Slashdot Mirror
Desktop Linux Summit Highlights
mo writes "The Desktop Linux Summit has just concluded in San Diego. There were a number of exhibitors, including Novell, AMD, and Mozilla. I've put together a summary of some of the more interesting announcements and booths at the conference. Highlights include a Linux-only 3D game, DRM-free music services, and a new Asterisk GUI."
The first half-day of the conference was an OpenOffice.org RegiCon (Regional conference), and yet there was no mention of them in the article? That's a HORRIBLE summary of the DLS, coming from someone who was there every second of the thing.
Jay | http://oldos.org
>network deployability
Ummm, people have been installing Linux over a network for over a decade. The old NFS installs worked just fine. You didn't even need a boot floppy if you had a boot ROM on the network card. Now I just do everything with a business-card CD of Debian, and download all of the packages, including our custom ones, from a central company server.
> end-user configuration lockdown
UNIX has had this for over 30 years, and Linux for over 13 years. When you don't give the end-users the root password, the configuration is locked-down.
I was there as well and Rob Lanphier, Real's open source guru, unveiled the next feature set of the Helix Player (https://player.helixcommunity.org) and the Linux RealPlayer. The three features I wrote down were: - Subscription radio - Commercial Free - YES!!! - Reduced start up delay - whatever that was - Automatic bandwidth detection - for better roaming I think. Later...
Skype is an implementation of VOIP. Asterisk (and Switchvox) is a sort of drop-in replacement for some very expensive telephone switch and voicemail hardware (PBX) like the Avaya systems.
Where are you getting that? GURPS? How 'bout no. Mechwarrior is based off of FASA's classic "Battletech" boardgame. The RPG version that was released later (which did have a GURPS version) was called MechWarrior. The two games were meant to be played in tandem - using Battletech material for vehicular combat. The Mechwarrior games have always actually been far more tied to Battletech (the vehicle technology game) than any of the Mechwarrior (man-level RPG game) material.
Unreal Doom3 HalfLife2 Enemy Territory Cube Savage Stratagus Freeciv Wesnoth NeverwinterNights Tribes2 Vendetta YohohoPuzzlePirates Civilization AlphaCentauri FrozenBubble Pydance Teg DeusEx BZFlag XPlane Flightgear Torcs Scorched3d Pingus Lincity Tuxcart Torcs Quake 123 VegaStrike Railz LBreakout Armagetron PPRacer Vendetta and there more impressive titles under development.
Here's my opinion. What "we" need are fewer people saying we need more games, and more people recognizing some of the excellent offerings we have right now. If we support these games (even with nothing more than just a little recognition), the companies WILL notice, see us as a market, and want to cater to us.
I would suggest staying with Windows for the time being. Why becuase it works for you, why fix something that isn't broken.
Now from your description I would suggest to moving to Linux in the future. This is how I would do it.
First Thing I would suggest you to do is read up on how to use Linux, and get used to it. Try out one of the bootable distro and use that for awhile, make sure you can use everything. If everything works(hardware and software), and you have the time go ahead and (Backup)install Linux.
Otherwise I would wait for when you are ready to replace your computer, and plan my purchases around Linux. Linux is really good about Hardware support, but I would be careful and double check everything you buy and make sure it would work, and isn't too hard to setup.
Once you have everything working, then transfer all your work related things to the new computer and then put that Windows Box to rest.
mnewberg.com