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What 2008 May Hold In Store for FOSS

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the hoping-for-nothing-but-good-things dept.

eldavojohn writes to mention that LinuxPlanet has a brief discussion on what 2008 may hold for FOSS. The list includes thoughts on KDE 4, OOXML, DRM, and 3-D desktops. What boons for FOSS are you looking forward to in 2008?

6 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. opengl console by rucs_hack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's what I'd like, a version of bash implemented in opengl, so I can make the console apps I write look funky.

    Not perhaps the highest priority of the FOSS world, but sometimes you just gotta go with 'it`d be fun'.

  2. How about fixing what we have now? by rueger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm among those who would be happy if existing apps could get fixed, Firefox being the prime example. On my G4 Mac every new realease of FF brings more crashes, more memory leaks, and generally more sluggish performance. I finally abandoned it last month for Opera, which I am liking very much.

    When most Open Source apps were small, simple and fast I could tolerate the inevitable bugs, and assume that they would be fixed up in the next release. Now it feels like everyone is working to add more and more features and "widgets," but no-one is worrying about overall stability and reliability.

    --
    Three Squirrels
  3. What they're missing by Dasher42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I predict that LLVM and HLVM will gain steam. People are going to realize that this pair of abstractions is cleaner, leaner, and meaner than the current virtual machine + language + API way of doing things characterized by Java and .NET. The fact that a GPU can be used as a processor transparently where appropriate, just the way Apple already has with LLVM, is going to start the rethink that was cut short by Java and .NET's fiascoes of ownership or patents. They'll also start making development in compiled languages easier.

    This will be the open source response to the blurring lines between CPU and GPU task-wise, as the vector computing tasks could be done much quicker on the GPU based on the advances of LLVM, and applications will benefit transparently. It will be very cool.

  4. Re:More Linux games! :( by RandomStyuf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Loki tried it, and failed miserably. There really isn't that much demand out there. Actually, I believe that Loki were very successful, as in, the company was profitable and the business model worked, and everything company wise was ok... The problem, from what I understood was more of the CEO and his wife using the companies funds as their personal bank account. Even if not, though, don't forget that Linux has changes substantially since 2002! In 2002 I would have never considered giving my sister any distro of Linux. Now my sister is dual booting openSuSE and Ubuntu debating with herself which she wants more (she has been dual booting them for over half a year, but she still can't choose...). My point is, the leaps Linux has made since 2002 are substantial, and anything that happened back then can not be used as an excuse now, because the landscape of the market is different. Ubuntu has introduced the idea of free operating systems to teenagers worldwide (I know at least in the USA, Belgium and Israel, where I've been working lately and talking to many Linux users) and many more would jump ship from Windows in an instant if they could play their games on it. If someone were to start a porting house, that would negotiate and port games and important programs over to Linux (important programs like the Adobe suit(Photoshop for example) and Quicken's programs), it would probably, not only be successful (provided they manage to find a good "platform" to base the "linux platform" on) but they will probably become very influential in matters of computer software.
  5. As silly as this sounds coming from a Linux user.. by centuren · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like either a nice port of iTunes or to find a better jukebox-type music player. I know I can get 100 suggestions right now for players people swear by, but nothing I've tried so far handles browsing, selection, and playback of music as well. In fact, I'd like a better version of iTunes, with features like the ability to classify a song as multiple genres, and have it show up under each.

    I've yet to try setting my Linux box up as a iTunes library sharing server (which makes sense with the Macs in the house but the media on my Linux desktop), but if that's not easy to maintain (adding/editing content) I'd like to see improvement there. I suppose that falls into the network media sharing server that's compatible with iTunes as a client category.

    Also, the traditional complaint about having to fiddle around. Why should I have to assign keystrokes to 8 of my 12 mouse buttons for it to work across everything (comfiz-fusion/kde, wine/wow, fluxbox, etc)?

  6. Re:More Linux games! :( by kazade84 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    SDL + OpenGL + OpenAL + OpenTNL (or HawkNL) + ODE + DevIL + FreeType. There you go, Windowing + Input + Threading, Graphics, Sound, Networking, Physics, Texture loading and Fonts all with a similar syntax (i.e. glEnable, alInit etc.) all also aim to be cross-platform and importantly, all bind together really well and will compile on pretty much any modern Linux distro, Windows or Mac OS. Of course Microsoft provides math functions (but honestly.. you only need to write a math lib once and there are plenty free ones out there anyway). Write a game using those libraries and you hardly need to do anything to make it completely cross-platform (just file paths *cough*boost-filesystem*cough* and a few other bits and pieces).

    There are 2 reasons Microsoft has a hold on the games market:

    1. They provided a decent, well-supported solution first (well by the time they got to DX7 or 8 anyway)
    2. Big games developers can't just change the way they work without a very VERY good reason.

    The only way we can expect a shift in Linux support in games is if Linux market share gets to about 20% and ATI/nVidia really start supporting open source drivers properly so Linux drivers can as fast (if not faster) than the Windows ones. It will happen... it'll just take time.