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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."
considering i just started using Linux more than i use windows, and I'm a gamer, i'm particularly happy right now ^_^
Beyond doubt, we need better and more 3D games to attract a normal Joe towards using GNU/Linux. Even I reboot to winblows for the games. First step would be to port the existing games to Linux, but this cannot be done by the community. We need help from the gaming companies and I am are more than willing to pay for some nice games like Counter Stike, Half Life and NFS Underground.
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.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
The big firms will embrace Linux on the desktop when they can see network deployability and end-user configuration lockdown in an easy-to-buy solution. It's a pretty major acceptance criterion. Anybody focusing on that?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
it runs on Windows, Mac OS X and one flavor of Linux (Linspire).
Where are the tubby bearded Unix gurus? The skinny, pasty-skinned, ponytailed technopolitical geeks with the long leather dusters? The thought of any "summit" where friendly user interfaces were highlighted probably scared 'em off.
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.
And I love that screenshot with the taskbar that has room for about 1.5 open window buttons at 1024x768 resolution.
DCMonkey
...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"...
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...
The only person I see talking down is you. You seem to think that ALL linux users fit your STEROTYPE of what a linux user is.
FWIW. I use linux on the desktop and I PREFER the distributions that are the easiest to use, e.g. fedora/ubuntu. That said, I still prefer to use command line toos for many activities because it is simply a more efficient way to accomplish some tasks.
While you are busy trying to defend your predjudice, linux developers have been working to make linux easier and easier for the end user to install and maintain. No, it's not perfect, but it's a far cry from what it was five years ago.
Most people I encounter who use linux fall in between the extremes that you mention. They aren't super geeks who eschew the gui for a command line because it's l33t but they typically aren't afraid of typing a command or two if it is a more efficient way of doing something.
Has it occured to you that what you percieve as archaic and complex is, in fact, neither?
(typed on federa core 3...installed from GUI)
I see lots of posts saying "games" are the magic ticket to Linux getting popular. Stop dreaming... it's not gonna happen for a long time. Linux on the desktop is not even remotely near even 10% market share... no sane company is going to put lots of resources into developing games for Linux. Yes there were some flukes where a couple popular games got made but they were hardly profitable. Most of what Linux has for games are done by hobbyist... which is fine for the nostalgic type who like 80's style gaming but will never fail to succeed an impressing most of the gaming public. END OF RANT.
On to what I originally wanted to say... Linux on the desktop could sure use alot of polish in the following ways. Consider:
1) A common control panel. There are a ton of different config tools which vary by distribution. Even on a single distro you can't configure everything from one place- it's often a mix of various config tools and hand editing of config files.
2) Tell the freakin developers to make GOOD intallation binaries and keep them UP TO DATE. Have a common to all distro's install tool that is very easy to use (perhaps a RPM front end). I am a programmer and yes I do know how to compile stuff but when I'm not programming... I'm also a user and feel I should not have to compile anything myself.
3) KDE vs Gnome wars: put an end to it. I know everyone will disagree with me saying 'choice is good'. I agree... but there needs to be a standard. Without a standard alot of manpowers being distributed where it could much be better focused. Perhaps this is the downfall of Linux in general... everyones got freedom so all they choose to work on something different.
I could go on but I'll leave it at that for now.
Blender And Linux Fan
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.
Most likely you selected something else that required what you deselected as a dependency.
As a beginner you should use one of the standard base installs and either yum or apt to install software.
Perhaps what you really want is ubuntu. Installs with synaptic by default and is super snappy even on low end systems. Not too much bloat.
ymmv.
Err... the linux kernel is probably the most often forked piece of OSS. I don't know of a single distro that uses a stock kernel. Each ditro "forks" a version of their own and works on it in more detail there. When newer kernel branches are released, those branches are diffed and updated again... (more or less). Linus likes it that way. In fact, the kernel developers have accepted this to such an extent that they have decided that they may start including more experimental code in the stock kernel and let the distributors sort it out in their forks. Not to mention... alot of linux's media players are not half baked. MPlayer gui and Xine are two that I can think of off the top of my head that work better then most on windows. Real Player is another nice one.There is also quality software for every other category you listed including thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, gaim, gimp, eclipse, vim, apt and yum.
Regards,
Steve
(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.
If you call mplayer (a media player with the most comprehensive format support you'll find anywhere) half-baked then you are sadly deluded.
Admittedly gmplayer isn't the most brilliant interface, but as a gecko plugin it works flawlessly and not only runs happily in-browser but also offers fullscreen playback for stuff you view in-browser. That is a damn useful feature that (IIRC) you won't find in realplayer or MS media player browser plugins.
With regards to your sarcastic take on KDE and Gnome, they are totally different DEs with different approaches, architecture, and language choice. Do you honestly think we'd make faster progress if we pigeon-holed people into one or the other? Half of the development impetus comes from the passion of the developers. Remove the choice for them to work on what they feel is [potentially] the best platform and you remove much of the emotion involved and hence the desire and motivation.
This is not the corporate world when focusing on one thing is best because that's how you make money. The freedom and choice that you deride is not only what makes Free Software so attractive but what provides the reason that most people develop for it; I don't think many people would volunteer their services to Microsoft.
