[400] in Athena User Interface
Re: Fwd: Re: Beta, system, and usability testing, p.s.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Susan B. Jones)
Fri Sep 8 08:56:32 2000
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Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 08:56:28 -0400
To: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@mit.edu>
From: "Susan B. Jones" <sbjones@MIT.EDU>
Cc: jlittell@mit.edu, kcahill@mit.edu, aui@mit.edu
Thanks, Chris.
Here's another bigger question. I had thought that we might try testing
next week, but from Andrew's e-mail last night, that doesn't sound very
likely.
Can someone help me with the timetable? I will be tied up with the
conference I'm chairing from September 18 until October 1, so I really
would like some clarity on the calendar.
And yet ANOTHER question: how does one attach or add a course locker (say)
using the gnome menus? Have I missed something?
By the way, I would like to have input on the icons, but will be in touch
with Debby about this.
Susan
At 8:47 AM -0400 9/8/2000, Christopher D. Beland wrote:
>Hmm, forgive me if these have already been answered, but I don't think
>anyone has replied...
>
>> I think we should test on a Dell running Linux/Athena. It seems to be the
>> most stable setup, I can find and is definitley the zippiest. I just tried
>> it on Muhammed's Sun and it felt like mud. I tried to open Netscape and by
>> the time it showed up, I had opened at least two instances. Do you want to
>> have testers test for speed of use as well as ease of use at this point?
>> Or do you want to wait for a later test?
>
>Right now, the system is running out of the aui locker, but by the end
>of IAP (I hope?) we'll actually be part of the Athena release itself,
>which will impact performance in various ways. So, testing for speed
>right now isn't necessarily a good idea.
>
>We can artificially speed up the test machine by logging in ahead of
>time and starting various programs, so that they'll be cached on local
>disk.
>
>
>> Actually for what platforms are the gnome people designing?
>
>Well, there are pre-compiled versions at gnome.org for Solaris 2.7 and
>Redhat 6.2, among other platforms. (Though from what I've seen, the
>project does tend to be somewhat Linux-centric.) The only Athena
>platform not represented would be IRIX. Making Gnome-Athena work on
>IRIX has been significantly more work, for which I cannot take any
>credit. 8)
>
>> Here's another question. My understanding is that the AUI is ?
>> particularly aimed for occasional cluster users. Are there plans to
>> replace all or most of the cluster computers with Linux/Dells? Or
>> will it be more or less the same mix as now. If that's the case, I
>> foresee a problem.
>
>All of the SGI machines are supposed to be out of the clusters by
>2003. If I understand correctly, the proportion of Linux machines
>will increase, but there will always be more than one platform.
>
>If what you're getting at is the performance difference, I'm sure that
>Sun hardware will continue to get faster as newer machines make their
>way into the clusters, as well.
>
>Hopefully we'll be able to fix the Solaris (and IRIX?) Gnome-Athena
>release, at least, so that it's no more buggy than the Linux version.
>::crosses fingers::
>
>-B.
