“The two big star apps of the GNOME 1.4 release are Nautilus,
the new file manager from Eazel; and Evolution, the mail
client/PIM. Falling in behind the apps (from an end-user
perspective) are the GNOME-VFS libraries, which provide a way for
GNOME apps to easily access virtual file systems (like you find in
archive files of various sorts), and bonobo, the GNOME component
libraries. It looks like Evolution is going to arrive later than
the general GNOME 1.4 release by a notable stretch, even as
Nautilus is scheduled to come in on March 5th, several weeks ahead
of the rest of 1.4.”
“The real heartache for “Joe Casualobserver” in the march to 1.4
has centered around the fact that there’s no easy way to see
Evolution and Nautilus running alongside each other much of the
time, largely owing to conflicting bonobo version dependencies,
though the GNOME VFS libraries have seemed to cause a little
heartburn here and there. An Eazel developer I spoke to recently
promised to “help Ximian have a soft landing into GNOME 1.4″ when
they finally ship Evolution, which was an awfully friendly thing to
say. I’m sure the folks at Ximian are looking forward to a helping
hand.”
“Ximian and Eazel form an interesting pair in the GNOME world.
Most people paying attention to the two companies are aware of some
cultural differences between the two, which will make competition
between the two businesses all the more interesting. Once they’re
done going along to get along to make a complete GNOME 1.4, there’s
a lot of room for strangeness with the companies’ plans to make
money on the new Open Source mantra: services, services,
services.”