There is more than logistics at work here. You, and others who scorn at Free Software diversity, would do well to appreciate that.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
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
Robin Rowe founder of LinuxMovies.org
Linux in the Motion Picture Industry
He showed clips of 'The Last Samurai', Bad Boyz, etc. He said Shrek2 had a 2,500 cpu render farm and was fast approaching their deadline. They contact HP for an additional 1,000 cpu render farm and sent their info to them so that could finish. Like in last samurai he said no arrows were shot in the whole movie they were painted in. Also the shot with thousands of arrows the actors had them stuck in their legs and the digital effects people had to reverse trajectory paint them in. Pretty neat stuff.
Mitch Kapor lotus 1-2-3, co-founder of eff.org, working on chandler
I really liked his talk...he really is a visionary. He basically just sees it as a matter of time till open source blows over but his time frames are like 10 to 15 years.
Brenno de Winter
This guy single handedly wrote an op-ed and had the Dutch goverment stop a 160 million Microsoft contract of 5 years for something like 25,000 desktops. Instead he had redhat, suse, etc. summit alternative bids for like 7 million dollars. Anyway he now has minister and politicians asking him about DRM, etc. I stood next to him while I was buying like 25 firefox and thunderbird cds but didn't say anything. He's really a funny guy. He kept belting out s-word and b-word, etc. totally hilarious.
Gary Edwards like a co-ordinator for openoffice OASIS. I almost didn't sit through this talk cuz I was like what the hell is OASIS? But boy oh boy this is really gonna revolutionize all office suites and the way business share documents.
He said last 3 years OASIS (open document) has been in the making. Microsoft objected to it being called 'openoffice document' so they settle on 'open document'. It'll be in Openoffice 2.0. It supports XML, Xforms, UBL (universal business language...bills of lading, etc.), compound documents. Say Abiword opens a compound document with some word processor format with spreadsheets and it'll gracefully handle it just saying it can't display the spreadsheet portion.
Barry is totally in the know and I couldn't get enough of what he had to say. Other talks I liked were Doc Searls and Simmon Phipps who is a Sun guy and anyway.
I really got the feeling that Novell and Sun are embracing it slowly but surely. Anyway about those Linspire 4.5 and Linspire 5.0 beta...I guess they just don't like my little shuttle box. I guess I'll have to wait till they send me a japanese version (hey Scott) of 5.0 and hopefully I'll have better luck with that one.
I did try that Novell 9 Linux Desktop 60 day trial and yeah it's basically suse but with an administrator's perspective to make it easy to manage hundreds and thousands of workstations. Kinda cool.
Now they said they were videotaping all presentations but for the life of me I can't find squat online. I got that cd from Kim Brand (opensource in small schools) but it doesn't seem to have 25% of what was in the whole slideshow presantation.
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
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
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.
In Windows you are subjected to the whims of whatever company or individual that handles to put a piece of software in your computer, from known manufacturers to spammers, crackers and fraudsters.
With windows you are waiting that uncles Bill snaps his fingers to be out of support, need to upgrade or having to agree to draconian EULAs when installing things like media viewers.
With Linux you are free of those inconveniences and you know that the software you use has a better chance to be improved in the benefit of the users that use it, not in the benefit of the company that produces it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At least I think it is. After all XP really is a pretty good desktop all other things aside. The problems are a) cost b) security c) adminsistrative overhead. Linux addresses two out of three. Administrative overhead is still pretty high, at least if you're the guy doing it because no one else will be able to. In either case Linux also suffers from a few distinct disadvantages: a) installation complexity b) inability to run Windows apps without introducing another layer of complexity in Wine, etc. c) It really doesn't run well in a desktop environment in hardware that is significantly cheaper or underpowered compared to Windows. XP requires quite a bit of juice to run well whereas W2K runs rather nice on my P2-400 with 288MB RAM. Similarly ANY good Linux desktop really does need 256MB RAM and at least that much processor. Installation disk requirements for Linux are somewhat higher but disk is practically free.
So instead of playing to Windows strengths why not play to Linux strengths? Make a desktop that can run Windows apps when it needs to but runs the machine in a highly configured, locked down, no spyware, no virus no end user ability to change anything configuration? And run it on cheap hardware? In fact a Linux terminal server starts to look like a nice alternative for a home LAN.
Other than that I'd ask for better support and much much cleaner functional installs of devices that are no longer exotic, like Wireless NICs, scanners, multifunction printer/scanner/fax machines, drawing tablets and USB devices of all kinds. Instead of building the 19th most popular UI for Linux why dont' we build better integrated support for LAN bootable 802.11G NICs?
I don't know about everyone else, but personally I found that the last screenshot gave me shivers.
Username: root
Hostname: linspire
I don't really think that touting "looks and works like windows" is a good thing, because eventually that just dumbs down to "gets 0WN3D like Windows" as well.
I run as a local user, which works just fine for me (and guess what, my touchpad scroll also works on X.org). For things that need root access (such as installing new software through apt), specific apps are allowed via sudo.