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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.
I think this will be a(nother) great year for linux. Long live Open Source Software :)
...and not answering them himself.
4 8
t ml (predicted in Dec. 2000)
Windows will be obsolete when PCs cost less than $350: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/28/13242
MS monopoly to collapse in 6 months: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/13/216237_F.sh
I found the following intresting
"I think 2004 is going to be a big year for Fedora and Suse, and a challenge for Debian (because Fedora now offers apt for RPM)."
Well apart from the fact that apt for rpm has been around for a while and also debian packages usually come configured a lot better than fedora are aren't as buggy.
Of course with the recent Debian security breach things might not be that easy
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Partly because it will be my 10 year anniversary of using GNU/Linux... but practically, too.
/. article on that before.. that or linuxworld.com)...
I can't really put my finger on just why that year sticks out, but it does. I suspect that it will take a year+ for 2.6 to mature/be accepted to the point where most major distros are shipping it and most howtos are being written for it. I also suspect that both GNOME and KDE will reach another major version by 2006 (haven't checked their road maps... just hoping.) I also hope that device support will continue to grow as it has, configuration tools will mature more, and the "your mama" test will be more easily passed. I doubt all that will happen in the next twelve months.
As for what I think COULD happen? I think a major U.S. gov't agency could start putting GNU/Linux into major use. I think we will see a lot more adoption abroad. Maybe even a first world national government promoting it in some way. I understand GNU/Linux desktop usage will top Mac desktop usage (was a
Now I'm just rambling. This made very little sense. sorry. It is 2:30 AM EST... I'm going to bed.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
It's not about having "good enough" software. It's about having feature-for-feature replacements that are open and secure. It isn't enough that sendmail, procmail, spamassassin, ical, etc. can be put together to implement most of the MS Exchange features; it's going to be the drop-in replacement that drives adoption.
Once people are used to using the drop-in replacements, they will be able to migrate away from closed and proprietary solutions. Until the drop-ins are available, Linux will not make huge inroads. (all IMHO, of course)
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
I think that there will be at least three computers in my house with Linux installed on them... Oh wait...
Depending on how you define "in my house", this has already occurred.
DRM will have been adopted (albeit forcibly) in the kernel to cope with the Fritz chip. We'll be on about kernel 2.6.4 or thereabouts. KDE 3.2, possibly even 3.3, will have been released, and GNOME will be up to about 2.8, maybe 3. Around 15 governments will have taken on Linux in some way or form. MS's FUD is beginning to weaken.
:)
And there are still Soviet Russia jokes on Slashdot.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
I thought that DOD went out and purchased 10000 licenses of Star Office from Sun... Weren't those for Linux? Or were they for winders?
Maybe having Linux being "good enough for government work" isn't exactly the image we want Linux to have. Just like I think having Linux on cheap, disposable, sub-par computers from places like Wal-mart may not be the best thing either.
The real goal is to have people see Linux as a viable alternative, not a cheap Windows imitation or some eccentric thing the government uses.
I see a year of peace for everyone and linux....errmm except, may be
Darl and gang.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
I really hope this isn't a troll. If so, sorry for feeding. Google for Linux PDA
There was a company that made one called the VX3 IIRC. And, of course, there's the Sharp Zaurus. I also think that you can get Linux to run on the ARM based PDAs, such as the iPAQ, HP Jordana, etc.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
accepted to the point where most major distros are shipping it and most howtos are being written for it
I think it won't be read until howto's are a thing (primarily) of the past.
Quack, quack.
# 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.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
10) certen people will still froth at the mouth if you don't stamp GNU in front of it
9) people still won't spell well on slashdot
8) Bill Gates will spread FUD
7) A slashdot poster will get sued by David Lettermen for top ten copyright violation
6) Microsoft will announce that Linus T. uses windows. This will be true, except they will fail to add "to look out of."
5) SCO will disappear.
4) A major exploit will be discover in Linux.
3) Apple will stop supporting anything they released in 2003.
2) DOOM III will be released for Linux.
and the number one thing that will effect the linux world: You.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was really starting to miss your witty editorial commentary.
I think I speak for everyone here when I say "welcome back!"
Lets face it, they totally miss the reason I use Debian instead of the others, frankly, I don't even use Apt on Debian. It is a nice feature to have when you actually want to use it from time to time.
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.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
Unfortunately, I think that all this SCO garbage is going to have an impact in the data center. I don't think very many CIO's are going to be jumping to adopt Linux. Even though it's all a bunch of bullshit it's still a risky move until all this blows over. No one wants to become a target for some sue-happy company that can't compete in the current market if it can be avoided. No flames please. Just imagine a CIO pitches Linux as a huge money saver. Then by some insane turn of events SCO wins and charges $699 a cpu. That cost-saving move ends up costing 3 times as much as before. It's a risk not everyone is eager to take. I may be wrong, but I just don't see Linux having huge success in the server market as long as SCO is still spouting off. In the long run I don't think this will have much of an effect on anything. Linux has made its mark and once things clear up I think many CIO's will consider it a very attractive option. On the other hand Linux has a huge opportunity on the desktop right now. The mainstream distributions are becoming more useable with every release. All the security nonsense with Microsoft can only help Linux as well. It seems like Windows never gets good press anymore and I'm not just talking about techie publications either. Every time there's a new worm it's on the front page of CNN. After people read enough of that they start to think maybe it's time to a less susceptible platform. Just my 2 cents.
