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ru.linux
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From : Sergey Lentsov 2:4615/71.10 02 Aug 2001 16:38:18
To : All
Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2001/0802/desktop.php3
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See also: [14]last week's On the Desktop page.
Note: An asterisk (*) denotes a proprietary product, (w) denotes WINE
based tools.
Office Suites
[15]Ability (*)(w)
[16]ApplixWare (*)
[17]GNOME Office
[18]HancomOffice
[19]KOffice
[20]StarOffice / [21]OpenOffice
[22]Siag Office
[23]WordPerfect Office 2000 (*)(w)
Java / Web Office Suites
[24]ThinkFree Office (*)
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Desktop Publishing
[27]AbiWord
[28]iceSculptor (*)
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[31]Mediascape Artstream (*)
[32]Scribus
Web Browsers
[33]Mozilla
[34]Netscape (*)
[35]Opera (*)
[36]Konqueror
[37]Galeon
Handheld Tools
[38]KPilot
[39]JPilot
[40]Palm Pilot Resources
[41]Pilot Link
[42]SynCal
On The Desktop
HP and the visual effects industry. The visual effects industry is
moving to Linux in big ways these days. Visual effects, which is more
commonly referred to simply as VFX, has two distinct sides: the
renderfarm side and the desktop, or Digital Content Creation (DCC)
side. While most readers are well aware of the role Linux plays on the
renderfarm side (such as with the movie Titanic), few people are aware
of how strongly the DCC side is being infiltrated by Linux.
Most of the major studios have already started to migrate to Linux.
Originally studios relied heavily on SGI systems which had very
powerful graphics hardware. When SGI began to fall on hard times,
studios felt they needed alternative solutions. Most turned initially
to Microsoft but found the going rough. Applications written for SGI's
Irix platform were not easily ported to WindowsNT and graphics
libraries and support were not nearly on par with the more evolved SGI
systems. Then, in the summer of 1999 things began to change.
One of the driving events that year was the announcement of SideFX's
port of Houdini to Linux. Houdini is the desktop application artists
have used to create visual effects for such feature films as [43]The
Grinch, The Matrix, X-Men and Godzilla. SideFX ported its application
to Linux without the availability of hardware acceleration - XFree86
didn't release support for hardware acceleration until March 2000.
Once SideFX made its software available, VFX studios could then begin
to request hardware vendors to supply systems which could run Houdini.
One company that answered the call was HP.
"In early 2000 we started getting strong requests from the DCC
marketplace for a Linux desktop solution," said Karen Ghavem, Linux
Program Manager for the Technical Computing Division of HP in Colorado
that worked on HP's VFX support. "The main technology lacking on the
Linux desktop at the time was the ability to run accelerated, OpenGL
3D graphics. To do that you need to run under X." At the time the
XFree86 team was just developing DRI/DRM and their delivery date was
expected to be after the time frame HP needed to provide their
solutions to their early adopters, which HP refers to as Lighthouse
customers.
"There were two options for us: one was to beef up DRI/DRM to make it
robust enough," but that would have taken too long. HP decided to use
its own, mature HP/UX solution that they could port over to Linux in
order to deliver product to the DCC customers. Ghavam noted, "We
started shipping those systems about 9 months ago," with early access
customers getting systems up to 6 months prior to that.
HP ported their own X server over to Linux along with their own
hardware accelerated OpenGL. This gave them better performance than
what users were getting with XFree86 when used with some of the
graphics cards available at the time, while allowing them to utilize
their existing expertise with Linux. And while HP could deliver early
to the DCC marketplace with their own proprietary offerings on top of
Linux, they knew that market was looking for open source. "We
recognized that the open source community and the 3rd party graphics
drivers would evolve and become stable enough under the XFree86
environment."
"The reason customers are moving from those other Unix solutions to
Linux is because of choice and commodity. They want to not be locked
into a single vendor solution," Ghavam pointed out.
In July HP released the [44]X2000 and [45]X4000 systems which are
based on Red Hat 7.1 and accelerated XFree86 servers for the FireGL
cards. "We have an OEM agreement with Red Hat and proactively certify
our systems with Red Hat releases at the time of the OS release." HP's
role here is to work with graphic card vendors like FireGL to push the
requests from DCC customers to make Linux and XFree86 work well with
HP systems. "There are even some areas where 2D performance can be
improved," says Ghavam. Some of these improvements will come as more
customer demands drive the work. "But from what we're hearing from our
customers, and even in our internal R&D, XFree86 is pretty stable and
a good desktop now. People are pretty happy with it."
Many of HP's new Linux DCC customers come from Unix backgrounds,
though not necessarily HP/UX, while many of their existing customers
are happy in their current HP/UX solutions. That means they'll be
maintaining both their HP/UX environment along with the newer Linux
solutions. It also means that HP has begun looking at taking some of
the technologies in their current X environment and making them
available to the open source world. Ghavam couldn't elaborate on most
of those but she did mention one in particular: SLS - single logical
screen. This technology allows multiple monitors ("screens" in X
parlance) to appear as one large screen, with individual windows
spanning multiple monitors and the cursor moving across screens. In
the XFree86 world the equivalent option would be Xinerama. "But the
current Xinerama release doesn't support accelerated 3D applications
to run in a window. SLS does."
