Re: gnome vs ximian

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

>   What is the diff. between gnome and ximian?
>   I would like to know the advantages and disadvantages of them too.

Gnome is Gnome is simply the desktop environment. People contributing
to the project usually releases only source packages (not 100% true).

Ximian is company which employs a bunch of Gnome hackers. Since source
packages are somewhat useless until they're compiled, Ximian also
builds binary packages for the general public - all these packages
together make up what is called Ximian Gnome.

The difference between Ximian Gnome and plain Gnome is that the former
is ready-to-use whereas the latter usually requires manual building.
Ximian also does some testing and integration among packages before
they release updates. And they provide a nice program for keeping you
up-to-date, Red Carpet.

They do, however, also add some Ximian blurbs here and there, but that
really isn't that intrusive.

Conclusion: feature-wise there shouldn't really be any difference
between vanilla Gnome and Ximian Gnome since it is the same software
(enhancements are supposed to go upstream like with all other
packagers, e.g. Red Hat, but of course the propagation may take a
little while). Except for the small Ximian specific things
(MonkeyTalk, a chat client in the help menus, is probably the most
prominent), of course. Choose Ximian Gnome if you don't want to go
through the hassle of installing and figuring everything out by hand
each time a new package is released.

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://sunsite.dk/olau/