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?"

Comments

I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Others â" KDE 4 comes to mind â" will be more controversial.

How is that controversial? Oh, the Gnome heathens? Well, they'll be dealt with in 09.
 
2009 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop...Wars.

Re:I like KDE 4

[3vi1]

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.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Asic Eng]

I dunno - I've been using KDE for years, recently I gave Kubuntu a try (using it to setup the Christmas gift for my dad), and it came with KDE 4.1. Either there is still so much functionality missing that it's not usable yet, or the usage concepts are so far from my expectations that I couldn't get the hang of it. Looking around on the message boards seemed to indicate the former, so I switched back to KDE 3.5.6.

One thing I found particularly puzzling are the plasmoids - I couldn't see the point. They seem to be basically applications which can not be re-sized, brought in the foreground or moved around. They are not in the task panel either. So why would I use a plasmoid instead of a application window? To see it, I would need to minimize every other window on the desktop.

Then again - it didn't seem possible to add an application to the panel - only plasmoids. So no quick access to the 3-4 apps I need the most.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking it - it had a nice look to it, the eye-candy was neat. (The icons were damn hard to read though.) However I just didn't get the hang of it. At the time I couldn't find a general usage guide either, so I'd be curious for any insight you could provide.

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

Uhm, 4.1 is only marginally better than alpha quality. Perfect example: yesterday, I needed to import a CA public key for use in all my KDE apps. There is no tool for this, and I actually had to use 'cat' to append the certificate to the system certificates file. That is an embarrassing oversight, and forces one to question just what sort of design practices, if any, were adhered to by the KDE 4 team.

You say that 4.0 was a temporary step backward from 3.5? 4.1 is still a step backward, just slightly less of one. 3.5 derived a lot of its power from a very solid, well refined OLE framework, and 4.1 has yet to even approach that. In 3.5, it was seamless to browse a tarball, because the ArK component would embed right into Konqueror. ArK does not embed into Dolphin or Konqueror in 4.1, and in standalone ArK, you cannot open most files without extracting, which is annoying and basically defeats the purpose of a tool like ArK. Many users, myself included, use (or used to use) keyboard shortcuts for various actions -- yet that is still completely broken in KDE 4.1, and worse yet, some application shortcuts are broken if you run the application with KDE as the WM, but work just fine if you use something else.

If the KDE team does not get their act together fast, and give people some sort of hope with the 4.2 release, KDE is going to die.

Re:I like KDE 4

[3vi1]

I'm using the nightly releases now; it's much closer to 3.5 in stability and has addressed all of my feature concerns.

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

I take it you are not very demanding with features or stability? Things that are completely broken in 4.1:

• SSL -- There is no SSL configuration tool, poor documentation on where SSL certificates are stored or how they are stored, and bugfixes are barely even on the horizon right now.
• Keyboard shortcuts -- not only are global shortcuts still not working, but KDE4 seems to kill shortcuts set by other applications, even when those shortcuts are working when I run the application not in KDE.
• OLE -- 3.5 had solid OLE system that worked exceptionally well. 4.1 has an OLE system that is flaky, poorly unified, and poorly used. Maybe 4.2 will fix it? Maybe we won't see a fix until 5.0.
• Bluetooth -- I should NOT be using Nautilus for browsing Bluetooth filesystems.
• ArK -- I should not have to extract files from an archive to view them. Assuming that ArK will even get me that far, which it sometimes will not.
• Samba -- Samba support should be integrated with Dolphin, or supported by embedding smb4k using the OLE system; see above.
• Configuration -- I should be able to rely on my configuration settings remaining set. Over and over, I see my settings being forgotten when I hit "Apply," even for things that should be a no brainer: setting the default application to open a text file.

You can check the KDE bugzilla if you are curious about just how many things need to be fixed. KDE 4 is a complete mess, and was completely mishandled. It is getting to the point where, embarrassing as it would be, they should probably scrap it and start over by porting KDE3 to Qt4.