I think there needs to be more unification and simplification over the way things are installed in , not only Linux, but the BSDs as well.
I think everyone agrees that rpms suck. Most of the good code comes in source tarballs - configurable for any *nix... but this is where the user experience falls apart. What person is going to want to dig out the command line to compile source code, and will he or she know about all the ocnfigure options... and then, will there be dependency issues (or should the source contain the dependencies too?). Then there are the legal issues of bundling dependancies... and then there will be future commercial Linux apps which won't want to include source code.
In an ideal world, packaged installs will be a compressed single file, containing all source code, configurable on any *nix like normal source code EXCEPT that now there's a graphical interface so that setting compile options, creating desktop shortcuts, and "Make clean, make install, make uninstall" now all work under X with a point-and-click.
PLEASE! Will someone serious about standardizing Linux installs do something about this... or desktop Linux will never take off.
The real influx of Linux is due to the hiring of university students. Push Linux in the schools, and it'll end up in businesses and the gov.
Like, say, Germany?
im sooooo gonna get modded to hell for this but, the #1 reason linux sin't going mainstream anytime soon is the community. its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness.
its been said before, and i'll say it again, until my mom and dad can run linux without calling me every day, and they can just install something or simply copy and paste from one app in X to another, linux is just gonna stay a hobbist/server OS.
sorry to say it, but its true, dont give me the "its more stable, its more secure" stuff, you're preaching to the choir here, especiallly at slashdot.
Linux isn't going anywhere for awhile, im sorry, you just have to deal with it.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
he business world is absolutely full of Linux on the desktop but it's the worlds best kept fucking secret.
I was hoping that thw world's best kept fucking secret would be something that involved sex. Perhaps in 2004 it will.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
Terpstra says 'I predict that during 2004 at least one significant USA government body will adopt Linux on the desktop.'
Not with Homeland Security showing how absolutely retarded they insist on being and going with WinXX. This is clearly not a security based decision, and any "significant" attempt to go counter to it will bring the HLS pseudo-spooks down by the thousands to protect their investments ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H The Nation.
michael sez: 'Depending on how you define "significant", this has already occurred.'
Pray tell, what agency might that be? In my years inside the beltway (up through less than 2 months ago) I didn't see any with any appreciable (let's define that as, say 5%) Linux desktops on desks. All I've seen, besides individuals setting up their own for number crunching, is piles and miles of MS systems "supported" by clue-deficient federal employess constantly in fear of replacement by contractors for extremely good reasons. Even NIH was mostly MS on the desks, and what wasn't was Macs. The necessarily more powerful research machines we used were often *nix, but these were not desktop machines.
Offering a secured version of Linux for D/L is not the same as an agency's internal deployment of same.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
First, the linux installer must be as easy as windows. Looking at the beginnings of the new Debian Installer, that is a definite possibility. They have the autodetection and the automation down. With a spiffy interface and maybe Synaptic in the installer that's about as easy as it gets.
Second the linux desktop has to surpass Windows XP in usability. They have the time to get this done. Longhorn is a long way off. Personally it would be nice to see some INNOVATIVE navigation ideas thrown around in the mainstream such as unified hotkey standards, radial pie menu in the window manager, and/or mouse gestures for launching commonly used applications (gesture down to open web browser, up for email) and common commands (down+left for copy, up+left for paste, for example). Maybe even mousewheel based window navigation instead of alt+tab.
Granted these things can be done now but not without some footwork. These need to be integrated into a "desktop" linux distribution like Lindows, Lycoris, or XandrOS. Somebody just needs to put them together.
Frequent tasks should require less keystrokes or mouse movement to accomplish. It isn't enough for it to be intuitive on where you should start to look for the document that tells you which clock does what. Less applications. Faster access and faster results.
Lower-education will be the short-term future of linux in my opinion. It's already hit the corporate server level, the governmental level, the ranks of high education, now what?
I've suggested to our [poor] school district that we should switch to Linux, using the old hardware we have, and they liked they idea but said it would be "too hard to implement". Oh, come now. I think that any kid could easily circumnavigate a Linux interface, especially if it is an easy one, like Mandrake 9.x or Lycoris! I sure would want my kids to learn Linux, and this is a cheap(free, actually) solution for those school districts that just can't seem to raise any money. In addition, get a good IT guy at the helm, fire all the low-waged IT guys who don't know what they're doing, and get that network running smoother than ever with Linux!
It's a SHOCK to me that school districts haven't at least started putting in an "Operating Systems 101" class in high school for everyone to learn about alternative OS's. Linux, Macintosh OS, Solaris, FreeBSD, UNIX, just imagine how much that would open up the minds of those kids!
I have FreeBSD instead, less people will think it's a nasty venereal disease.
