Linux in 2004?

An anonymous reader writes "John Terpstra and Eric S. Raymond have started the ball rolling on LinuxWorld's poll of the community for what they think will happen in the world of Linux in 2004. Terpstra says 'I predict that during 2004 at least one significant USA government body will adopt Linux on the desktop.'" Depending on how you define "significant", this has already occurred.

Comments

US Gov't on Linux

[CompMD]

The NSA has their own spiffy modified linux kernel which is actually pretty nice. I haven't had any problems with it. Interesting how they won't say if they actually use it internally or not. With budgets the way they are I don't doubt that there will be some significant moves toward putting linux on the desktop of government officials in the near future. In fact, I bet there are lots of folks in the FBI computer crimes division that would be pretty happy to see that happen.

Re:Apt

[mhesseltine]

Agreed. The power of apt isn't necessarily the tool, it's the repository that apt connects to. After all, it's the thousands of packages that are tested against each other that creates a cohesive system.

My thoughts...

[danielrm26]

# Which Linux application area do you believe will grow the fastest in 2004?

If not strictly meaning desktop applications, I'd say overall infrastructure. Web servers, mail servers, etc. And this will take place mostly in governments that can't afford MS licensing (it's already happening).

# Will 2004 *finally* be the year when Linux makes significant in-roads on the desktop?

No. The new X movements are just now gaining momentum, and it will take quite a while before it starts really biting into MS marketshare. I'd say 2006 maybe, like a previous poster. And that's *if* things go well.

# Which distributions will show the greatest growth in 2004?

I'd say Fedora (corporate), Knoppix (safety of cd distro), and Gentoo (great distro, great community).

# Will the SCO debacle slow Linux adoption over the next year?

No. I think it will die soon. It is just a matter of time before the whole thing is brought before a judge who is able to sort through the SCO lawyer crap, and when that happens, they'll throw the whole thing out.

# Will Tux finally get a girlfriend?

Yes. The hottie in Matrix 3. (he can have anyone)

# Or, make your own question(s) up...

Q: What is the single most annoying thing about the Linux community?
A: Irrational trash-talking about Microsoft. There are plenty of *rational* ways to criticize them, and people should stick to those arguments rather than ranting on and on about the same old tired issues. At some point the Bill Gates and Blue Screen jokes just lose their luster.

Not him again!

[benna]

While ESR seems to be very zealous and into the (GNU)/Linux scene, he's it's worst enemy. While Microsoft may spread FUD, people look at this guy and "wtf is this idiot doing? what's he talking about?" if i didn't know better, i'd avoid linux for the sole reason i wouldn't want to be associated with that nut.

Never happen until...

[ratpick]

Openoffice file conversions from MS Office work better. Yeah, they work pretty well now, good enough for probably 99% of files/users, but that small portion left creates a lot of headaches. Like it or not (I certainly don't) MS Office is the standard, and office app file compatibility is an absolute requirement for widespread adoption of Linux OTD.

Re:My Bet Is On 2006

[Billly Gates]

I personally think it will never happen. Remember the past stories about the NSA using and giving away software for linux?

Well Microsoft threw a fit and is one of the biggest lobbiests. They pressured dozens of senators with the phrase "Lost jobs" and "Communist" and they wrote legislation to ban code being release to the GPL and Linux at the NSA. Now are tax dollars are used to buy copies of Windows to help Microsoft.

Gotta love corporate influence.

Other governments its a different story because they are not all whores like ours.

Beg to differ, my own predictions:

[Florian]

• Which Linux application area do you believe will grow the fastest in 2004?

  Conventional, but probably true answer: servers. There are still many companies running standard services like mail, web etc. on proprietary operating systems (Sun, Microsoft) in a time where it makes no whatsoever sense anymore. With kernel 2.6, Linux will gain acceptance as a high-end Unix replacement and be deployed wherever older server installations need to be replaced.

• Will 2004 *finally* be the year when Linux makes significant in-roads on the desktop?

  No. The desktop UI is still too inconsistent across KDE/Qt, Gnome/GTK, Mozilla/XUL and Openoffice and still offers no viable alternative to the commandline when it comes to system administration/configuration.

  I predict that in 2004, attention will move away from KDE and Gnome as all-in-one-solutions. Instead, it will be finally accepted as reality among developers and users that different GUI APIs will continue to coexist, and that efforts should be made to standardize the protocols and user interfaces across the APIs. For the future of GNU/Linux and *BSD on the desktop, freedesktop.org will be much more important than kde.org and gnome.org, but it could take five-ten years until the difference between a KDE/Qt, GTK/Gnome, Tcl/Tk, Fltk program will be as irrelevant to users as the difference between a Carbon and a Cocoa app on MacOS X or as that between a Microsoft MFC program written in C++ or an OWL-based program written in Borland Delphi for a Windows user.

  Once this level of standardization is reached, the importance of all-in-one desktops like KDE and Gnome could dramatically decrease, since users instead could combine components like taskbars, window managers, file managers and system menus at will. (Which, thanks to freedesktop.org, is already possible: fspanel / fbpanel / suxpanel / the xfce4 panel can be used as drop-in replacements for the Gnome panel, rox / xffm4 as drop-in replacements for Nautlius, and the list of freedesktop.org-compliant window managers suitable as replacements of metacity / kwin is endless.)

  However, it will take yet another five years until 2013 or 2014 that a standardized Unix/GNU/Linux/BSD desktop will allow developers of system components (like sendmail/exim/Postfix/qmail, lpr/cups, Samba, Grub/Lilo...) to write GUI configuration panels for their own software. At the moment, desktop projects like KDE, Gnome/Ximian and Webmin can only provide insufficient configuration wrappers around low-level system tool; the only sane solution is that such GUI configuration panels are provided by the original component developers in sync with their release schedules, and will work consistently on any GUI configuration (as opposed to the present situation where a configuration panel would have to be provided in separate versions for KDE, Gnome, XFCE, webmin and what-have-you). Only at this point, GNU/Linux will be able to replace commercial end-user GUI operating systems on a large scale and be accessible to home users.

• Which distributions will show the greatest growth in 2004?

  Contrary to what Eric S. Raymond says: The unclear situations of RedHat/Fedora and SuSE (after it has been bought by Novell) could create a strong push towards Debian as the standard binary (GNU/)Linux distribution. The Debian core distribution could become a de-facto-replacement of the disappointing "Linux Standards Base (LSB)", as more and more (commercial and community) distributions will be based Debian. Knoppix, Lindows and, in the near future, User Linux are prime examples. Debian itself will gain more acceptance in the mainstream and among new users as soon as it will ship with the new installer.

  Given the record of Netscape/Mozilla's, StarOffice/OpenOffice's and Apple Darwin's transformation of corporate into public development projects, I doubt that RedHat/Fedora will ever become a true community project. It is also being overlooked that the equation RedHat=Linux is specific to the U.S. only