Slashdot Mirror
What Will Linux Be Capable Of, 3 Years Down the Road?
An anonymous reader writes "In a prediction of the open-source future, InfoWeek speculates on What Linux Will Look Like In 2012. The most outlandish scenario foresees Linux forsaking its free usage model to embrace more paid distros where you get free Linux along with (much-needed) licenses to use patent-restricted codecs. Also predicted is an advance for the desktop based on — surprise — good acceptance for KDE 4. Finally, Linux is seen as making its biggest imprint not on the PC, but on mobile devices, eventually powering 40 million smartphones and netbooks. Do you agree? And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?"
based on â" surprise â" good acceptance for KDE 4.
Definitely agree there. KDE4 is going to dramatically improve very quickly. They've made a huge development investment in the underlying libraries, and that will come to fruition this year (and already has somewhat with KDE 4.1). My impression is that it's going to get better. Couple that with a maturing X.org, and you have the makings of a beautiful desktop.
No it's not predictable. I am not (well at least not trying to be) flamebaiting and/or trolling but given this is Linux we are talking about FLOSS and innovation, so we can't possible know.
Innovation wouldn't be innovation if we allready knew what is going to happen in three years, now would it?
Here be signatures
Linux distros into one category.
In four years Distros made to be user-friendly like Ubuntu will probably be heavier on system requirements but nearing the ease of use of Windows (IE easier driver and plugin installs as some are still a bit touch-and-go)
Distros like Puppy will still be lightweight and have little change to fit on those old Pentium 2s you just can't bear to part with.
Distros like Gentoo will still be hardcore users only with every option available only after heavy config and compiles.
I think usability for the average user will improve on the "fluffy" side of linux, but a lot of the distros do exactly what they're made to.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I hope it doesn't become a mess of binary drivers. Binary drivers are one of the worst things happening to Linux. They ruin the stability and the usefulness of hardware. As fas as I am concerned, they are not the pragmatic choice. I consider an idealist to be a pragmatist who thinks about the future. I have found that the "pragmatic' choice always comes back to bite me, at which time it stops being pragmatic.
Anyway, enough of that rant. On to CODECS. That depends on the patent systems in various countries. Currently FFMPEG has had a history of producing extremely find implementations of CODECS. They sometimes lag behind on the very newest ones, but their more mature ones suprass all others in terms of quality and speed. And they generally get better with time. Anyway, software patents don't exist everywhere and they are unlikely to do so within 3 years. So, it looks like codecs will remain free and FREE for a while yet.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
D-BUS: have you heard of it?
OK, I'll stop the sarcasm and just state the facts. D-Bus is now used by both GNOME and KDE. It can also be installed for any customized DE a user creates. The future for Linux looks like the past, but more so: some distros will go for ease-of-use without customization and others will go for customization over ease-of-use, while the whole system gets more and more modular and scripted.
Base window manager is irrelevant. Users don't care whether it's KDE or Gnome. Behold the Cube! Behold the wobbly windows. Behold the 3D tiling! Behold I say!
Show potential Linux users a demo of that floating cube, and you will ship millions of Linux boxes. I have observed this effect, first hand. If you've got a business selling Linux boxes and you don't have such a demo set up in shop, you are wasting your time. You think OSX got where it is because of its Kernel features?
May the Maths Be with you!
No I doubt it. Linux is a server OS and I really think it is going to stay that way unless there is some huge change in attitudes among the FOSS Community.
Change one: Learning having more features doesn't make it better. Can linux do X... Most likely yes. However its defaults are not really setup for that.
Change two: Easy Drivers. Installing a driver should be as easy as drag and drop a tar ball, if it doesn't work drag it to the trash. It should be done via GUI alone
Change three: Make the command line last resort or if you really want to use it. Still there is a lot of stuff depending on the command line, Geeks like us have no problems but if you are use to Mac or windows and you get a blinking cursor what to type? beats me. For example for those who never used a VAX before login to a VAX terminal and try to move around without googling all the commands...