Microsoft lobbies and donates to congressman so they may take exception to your ideas. Do you believe congressman care about budgets or campaign donations ?
Why are people so concerned with Linux on the desktop? Linux advocates should be spending all resources on making sure Linux keeps and expands it's adoption with the server. The desktop war is one that is long and hard and really Linux is not in a place right now where it can seriously compete with desktop offerings such as Windows or Mac OS X. What Linux does have going for it however is its fabulous server abilities. However great these abilities are, it cannot be overlooked Microsoft will keep spending more and more money to market their server options. Linux doesn't need some "validation" by being used as a desktop. Linux needs to keep improving as a server to make sure it stays superior to other server options. In time, the desktop may come. Until then, at least at this point, it is not something that is not too important. I only hope Linux keeps its focus and plays to its strengths.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
In 2004 Linux will be awesome - awesome to the max!
The owls are not what they seem
It seems like Linux on the desktop for the masses is always a couple years away.
In 1998, I was swearing up and down that by the beginning of 2000, some major PC manufacturer would be selling Linux-preloaded systems branded for comsumers in places like CompUSA. That obviously didn't happen.
For most of the last four years, I've been predicting that by the beginning of 2005, most people would be using open source operating systems (keeping in mind that that could be Windows, if Microsoft caught a clue in time). Doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Now it's looking to me like the first half of 2006 is when Linux use on the consumer desktop will move from the "early adopter" to the "early majority" phase. I say this because:
* It's virtually guaranteed that we'll have several more major deployments in 2004 and 2005. These might be specialized applications instead of general desktop, but that will help create demand for more general applications.
* If you read the "Roadmap to desktop Linux" posted earlier today, it's clear that several very cool and useful features will be coming to the Free desktop in the next couple years.
* OpenOffice.org 2.0 should be released in the first half of 2005, and it is planned to make development of add-ons much easier. This will hopefully help get more office-oriented vertical applications ported to OOo.
When all this happens over the next couple years, I believe desktop Linux will turn from a stream to an avalanche.
But still, we need consumer pre-loads with all hardware configured to work out of the box, and marketed well. Few people are going to buy a Windows-infested PC, then choose to replace Windows with Linux. This is probably the most iffy condition, but I think it will happen. Most PC manufacturers would do anything to break away from MSFT.
I can't stand using Windows now that I've gotten used to running Linux 2.6 (with the Andrew Morten patches).
Linux 2.6 is so much faster and more responsive than any version of Windows I've used.
However, the 2.4 kernel is still comparable to Windows in speed and most people don't have the time/knowledge required to upgrade to 2.6.
I think once 2.6 starts shipping with major distros we'll see more people talking about how much faster Linux is.
I've got a Dell Axim, I wish it was an IPaq because of the linux compatibility. Is the Sharp Zaurus worth getting? I really want/need a PDA to have Linux on it for various reasons. The axim was a gift and has major linux issues. Anyone have any recommendations?
I guess my one hope for this year is that end-user linux improves. I personally have two boxen operating right now, one linux, one windows. The windows one does exactly what I want, desktop related. It happens to be aggravating to deal with server-wise, which is what my linux box does. For example. I click and, three seconds (at most) later, mozilla comes up and I browse stuff. Yay.
For linux, I wait about 10 seconds at a minimum. I understand there is a 800mhz difference between the two processors, but this is just absurd. No, mozilla does not pre-load on either.
My sincere hope is that scheduling advances in the 2.6 kernel series will provide a much more usable interface. Java runs sooo much better on windows than it does on linux, and this is something that matters to me. I shouldn't have to renice -2 java so eclipse can have a decent reaction time.
other than that, the only way to go is up. let's hear it for all those developers who are trying to do the things I mentioned, and about a bajillion other things. Hats off to ya'.
Recursive (adj.): see 'Recursive'
Here's a question I'd like to throw out:
When, if ever, will there be a clear "winner" between Gnome and KDE for the average desktop?
When Linux takes over the desktop in a few years, will either one of them be the de-facto standard that nearly everyone uses?
Right now there's so much mindshare and development commitment in both, and it's hard to see when that will change. But I don't think it will last forever. Eventually one will have to give. Which one and how long will it take?
If you dominate the desktop, you can't innovate. The tech support costs of innovation quickly spiral out of control. This might change as more jobs are moved to cheap overseas labor, but I doubt it. OEMs don't like innovation because they have to field the calls when a user is confused. Software developers hate it because it means redoing code and distributing patches (and maybe trying to charge for patches, which really ticks customers off).
Microsoft's 'innovations' to the XP GUI weren't for innovations sake, they where to dumb things down. Microsoft isn't trying to be innovative, they're trying to get rich. While they're doing that, they'll happily let everyone else innovate.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But, remember around 1990~ or so that the reason that so many people went PC was for economic reasons? The .edu market slipped and fell into the corporate save a buck regime.
I think Sun may have a winner with the Java Desktop... though the Java in the desktop is suspect... it's Linux... You show people how to save money AND get the job done and they're converts...