Re:I like KDE 4

[scruffy]

I agree. Frankly, KDE 4 sucks. KDE 3.5 was polished and efficient. KDE 4.1 is well, not even close to where KDE 3.5 was. To pick one example, panel hiding is still buggy. Sometimes it hides, sometimes it doesn't. The number of options on panel hiding are now yes or no rather than a gradation of possibilities. I'm wondering if we'll get to KDE 4.5 where things are good again, and then we'll come to some screwy KDE 5.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lord_sarpedon]

A few years ago...I never thought I'd use GNOME, what with its child-proofing mentality.
But now its the only choice that's both functional and actually supported.

(Functional is a relative term. The release that shipped with Intrepid has entirely broken session management, which is a regression from even the ancient releases)

Re:I like KDE 4

[Risen888]

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.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Plasmoids can be embedded in the taskbar, and could be useful for something like a little weather applet.

In other words, the KDE team destroyed a perfectly functioning desktop environment to build a better Weatherbug. This is coming from a long time KDE user, Gnome hater, and still Fedora 6 user (previously Fedora 4 user). I can't upgrade to the newer Fedoras due to bugs. In other words, if it is not going to work "out of the box", there isn't much benefit. Maybe I will switch to Debian.

Re:I like KDE 4

[JackieBrown]

SSL, ArK, and Samba though dolphin are working great in the 4.2 pre-release.

Actually, expect for ArK, the other two have been working since 4.1.

The configuration thing you mentioned I have never seen before and I don't use bluetooth so I don't know if you are right on that or not. (But based on your other comments, I doubt much of what you say in regards to KDE 4.)

And as far as checking the bugzilla as some kind of indication against KDE 4, the vast majority bugs are not for KDE 4.

Re:I like KDE 4

[R15I23D05D14Y]

>> 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.

Re:I like KDE 4

[stilborne]

"I needed to import a CA public key for use in all my KDE apps"

Konqueror -> Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Crypto -> SSL Signers -> Import.

"That is an embarrassing oversight,"

*cough*

"3.5 derived a lot of its power from a very solid, well refined OLE framework, and 4.1 has yet to even approach that"

the "OLE framework" in KDE is called KParts, and the infrastructure hasn't changed one bit between KDE3 and KDE4.

"ArK does not embed into Dolphin or Konqueror in 4.1"

it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal. i don't have 4.1 nearby to test this on, but in 4.2 you can navigate directly into tarballs seamlessly in Konqueror.

"you cannot open most files without extracting"

currently Ark relies on KParts for previewing files without extracting. an "open with" that would extract to a temporary location and launch the app would be nice, though.

"some application shortcuts are broken if you run the application with KDE as the WM,"

which shortcuts would those be? actually, better yet, go to bugs.kde.org and report it there so it can be handled.

Re:I like KDE 4

[oakgrove]

For your global shortcuts, at least, you can always just use xbindkeys. A very powerful global shortcuts daemon. It's completely independent of the window manager and should be in the repositories of most distros. It gets really interesting when you combine it with the xmacro GUI scripting program to do things that aren't CLI scriptable such as certain types of interactions with virtual machines. For example, I like to hit a hotkey in Linux and certain things automatically happen in a virtual machine I'm running. That's not something I've been able to script with bash. However, xmacro has no trouble taking over the mouse and keyboard briefly, running into the virtual machine, doing what I've set it up to do and then quickly handing back control to me. It makes some normally repetitive and tedious tasks quite fast and easy.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lbbros]

Ahem... there is NO panel hiding in 4.1. Your distro must have backported the feature from trunk (4.2 has not been released yet). Put the blame on them if it doesn't work properly, not on KDE.

Re:I like KDE 4

[orthogonal]

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.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Tadu]

I dunno - I've been using KDE for years, recently I gave Kubuntu a try (using it to setup the Christmas gift for my dad), and it came with KDE 4.1.

