switch between them) is nifty.
OOo 2.0pre with full GNOME integration
OOo 2.0pre with full KDE integration
OOo 2.0pre with the old default look
And that's all from the same install...
In other news Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins has joined Microsoft and the expected uproar in the community about this "act of betrayal" (at least it seems to perceived as this by some) has begun. I think I will never get all this nearly religious Anti-Microsoft-stuff, all this childish "M$"-postings. People, free software should be about "free" and "software" and not about "the church of everyone who hates Microsoft". I mean Microsoft really IS bad in lots of ways and also has done quite a few really nasty things in the past, but this form of hatred is really out of proportion. Just a quick reality check, to illustrate what I mean: Which company recently sued community sites for reporting about their upcoming products? Which company holds quite a lot patents for trivial enhancements of the desktop (like "springloaded folders" or "transparent windows")? Which company has DRM all over the place in their MP3-Players? Correct: The name is Apple. Still there is no sign of a similar hatred against the Mac-producer as there is for Microsoft. No big uproar when David Hyatt of Mozilla-Fame and now Safari-developer joined Apple, or if Linux-people are using their computers. (and to add: it's good like that).
So my congratulations go to Daniel Robbins, and thanks for all the great work you did to get that nice distribution called Gentoo rolling!
Still managed to get some work done in preperation for OpenOffice.org 2.0, lot's of improved things to look forward, though still quite a few nasty bugs too, but that's to be expected from a beta version. From a maintainers perspective the biggest plus is the death of the old install method, no more autoresponse files, yeah! From a users perspective, there really is too much stuff to mention it all, still one big bonus is the much improved Impress, also the possibility to install multiple Icon sets (and soon to be easily able to switch between them) is nifty.
OOo 2.0pre with full GNOME integration
OOo 2.0pre with full KDE integration
OOo 2.0pre with the old default look
And that's all from the same install...
In other news Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins has joined Microsoft and the expected uproar in the community about this "act of betrayal" (at least it seems to perceived as this by some) has begun. I think I will never get all this nearly religious Anti-Microsoft-stuff, all this childish "M$"-postings. People, free software should be about "free" and "software" and not about "the church of everyone who hates Microsoft". I mean Microsoft really IS bad in lots of ways and also has done quite a few really nasty things in the past, but this form of hatred is really out of proportion. Just a quick reality check, to illustrate what I mean: Which company recently sued community sites for reporting about their upcoming products? Which company holds quite a lot patents for trivial enhancements of the desktop (like "springloaded folders" or "transparent windows")? Which company has DRM all over the place in their MP3-Players? Correct: The name is Apple. Still there is no sign of a similar hatred against the Mac-producer as there is for Microsoft. No big uproar when David Hyatt of Mozilla-Fame and now Safari-developer joined Apple, or if Linux-people are using their computers. (and to add: it's good like that).
So my congratulations go to Daniel Robbins, and thanks for all the great work you did to get that nice distribution called Gentoo rolling!
Posted by | Permanent Link
Sat Jun 4 12:22:41 CEST 2005
Apple now really switching to x86?
After ages of bad jokes about Apple
going to switch to x86, it might now really happen. At least if you
tend to believe C'Net which seem to be quite confident about
their story. I wouldn't bother about this if it were on Slashdot,
but C'Net normally is a quite reliable source.
--- speculation mode=on ---
Assumed this is true, this could be a quite interesting but also very risky move for Apple, as they might alienate lot's of their current users, also the time of migration when they have to support both architectures won't be an easy one. IF this is true I really would like to get more knowledge of what has happened behind the scenes, IBM must really and totally got Apple fed up about them. At least there are public signs, that it might be like that, seeing that IBM didn't keep any of their promises lately. Remember Steve Jobs promising 3 GHz G5s quite some time ago which never materialized? I can imagine that Apple isn't very happy about that. Even more the recent XBox 360 and PS3 announcements must have been a blow to Apple, both with far more powerful CPUs than anything Apple has currently to offer, both (co-) developed by IBM.
--- speculation mode=off ---
A lot of people seem to think that this might kill Apple, but what they tend to forget is that Computers aren't anymore their main source of revenue, the iPod and iTunes market is growing a lot faster than their computer sales, be sure that Apple will keep on pushing into the "digital lifestyle"-market.
We will know on Monday, if C'Net got it right, and if yes, how Apple is going to handle the migration, if Mac OS X will be generally available to x86 or Apple does some sort of lock-in to their own hardware. Also there is still the possibility that C'Net got it half-right, and that Apple is indeed going for Intel-processors, but not x86, instead letting them build PPCs for them...
Any way this plays out: Interesting times for the desktop market...
--- speculation mode=on ---
Assumed this is true, this could be a quite interesting but also very risky move for Apple, as they might alienate lot's of their current users, also the time of migration when they have to support both architectures won't be an easy one. IF this is true I really would like to get more knowledge of what has happened behind the scenes, IBM must really and totally got Apple fed up about them. At least there are public signs, that it might be like that, seeing that IBM didn't keep any of their promises lately. Remember Steve Jobs promising 3 GHz G5s quite some time ago which never materialized? I can imagine that Apple isn't very happy about that. Even more the recent XBox 360 and PS3 announcements must have been a blow to Apple, both with far more powerful CPUs than anything Apple has currently to offer, both (co-) developed by IBM.
--- speculation mode=off ---
A lot of people seem to think that this might kill Apple, but what they tend to forget is that Computers aren't anymore their main source of revenue, the iPod and iTunes market is growing a lot faster than their computer sales, be sure that Apple will keep on pushing into the "digital lifestyle"-market.
We will know on Monday, if C'Net got it right, and if yes, how Apple is going to handle the migration, if Mac OS X will be generally available to x86 or Apple does some sort of lock-in to their own hardware. Also there is still the possibility that C'Net got it half-right, and that Apple is indeed going for Intel-processors, but not x86, instead letting them build PPCs for them...
Any way this plays out: Interesting times for the desktop market...
Fri Jun 3 23:42:36 CEST 2005
Welcome to my shiny new weblog
The common sense for starting a blog
seems to dictate to do a first post. So here it is. And if I
already have your attention, I might as well introduce myself,
which would be something like:
Codename: suka
Real Name: Andreas Proschofsky
Role in Gentoo: OpenOffice.org dev (yes the one which eats all your cpu cycles for days)
Dev since: January 2004
Now that you know me that well, I might also show you a recent screenshot of my desktop:
As you can see my desktop of Choice is GNOME, also you might recognize the big window in the foreground. That's a glimpse of the future, or as others might call it: openoffice-ximian 2.0-pre.
Codename: suka
Real Name: Andreas Proschofsky
Role in Gentoo: OpenOffice.org dev (yes the one which eats all your cpu cycles for days)
Dev since: January 2004
Now that you know me that well, I might also show you a recent screenshot of my desktop:
As you can see my desktop of Choice is GNOME, also you might recognize the big window in the foreground. That's a glimpse of the future, or as others might call it: openoffice-ximian 2.0-pre.