We do still have to plug away at high performance in a few areas that make the most gains... Keep the storage, I/O, and a few emerging gadgets supported... The core of the computing experience... That's what wins users... I'm drunk... and I still make more sense than the general computing public.
Sure you can. You can do whatever you want because you dictate the terms. Even if people, OEMs and developers get pissed off at you, they'll still keep using your product because there's no feasible alternative.
they where to dumb things down.
You say that as if it is a bad thing?
The owls are not what they seem
I'm looking forward to 3 things in 2004:
:v)
Getting cut & paste unified between X apps.
Having Xface support in Evolution.
A 3D World/avatar interface to Jabber.
Everything else will just happen.
Vik
This battle is wagged routinely in the large government agency in which I work and won or loss based on how literally the oganization policy is interpreted. One of the versions of SUSE Linux has met the accredidation requirements as has Solaris and Microsoft 2000. Our distro of choice is Red Hat which has not made the cut to my knowledge. Just this past week we tried to deploy a Apache web server on a Linux system and were denied access to the intended network because of the accredidation issue. We ended up reloading with W2K and Apache, a workable but less desirable platform. NIAP accredidation is tedious and expensive but it is the price to play and needs to be done to gain widespread acceptance. I can't tell you how many times I've been told NFW to Linux on a target network when it's clearly the right choice.
2. Every time there is a story on
3. more Microsoft / SCO FUD
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
- Portage gives a corporate IT the most fine-grained dependency control protecting the consistency of installations within upgrades;
- Gentoo makes possible to compile everything from sources on a reference hardware, adapting by that to the last bit of any available performance optimization, and then distribute the compiled binares to compatible hardware cross the enterprise (using GRP for fresh installations and just shared
/usr/portage/packages for already installed systems);
- Gentoo (mostly thanks to Portage) represents really the next generation design of Linux distro;
As a side affect of that, Gentoo with Portage will help corporations to recognize Python as the next-wave language after Java.Less is more !
I bet the 2.6 kernel will be released... oh wait..nevermind.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
be made illegal for all intents and purposes. NO ONE in thier right mind can believe that the republicans in power would let the 3rd world get away with becoming independent of american interests [trans: "get away with not putting money in american pockets."]
With the DMCA, etc in place, and the current state of soft-ware patents in europe, I think it's safe to say that in 2005, the only ones who'll be left using GNU software will be outlaws.
Well i see Lindows selling more and more computers and substantial sales for their laptops. I also see the possiblity of myself either having one of those Lindows laptops, a normal laptop with debian installed, an AmigaOne with debian and AmigaOS4 or an Apple iBook with debian installed...
:) *wish*
Hrmm... The future is looking very much like debian. I see more desktop oriented linux distro's based on linux. I also see standard debian programs such as APT starting to be excepted by other distributors which will lead to the a standard front end for package mangement
Ummm...
Commercial Unix will suffer again whilst linux is triumphant in the server market. Linux will start to make inroads into desktop OS...
Kernel 2.6 will kick off a lot of new distros and the overall user experience will be improved!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Out of nowhere will come the killer office app that integrates word processing, spreadsheets and databases so they really interoperate nicely. (Think Improv, Access, and some quasi-wysiwyg word processor that works on xml schemas all bred together by a Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Brown and then make "easy" enough for the masses. Maybe even constraint propagation as the spreadsheet engine.)
A personal information manager will surface that enables us all to keep track of mail, favorite websites, IM buddylists, newsgroups and all that ephemeral, necessary information that clogs our bits and our neurons. (Ideally it will integrate with the above.)
Linux will finally have a sound system that works and without it being a pain to deal with.
A way to build and install kernels and modules that requires less than serious geekery to get to work.
Package management will mature enough that we wont have to chase dependencies manually, and so that packages will install cleanly.
A good dictation package.
A linux based PDA about the size of a paperback with handwriting recognition and (of course) all of the above.
Hey, I can dream, can't I?
there are two in question here, open source, and free software.
people in the free software community are not going away because of rms and his "obnoxious ethics"...and so what if people are being driven away from the free software community because of its raving visionaries? this should not effect a complete and seperate open-source community. remember it's the union of the two communities that is important here, and so long as there isn't some sort of net loss, things are ok. and keeping an elitist either-you-get-it-or-you-dont side AND a we-welcome-everybody side to the whole ordeal seems to me very logical and practical, especially for something that just sort of happened to self-convulse into being.
also remember, some of us are geeks...social grace, caring about what others think, and diplomacy play no time in my mind when bigger issues are at stake...and rms knows this more then anyone.
of course, mabye i misinterpreted something. i haven't met rms live yet, only seem breif interviews and clippings of him. but there's an fsf-associate meeting coming up, so who knows.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
[nt]
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Oh no wait - Windows has to do all this first.
Create a pool of Linux trained students, and they won't need 'conversion' to handle it in their workplace.
"I think everyone agrees that rpms suck."