If you want to use KDE4 in any useful way, then go for any KDE distribution. In particular, OpenSuSE is known to be quite good for handling KDE4: you can still install KDE3, or you can install KDE 4.1 with a bunch of KDE 4.2 features backported, which actually works quite well. As much as people like Ubuntu, Kubuntu is simply KDE 4.1 hacked together in what feels like the worst possible way. If you insist on Intrepid, then at least grab the KDE 4.2 b2 binaries. You trade in a constantly crashing plasma for a KDE version without the plasmoid that shows CPU/mem usage (and that one was really handy). So whatever Shuttleworth archieved with Ubuntu, his team doesn't deserve any credit for what they did to Kubuntu. :-(

Re:I like KDE 4

[Fred_A]

I like Gnome because it doesn't get in the way.

Doesn't get in the way ? As soon as you click in a window it comes to the front and obscures the material you were trying to view.

I suppose that it makes sense to Windows and Mac users but for the rest of us it's seriously irritating. I suppose it can be turned off by editing the Gnome XML configuration file (a staple of the traditional Gnome user friendliness) but it's a major pain in the neither region. As are a number of other defaults picked by the Gnome people who want to make the experience as "Windows-like" as possible for the corporate users.

I just can't wait for the transition to KDE4 to be complete. KDE works *for* me, not against. I don't want a desktop that "doesn't get in the way", I want one that actively makes things easier. KDE does that for me.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Jurily]

it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal.

What? What kind of *nix file manager leaves out tarballs? Hell, even Explorer does zip.

Rule of thumb: if it does less than mc, it sucks.

Re:I like KDE 4

[squiggleslash]

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?

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

"Konqueror -> Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Crypto -> SSL Signers -> Import."

Maybe this is fixed in the nightly builds or in 4.2? I am using 4.1.3 right now, and yes, that option *exists* but it does not work, it does not propagate the public keys globally, and it does not retain those settings after hitting "OK." Claiming that is the solution to my problem is kind of like calling your alpha release "version 4.0 stable." Hmm...

"the "OLE framework" in KDE is called KParts, and the infrastructure hasn't changed one bit between KDE3 and KDE4."

Except that the use of KParts has changed. In KDE3, all the KParts components played well with each other (except for the Kontact KParts, which only embedded in Kontact), which is exactly what OLE is supposed to do. In KDE4, a few components still embed in one another, but nothing on the level of KDE 3. The OP was claiming that KDE 4.1 was approaching 3.5 in terms of functionality; where are the useful, play-nice-with-others KParts?

"it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal. i don't have 4.1 nearby to test this on, but in 4.2 you can navigate directly into tarballs seamlessly in Konqueror."

Then Dolphin was poorly designed. I do not need a file manager if all it does is browse normal, already mounted file systems. Dolphin certain supports some level of OLE, the fact that it cannot embed an ArK component is, once again, an oversight, and an embarrassing one. Maybe this will be fixed in 4.2.x? 4.3?

"currently Ark relies on KParts for previewing files without extracting. an "open with" that would extract to a temporary location and launch the app would be nice, though."

And once again, they do not play well with others. Why not have an Okular component embed into ArK? Why force me to extract a PDF file just to view it? If the file manager does not embed an ArK component, and ArK cannot embed an Okular component, then why would I use Dolphin/ArK when I could just use a terminal? In 3.5, there was no question: KPDF embedded in ArK, ArK embedded in Konqueror, and the software stack was more useful than trying to navigate using just a terminal.

"which shortcuts would those be? actually, better yet, go to bugs.kde.org and report it there so it can be handled."

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165441#c2

Notice that they did not even PLAN to fix it in 4.1. Maybe it will be fixed in 4.2? I can only hope so, because it is clumsy, annoying, and frankly stupid for shortcuts to fail. What is very odd, though, is the kxkb shortcuts work in Fluxbox; oh wait, that is confirmed too:

http://markmail.org/message/dxz6fntbrp73cljl

Again, NO PLANS to fix. Why are there no plans to fix this? Keyboard shortcuts are the only way to keep a large GUI like KDE from being too clumsy to use, but they are sitting around scratching their heads and not even trying to get this working. Again, one is forced to ask just what design methodology they are adhering to, if any. Another commenter noted that there are other shortcut daemons; is that really what we are stuck with?

