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Open Source Victories of 2008
Meshach writes "Ars Technica has an interesting run-down on the major open source victories of 2008. Some, like Firefox 3, we can probably mostly agree on. Others — KDE 4 comes to mind — will be more controversial. And Mono 2? What else should be on the list?"
KDE4's fine... once you're talking 4.1 and later. The 4.0 stuff was very alpha quality, though a necessary step to get developers to actively start supporting it.
They probably meant that the controversy would be because 4.0 was a temporary step backward from 3.5 in features and stability.
wont feel like a victory if MS decides to pull the carpet off everyone's feet someday. to my mind, the phrase "walking on eggs" illustrates perfectly the situation of those developing or relying on Mono.
I can't believe nobody mentioned AMD open sourcing all of the Radeon documentation. That's some of the biggest open source news this year imho.
Two of the best open source projects that I first learned about and utilized for "real work" in 2008 (though I don't know that they count as "victories"):
Puppet, the system administration automation system. (Like cfengine, but way smarter and easier)
CodeIgniter, the PHP web application framework that doesn't box you into its idea of a web framework
Dude, if my desktop won't let me remove panels, it is in the way. (Really, try it yourself. You cannot remove the last Gnome panel, which to my knowledge has long been the case. But in the version of Gnome that ships with Ubuntu 8.10, you can't even remove it from the startup programs.) Super lame.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
>> they should probably scrap it and start over by porting KDE3 to Qt4.
I agree 100% that the KDE 4 lacks a horrible level of features for a release series, thus far. The 4.2 betas are more stable and usable for users than 4.0 and 4.1 combined (:P Literally if combining means combining bugs)
That said, since porting would involve re-reading and recoding the whole old codebase, and reimplementing would also involve re-reading and recoding the whole old codebase, I think that scrapping the _very nice_ desktop framework is a very poor suggestion.
Really the new Desktop model is better than the old. The current implementation sucks from lack of features - but it is a better start than a 3.x port. The underlying work are complete enough that a port is now simply beyond a waste of effort. KDE 4 is here to stay, and this is not a bad thing.
> If Wine works well, why should I, (a developer) want to port my appz to *nix?
You should write them portable from the beginning. Use cross platform libraries, Qt (desktop applications/Games), wxWidgets (Desktop applications, license suits closed source apps also), SDL (2D games, very portable, but not very OOP), Irrlicht (3D games, easy to use) etc.
There libraries, e.g. wxWidgets, Qt and Irrlicht are easier to use than MFC and DirectX, so there is really no reason to write closed source applications. It is more expensive and it is not portable.
> but in all these years I've NEVER been asked about a Linux port
I quite rarely ask, especially if I see that the app has been written in MFC or Visual Basic, because I just know that they will never port it. That doesn't mean that I would not need Linux port. Instead I might write my own solution, release it as open source and become a competitor to you, with version that is portable and free.
It's fine and dandy to talk about "victories", but the whole picture is not the same if you don't talk about what does go wrong. You never hear about the hundred of applications that die a painful slow dead on SourceForge (the place where software is placed to die). You never hear about the wonderful TurboPower components that died after they went Open Source. You won't hear about Cobian Backup which was pulled back from OS because it was dying that same slow painful dead, and it's now going strong again when the author took the command back. You see, Open Source is not a magic word. It's not a magic solution. Sure there are some victories , but as well as with commercial software, for every "victory" there are thousand of deaths. So this article says actually nothing.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
KDE 4.1 looks like Gnome, only worse. The default font sizes are HUGE, and the default antialiasing is horrible. The launcher button on the kicker panel, instead of just showing applications, shows a tabbed panel that starts on the "favorites" tab; to actually launch an app, I have to chose the application tab, then get a list in a HUGE font, when menu, instead of cascading, are replaced by sub-panels, and the replacement is made slower by stupid animation.
The kicker panel itself is way too large, probably 50 pixels high.
The desktop isn't a normal desktop, instead there's some pseudo-transparent lozenge in which desktop items are grouped.
When I open "System Settings", I get some multi-applet container like MS-Windows or Gnome, not the tree-view I saw in KDE 3.5. I can't even find most things I want to change (like Window Decorations) or even a menu with an about which would tell me what app I'm running.
Did I screw up the install somehow? Am I still running Gnome (no, can't be, every app starts with "K").
What the hell??? If I wanted Gnome or Vista, I'd run that crap. Why can't KDE be KDE?
Help!
I liked KDE because it was clean and functional. KDE 4.1 is a travesty.