Really? Who? Have you looked at the feature-list for RPMs? It has a *LOT* of good features that makes it a joy for packaging software programs. It's very well defined and easy to write spec file format(yes its nit-picky -- but that's good), package signing, package integrity checking(i.e. missing files), package querying, dependent lib checking, SRPMS format, idea of prestine sources, package roll-back(very cool), etc.
What sucks about RPMs is that rpm *installation* utilities are stupid. RPM was designed by Redhat as a format to install/upgrade distro-packages - so all dependencies would already be satisfied. Meaning you have to explicitly provide all dependent RPMs during installation. This is the part that sucks. The higher-level utilities are not smart enough to satisfy dependencies by themselves, and we experience dependency hell.
Using a tool like apt will solve this problem, but it doesn't know if a particular RPM is 'pure' or has been 'tainted'. A 'pure' RPM only uses libs/packages provided by the distro-vendor, while a 'tainted' RPM contains custom "external" dependencies. In the latter case, apt will not be able to figure out dependent RPMs without the user providing an additional repository. However 'tainted' RPMs are the fault of the packager - and it's the packager's responsibility for dependency checking -- not RPM.
Finally, many rpms cannot work interchangibly on different distros(i.e. SuSE and Redhat) or even across multiple vendor versions(i.e. RH9.0 rpm --> RH7.2). Who's fault is this: packager and rpmbuild for making package building too damn easy.
- A desktop offering hardware acceleration, scaling, blending, composition effects. There are promising extensions for X for this and they should be leapt on. But if means ditching X / a WM then so be it - QT / GTK are meant to be abstraction layers after all and X can run rootless on top of whatever-it-is if need be.
- A desktop where KDE / GNOME / dist homegrown tools are blended into a single cohesive entity. Not one with a generic KDE / GNOME slapped together with some weird tools (i.e. Mandrake). The desktop will be referred to as "the desktop" in all dialogs / apps and not KDE / GNOME / Drak / Yast etc. except in advanced documentation.
- A unified help system - one that offers one stop access to all man pages, info, html, READMEs, GNOME / KDE / dist help, all ordered in a task centric way with full search facilities.
- A desktop that offers to install additional apps (especially DVD, MP3 player etc.) in a user friendly manner click N run style during installation and at any time after. Even if there are legal reasons for not shipping MP3 on the CDs for example, the dist could still make it easy to find them remotely.
- A unified distribution neutral driver model with detection, installation / removal architecture. The situation at the moment with
getting a driver (or the hell of writing and supporting one) on Linux is a joke. Even a popular driver like NVidia involves screwing around at the command prompt and having a toolchain and kernel source if your dist is not directly supported.
- A unified theme engine. A single engine that any app, toolkit or WM can use to render buttons and decorations.
- Identification of every day operations and a UI to support them completely with no overlapping functionality. There should be no need for mere mortals to drop to the shell. Not even once. If OS X users can control a BSD derivative with a (single button) mouse then so can Linux. It doesn't mean Linux must be 'dumbed down', just that needless complication should be identified and removed / hidden from those who don't want to see it.
And most importantly:Well, try to exchange your OSs' hardware with one another, and you'll be amazed at how linux is suddenly faster, and windows slower.
Sometimes, I just can't understand some people's logic./p
Other governments are whores to the idea of womb-to-tomb socialized health care, medicine and social welfare. Which is worse?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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.
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
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Tinfoil Hat linux.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Gardner's genius deserves more respect than to be misquoted anonymously.
Whether it's Linux distributions, music, car mods, or anything else in its infancy, someone always feels the need to whine about it going "mainstream."
Justify your claim that mass usage will destroy the value of the Gentoo system, please. If something is intrinsically good, it remains so no matter how many people become familiar with it.
+++ATH0
In 2004, that trend will increase. If you've got a laptop, why not put Linux on it all by itself?
OK, some of you have your reasons, though making the jump and dealing with the problems (if any) is one way to get the ball rolling. Here are two resources to help out;
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Second the linux desktop has to surpass Windows XP in usability.
That is going to be the ONLY way that Linux will finally get the critical mass supports it needs for wide-scale desktop/laptop adoption.
Really, Linux in the near future needs the following:
1. True Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support for automated hardware detection and configuration. Hopefully, the final 2.6 kernel will incorporate this fully.
2. Driver support for all hardware (motherboard drivers, peripheral cards, devices plugged in through the USB 1.1/2.0 and IEEE-1394 ports) at full functionality of the hardware itself.
3. The equivalent of DirectX in Linux for easier programming of multimedia peripherals in Linux.
4. Improvements in OpenOffice so it can truly read and write in Microsoft Office 97/2000 formats fully.
5. Development of easy-to-use software to play back multimedia files, create new multimedia files (especially VCD, DiVX and DVD-compatible discs), and definitely easy-to-use programs to manipulate JPEG, RAW and TIFF files from digital still cameras.
I like the idea of different APIs, but first there needs to be a common desktop like Mac OS where it doesn't really matter what toolkit is being used, but where it can handle both, and they will look and handle the same.
This probably needs a base desktop API for handling things, but this would probably allow greater acceptance of a desktop linux, as users wouldn't have to be confused by KDE/Gnome differences.
