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."

Comments

great timing

[ginotech]

considering i just started using Linux more than i use windows, and I'm a gamer, i'm particularly happy right now ^_^

Switchvox!

[IO ERROR]

OK, Switchvox has got the nicest GUI for an Asterisk-based system I've yet seen. Too bad it only comes on their PBX systems (starting at $995). I'd love to have GUI-based software like that to go along with my home asterisk setup.

Re:Switchvox!

[super_luminal]

Thanks for the kind words about the interface. The problem we found with just selling the distro is that there's a fair amount of hardware out there that doesn't play well with the high interrupt rate of the telephony cards we use. By bundling it with the hardware we can guarantee that everything works, and we can work on shipping with the kernel tuned specifically for our hardware. However, we do get a lot of requests for different hardware, so it's very likely that we'll have a rackmount offering, and probably a RAID+redundant power supply multi-proc beast in the near future.

Re:Games. We need more Games

[Solarian]

I was at the summit, and spent a bit of time talking to the Garage Games guys. It turns out that the normal joe is the fastest growing market segment in gaming right now. Now stay at home moms are downloading simple "casual games" from places like gamehouse.com, and playing them. Guys are coming home from their accounting jobs and having a quick puzzle game to decompress. So, evidence is contradicting your assumption that only an elite few basement rats play games.

Linux...mainstream?

[Robotron23]

Its somewhat difficult to envisage what the exact purpose of these innovations are. I mean Linux's userbase is made up largely of coders and firms, neither group see their Linux OS as one to support 3D gaming. Thus, its pheasable to say that these firms are looking to make Linux appeal more to the mainstream market ("Average Joe" users) by introducing methods even the most basic of PC's from decades ago possessed (ie. Video Gaming).

Re:Linux...mainstream?

[sloanster]

Its somewhat difficult to envisage what the exact purpose of these innovations are.

LOL, it certainly seems to be difficult for the likes of you, but that's probably par for the course ;)

introducing methods even the most basic of PC's from decades ago possessed (ie. Video Gaming).

Wake up rip van winkle - we've been gaming on linux for years, and sad to say, you were asleep and missed it all. For a gentle heads-up, see doom 1/2/3, quake 1/2/3, ut 2000/2003/2004, RtCW, etc etc...

Oh I DO hope....

[Smiffa2001]

...that the folks at Linspire don't do an MS and run everybody as root: http://adn.bmdhacks.com/desktopsummit/images/lindo ws.jpg

It's been a while since I played with Lindows/Linspire 4.5 and I can't remember if that ran as root by default or not. Can anybody confirm ? I really hope that they've not made that mistake as 'Average Joe' mentioned above won't know its "bad"...

Re:Linspire Trying Too Hard to Mimic Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linspire 5 looks like it is trying to emulate the feel of Apple software... and failing."

Direct rip off an iMac 2 icon aside, looks like Windows 95 to me. Linux needs to attract good designers as well as coders. Unfortunately that isn't going to happen.

What you have with Linux is situation a bit like the old days of people writing games on the ZX Spectrum, i.e coders doing both the code and graphics. And most coders don't know shit about art. Hence why they are trying to reproduce GUIS and desktops that were barely cool 10 years ago.

Re:Hey I've got some ideas

[Lisandro]

For #3 check the Freekdesktop specification.

Basically, different toolkits and DE will still exist but they aim to standarize stuff to increase interoperabiltt between DEs; from stuff like common configuration files, proper metadata support, menu files, and trash can management to more complex like drag-and-drop between tookits, control embeeding and (finally) proper clipboard functioning.

This has the potential to end a lot of nightmares for program instalation and interoperability, no matter for which desktop you write them.

Most major desktop enviroments are embracing the Freedesktop specifications: KDE and Gnome among them. XFCE 4 deserves a nod too for being one of the most FD-compliant desktops available.

Why should I switch to Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

(This isn't a troll, I just want to see some clear arguments.)

I'm a fairly heavy Windows user. For about 90-120 minutes a day, I check email through Thunderbird, browse some sites with Firefox, chat on Gaim and XChat, and download my daily dose of Mercury Theatre[1] with Azureus. I use Sygate Firewall and AVG Anti-virus, and I rarely have a problem.

