Software Report [Free Agent: Getting Better All the Time - 12/29/2004]

A

Ablang

December 29th, 2004



Free Agent: Getting Better All the Time


Editorial Applications Devel. Mgr. Matthew Newton


One of the Gnome desktop's biggest weaknesses is the lack of a serious

CD burning application. Yes, there is a rudimentary-yet-elegant

burning function built right into Nautilus, the Gnome file manager:

Simply open up the CD Creator system folder, dump into it whatever

files and folders you want to burn, select File, Write to Disc, and

soon you have a brand-spankin'-new data CD. But if you want to burn a

bunch of MP3 files to an audio disc, or duplicate an existing data or

audio CD, you're out of luck. (Of course, Microsoft Windows can't do

these things out of the box, either.)


Linux users have had only one option when it comes to a GUI-based CD

burning tool: K3b, which is built for the KDE desktop:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/601437/0/


There's nothing wrong with running a KDE app if you're a Gnome user.

It'll start right up and behave just fine. But you may have to wait a

bit before its window pops up, as the system has to initialize all

sorts of KDE system components first. Further, KDE apps may look a bit

out of place on your Gnome desktop, especially if your distribution

doesn't have a visual theme shared by both the Gnome and KDE desktops.


So, though K3b gets the job done, I've been waiting for a native Gnome

app to handle all my burning needs. One candidate, the Coaster

project, has been in the works for a long time, and recently made its

first few public releases:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967983/0/


I played around with version 0.1.3 while working on this column, and

I'm here to report that it's far too early to tell whether Coaster is

the tool I've been waiting for. At this stage, the interface is nice

and clean, but support for burning audio discs has yet to be

implemented.


There's reason to think that will be the case: competition. I assume

that Graveman, a new offering from a hacker in France, has nothing to

do with burial or the undead, but rather takes its name from the

French verb for burning a disc, graver:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967984/0/


In any event, when I downloaded version 0.1, I was surprised to see an

elegant interface offering me the choice of burning a music disc,

burning a data disc, or performing a straightforward disc-to-disc

copy.


If Coaster doesn't kick into high gear in 2005, I fully expect to see

Graveman showing up on new Linux distributions to fill Gnome's CD

burning gap, because the sucker Just Works. And that's what we want,

right?


At Long Last: Painless Wireless?


It's been more than a year since I chronicled my travails in getting

Wi-Fi to work on my trusty Thinkpad:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967985/0/


Not much has changed. If I am at home, the machine connects quickly

and effortlessly to my home network, whose parameters (network name,

WEP encryption key) are stored in the wireless configuration for

Mandrakelinux 10.1, which I'm now running.


But when I'm elsewhere, trying to connect to an open wireless network,

the Gnome desktop falls short. I have to open a terminal window,

disassociate from any existing network, and enter lines and lines of

code at the command line to turn off WEP, scan for the public network,

and finally connect to the network and grab an IP address. That's

hardly the epitome of user friendliness. I don't need a computer that

holds my hand every step of the way, but I also have no desire to mess

around with the command line for something as simple (from an end-user

perspective, anyway) as connecting to a wireless network. I'm guessing

you feel the same way.


So when Novell was here at PC World HQ to show off Novell Linux

Desktop 9, I was intrigued by an applet running in the demo machine's

Gnome panel. A right-click on this applet showed all available

wireless networks and their signal strengths. Selecting any listed

network made the machine connect to that network. I was salivating; I

wanted that applet right away. I asked the Novell reps where it came

from. They told me that it was a custom bit of work by the coders at

Novell, and that, in due time, the code would flow back to the wider

Gnome project.


It turns out that wasn't true. The applet I saw is known as

NetworkManager, and it's actually a clever bit of work spearheaded by

a coder at Red Hat:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967986/0/


Novell Linux Desktop just seems to be the first distribution to ship

with NetworkManager included. (To be fair, I don't think the Novell

guys deliberately misled me: They also seem confused about which

publication I work for. I received a package from them this morning

that was addressed to Matthew Newton at PC Magazine.)


Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the applet comes from as long as I

can run it, right? Aye, but there's the rub: I can't get

NetworkManager running on my Mandrake 10.1-laden Thinkpad.


Toto, We Don't Have Setup.exe Anymore...


Most Free Software is crafted in the time-honored fashion of standing

on the shoulders of giants. Your typical Linux system comes with

hundreds and hundreds of code libraries on it--shared code that can

perform all sorts of low-level functions. You name it, and there's a

system component hanging out on your hard drive that can do it.


