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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 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.
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.
The kernel will get up to at least 2.6.10 by December '04, and KDE will probably release 3.3 (or 4.0) later on in the year as well, along with Gnome 3.0.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
# 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!"
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oh no wait - Windows has to do all this first.
2004 will be a year when many corporations, especially those who will try to adapt Linux as a primary desktop platform, will recognize Gentoo for several reasons:
Please, explain to me why.
* Portage gives a corporate IT the most fine-grained dependency control protecting the consistency of installations within upgrades;
I don't agree with this one. Corporations that "roll their own" packages have the same advantage. Movifying SRPMS can acheive the same effect.
* 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);
Normally I would respond to this one saying that most people who use CFLAGS to optimize binaries actually hurt themselves, but corporations would have people that actually know how to use them best (i.e. -Os over -O3 or even -O2). However, I don't think that this is really an issue for corporations.
* Gentoo (mostly thanks to Portage) represents really the next generation design of Linux distro;
How so, specifically? There is something to be said for having a dedicated box to building binaries for the whole infrastructure, but the idea that Gentoo can do this and no other distro can is rather ignorant.
Gentoo is a really cool distribution (no joke), but I fail to see any technical advantages it has over other distributions. It's real strengths are in how it brings a lot of advanced administration techniques down to the level of an intermediate-level user. Plus the forums are cool, and portage is really well maintained.
Trust me on this one, though, there's no actual technical superiority over other distributions.
By the way, can you do reverse dependency checking yet? Like uninstalling gtk, and having every app that builds against gtk also unistall? I'm not "knocking" it if it can't (this isn't too important to corporations anyways), I'm just curious.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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:*rolls eyes*
No WONDER everyone seems to have this thing against Gentoo users. I think a lot of us get too caught up in our own distribution's "superiority" without remembering that the cool part of multiple distributions appeal to certain people. However tons of people seem to wish their particular distro will catch on and take the mainstream.
Frankly, as a Gentoo user, I don't ever want it to "take over" (and being source based I don't think it will). I like its niche and I like its community. Mass usage is going to kill that.
I don't think Gentoo is ever going to appeal to "big" corps or businesses. Small shops perhaps (I use it for all my operations) but the big guys? Nope. Corporations like dealing with corporations, it's that simple.
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
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.
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