Change four: If you put it in make sure it works. I have seen many apps that just don't work correctly. If it doesn't work don't put it in.
Change five: Eye Candy is not a good GUI make. Yea it is fun for a bit then it gets annoying. Every eye candy element needs a good GUI reasoning for it.
Change six: Listen to complaints don't marginalize them. Yes yes you have invested emotional interest in Linux however people are having real problems with it, and just saying you are dumb or google it, or you google and give them a non working issue actually take it into account and see if you can fix the problem, or make it better. As well acknowledge it is a problem don't blame hardware for having closed source drivers if your open source one doesn't work. Just say it doesn't work or fix it or both.
Change seven: Learn other usage habits just don't copy your own. A software developer uses a computer much differently then a non-developer. You will be surprised how differently if you are willing to examine it. These people are not dumb they go the path that is most intuitive.
Change eight: Getting threw the boring stuff. There is fun stuff to code and annoying stuff. The stuff that is not really hard or easy just annoying. But it needs to get done to give it polish.
Change nine: Swallow you CS Degree pride. I am not saying make sloppy code but be willing to break the rules when it make sense. I have seen many apps that run very poorly because they try to make their CS Professor happy.
Change ten: swallow your pride, sometimes your ideas loose, embrace the winner and make the most out of it. Keeping you gopher client and adding new features is a wast. Or stop tinkering with the token ring driver in hopes it will kill TCP/IP in the future.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
network adapter support is problem free? I still hear about a lot of problems with wireless nics. Granted they can often be worked around, but getting wireless working without being flaky is far from brainless. Windows isn't much better here, but I think my mom would figure it out in windows before she would figure it out on linux.
Video card support is good? I'd call it mediocre at best... You can spend 100 bucks or more on a card and you don't have drivers which can reliably utilize that power you paid for. 3d? Possibly, but 2d is more likely. Compositing? That's a maybe also.
I'm a Gentoo user. I actively avoid using windows, but I feel I have a realistic outlook on linux. Some around here do not.
Overclockers
Whatever happens, there'll be more people using Linux-based OSes in 3/4 years. However, there's a long way to go before it can properly overtake Windows, IMO: there are several major problems that stop GNU/Linux becoming the ideal consumer desktop OS.
In short, devs need to really get their fingers out and concentrate on creating a truly kick-ass operating system that'll work out of the box on practically any machine you throw it at. This is what led Apple out of its slump in the mid-90s - if the FOSS community can do it now, when the popularity of FOSS is booming, it will truly be a force for Monkey Boy to reckon with.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
No, installing a driver should be as easy and checking a box. Drivers aren't something you download as tarballs; they're something that comes with your kernel. They are part of the kernel, not add-ons. You don't install drivers, you enable them (assuming they were disabled for some reason).
Installing drivers is so 1900s.
With the way desktop software is heading, to get Linux on the desktop all that has to be done is for it to remain "free", as in "I'm free to do whatever I want with my computer".
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
...or is the author basically predicting that in 2012 we'll have the things we have now?
We currently have pay distros, free distros, and libre distros. KDE 4 already exists. There are already Linux netbooks, and major OEM preinstalls. In the future apparently we'll have Gmail and OpenOffice.
The author also MAGICALLY predicts storage costs will go down.
Linux will also be on servers, and support virtualization.
Will all this stuff happen before 2012?
I'd say so, considering it is all true today.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Who said I was trying to find a scapegoat to pin the blame on??
It doesn't do what I want it to (yet), therefore it's useless for me. Simple as that.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Whether you like it or not, GNOME will be the big one, because nobody controls it.
That makes sense. Just like no businesses would ever use Windows because Microsoft controls it.
Trolltech never controlled KDE and Nokia can't either. Same as Novell can't control Gnome.
Why do people continue to insist that PC gaming, which is only done by a small percentage of computer users, is so important to Linux. It would be a simple matter to capture 90% of the PC market without ever having a single 3d driver, let alone anything more than the casual games Linux already has.