When they were putting together those early Linux systems, HP decided
to provide SLS for their DCC early adopters. Ghavam described the
setup: "Artists like to use two screens for their work, one for
animation work and another for video playback but with the ability
move windows and the cursor freely between the two monitors. Even
though some hardware, such as the FireGL cards, now provide multiple
monitor support in hardware (removing the need for software to handle
this), many cards still don't."
And in keeping with their eye toward the future, HP is considering
contributing SLS to XFree86. Such contributions are driven by the
requirements of their customers. "There has not been an immediate need
for it, but in the future we think this will move into the XFree86
space," says the HP program manager.
While HP may appear to have skipped the open source route while
putting together desktop workstations for the fast growing,
Linux-based DCC market, they in affect chose to provide a solid
solution with a hybrid environment while waiting for (and helping to
move forward) the open source alternatives. It's a reasonable solution
for commercial organizations who simply can't wait for open source to
catch up to existing offerings, but who also don't want to ignore the
benefits of open source, and the demands of their target industries,
over the longer term.
Relocatable Java installs? Well, sort of. This story might never end,
but after last weeks note from IBM that the Java RE they provide is in
RPM format and therefore relocatable, one reader wrote in to let us
know our test system, Red Hat Linux 7.1, might not let us do so.
Actually, relocation is broken in the rpm shipped with RHL7.1
([46]bugzilla bug #25876). The rpm in rawhide is fixed in that
regard, but it is broken in other ways (most probably because it is
under active development), so ymmv.
The bug report was against RHL 7.0 while the closure puts it against
7.1, however. (Thanks to Ronald Cole)
Desktop Environments
Kernel Cousin KDE #18. This weeks [47]Kernel Cousin KDE carries an
analysis of the extended discussion on the future of KDE after 2.2.
"The other main point of concern was the current state of KDE2 and the
number of outstanding bug reports. Peter Kelley verbalized this
objection saying, 'I think having a 2.3 version will be very important
from the point of getting a stable and relatively bug-free version of
khtml. Right now there are over 700 open bug reports for khtml and kjs
combined...'" Eventually, Waldo Bastian posted a schedule which puts a
KDE 3.0, which includes the migration to Qt3, out in the early part of
2002.
Minutes of the GF Board Meeting (July 24, 2001). The [48]GNOME
Foundation Board meeting notes reveal that the current plans for GNOME
2.0 include an imminent API freeze, and that the board wants to do
more to let those with special needs know what GNOME has to help them
out.
GNUstep weekly update. There was only one minor bug fix this week
according to the [49]GNUstep weekly update but that doesn't distract
from the release of a new version of the Java language interface
(JIGS).
FVWM2 2.4.0. We missed it somehow, but a final, [50]stable version of
FVWM2, release 2.4.0, has finally been announced. [51]RPM's are
available from the sourceforge themes site for this window manager.
Office Applications
KOffice Suite 1.1 Release Candidate 1. The [52]first release candidate
for KOffice 1.1 has been made available by the KOffice project team.
Final release is targeted for mid-August.
KSpread 1.1 Beta 3 reviewed. In this second part of a full KOffice
review, this review covers the KDE spreadsheet, [53]KSpread.
Evolution 1.0 Beta 1 announcement redux. Last week we mistakenly noted
the release of Ximian's [54]Evolution 1.0 Beta 1 in the Development
page under the subtopic of "Browsers". Well, we knew better. Evolution
is an Outlook-styled application providing calendaring, email and an
address book.
The Beta 1 preview releases begin the countdown to the 1.0 release
this fall.
AbiWord 0.9.0. A new release of the [55]AbiWord word processor has
been announced. The [56]new release includes better import/export
support for RTF, XHTML, MSWord and ApplixWords, spell checking
improvements, automatic numbered headings, and a plugin architecture.
The new release is also noted in the [57]AbiWord Weekly News.
Desktop Applications
Review: theKompany's Universal Documentation Tool - DocBrowser.
[58]The DocBrowser, a KDE tool for reading man pages and info files,
was reviewed this past week on GUI-Lords. " The Info pages are brought
to new life and new appreciation for me with DocBrowser. Smooth treed
navigation, all hyper linked. Very nice, I actually enjoy these info
pages now. As for my favorite, 'man'... it was doomed. Now granted I
didn't have DocBrowser's documentation, but I just could not get my
systems man pages to work. "
GIMP 1.2.2 released. A new version of the [59]GIMP 1.2.x distribution
has been announced. Unfortunately, the original announcement came
before a problem with building from source was noted and a second,
identically named distribution was made. That means there may be two
versions of this 1.2.2 release out there, only one of which may build.
