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The State of GNU/Linux in 2002: It was Good.

Posted by michael on from the well-duh dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This year has proven most interesting for GNU/Linux. While there was not any amazing surprises, there were numerous events that are noteworthy for review. The upshot to all of this is that most of what happened was good overall for the Free Software community. Read the full story."

17 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. just good? by SHEENmaster · · Score: 5, Funny

    It rocked! Then again: I'm using Debian/Woody which is about a year old so I wouldn't know...

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
  2. Fonts That Don't Suck! by occamboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To my mind, the best thing, and it's a biggie, is that we finally have a distribution (Redhat 8.0 -- perhaps others?) that, out of the box, renders fonts so that they look good to non-nerds. This is the first step towards bringing Linux to the masses!

    Next we need to radically cut the number of choices that the average user needs to make at install-time (Gee, which of the following 87 libraries should I install? And what the hell is a library anyway?)

    If some entity (Redhat? IBM?) just grabs the bull by the horns, we'll have a good Windows replacement in a few months! Pleasepleaseplease somebody do it!

    1. Re:Fonts That Don't Suck! by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is a huge line several miles wide between what is useful for servers and what is/could possibly be useful for desktops. Unfortunately, this line is so wide most people would fail to notice it even if they hit said line head first. I often see that so called "desktop distros" include stuff such as PERL, Apache, MySQL, PHP, ProFTPd... What the hell would one random computer user do with these programs? And with "random computer user" I mean those kind of people who do nothing about security at all, double click everything that contains the word "naked" "nude" or the name "anna kournikova" and their parents/ofspring/aunts/cousins/grandparents/lovers /mistresses/pets, you name it. I'm not even going to mention out-dated FTP/HTTP/SSH servers that might be exploited because random users don't ever update or turn off programs... ("But I like having so many programs running...")

      On the other hand, we have so called "professional" distros that are far better. If you want to use them as a desktop, sure, click anything you want. Server? Just select everything you want for that one. However, these distros will never be destined for the normal user ("Where is my mouse? Yes, I know it's on my mouse mat, just where is it on my screen!? GPM? Wha? Not in X yet?") unless installed and secured by one random friendly non-introverted Linux hacker from around town...

      So, get rid of all the stuff people never use on desktop distros such as Apache and the like. The people who DO use it prolly aren't happy with the default included package and will most likely build their own anyways. The professional distros are fine with me atm, no-nonsense and no marketeer buzzwords. (Yes, I just visited redhat.com)

      Although the one thing that could improve all of linux is the removal of X. God, it is SLOW, Windows 98 booted faster on my p300 with 64mb and this is an AMD at 1667mhz with 1024mb! While I haven't seen the source code myself (yet), I heard it is about as bloated and obscure as it is. Lose it, replace it with smaller, non-server client orientated graphic systems. Random users want SPEED, not the ability to link up 100+ terminals to the computer.

      --
      Hate me!
    2. Re:Fonts That Don't Suck! by mbadolato · · Score: 5, Informative
      Hello Nitpick, PERL still is and always has been an abbreviation of "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language"

      Um, no it isn't. Right from the FAQ:

      What's the difference between "perl" and "Perl"?

      One bit. Oh, you weren't talking ASCII? :-) Larry now uses "Perl" to signify the language proper and "perl" the implementation of it, i.e. the current interpreter. Hence Tom's quip that "Nothing but perl can parse Perl." You may or may not choose to follow this usage. For example, parallelism means "awk and perl" and "Python and Perl" look OK, while "awk and Perl" and "Python and perl" do not. But never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym, apocryphal folklore and post-facto expansions notwithstanding.

  3. PDA Good || Server Bad by fozzy(pro) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many Linux users have been waiting for Linux to break out and start converting more users. Walmart certainly helped supporting Lindows, which i hope succedes as a desktop replacement. I think It's demize is the generally high price of the Subscription. In other light I know of schools and many other instutions switching to MS bassed mail systems due to ease of maintence and webacces they offer (Yes Many Linux solutions exist I like them myself). But a switch to MS Products is very bad for Linux on the server side...espically considering security issues as Windows is insecure.

    I agree ith the PDA article. I found the Sharp to be just as usefull as the Palm software and almost as easy as WinCE. I think the Small evices market could easioly be dominated by Linux because software for those devices needs to be customized by a manufacturer and the cost quickly becomes cheaper for manufacturers due to little to no cost for the Linux and abou tthe same cost to customize it as any other OS (ie Drivers for the hardware and customicing software).

    I hope the economy gets better
    Happy New Year

  4. next year will be better..... by oliverthered · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well if not for Linux, then for the users....
    Key projects are starting to mature and become more 'user friendly' which is important for the desktop usage Linux is missing.
    a few examples are:

    Desktop+ performance features have made it into the 2.6 kernel, things like pre-emption, lower larency, higher frequency clock, async-io, better threading, alsa.. All great news for desktop users.

    Support is under development for older video cards (often build into modern chipsets) in the DRI project, giving decient X performance to most users.

