Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Revisiting the past

So the questions have been rolling in and so we decided to answer some of the questions.

First, why are we going back and revisiting the original GUI concept?  The fact is we improved upon it.  We had a lot of people that loved the original look and feel, Cris the GUI guy pretty much revamped everything from the Murrina engine, matching it up with the SVN version and highlighted the window controls more.  We here at PC/OS live by our mission statement, simplified computing and it appeared to many of us that we were getting away from that so we applied the brakes and said whoa.  Lets get back on track and thats what we did.  We went from ground zero and restarted.  While some loved some aspects of PC/OS 2009, we created a hybrid of that and the original design.  The single shelf with the original GUI concepts.

Second, why include GNOME.  Well there are a lot of GNOME users in the SMB and home office userbase who dont want to change to XFCE, so we included the GNOME desktop for those people and put it in the retail version.  Will we do a KDE release?  That is being undertaken by another developer who will be responsible for that branch.  When KDE 4 reaches that level of maturity to where I feel comfortable putting my name and brand on it it will be released.  Myself and that developer have come to that understanding and he agrees wholeheartedly.  The KDE release and the E17 release when that comes to fruition will be placed in the unsupported section of the FTP site.  Those developers will be responsible for those releases.  Just so we have an understanding only the retail release of PC/OS OpenWorkstation will have the GNOME desktop.  Open64 Workstation being also a retail product will have GNOME included.  OpenDesktop and Open64 Desktop if there is one will NOT have GNOME, you can easily go to the repositories and install it at your own free will.  The 2009v2 release ends the LTS releases and maintenance packs will be released for those systems.  Rolled up ISO's will happen only when/if Ubuntu 8.04.3 is released.  Maintenance Packs  only update core applications and base system, any other updates are the responsibility of the user.  PC/OS 10 will be based on the newer Ubuntu releases.  PC/OS 10 will be a DVD release with Multimedia Packs and Developer packs offered separately.  Integration will happen with the retail releases only.  OpenCore and WebStation are not affected and will remain CD ISO's.  Webstation is a Web 2.0 app release so only things like multimedia playback are handled offline.  We may consider Firefox for WebStation due to Gears support.  OpenServer 8.5 will be released over the summer with the next server release coming with the next LTS release.

Third, it seems like PC/OS is becoming serious business.  It is becoming very serious.  Our distrowatch ranking is going up and we take this seriously and will act responsibly.  We are accountable for our releases, we are accountable for the success, we are accountable for the quality and we take that very seriously and are not taking our standing lightly.  Feedback is very important so keep it coming.  Good and bad, we appreciate it all.  Right now we have grown to 7 developers, with 2 only being responsible for KDE and E17.

Lets get crackin.

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