So if you're a Free Software hacker and you want to build an app like

Graveman or NetworkManager, you begin by finding out what the system

already knows how to do. In the case of Graveman, author Sylvain

Cresto began by working with components on his system that know how to

do things like read MP3 files, burn data to a CD, and more. To grossly

oversimplify for just a moment: The work involved in building Graveman

is to a large degree all about getting existing system components to

play nice with each other and with a newly crafted, attractive

interface.


When I downloaded Graveman, it came in the form of source code.

Cutting-edge versions of most Free Software are distributed this way.

After you download the code, you compile it, and then you install it.

During the compilation process, the compiler hunts down all the system

components that the new application will need in order to get its work

done. If a given component is missing, or isn't the

latest-and-greatest version required by the app you're trying to

compile, then the compilation will fail.


When this happens, you have a choice to make: Either track down and

install the needed component, or give up. Sometimes installing the

necessary component will require another download-and-compile

procedure, which may itself reveal another missing (or antiquated)

system component. If this sounds like a potential snowball effect,

then I've explained it adequately.


Consigned to Dependency Hell


The situation I just described is what longtime Linux users refer to

as "dependency hell"--and it's dependency hell that keeps me from

enjoying NetworkManager on my Mandrake machine. In my particular case,

attempting to compile NetworkManager generates an error message saying

my copy of the "wireless-tools" system component is too old. However,

the version I've got installed is the one supposedly required by

NetworkManager. I banged my head against that wall, trying various

bits of trickery I've learned during my six years with Linux, for a

couple of hours before finally (sigh) giving up.


I have two options. First, I can wait, hoping that some kind soul with

far more geek credentials than I will figure out how to make

NetworkManager compile on Mandrake. At that point, said kind soul may

make a binary (that is, precompiled) NetworkManager package available

for Mandrake. This sort of thing happens all the time: I am running

Gnome 2.8 on my Mandrake 10.1 machine thanks to the hard work of

another kind soul who posted some carefully crafted binary packages.

(Mandrake 10.1 comes with Gnome 2.6, not Gnome 2.8.) My second option

is to wait for Mandrake 10.2, lobbying Mandrake in the meanwhile to

include NetworkManager in that release.


Sure, there's a third option: I could spend a whole weekend getting

NetworkManager to work. I might very well meet with success. But there

are too many better things to do with a weekend.


This Beagle Can Fetch


Some folks say that Free Software is perennially in catch-up mode, and

that it takes the profit motive that's inherent in the commercial

model of software distribution to generate actual innovation. When you

take a look at the Gnome desktop, you see some signs of this alleged

weakness, with CD burning and wireless handling being just two

examples of missing pieces that ought to be there by now.


Elsewhere in the Free Software universe, however, innovation blossoms.

Consider, for example, the Firefox browser from Mozilla, the first

innovative Web browser of the 21st century:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967417/0/


There has been a lot in the tech press lately about desktop search,

what with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo releasing apps that live on

your machine and help you locate your own precious data.


In this context, it is gratifying to see the Free Software community

produce a tool as promising as Beagle, the forthcoming desktop search

tool for the Gnome desktop:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967987/0/


Enter a search term, and Beagle combs through your e-mail, your

documents, your instant message history, your media library, and more,

looking for related information. I wish I had Beagle running on my

machine today, but I smile to note that I am likely to see Beagle ship

as part of my Linux distribution of choice long before my friends

running Windows see any analogous tool built in to their own operating

system.


Catching up? In some respects, yes. But in other respects, my Gnome

desktop is every bit as cutting-edge as anything else I could install

on my Thinkpad. And it's getting better all the time.


Have a question or comment? Write to Matthew Newton:

freeagent*pcworld.com


Read Matthew Newton's regularly published "Free Agent" columns:

http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/239109/0/



===
"You can easily judge the character of a man by the way he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-- Goethe
 
P

Peter Seiler

Ablang - 15.01.2005 05:03 :

December 29th, 2004



Free Agent: Getting Better All the Time


Editorial Applications Devel. Mgr. Matthew Newton


One of the Gnome desktop's biggest weaknesses is the lack of a serious

CD burning application. Yes, there is a rudimentary-yet-elegant

[...]

why shows your posting always a blank line after each line within my
Netscape-Client? This way your postings double the number of transferred
lines each time, making reading your posting slightly uncomfortable -
further in every reposting :-( This description does NOT occure with
"normal" postings here.

(PS: In general I know the functionality of PGP)
 

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