    KDE and GNOME had a lot of new features in the latest releases, the next couple of revisions should see the features maturing, with performance gains, more universality/intergration &co...

    CDRecord has added support for IDE drives (without having to run ide scsi) application like arson are making cd burning easy... all good news for the home user.

    Wine is comming along in leaps and bounds....

    Xine and Mplayer now work for more-or-less every format out there, hopefully next year will see Moz plugins.

    This year was good, next year will be better...

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  5. I think its amazing by pavera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've only been using Linux for about 1.5 years now, and it amazes me how fast things get better in the OSS world. I mean sure Linux has been around for 10 years so maybe that's not "so fast", but in the last year I've noticed huge strides.

    The first time I installed linux (redhat 7.1) it took me a few tries to get it to see my mouse, my laptop video card didn't play nice, my desktop sound card didn't get found and took like 3 weeks of teaching myself kernel compilation stuff to get it up and running, my desktop NIC was a hassle, and I thought the desktop choices were attrocious (KDE 2.2 and gnome 1.4 I Think...)

    Not to mention any software to do real work (Office apps, decent browser) or to have any fun (IM, Decent mail client) had to be installed after the fact requiring more compilations, and messing with the system...

    More recently I installed RedHat 8 on my desktop and laptop... Oh the beauty... Gnome 2 is a truly nice system if you ask me. the new theme is easy to look at (finally!!) All the apps I need (OpenOffice, Gaim, Evolution, Mozilla) are the defaults and are already installed. All of my hardware was perfectly and flawlessly recognized, even my wireless network card was setup during the installation (Shake a stick at that WindowsXP!).

    All in all, night and day, in 1 year its gone from taking 1-3 days to get a desktop linux system really ready for production to about 30 minutes... If the next year holds as many leaps and bounds of usability MS will be in dire straights soon.

    I have still done WindowsXP installs during the last few months that don't recognize all of the hardware in a box, especially wireless network cards (the linksys wpc11 most notably). Besides the fact that from a clean install of WindowsXP you still have to install all of the software (office, developement environment), it still takes at least 2 hours to get a windowXP box really ready for use, then another 4 to do all the updates it needs... (granted, it takes about 2 hours to download and install all of the redhat updates since the 8.0 release.. but it all happens in the background and doesn't require a reboot, while with WindowsXP and windows update, there are at least 4 updates that you have to download *alone* and then reboot after each one, meaning to do the updates, you are going to reboot 5 times and you have to babysit the box while the updates are happening, times reflect downloading on 1mbps DSL).

    In this users opinion, its been a GREAT year for OSS and Linux, and I hope it just keeps getting better.

  6. Q: Why is linux like sex? by Lord_Slepnir · · Score: 5, Funny
    A: Because Even when it's bad it's still good.

    A: Bill Gates doesn't get it.

  7. Other reasions why 2002 was great by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Other reasions why 2002 was great:

    Phoenix 0.5 - http://mozilla.org/
    Chimera 0.6 - http://mozilla.org/
    The Open CD - http://www.TheopenCD.org
    GNU Win II - http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html
    yEnc - http://www.yenc.org/

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

  8. Re:GNU/Linux? by glenstar · · Score: 5, Funny

    To see how rapidly GNU's alternative to the Linux kernel is moving along, look at the Initial GNU HURD announcent in 1991 and the last announcement. Note the following phrase in the last announcement:"Popular PC devices are generally supported." What a fantastic 12 years it has been for GNU!

  9. Who is kidding who? by Woodrow+Stool · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft has $40B in the bank and is still making money like they have a license to print it.

    The Linux vendors have fallen to beg mode, "please give us money or we will vanish" (Mandrake). VA Linux Labs, now VA Software (stock symbol: LNUX) says "We are in no way a Linux company - we are a proprietary software company". Red Hat made a $300K profit last quarter, first ever, on a market cap of about $1B, what a complete joke.

    Yes, yes, we have Apache, we have MySQL, we have numerous charity cases, but there is no way in hell that this has been a "great year" for Linux. If you can't make a buck, you can't eat, and sooner or later, you will stop breathing.

    In the meantime, Borg-like entities like IBM (for Christ's sake) are adopting Linux (should I say "swallowing up Linux"?) and this is somehow a twisted victory for "the cause".

    I want to throw up.

    1. Re:Who is kidding who? by Kunta+Kinte · · Score: 5, Insightful
      If you can't make a buck, you can't eat, and sooner or later, you will stop breathing.

      I think you're missing a big part of the picture.

      Financial advances are extremely important but aren't the only advances to take into consideration. All your arguments dealt with the "financial" state of linux and open source in general. Slashdot is a geek site, and so it's understandable that most people are discussing the technical changes for the year.

      In terms of technology, 2002 was an outstanding year for linux.

      Still, you brought up an important aspect few open source advocates are willing to discuss. That is, how does open source sustain its current growth?

      It is said that statiscally, by tomorrow or day after, Microsoft would have made more money than linux vendors make all year, given the market stays the same as it was last few years. That is, MS makes in 2 days what most linux companies make in a year. I hate to throw unchecked stats around, but even if this is remotely the case, then opensource companies have a long fight ahead of them.

