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?"
Linux hasn't had any major changes in the past three years, why would you think it'll have any in the next three?
I can see linux being on a 2-4 GB flash card and the "computer" being the same size and the entire device running inside your tv, LCD picture frames, microwave oven, toaster, refrigator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, or your air conditioner. The price for the computer and storage will be like $2-5 on the bulk side so that cost has to be able to be hidden in the products. Linux'll be running all sorts of things that you never really figured even needed a computer per se or even 2-4 GB of storage. What the heck does my dishwasher or toaster need 2 Gb of storage for? Well, we'd find out when it's "cheap enough" to through in everything. Licensing and cost is what'll get Linux in the door and keep MS out. MS just can't afford to give away MS embedded edition.
Of course Linux will run on things like cell phones and DVRs as well, but you'll shortly find it running things like McDonalds' toys as well. What could a McDonalds' Toy use Linux for? I haven't a clue, but, once the hardware is cheap enough, we'll find out.
The patent situation will be a non-issue in 2012. All the major codec patents expire within the next 3 years, including MP3.
Binary drivers are also becoming less of an issue. Nvidia and Broadcom are the last two holdouts. Nvidia is doing a good job of driving themselves into bankruptcy, and since every other major wireless chipset manufacturer now has open-source drivers, you can just not buy Broadcom.
I think we're going to see that Plasma/Plasmoids are the genius invention that will propel innovation. They will do for the desktop what Compiz/Beryl/Compiz-Fusion plugins have done for the window manager: let loads of programmers make up innovative or simply good-looking things they can do.
This, of course, will lead to a boom that will result in a few really good Plasmoids that will draw in additional effort and lots of crappy ones. But I think by 2012 everyone will look back and wonder how they once got along back when XYZ had to be a whole custom application written in C instead of a Plasmoid or Plasmoid containment written in C/C++, Python, Ruby, or any other language with KDE4 bindings.
GNOME will have at least started moving in such a direction, but will have more restrictions to make sure the system stays easy to use.
I agree 100% - wild and cute enough to make you want to play with it.
Linux has laid the foundation.
Firefox has taken good care of our browsing.
OpenOffice + Google docs have given us portable information.
KDE 4 has given us a flashy desktop, GNOME has given us a simple yet powerful one - both are beautiful in their own right.
VLC/Mplayer have given us independence of video formats.
Linux + Firefox + KDE 4/GNOME + OpenOffice + VLC/Mplayer = desktop independence. Only piece of the puzzle left is gaming. Once we have gaming, drivers on Linux (for anything consumer oriented atleast) will no longer be a problem. I definitely see that happening within the next 3 years, but we as a Linux community HAVE TO back whichever video card manufacturer gives us the best Linux drivers. Make them work for our cash and very soon, Linux will be a standard platform to release for.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Here's a conversation I found from a fedora discussion:
Non linear ogg editor/ screencast helper
Status: Proposed
Summary of idea: Still we are missing a good non linear editor for ogg videos. This can be a simple GUI based application to do non linear editing of ogg. Like cutting, mixing the videos. Adding still frames to the video etc. Though this is not a project to be finished within 2-3 months, but we should be able to have a basic application running to do simple edits. May be having feature of upload videos to fedoratv or integrate itself with recordmydesktop to get screencasts directly. I am looking for more ideas on this.
Contacts: KushalDas kushaldas AT fedoraproject {NOSPAM} DOT org
Notes: Recommended choice of language is Python or C
ValentTurkovic: I have 2 suggestions; First is to try and resurrect Diva Project who started as GSC project in 2006. Second is to work with Pitivi Project because it is on a good path and has ogg editing functionality and easy enough interface. To get an overview of this Diva Project rise and fall please read these two posts. UPDATE: There are two projects that look promissing: saya-videoeditor [2] and myvideoeditor [3]
So between these and Cinelerra's successor, Lumiera, I'm sure 4 years will be more than enough to have an actually usable professional Video Editor for Linux.
And I think that these 4 years will give Krita and GIMP the time they need to become full-featured and more user-friendly, respectively.
(And don't get me started on WINE, these guys are advancing fast!)
Well as it turns out. It might never be Linux's year on the desk top. Fours years down the round, multimedia desknotes, UMPCs, smartphone/PDA, smartTVs and, maybe, just maybe, walk around virtual reality will be approaching. Now when it comes walk around virtual reality who seriously would want M$ DRMing your personal view of the world, talk about suck.
The real shift will be a hardware shift,with software supplied 'FREE' as in 'FREE' with the hardware, which combines compatibility across a broad range of different hardware platforms all free of licences. Typical family home, 4 phones, 2 Multimedia desknotes , 4 UMPCS, 2 smartTVs, 1 Family Server(email,VOIP messaging, streaming) yeah we are all stupid enough to pay for 12 OS licences every two years, or even every time we replace the hardware, then add to that another 12 office suite licences every two years now add the cost of fully functional unDRMed family server, plus additional user licences for guests. I am not even going to bother to calculate the cost, as it is obviously way out of the ballpark for the average family. Lets not of course forget some of the other content that still has to be paid for, games, movies and music.
So M$ is doomed, doomed I tell you ;), when it comes to windows and office, why else would ballmer be so myopic is his bid for yahoo as a result of a failing MSN if he did not know the writing was on the wall for M$'s monopoly OS and office suite pricing rip off (that monopoly is slowly but surely being eaten away by millions of voracious piranha penguins) ;D.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Microsoft is (and has been for a few years now) fighting hard against the Linux tide on the sub-desktop. Currently, they say its 50-50... but that was years ago. I guess that's why the first result in every API search at the time returned the WinCE version.
Fast forward today, and Windows is sliding against the Penguin, which could suggest why the first result in every API search returns the .NET equivalent, and how if you install the Platform SDK, you cannot uncheck the option for .NET embedded APIs.
So.. Linux for the future, I reckon so simply because the biggest and best weathervane for increasing Linux adoption is shouting how worried they are (ie Microsoft). If MS were ignoring Linux and F/OSS then I'd think it was all hype, but as they're coughing up cash for various OSS projects, declaring how open-source friendly they are, creating their own OSS repository sites (codeplex), getting various OSS projects better integrated with Windows.. all that just shows how worried they are, so Linux is a big deal at the moment.