Hell, before Aero was announced, most systems had almost no graphics (and thus gaming) ability anyway.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
I can't think of any M$ product from inception in '70s that was anything but below sub-par, frought with bugs, hard to use and way overpriced.
No love for Microsoft Flight Simulator?
MicroCrud will disappear from the world o' desktop because they've pissed everybody off on this planet. The sooner they're gone the better.
You think so, don't you? Keep dreaming. Most big corporations aren't ready to drop MS on the desktop yet - although it doesn't look promising based on Vista adoption rates.
My Sysadmin Blog
(Before I go further, I want to note that I am not trying to start a flamewar.)
With all due respect, I think you're forgetting a few things thing. Let's start with what's the biggest for me: a distro that handles the install properly. I have tried many distros over the last few years, and while they've all moved forward with leaps and bounds, none of them "just work" out of the box.
Let's use Ubuntu as an example. It's far better than it was even a year ago, but it's still not perfect. For example, on Saturday, I started the quest of installing Ubuntu as the primary operating system on an older PC. The install seemed to go fine, but after doing the updates, I suddenly had no sound from my SB Live! I managed to resuscitate it after a bit, but that's the sort of thing that just shouldn't happen. Also, earlier today, BMPx randomly stopped working. I had closed everything and put my computer to sleep, and when I came back three hours later, BMPx refused to start.
You make a good point with your video comment: it's pretty easy to play video on Linux now. Will pretty much any video play? Yes. Is it blindly obvious as to how to play an encrypted DVD? It's getting there. Audio's the problem now. People seem to be focusing so much on video now that information on installing support for such things as WMA audio (c'mon, do you really expect people to rerip everything that they most certainly own? :P ).
And then there's the ubiquitous gaming comment. Thankfully, Wine's making progress, but contrary to what Linux zealots want us to think, it's not actually perfect! Support for games using OpenGL is pretty good, and as someone said earlier today in another comment (forgotten where, sorry), so is support for programs that were actually written the "right" way, but it's still far from perfect.
So, I guess, to sum up: these days, Linux is pretty (or at least, not butt-ugly as it used to be), user-friendly (once it's all working properly), and there's a wide range of utility programs out there. It just needs better gaming, easier-to-find information on installing support and codecs for protected audio formats, and it needs to just work (and keep working!) out of the box.
--- Mr. DOS
I would bet you that 90% of the nerdy guys who know how computers work, support the average user working at helpdesks and IT shops, and sell things to the average consumer at best buy play (or have played) games.
I am one of these nerdy guys. I learned how to use linux when I was a kid to run bots for an efnet channel and bsod windows clients and stupid shit. I liked it because it was robust, I could do things without a GUI, and everything worked off of C, which I knew enough of to get around. So, I imagine I am about as willing to use linux as the average nerd. The thing is, I haven't touched it since I was 16 because it doesn't run games.
I think it's great, but would I be comfortable installing it on a friends' or a coworkers computer? heck no! I don't have the years of experience supporting it that I do with windows based systems, so when they ran into some strange driver error or something, I wouldn't really be able to help.
And again, I want to emphasize that the only reason I don't have this experience is that Linux doesn't support the games I play, so I have no lasting motivation to switch my OS.
When I think about how many people I know who feel pretty much the same, and work in similar positions supporting end users, it's really wholly apparent how important gaming is to the Linux movement. If you truly cared about Linux, it seems to me you would do everything in your power to bridge this divide.
I think the problem is that we've been given a pretty amazing gift by the early pioneers who (of course) didn't grow up with it, like people increasingly are. I think the job was in a pretty big way its own reward, at the time, and that prompted more dedicated work for less (apparent) reward. but now we're becoming like some bratty kid who's given a really nice car and never changing the oil, throwing a bunch of bumper-stickers on it to improve how it looks/make a statement, and then being all annoyed when the 2nd sunroof we cut out of the ceiling starts to pull the whole roof off.