Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit Leaves Desktop Linux Behind

Linux.com's Joe Barr has an interesting commentary about the recent Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit and the astounding lack of attention for desktop Linux. Now, a great deal of the monetary support driving Linux these days comes from companies with a vested interest in "big iron" but hopefully this won't completely eclipse the rest of the community. "Before I learned that the press was not welcome in any of the working-meetings at the summit on days 2 and 3, I saw and heard rumblings of discontent from more than one ordinary Linux desktop user. One example: a top-ten list of inhibitors to Linux adoption, created by a committee of foundation members, contained nothing at all relating to desktop usage. Nothing. Everything on the list was about back-room usage. Servers. Big iron."

Comments

Uh Oh

[ColdWetDog]

I guess 2008 won't be the year of Linux on the desktop?

Re:Uh Oh

[proudfoot]

I hear it's been rescheduled for 2009 now.

That was why it was founded!

[Per Abrahamsen]

The Open Source Development Labs was formed by "big iron" vendors to cooperate on the development Linux for of enterprise computing, so I don't find it surprising that is where their focus is. OSDL later merged with the Free Standards Group to form the the Linux Foundation, but OSDL was the larger part of the merge.

I don't find that more noteworthy, than freedesktop.org focusing on the desktop. Different organization have different focus.

This story is factually incorrect

[br1an.warner]

While I respect Joe, he unfortunately missed the fact that on the other two days that he _wasn't_ at the conference, there were all-day desktop Linux meetings.

The focus was split pretty evenly between the desktop and the server - although journalists were only invited to the first day and that session was, admittedly, weighted towards the server. However, the two all-day desktop meetings and many of the other sessions (Printing in Linux, virtualization, energy efficiency) involved significant Desktop content. I'm not sure that his claim can be substantiated.

From the conference agenda:

Wednesday, 9-5: Desktop Linux Architects Meeting

• State of the Linux Desktop - Linux Distros
• OEM vendor round table: what they need to have a successful Linux desktop
• Building a Desktop Environment Ecosystem - Gnome / KDE
• Linux Desktop Implementation Case Studies

Thursday, 9-4:30: Desktop Linux Architects Meeting

• Virtualization on the Desktop
• State of X
• OpenPrinting Joint Session
• Creating Portable Linux Applications, Joint Session with the LSB Workgroup
• Desktop kernel requirements
• Desktop project Lightening Talks