ALS and an observation

[Cory Watson <gphat cafes net>]

Just got home from ALS (which bygolly my information said the the floor
opened @ 11:00, not 11:30!!) with a bag of goodies and thought Id for off
a mail with a few observations.

I roved around the floor today and saw a huge number of computers running
linux, most of which where running KDE, not GNOME.  I was kind of
disappointed.  I stopped by the GNOME booth a time or two, and would've
introduced myself to the name tags I recognized, but those of you who were
there were often engaged in conversation, and the one time I saw Elliot
tinkering on a box, he looked as if he had had an ample dose of
'people-lookin-over-my-shoulder' syndrome;)  So I wandered a bit more,
almost bought your book Havoc, but there were too many people cluttering
at the book booth  when I had the motivation to buy it, and postponed, and
ended up not getting it;)

My ideas for why GNOME was not getting the runtime that KDE got around the
room were pretty simple.  KDE looks busy when you run it the first time,
whereas it takes me 10 or 20 minutes to get my panel and themes setup in a
nice way.  The panel is boring looking by default!  KDE also seems to have
the reputation of the older sibling to Gnome, where I find them rather
equal on many levels.  (BTW: any of you who got a bag from the ALS read
the article about KDE and GNOME by the Hughes guy in Linux Journal!  He
seems to believe we should consolidate with the KDE gents and make 1 big
desktop!  I wanted to stop by and ask him if I should tell the Debian,
SUSE, and Caldera guys to give up and merge with RedHat as well!  Or
perhaps we could all just make Windows better! I thought competition was
good!)

Also, maybe Im missing an application, but wouldn't it be rather simple to
write an app that would probe the RPM database, pull information about
relevant GNOME packages, and auto-update if necessary?  This would fill a
nice niche in GNOME, but maybe this app exists and I havent seen it yet.

There are two things that stop me from being a full-time Linux/Gnome user.
Photoshop and Eudora Light.  I can't find a substitute.  I enjoy Gimp, and
if forced too, I would prolly be able to convert, and sure Pine is nice,
but I love Eudora!  I can't find a mail client for Gnome that is DONE.
All of them have the features I want on todo lists;)  Perhaps Im missing
one?

Enough of my ramblings, it was a nice afternoon, worth the 3 hour drive;)
I probably wouldn't have said that at 4am when I was getting ready to head
out though;)

PS: Anyone else see that awesome tape backup system?  The one with the arm
that fiddled around and moved the tapes?;)