Brian Cameron wrote: > > Who said that Sun would be abandoning GNOME? I anticipate that
I didn't, and I want to be clear that I never thought that. But there were some community members that seemed to imply that using a light-weight alternative was the only option instead of improving GNOME. > GNOME will continue to be the premier desktop on machines with the > horsepower to handle it. However, the GNOME community is moving > towards an evermore tight relationship with OpenGL, which means > an alternative is necessary for machines that do not support OpenGL. > For example, refer to GNOME Shell, which will replace the metacity > window manager, gnome-session, the GNOME panel and applets in GNOME > 3.0: > > http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell > > In talking with the GNOME community, there is little interest in > making the new GNOME Shell work in non-OpenGL environments. Considering > that all the elements in the GNOME shell desktop is treated as 3D actors > via clutter, it would be tricky to figure out a way to untie it from > OpenGL. However, I suppose if someone did the work to make GNOME Shell > work in non-OpenGL environments, it could get upstream. > > That said, I think a more straightforward approach would be to simply > provide a lighter desktop for users who either want or need one. I'm > sure people will still run a lot of "GNOME" applications from within > a light desktop if it were available. I don't yet personally believe they'll be able to push the OpenGL requirement. There are too many systems out there that either don't have OpenGL drivers at all (its software), have flaky hardware, or that it will just be too darn slow on. Call me optimistic... Cheers, -- Shawn Walker
