dang, consider adding [2001] to the title? This is a long-defunct company.
Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
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Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Probably by joining elementary OS: https://elementary.io/
Or instead of Linux they could join something FreeBSD-based, like ravynOS https://ravynos.com/ > We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD. Imagine former Apple employees joining them! That’d be so awesome!
Other players as well:
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#33Very cool to learn where my Linux file manager GUI app came from. One point that is light on details in the wiki was what exactly their monetization plan was or if they even had one at all? It sounds like they wanted to integrate business/enterprise features and support, or perhaps features that plug into other internet services that they could possibly monetize. It sounds like the "network user experience" with "Eaz…
They wanted to be Dropbox before Dropbox.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#34As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would…
> if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Probably by joining elementary OS: https://elementary.io/
Elementary's aesthetics are in the right place, but Pantheon is probably too closely coupled with GNOME to allow the degree of freedom such a group would desire. Depending on GTK, which has become well known for pulling rugs from underneath devs using it, is also a liability.
Considering these things I believe such a group would be best served by starting their own DE project and likely writing their own UI framework with first-class C bindings, because while Qt doesn't break things as often as GTK does it's restrictive in the languages it can be used with.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#35Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#36This post brings back memories from when Windows dominated the market, and many online sites—e.g., Slashdot—talked about the "year of the Linux Desktop." (Sadly, in 2024, the closest thing to the year of the Linux desktop is Android.)
I tried multiple Linux DEs at the time. I also remember "Helix Gnome" (later renamed to Ximian). I also remember that Helix Gnome used icons created by a person with the "Tigert" user alias. His icon designs were terrific and greatly influenced all the later Gnome icons.
The main Gnome problem at the time was stability: Nautilus and Helix Gnome generated core dumps constantly. At that time, I switched to KDE for my daily work (I loved KDE's architectural consistency) and later to Xfce.
In retrospect, as a user of Linux DEs at that time—nowadays, I use macOS—the KDE vs. GNOME "fight" didn't help. KDE had a more stable code base but lacked a polished UX. GNOME had the investment of a few companies (like RedHat, Ximian, Sun, and later Canonical) that improved the visuals and UX over time, but its internals were a mess.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#37I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
At the time, there was the pervasive notion that a business didn't need to make a profit to be valuable as a public company, as long as it had a large number of loyal users. The practical issues of how to make a profit were almost ignored for most companies of that era. So it is not surprising to see that a company creating a new file explorer would be consider valuable, especially if that browser made lots of people switch to Linux (something that many people believed to be possible).
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#38> Susan Kare designed new vector graphics-based iconography, having designed the original Macintosh icons > […] > On March 13, 2001, Eazel simultaneously launched the first release of Nautilus (version 1.0), and laid off most of its 75 employees in an attempt to secure funding in its final few months. > […] > The Nautilus file manager was received positively, and has been incorporated into GNOME since GNOME version 1…
Who designed the icons in MacOS up to Mavericks and iOS 6? Those were IMO the peak icon design on Apple devices. Would be great to hire that person for some Linux UI.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#39I was not involved in this in any way other than being an avid Linux user, but I remember it quite well. A very popular conversation among Linux nerds in the early 2000's was, "what if this thing actually takes off?"
There were quite a few Linux-related start-ups around this time that were fueled by dollars from the dot-com boom. As is the usual story, Eazel had same "hire people now and figure out how to make money later" strategy that caused the bubble to burst. There were quite a few high-publicized commercial ventures into the Linux space around this time: Ximian, Corel Linux, VA Linux. Others that I'm forgetting.
As to the software, when it was new, Nautilus was absolute garbage. It was memory-hungry, slow, and crashed often while doing perfectly normal things. Eazel had ambitious plans for it, but it didn't really stabilize into something useful until several years later after the community removed most of the bloat and it just became a regular file manager.