Be sure to [60]grab the right one.
OpenOffice anniversary report and build 633. The OpenOffice site has
posted a report on the [61]anniversary of the release of StarOffice as
an open source project. "To put it bluntly, OpenOffice.org is not here
to produce a finished product. Sun Microsystems is doing that with
StarOffice 6, which will have been built using code derived from
OpenOffice.org. Rather, OpenOffice.org's far more ambitious goal is to
create a sustainable process of code making and community building."
Interestingly enough, as this note was being added to the Desktop page
word arrived of the latest build release from the [62]OpenOffice
group: [63]build 633 is available for download.
New desktop layout package: Scribus. A new desktop layout program was
brought to our attention this week: [64]Scribus. This package is still
in early development but does fall under the GPL and comes with a
Qt/C++ based interface. (Thanks to Florian Cramer for pointing us to
this package)
And in other news...
Chinese language Qt/KDE programming text. A new text on
[65]programming Qt/KDE2 is available in traditional chinese.
ISBN: 9572085689
author: Chuang, MingChe
publisher: [66]SoftChina
Pages: 432
Vituascape releases Flash SDK as open source. Noted on the GIMP-User
mailing list: [67]Virtuascape, a media design agency, has released a
[68]Flash SDK as open source (using the BSD2 license), with the
company suggesting it might make a nice addition to the current GIMP
2.0 work currently underway.
Section Editor: [69]Michael J. Hammel
August 2, 2001
Note: An asterisk (*) denotes a proprietary product, (w) denotes WINE
based tools.
Desktop Environments
[70]GNOME
[71]GNUstep
[72]KDE
[73]XFce
Window Managers (WM's)
[74]Afterstep
[75]Enlightenment
[76]FVMW2
[77]IceWM
[78]Sawfish
[79]WindowMaker
Minimalist Environments
[80]Blackbox
Widget Sets
[81]GTK+
[82]Qt
Desktop Graphics
[83]CorelDRAW (*)(w)
[84]GIMP
[85]KIllustrator (currently unavailable)
[86]Photogenics (*)
[87]Sketch
Windows on Linux
[88]WINE
[89]Win4Lin
[90]VMWare
Kids S/W
[91]Linux For Kids
Send link submissions to [92]lwn@lwn.net
[93]Next: Development
[94]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [95]Eklektix, Inc.,
all rights reserved
Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
References
1. http://lwn.net/
2. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/pageid=001-012-132-000-000-005-000-000-012
3. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/
4. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/security.php3
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12. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/letters.php3
13. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/bigpage.php3
14. http://lwn.net/2001/0726/desktop.php3
15. http://www.ability.com/linux/
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18. http://www.hancom.com/en
19. http://www.koffice.org/
20. http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/
21. http://openoffice.org/
22. http://siag.nu/
23. http://linux.corel.com/products/wpo2000_linux/index.htm
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25. http://www.teamware.com/office
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28. http://www.chilliware.net/
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30. http://www.eeyore-mule.demon.co.uk/
31. http://www.mediascape.com/linux.html
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35. http://www.opera.com/
36. http://www.konqueror.org/
37. http://galeon.sourceforge.net/
38. http://www.slac.com/pilone/kpilot_home/
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41. http://www.gnu-designs.com/pilot-link/
42. http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/syncal/
43. http://www.sidefx.com/community/projects.shtml
44. http://www.hp.com/workstations/products/linux/x2000/summary.html
45. http://www.hp.com/workstations/products/linux/x4000/summary.html
46. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25876
47. http://kt.zork.net/kde/kde20010720_18.html
48. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/a/gf-20010724.php3
49. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/a/gwu-20010729.php3
50. http://www.fvwm.org/
51. http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/rpm/
52. http://dot.kde.org/996513659/
53. http://dot.kde.org/996131740/
54. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/a/evolution1.php3
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58. http://GUI-Lords.org/article.php?sid=65&mode=thread&order=0
59. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/a/gimp-1.2.2.php3
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69. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
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71. http://www.gnustep.org/
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75. http://www.enlightenment.org/
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77. http://icewm.sourceforge.net/
78. http://sawmill.sourceforge.net/
79. http://www.windowmaker.org/
80. http://blackbox.alug.org/
81. http://www.gtk.org/
82. http://www.trolltech.com/products/index.html
83. http://linux.corel.com/products/draw/index.htm
84. http://www.gimp.org/
85. http://wwwiti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~sattler/killustrator.html
86. http://www.idruna.com/products.html
87. http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
88. http://www.winehq.org/
89. http://www.netraverse.com/
90. http://www.vmware.com/
91. http://www.linuxforkids.org/
92. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
93. http://lwn.net/2001/0802/devel.php3
94. http://www.eklektix.com/
95. http://www.eklektix.com/
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URL: http://www.lwn.net/2001/0802/desktop.php3 |
Sergey Lentsov |
02 Aug 2001 16:38:18 |
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