Depending on the setup you're using, it may also be a factor of the server. At the university I work at we have a lab with more than adequate computers to run the latest linux distros, but have a hard time doing it, because of a poor, poor dying server. NFS isn't the best thing to implement when the server is already getting such a high load. Most likely, your lab is running NFS.
Meanwhile, while linux tries to infilitrate the government, the DoD is tyrying to infilitrate the linux. The DoD Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment is/was an initiative to to define a common software stack to run across multiple platforms that includes software installation, user management, and printing tools. When you talked about putting Linux on the DoD desktop, that used to mean having a DII COE stack for linux. This year DISA released a beta Linux COE kernel and then released the source code for it which can get from anonymous CVS. DISA has paired up with the OpenGroup to define a testable/brandable definition of COE. And there is a project to develop a platform independent COE stack from scratch.
Relevent URLs:
http://www.disa.mil/coe/kpc/linuxpc.html
http://gforge.freestandards.org/projects/qp-coe
http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/coe
http://opencoe.sourceforge.net
No. There seems to be this big delusion that somehow OpenSource has to rewrite virtually every commercial application.
Maybe commercial companies will port to Linux!! Oh no, you say, isn't that illegal by RMS's communist manifesto? Sorry to break your fantasy, but it is legal, only Microsoft wants you to believe otherwise.
Take a look at the special effects industry and you will see that there is lots of commercial, closed-source, for-profit software being written for Linux.
PS: What Linux really needs is to be pre-installed on machines in a store. However it appears that Microsoft is still disallowing dual-boot machines to be sold.
<sarcasm>Yeah, that would work fine if gcc and glibc didn't break binary compatibility every 6 months.</sarcasm>
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
And in washington, stupidity has the edge.
Congress can vote whatever it wants into law. Sensible or not. And they often do - especially when prodded by greed and self interest. And they have powerful allies in the avaricious, supremely (and willfully) ignorant types in and about the White House.
And what Congress does not do, the White House may impose by fiat.
Look at the DMCA, the Communications Decency Act, the move to allow foreign born citizens to become president ("President Terminator!"), the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq (expect your children to fight there), .....
I don't think mass usage will destroy Gentoo, but I don't believe Gentoo will ever really hit the main stream. As a Gentoo users myself I would never want to install it on any user machine. It takes far too long and isn't convenient. I'd rather stick to a binary distro. End users will not notice the speed difference.
No reverse dependency check is not in yet. Portage will be a god to me when that feature becomes available.
Daniel
Patriotism means knowing that your country is better than all those other countries because it is the country you were born in.
Patriotism means hating all those other countries that have people who don't see things the same way you do.
Patriotism means hating all those other people in your own country that don't see things the same way you do. Those people should just leave your country and move to one of those other countries.
A true patriot is never wrong.
You just didn't understand what s/he said or s/he was only repeating something that someone else told him/her.
A true patriot has no problem waving a US flag imported from China and made by prison labour.
I have considered PDF; however-- Problem #1: PDF use only addresses word processor files. What about spreadsheets? Problem #2: sure, we can send PDF files out; how do we get everyone else we do business with/need information from to use the format? Problem #3: how do we convert the huge amount of files that currently exist?
The congress is on the verge of passing prescription drug benefits. This will represent the biggest expantion of discretionary spending by the federal govt since the new deal. A permanent entitlement program attached to medicare!.
The Bush administration has also created an entire federal dept (homeland secutiry). This was also the largest expansion of govt payroll since the new deal.
Where do you get off saying the US is not a socialist govt? Medicare, medicade. social security, subsidies for every known industry, steel tarrifs, the list goes on and on.
War is necrophilia.
So what is Linux's main selling point? Price. Namely, Linux costs nothing, unless you feel like donating money to the distributor in the form of buying the retail version of their distro. The problem: nobody does this. Just look at any of the distros. Lycoris is having problems making money. Mandrake had to go chapter 11 because of sales. Redhat had to stop their desktop distro and concentrate only on servers. When people look to use Linux, they don't look at it (mainly) for its security, or its stability, they look at it because its free. Which is good for them, but bad for the company that has to make the distro.
Until you people are willing to put some capital investment into Linux distros, Microsoft is going to be able to keep Linux under its thumb.
Not according to Jermaine.
[Insert pseudo-intellectual anti-Amerikan/pro-socialist sig here]
As with everyone before me, I'm not saying Gentoo's bad, just that it is unlikely to catch on in large corporate scenarios.
That said, some programs that are badly designed don't support that.
Linux is nowhere near close to this. The best IMO is Fedora which has a very nice GUI - minmal, simple and effective. Combine that with SUSE's help system and we be getting somewhere. Combine that with a decent driver system and I'd say Linux would be on par with XP.
Sadly at the current rate Windows will be on Longhorn by that time, complete with sexy graphics, even more slick UI and even more media lockin. But users won't care about that last one - they'll just see this cool OS on the one hand and this clunker on the other. If linux wants to be seen seriously it has to look like a Ferrari it is, not the rusty jalopy that most distributors seem content on putting out.