      I believe open source users have to find ways to spend more on open source in the year 2003. Money is the life line of business, not good will. Yeah, it's free so why spend?

      Well if you "support" open source but you buy a dell desktop, a compaq ipaq, or you influence any buying decisions that acquire these things, then you all the open source advocacy is for nothing. Because your vote that really counts, your dollars, is going to Microsoft.

      --
      Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
    2. Re:Who is kidding who? by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Insightful
      [Some Linux vendors are struggling] ....and this is somehow a twisted victory for "the cause"


      Well, yes. Linux, like all open source software, is a cultural phenomenon, not a corporation, and so its success should be measured by how ubiquitously it is used, not by how much money any particular company is making or losing while trying to sell it.


      Your post makes no more sense than trying to judge the success of Microsoft based on how many people are working on the Windows source code.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  10. The best thing by jsse · · Score: 5, Funny

    happened for Linux in 2002 was that our boss put himself into this situation:

    PHB: "It's a well known fact that Linux is developed by a bunch of ameutars, a toy.", in a meeting with big Boss and many others, "There's no proof in saying that Windows server is unstable! Look at our file server, it hasn't had a single downtime since it started!"
    another non-PHB: "but sir, but your staffs told me that it's actually a Linux running Samba service."
    PHB: "Is it?!...."

    He should have talked to us more.

  11. And not just during the *install* by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But afterwards too. I've recently installed Mandrake 9.0 and it installs *seven* terminal programs. Seven? What on earth does the geekiest geek on God's green earth need *seven* terminal programs for?

    Here's the deal, either you don't give a damn and will use whatever default shows up in your prefered enviroment, or you have a fave that you just can't live without for some reason and you'll manually install it from the CD anyway. If you're that picky you're sophisticated enough already to handle this.

    If you're *not* that sophisticated the plethora of choices of terminal programs is at best confusing, and getting rid of the unwanted ones ( if you can even figure out which ones are unwanted, and why) may well be a somewhat daunting task.

    Because free software is free as in beer to the distro makers they can throw in everything including seven "kitchen sinks," so they do. This doesn't mean it's a Good Idea.

    I've got something of a rep as an Ubergeek in meatspace, but even I don't want a distro that just dumps the entire universe of software (including some pretty alpha stuff) on my HD just to prove it can.

    Here's what I want to see in a default desktop install. A choice of KDE or Gnome ( I use a couple of others as well, but I'm perfectly content to install those seperately after I'm up and running for a bit), ONE terminal, preferably the default for the enviroment. ONE office package, preferably the default for the enviroment. A basic collection of utilities and, well, that's about it.

    Clean, simple, and covering about 99.9% of all typical desktop funtions in one go, with no cruft.

    For a newb throw in a special section in the manual explaining that one of the things free software is about is choice, how the CD's offer them many extras to play around with if they want, and clear, simple directions on how to install, and *UN*install, them.

    Kinda like installing Windows, only better.

    Installing a system should be an additive process, not like hacking away at a mighty oak with a chainsaw to release the inner OS.

    Small is Beautiful.

    KFG

  12. Linux doesn't need money by David+Jao · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Your facts are all correct, but what you are forgetting in this instance is that free software, unlike commercial proprietary software, does not need corporate financial support in order to progress and improve.

    A commercially backed OS like MacOS or OS/2 or NextStep will die without corporate success, but Linux already has more developers working for it for free than MacOS or OS/2 or NextStep ever did for pay.

    The only way Linux and its free software friends will ever die is if laws like the SSSCA are passed to make it illegal.

  13. Linux: NEVER Ready for Prime Time on the Desktop by Dr.+Mu · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Linux continues its endless, asymptotic approach to desktop nirvana. Will it ever get close enough? I doubt it. The main problem for Linux's wide acceptance is a congenital failure of the free software model, namely, that there is too much ego and not enough subservience to a standard. I have a Redhat/Gnome box. I daily suffer at least six different graphical file selection paradigms of various capabilities and presentations. One lets me scroll with the mouse wheel; another doesn't. One lists files in strict ASCII order; another ignores capitalization when sorting by name. And none approaches the ease and uniformity of the Windows standard. Don't get me wrong: I think Windows is the OS from hell, reliability-wise. But at least Microsoft has the luxury of dictating to their programmers that they SHALL adhere to a common look and feel. That never can and never will happen with Linux -- or any product of a developemnt model that subjugates responsibility to freedom.

    The second big problem Linux faces is that its written by the OS-infatuated for the OS-infatuated. It very clearly lacks the "common touch". All I want is an OS that does what it's supposed to, then stays the hell out of my way. With Linux, I'm constantly tripping over piss-ant details and indiosyncratic quirks. The control is nice, and so is the ultimate reliability. But at what price? There's a line in one of the many HOW-TOs I've waded through that goes something like this:

    If you don't understand this, contact your sysadmin. If you are the sysadmin, God help you.
    God help us all!