Why should _I_ switch to Linux?

[1] Mercury Theatre is in the public domain, so this isn't a warez-related post.

Re:Why should I switch to Linux?

[BlurredWeasel]

You are 90% of the way there. You use almost all open source software (short of the security stuff).

Switching to linux for you isn't necessarily the thing to do if the system you have right now works fast with no interuptions/pauses and doesn't crash. I doubt you would notice much difference if you did an install of Fedora, all the same programs would be there, gaim, firefox, thunderbird...all FOSS.

For some people, the switch really wouldn't bring them anything. Its the people who do what you do, but instead use IE, Outlook, Aim (with WeatherBug!). They are the ones having their computers crippled by spyware and viruses. They are the ones that benefit by a usable Linux Desktop.

Re:Why should I switch to Linux?

[MrResistor]

Well, it would allow you to ditch the anti-virus. Yeah, I know that's not really much of a selling point in and of itself, but think about what it implies:

Even though you don't use them, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are still on your system, and they still represent a non-zero level of vulnerability simply by existing. Additionally, Firefox is still vulnerable to some kinds of spyware and such when it's running on Windows (don't know about Thunderbird).

I've been a Linux user for over 5 years now, and finally made the switch for good about 2.5 years ago, and I couldn't be happier. These days I have to be paid to deal with Windows. A lot of that is that the more I learn about *nix, the more I realize the way MS decided to do things is stupid and wrong, but that's obviously very subjective.

I think the thing I miss the least is the regular reinstalls. Windows just seems to gum itself up after a while, and needs to start over on a clean slate every 6-12 months or so. Obviously, I haven't had the same experience with Linux.

Ironicly, I actually had the switch kinda forced on me. When Suse switched from Lilo to Grub, my very nice SGI USB keyboard was suddenly unsupported (in Grub, it worked just fine everywhere else, even in the BIOS). This meant that I couldn't make selections in the boot menu, which made it a serious PITA to dual-boot. I considered my options, and told my wife she was now a linux user. Her only question, literally, was "how do I log in?" (suprised the hell out of me. She is, shall we say, non-technical, and had no prior Linux experience).

Anyway, since all the apps you use are either available or easily replaced on Linux, you really have no reason not to switch, other than, perhaps, some fear of the unknown. You have no reason to be afraid, though. There are lots of people out there who are willing to help you through it.

My recommendation is to buy yourself a copy of Suse Pro. it's about $90, so you're not going to save yourself much over XP Home, but it comes with excellent printed manuals, just about every app you could want, and their setup/admin tool, Yast, simply rocks.

Re:Games. We need more Games

[MrResistor]

That basically means ... idiot proof Linux distros that offer all the same software and functionality as the normal Windows workstation plus the same kind of easy intuitive integration into Windows networks as you have got with OS.X.

Have you actually tried Suse? I can't speak for the other majors, but Suse already offers everything you describe.

Secondly it would be important to ensure it has a sigificant representation in the student workstation pools of educational institutions from primary school upward.

Yeah, because that worked so well for Apple!

Seriously, this is really a non-starter. Good PR, but that's about it. Apple already learned this the hard way.

Kids don't make $1000 buying decisions, adults do, and they tend to get what they use at work. That's why when I was a kid every school had Apples, and every business and home (except teachers) had PCs.

Which is why Microsoft donates computers and software to schools all over the place, they get to look like philanthropists while securing their market share.

I challenge you to walk down the street and find 10 people, at random, that think "philanthropist" is a word that could be used to describe Microsoft. Seriously, MS has a huge image problem, and has for years. They need to be doing that stuff.

Linux has an image problem, too, but it's not the sort of problem that can be effectively addressed through philanthropy. I mean, if that was the case, we'd already be there, right? Which brings up the potential PR issues with "donating" something that's already free...

I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing these things, I'm just saying they aren't the big deals people like to make them out to be. The bottom line is: get it on the business desktop, and the rest will follow. IBM and Microsoft proved this already.

Yes, even games.

Re:Hey I've got some ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

A common control panel.

