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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
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.
# 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
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.
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.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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?
You state using "NT 4.0" for those situations. Well... using the latest KDE or GNOME is hardly a fair comparison. They're in the ring with XP, not NT 4.0.
XFce runs GREAT on older hardware without sacrificing a lot of nice bits of modern stuff (anti-aliased fonts, gtk2, etc). I just dropped Vector Linux on an old Celeron 366 with 64 megs (it's an old HP) and added XFce4 and it works like a charm.
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
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