What have you been smoking? Are you paid by RedHat? You know, the linux company where the CEO tells its audience to run windows @home, and for linux server one should spend $1500,= as a minimum.
Linux is as ready for the desktop today as it technically ever can be. Its even more advanced as WinXP ever was. It only needs a couple of serious hardware manufactures which _really_ backup and support the Linux Desktop distro's by supplying decent driver support.
Why do you think hardware manufactures are reluctant to supply Linux drivers? Could it not be the case that certain contracts they signed with a large software company mandates them to do so?
Robert
I never said it would destroy the "Gentoo system." I was in reference to the community. Their forums are one of the BEST and FRIENDLIEST places to get info. The other nice thing is it is very... well... "community" feeling. I answer questions and I get questions answered for me.
Mix in a ton of corps and do you think they're going to hang around and help? It'll make things more impersonal.
I'm not saying it would be the end of Gentoo, I'm simply stating that I believe it would ruin the community. Perhaps not though. I guess I can't see some IT suit in his office posting with any kind of avatar to speak of or being noted as "Tux's lil' helper."
This is also not a matter of "elitism." I don't think I'm "better" than anyone. I don't use Gentoo because I'm "1337" or because compiling everything from source somehow makes me more "advanced" or "intelligent." I use it because I like the way their boot scripts are arranged and as far as package management goes I like Portage because I like having the newest software and don't like waiting for other people to pack the binaries. It's more a matter of convenience than anything else.
It's fun to have things niche. It's fun to have them smaller and more personal. It's nice to be able to talk to the developers directly as normal people. Technologically speaking, numbers won't hurt it. But socially and community speaking I think it will. I could be wrong.
The other thing is this, perhaps it's not so much a matter of numbers but rather a matter of who those numbers are. Gentoo's grown a lot since I picked it up last Octoberish but it's still very friendly. It's full of freaks who run the newest software and like top have beta kernels on their machines. So, if it increases in people like that, cool.
I just hate when a distro tries to be all things to all people because it loses its focus. It's like those multifuntion printer/scanner/fax things in your office that do all things poorly.
Of course, as long as Gentoo's method of install remains as is it'll never be corporate IT stuff and most Joe Six-packs will leave it alone.
Join me and Tux as we look into the future...all the way to the year....2000.
[cue wierd lights and insanely high pitched band member]
In the year two thousaaaaaaaand.....
MindNumbingOblivion: Having been summoned to appear for the SCO vs. Creation trial, Linus Torvalds will present compelling evidence that his foes are, in fact, actually "smoking crack".
In the year two thousuuuuuuund.....
Tux: Comic persona Opus and Linux mascot Tux will become god-emperors of bands of rival fanatical penguins. War will ensue until at the pivotal moment it is discovered that the war arises from fowl trickery at the hands of those dratted humans, at which time man will cease being the dominant species on the earth.
[/blatant ripoff of Late Show gag]
#define CLUE 0
I really hope more for Linux in 2004 perhaps we can see some countries adopting the open source system for their desktops, or even a state... personally I think the triumph that it's use in home and office settings is going up is grand to it's self.
"How I envy those with a stunning ignorance of the truth. "sigh" oh to be truly happy... to be an imbicle." ~Wobbyhead B
You should be ashamed that you've encouraged people to switch from an NT based OS to a DOS based UI. You should know better, and I suspect you've done it to enslave them to your support costs. Anyone who thinks 95, 98, or ME is a more reliable solution than 2000 or XP is clearly ignorant and not suited to give advise on Windows computing. I suggest your Blaster victim should have purchased an inexpensive firewall instead wasting his money on your misguided services.
Fedora is a nice GUI, nicer than either of SUSE or Mandrake simply because someone has obviously put the effort into fixing the deficiencies that most other dists suffer from. Not just subtle deficiencies, but obvious ones. I don't have any bias towards Red Hat, in fact I installed Mandrake and SUSE before Fedora. . All I wanted was an OS that could work with a 4 year old Dell laptop, a Xircom Realport LAN/56k card and a Netgear MA401 wireless card. It shouldn't be rocket science. The good news was all three installed, the bad news was Mandrake and SUSE were severely lacking because neither detected the wireless card and neither saw fit to give me a useable desktop either.
For example SUSE 8.2 has a terrible dialler which after fruitlessly trying to get working for a couple of hours, I discovered I had to check some "Stupid Mode" option in the sluggish Yast tool- well that's intuitive. Even after sorting that out,I found the modem icon on the KDE panel just drops the call if you click on it. It doesn't even prompt you(or even have a preference to prompt you) - it just drops the call whether the click was accidental or not. And my wireless card could have been a lump of inert matter as far as SUSE was concerned. And the deskop uses the derided and idiotic icons-are-hyperlinks-single-click-to-launch behaviour which was dumped by MS in the days of IE4/Win95 because it was so unusable. And the default SUSE window theme set the resize area for windows to 0 or 1 pixels making it near impossible to resize a window.
And Mandrake has the most slapdash shoddy tools of any major dist. It's worse than SUSE in almost every way. The drak tools aren't even consistent in behaviour with each other let alone the rest of the desktop.