GNOME has the control panel, with the most common things you might want to control, plus the configuration editor, which is a similar to the Windows registry editor except that the back end is simple text files instead of a binary database that's easy to corrupt. I think this split makes perfect sense; for "power users" you can really get in to the fine details with the configuration editor, and for normal users the control panel is all you need.

Older versions of GNOME had the config stuff poorly organized, but I'm quite pleased with the pre-release GNOME 2.10 I'm using with Ubuntu.

Tell the freakin developers to make GOOD intallation binaries and keep them UP TO DATE.

This is why I love Debian. Note that Ubuntu is based on Debian. Package management is easy.

KDE vs Gnome wars: put an end to it.

Sorry, but no one appointed you Dictator around here. The guys who want to work on GNOME are going to keep doing it, the guys who work on KDE are going to keep doing it, and none of them will ask your permission first.

Since both GNOME and KDE are increasingly adopting standards from freedesktop.org, they increasingly interoperate well.

If you are responsible for a bunch of computers, you are free to pick one or the other and go with it. My computers all run GNOME.

Re:Hey I've got some ideas

[otis wildflower]

Or are you going to say all the GNOME developers have to go and work on KDE (or vice versa)? So who says who "wins"? And who really cares if there are 2 seperate desktops if they integrate increasingly well via FD.o standards?

I always figured it should end up something along the lines of Carbon vs. Cocoa (GTK vs. Qt). The look & feel should be uniform, but coding with different languages, APIs, event models, etc. should be supported. There really needs to be a definitive UI guideline summit that would provide a uniform user experience regardless of the underlying development environments.

Linspire Trying Too Hard to Mimic Apple?-Hinting.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've done quite a bit of work in SVG under Inkscape and I must say that I think the format is wonderful. Whether it's appropriate as a native icon format or not is pretty much a matter of choice, but it's *great* for designing them."

Fonts are a vector format. Now ask yourself: why do fonts have "hinting"? Why is it SVG doesn't?

Driving Simulator - Help Wanted

[KrackHouse]

I'm working on a cross platform(Linux | Mac | Win) driving simulator. I'm confident it's going to be a success is due to our use of 3rd party libraries to aid in development but how long it takes depends on how much help we recieve. A lot of aspiring OSS developers aren't aware that high quality libraries exist to aid in development of increasingly complicated games. We get to focus on the driving dynamics and not arcane shader technology because our graphics engine simplifies it.

Check out our image gallery for a look at the shadowing capabilities we're taking advantage of. If you or anybody you know are C++ gurus and have a love for driving and/or Open Source Software please consider lending a hand. Say hi on irc... irc.boomtown.net #motorsport

Re:Coding in Parallel

[otis wildflower]

If you call mplayer (a media player with the most comprehensive format support you'll find anywhere) half-baked then you are sadly deluded.

JWZ made some very scathing and accurate comments about mplayer (and other OSS media playing software) years ago, and for the most part his opinions are valid still. How many 'mortal' end users were involved in the testing process for these apps? Was their feedback taken into account when developing the UI of the app? Of course, dealing with people and their criticism is not terribly fun, which is why it usually requires paying developers to put up with it.

I mean, for goodness' sake, Apple's paying for all the usability testing and whatnot.. Just steal everything they do, and have lots of 'advanced' preference modes and CLI stuff for the geeks.

With regards to your sarcastic take on KDE and Gnome, they are totally different DEs with different approaches, architecture, and language choice.

These really need to be Cocoa and Carbon. That is, it shouldn't matter what env I run in, I want all my chrome to be correctly rendered and behave identically. As an end-user I shouldn't have to give a goddamn how the app was developed, in C, Java, C#/MONO, P(erl|ython), etc. It should all look and feel consistently, clipboards should work as expected, etc.

fd.o really needs to be about declaring an agreed-upon supported foundation of libs for GTK/GNOME and Qt/KDE, preferably by integrating the libs while having the APIs remain familiar and functional to their existing developers.

Re:How the hell did you leave out OpenOffice.org?

[mrbass]

Ok found the mp3 of the openoffice talks but they were huge 128Kbps. So I converted them to 32Kbps and they sound great (these are talks not rock concerts) and I threw them all in one 50MB zip file. It's on my frontpage with links to pdf files too. download at mrbass.org