Ok, read this bullshit marketing drivel from KDE, it reads like an MBA's sales pitch:
However Plasma is more than just this familiar collection of utilities, it is a common framework for creating integrated interfaces. It is flexible enough to provide interfaces for mobile devices, media centres and desktop computers; to support the traditional desktop metaphor as well as well as designs that haven't yet been imagined.
Christ, man, I just want to launch an app, and occasionally glance down at the laucher to see how much battery life I have. I don't want a "framework" that can do everything.
But, says KDE:
Plasma takes a different approach, engaging the user by creating a dynamic and highly customizable environment.
I don't want to be engaged, I just want to launch an app. I'll probably maximize that app, so the desktop won't even be getting a look.
But, says KDE, you can get rid of the gee-whiz gee-gaws:
With Plasma, you can let your desktop (and accompanying support elements) act like it always did. You can have a task bar, a background image, shortcuts, etc. If you want to, however, you can use tools provided by Plasma to take your experience further, letting your desktop take shape based on what you want and need.
Oh, ok, that's cool. So can I get rid of the "cashew" control on the desktop?
Although putting an option to disable the cashew for desktops sounds reasonable, from a coding point of view it would introduce unnecessary complexity and would break the design. What has been suggested is, since the destkop itself (a containment) is handled by plugins, to write a plugin that would draw the desktop without the cashew itself. Currently some work ("blank desktop" plugin) is already present in KDE SVN. With containment type switching expected by KDE 4.2, it is not unreasonable to see alternative desktop types developed by then.
So let me get this straight: Plasma's a revolutionary framework that can do things "that haven't yet been imagined." But it also supports the traditional desktop.
But getting rid on a "cashew" on the desktop is too hard to code, but if you write a trivial plugin that redraws the entire desktop (which isn't so trivial, as it's a yet unready work in progress, and won't even be possible until the next release of KDE) you can get around this unwanted "feature".
Come on, guys, your super framework requires a plugin to be written just to present a blank desktop? And plugins won't work until 4.2? And a boolean "don't show" would break the design? You guys got seduced into major mission creep.
This isn't a desktop environment, it's the dev's toy. Which is great, but don't claim it's ready for end users.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Hey! At least Wine was relased! Do you not remember the Duke Nukem Forever?! Over 12 years and it mayby it comes this year... we sould finally get more than just wo preview videos and few screenshots.
VirtualBox 2.x (2.1? not sure) recently got 3d acceleration support. Most of the other open source VMs (as well as the proprietary ones) are also going to accelerated 3d. Combined with the general move towards multiple cores and hardware support for virtualisation, this is pretty much guaranteed to bring decent windows (and OS X) app and gaming support to Linux. If physics acceleration takes off more, it'll be the next milestone, but there's still time for that, and the 3d acceleration technology combined with things like OpenCL should help to make physics accel support a smaller/faster project.
As another poster says, Django is a win. Pyjamas is a win. Even KDE 4 is more of a win. But Wine? No, Wine is nothing more than a legacy layer in a world that increasingly doesn't need such.
You're not flaming, you're just wrong. Wine enables many people to leave Windows even though they rely on just one program.
It also supports an entire class of gamer which refuses to dual-boot :)
Linux can run Windows programs, but not vice versa. (coLinux et al don't count.) This can only be a benefit.
Unfortunately, I had to go back to Windows because Linux never really properly supported my hardware. I even paid $20 for the conexant hsfmodem driver, which didn't work. nVidia can read my display's characteristics on Windows but not Linux because they haven't bothered to add EDID 2 support to the Linux driver, and the Linux Quadro support is ++crashy anyway. But let's face it, the wine devs wouldn't be working on making Linux more stable anyway.
Wine is a hugely used and useful project. But I won't put them on MY list of open source wins until we have both MAPI and TAPI working properly. Especially TAPI, without which you practically can't do anything with a modem or similar device (like run Motorola Mobile Phone Tools.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Generally speaking, I'm unaware of a single operating system environment where you're allowed to remove the critical shell user-interface element completely.
In Windows, you can't remove the Start button or taskbar. In Mac OS X, you can't remove the menu bar or dock. In Mac OS 1-9, you can't remove the menu bar or Finder.
In GNOME, the system is controlled using panels. You add widgets to control the environment by bringing up a context menu on an available panel. Without at least one panel, you can't control anything. Unlike the aforementioned operating systems (Windows excepted) you can, at least, hide this remaining user interface element - right click on it, bring up "Properties", and select the "auto-hide" option. And like most operating systems, GNOME will hide everything temporarily if an application - a game, a media player - requests it.
So I'm not sure what your objection is. You don't want to be able to control GNOME? Why have a DE at all if that's the case?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.