By contrast Fedora came as a breath of fresh air. The desktop behaves sanely out of the box, and it detected my hardware and made it easy to configure them. Aside from some screwing around trying to use WEP128 with the wireless, it all worked fine. This is not due to GNOME vs KDE, but simply because Fedora is polished and simple. The configuration tools look consistent with the rest of the system and do with simple dialogs what it takes Drak / Yast require multiple screen hogging windows to do.
As for the driver issue, the reason that there are so few is obvious (so obvious I wonder why you can't see it). There are umpteen distributions, each at umpteen version releases and each release has umpteen kernels for SMP, intel, athlon, security fixes etc. Throw in various packaging systems (rpm, apt, deb, shell scripts), various security umasks, various gcc compiler versions (or no toolchain at all) and you have a recipe for disaster. You try writing and supporting a driver for potentially hundreds of different configurations.I pity an OEM trying to produce a driver on Linux. Frankly it is a wonder that any can even be bothered with it just to appease a vocal and whining minority. All that would change if the dist makers rallied around a binary level driver API, installation mechanism and QA lab which ensured a single driver worked on all dists, and all kernels for some major release such as the 2.6.x kernel. That is what is required and you're living in cloud cuckoo land if you think its for any other reason (e.g. evil corporate conspiracies). Hardware manufacturers would be delighted to support Linux if the effort weren't so disproportionate to the number of users.
In summary if you think Linux is ready for the desktop you are simply deluded. It might be ready for use where there is a system administrator or expert hanging overhead to install and fix it, but not in the general sense.Step back, take a deep breath and accept some constructive criticism eh? I remember people with the same indignant attitude about OS/2 and the Amiga and look where it got them.
Copy & paste works. You use ctrl+x and ctrl+v to do it. These are the same keys as in most Windows programs. The only program of importance where it does not work is the terminal emulator, where it doesn't work on Windows, either!
(There is also the middle-mouse "drag & drop" which was put into X to make it usable for terminals. Even the first version of X was designed to do clipboard operations, through "Cut Buffers". It appears the middle-mouse is really quite convienent, and also the fact that it was the only thing that worked in the terminal, led a lot of people, including programmers, to think it is the only mechanism available. This made some people (including me) to try to emulate ctrl+x/v by using the same buffer as the middle mouse, leading to the broken behavior about 5 years ago (it would have been better to have clipboard not work at all). However this has been corrected in all modern programs and toolkits)
This endless repetition of "copy and paste" indicates to me that a number of posts out there are working off a script. There certainly are problems with the Linux desktop, but plain "copy and paste" is not one of them, especially to a "new user" who would never even figure out how to run a program old enough to not have copy and paste (the complaint is similar to complaining that copy and paste does not work on Windows when you run Lotus 123). The endless repetition of this statement plus the apparent inability of the same posters to name any other problem leads me to believe that this is scripted by non-Linux users.
Hint for the scripted posters: you can update the script to say "copy and paste anything other than text". This is an area where Windows is certainly better, mostly because the morons working on X built a mechanism but refused to assign a few predefined numbers to mean "an image" or "rich text".
* Perl6 won't come out, but several Apocalypse and Exegesis articles will, and .NET,
we'll get all excited about waiting with baited breath for Perl6 to come out
some future year.
* The 2.6 series Linux kernels will have a number of important patches.
* Sun will continue to hype Java, and Microsoft will continue to hype
but few people will adopt either of them that haven't done so already.
* gcc 2.x will begin to see serious disuse as 3.x pretty much takes over.
* People will start talking about features that will be in Emacs 22.
* Some of the features being developed at xserver.freedesktop.org will make
it into a major distro but will be optional and probably not the default.
* A major ISP will threaten to adopt Mozilla technology, forcing Microsoft
to strongly reiterate their promise to update MSIE to block popups.
* A major desktop vendor will ship low-end systems aimed at consumers with
an office suite built on OpenOffice.org technology.
* A major desktop vendor will announce a total discontinuance of systems
with "legacy" ports, saying that they're going over entirely to USB, but
the "legacy-free" systems will continue to flop in the marketplace and the
vendor will retract their position and continue to ship systems with
RS232, parallel, and PS/2 ports, on the grounds that they still want to
turn a profit.
* A "luggable" laptop will be released with an 18" viewable screen.
It will have one hardware component (probably a NIC or modem) that
doesn't support Linux initially.
* Macromedia will release a Linux version of one of their programs that
was previously unavailable for Linux. Nobody much will care, but slashdot
will get at least three stories out of it.
* Apple will announce Mac OS X 10.4, with redesigned box art, changes to
Finder, synced with a newer version of BSD, a newer Apache, and assorted
minor improvements to the GUI. People will complain about having to pay
for the upgrade, but it'll get great reviews. My best guess for the
codename is "Wildcat". People will switch to it, mostly from earlier
versions of Mac OS X, but some from other systems as well.
* The SCO thing will not be over by the end of 2004, but we *will* be
tired of hearing about it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.