Debian and GNOME, partnership with Helixcode?
I assisted today to a conference by Miguel de Icaza here in Madrid,
it seems he is running a new business namde Helixcode
(http://www.helixcode.com) which will be working for GNOME. In the
conference he said that the GNOME developers do not want to make debian
packages because "they are too difficult". But he also did not understand
why distributions carry out old version of GNOME.
I have taken a look at
http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/packages.php3 and it seems they are only
giving away rpm packages. I wonder two things:
1.- what is the current status of GNOME in Debian? I checked in
packages.debian.org/gnome and:
debian-frozen helix
gnumeric 0.47 0.48
libgtop 1.06 1.07
gtop 1.05 1.05
gnome-print 0.10 0.12
gnome-media 1.0.51 1.0.51
gedit 0.5.4 0.6.1
gnome-core 1.0.55 1.1.5
pan 0.7.6 0.7.6
control-center 1.0.51 1.0.51
gnapster 1.3.5 1.3.6
glade 0.5.5 0.5.7
dia 0.83 0.84
gnome-gv 0.82 0.82
gmc 4.5.42 4.5.42
gnap 0.1.5 1.3.6
pim 1.0.55 1.1.3
xchat 1.4.0 1.4.0
gnomeicu 0.90b 0.90b
gimp 1.0.2 1.1.7
gphoto 0.3.5 0.4.3
gaim 0.9.10 0.9.10
imlib 1.9.8 1.9.7
I have not checked development libraries, and the results might be
wrong... Mos of the packages are up to date with the GNOME versions, worthy
of note on the other side, however, are gimp and gnome-core.
However it seems Debian 2.2 will be more GNOME ready than any other
distributions. There seem to be however the idea in GNOME (at least Miguel
has it) that Debian packages for GNOME are not uptodate/available.
It seems that helix distributes some packages not yet in Debian but
IMHO there are also a lot of gnome programs (from http://www.gnome.org I
suppose) that have been included in Debian but are overlooked in Gelix.
2.- Maybe Debian could do something in order to make easier for GNOME
developers to build Debian packages... where is really the barrier for
making Debian packages?
3.- Debian possibly needs more promotion regarding people in Helix, thy seem
to be working with RedHat and making their own packages instead of using
Debian and the packages already available!
How about talking with Helix to become a Helix Desktop Partner? (see
http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/partners.php3)
Just my 2c
Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña
Debian GNU/Linux developer
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