Slashdot Mirror
A Year of Linux
rar7 writes "See the whole year of Linux -- in all its many dimensions
-- on one interesting and informative page!" There's a ton of stuff on this page. Amazing how much happened in the last 12 months.
Anything critical missing?
You're right. Maybe we should impeach Linus and replace him with someone like Bill Gates, who says -
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> any window manager my grandmother has to first compile is not innately "user-friendly"
You're absoultely right. I wouldn't use any window manager your grandmother has to compile either. I don't even know how to contact her to do it, and in any case she probably wants to be doing her own compiles, not mine.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
As the year 2000 limps to a close, the days when Slashdot's name was at the tip of every tech pundit's tongue, and Linux's rise to world domination seemed a foregone conclusion, are suddenly long gone. The prominence of free software in the tech and financial press has sharply declined. I mean, you know the buzz is fading fast when media outlets become so bored that they can't even muster the energy to harp on the declining stock prices of Linux companies. Sure, the dot-com downturn is responsible for a lot of the deflation, as is the normal news cycle that treats yesterday's news as, well, yesterday's news, but was it really only a year ago that VA Linux was breaking all records for IPO debuts?
Linux as an adventure is coming to an end. That doesn't mean things won't continue to get better and better but the excitement of the last few years is gone. You can feel it on the web sites - Slashdot is shrinking back to its pre-post--Columbine size, except for flamebait articles about the election and such, and discussion areas on other sites (advogato, Linux Today) are empty.
Partly it's that the rush of new people juming aboard has slowed. You can only have the same "Oh yeah? Well, according to RMS, ESR says the GPL..." discussion so many times.
And there's nothing really new around the corner. Since I've been using Linux, there's always been some exciting new development to look forward to. Either software (KDE, the 2.0 kernel, glibc, Mozilla, Gnome) or political (IPO's, 'letters', squabbling egomaniacs). Now Gnome is running stably, KDE 2.0 is out, Mozilla and the 2.4 kernel will slink in the door like teenagers out after curfew. At least for me, the only thing I'm eager to see is Evolution. (Nautilus? Yawn.)
Basically, the 'world domination' stuff is over. Linux has settled into its niche - a major chunk of the server market and a desktop share that's too small to support boxed Quake releases or a commercial office suite.
Now if that doesn't get Slashdot some more page views... ;-)
- Still not made it to version 2.4 of the kernel
- Seen some amazing infighting between [Gnome & Kde | Mozilla lovers & Mozilla Haters | Everyone else]
- Still not become much easier to use, dispite promises to the contrary by [Redhat | SuSe | Corel | Linus | Alan Cox | Everyone ]
- Gained market share. Well, we think it has. We're still trying to count everyone...
- Gained some really great software. At least, it will once it gets out of [beta | alpha | pre-alpha | planing | the mailing list ]
Wow. What a year! Just wait until next year, when, um, all the above may still apply actually...Note for humour impaired. This is a joke! Well, some of it may have a point, but thats for you to decide
Syllable : It's an Operating System
January : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
February : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
March : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
April : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
May : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
June : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
July : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
August : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
September : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
October : Linus : Sorry, folks, 2.4.0 won't be out this month
November : Linus : Sorry, folks. I just extended my family. 2.4.0 won't be out this year
> Anything critical missing?
Yes. In additon to their other mentions of Netcraft surveys, they failed to remark on the Netcraft report from a few months back which reported that Linux was running 30% of all the Web servers they detected, after applying an algorithm intended to filter out ghost sites.
That put Linux in the #1 position, edging out Microsoft's line by around 1-1/2%.
This is a landmark event, and I regret that Netcraft has not seen fit to report the usage trends in server OS regularly.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade