Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World

About a month ago, I considered the factors that were holding back one open source project with much potential, Parrot. Today I will do the same for another open source project: .

One computing myth we hear quite often is that of Microsoft Windows offering a “common UI”. That is, one toolkit or framework that is used by all applications, thus giving an experience that is well-integrated and shared. But anyone who has used Windows recently should know that this is clearly not the case.

I’ve met a lot of end users over the years. Some I have quite disliked, most I am indifferent about, but some I will remember forever. One such user I met today at an insurance company. His job was to perform some actuarial tasks for the company. The work he does is apparently quite computationally-intensive, so he had some pretty modern, high-end Sun and IBM workstations at his disposal.

I recently wrote about Pyro Desktop. Pyro is essentially an effort to merge the desktop and the Web, which I think is a poor idea. I’ve gotten some interesting feedback on that article from others, and I’d like to address their comments.

The first comment is from Manuzhai, over at Reddit. It focuses on the suitability of the Web as an application development platform. The basic suggestion is that while the browser may not have been an adequate platform in the past and even the present, the continual evolution of JavaScript will change that.

Those who follow GNOME have probably read about the GNOME Online Desktop. After reading about this concept, I find myself very confused at what it is they’re actually trying to accomplish.

Take what is, at the time of writing, the second paragraph under the “Philosophy” section: Imagine an OS that keeps all its information online, so you can use a live CD as easily as a full installation. When you start up a newly-installed computer, or visit a friend’s house, your whole environment will be waiting for you, with no setup to redo. For the techies, think Stateless Linux Desktop; your files and settings are somewhere else.

It’s often the most flashy and rapidly-developed open source applications that get the most attention. Most people focus on projects like Beryl, Metisse, Firefox, OpenOffice.org and Ubuntu. But we can’t forget the importance of the open source software an average user doesn’t see every day. This is a list of nine such programs and libraries.

The actual benefits of 3D computer desktops is a topic I have written about in the past. And today I’d like to revist it, specifically after seeing an article linking to a YouTube video of Beryl in action. In short, the title of the article challenges Bill Gates and Microsoft to exceed what is shown in the video. Except I don’t think that there video really shows anything remarkable.

With consumer-grade 3D graphics hardware becoming better on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that people have considered the idea of a three dimensional desktop. I read an article today comparing two such desktops, Project Looking Glass and Beryl. While my experience using such systems is fairly limited, I have to express some skepticism about whether or not they bring any productivity gains.

There has been a lot of hype lately about what are called “WebOSes”. Essentially, such systems tend to be web browser-based environments that attempt to provide some of the higher-level services of an operating system. I read an article today about such a system called GravityZoo. After reading that article, my first question was “Why would I want to use it?”