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

Sadly, much as I like KDE, this is basically the case. Nobody really knows what Plasmoids are useful for, other than simplistic applets that we already had with other systems. It is kind of interesting to having something like Folder View...but not really useful. Unfortunately, the KDE team spent so much time worrying about Plasma and plasmoids and getting it all working that they neglected things like KHotKeys, KSSL, etc.

We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I wish people would just sit back, relax, and realize that there mere EXISTENCE of open source is the real victory here. Do we really need more than that? I have a choice in software. I have a freedom to choose. Neither Microsoft nor Apple dictate how I execute personal computing tasks.

We won. Let's give it up with the smug articles about how our sh*t doesn't stink. It's really tiresome.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[theheadlessrabbit]

Honestly, I wish people would just sit back, relax, and realize that there mere EXISTENCE of open source is the real victory here. Do we really need more than that?

yes, we do. we need software that actually works.
some of us have work that needs to get done. (that's why i use gnome and winXP.)

Re:We won already. Geez.

[tsa]

I'm so happy to have switched from Linux to OSX. After 10 years of jumping through hoops to get simple things done, struggling with software that's far behind in capabilities and ease of use compared to commercial software, and listening to conversations like this (it's crap now but in a few weeks/months/years...) I'd had enough. Now I have a system that works most of the time. And that is worth every penny I paid for it.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to hear you are satisfied. FOSS still gives you a choice. And Mac is based on OSS anyway.

Nokia ad

[Tubal-Cain]

Of the 7 "victories" listed, 3 involve Nokia:
Their opening up of Symbian
Their purchase of Trolltech
And the unveiling of Maemo 5

Yay.

Re:Nokia ad

[squiggleslash]

but I am not convinced it advanced FOSS's cause very far. After all, Windows users benefit as well, and most don't care about open source.

Firefox is a cross platform browser that runs on Free operating systems as well as proprietary ones. What makes it valuable is that it's enormously popular on Windows. Without that popularity, it's fair to say that most websites would be tied to the default Windows browser, Internet Explorer, and all alternative platforms, be they proprietary - like Mac OS X - or Free, like GNU/Linux - would have little access to the bulk of content on the 'net.

Effectively, without Firefox (or some other Free Software browser doing what Firefox has done) it would not be possible to use Ubuntu as an every day desktop system, except for some very limited applications. Firefox more than anything else has made GNU/Linux "ready for the desktop".

Python 3

[dmomo]

Pretty exciting stuff. Another notable open source victory was that of the release of Django 1.0 in November.

Sadly, Django is not written in Python 3, and python 3 breaks backwards compatibility.

Since both the Django and python communities are very active, I suspect this will be remedied soon. I cannot wait.

Re:Python 3

[ubernostrum]

Since both the Django and python communities are very active, I suspect this will be remedied soon. I cannot wait.

You might end up in trouble, then; as explained by the FAQ, it'll be a while before Django officially supports Python 3.0.

Remember: even the Python developers themselves are talking about a migration timeline of years, rather than a simple "next version of every library will be on Python 3" (which just isn't possible with any kind of responsible release process). See this summary I posted on django-developers for some more information.

Wine

[3p1ph4ny]

Uh, Wine went 1.0? How is this not on the list, but Google Chrome is? Chrome isn't even open source, Chromium is.

Re:Wine

[martijnd]

Seconded -- Wine is making amazing progress, just check the biweekly changelogs to see how much progress its making.

If this keeps up Linux becomes a solid games platform.

Re:Wine

[Tubal-Cain]

You ARE an oppressed minority. There's just about barely more mac os users on the interwebs than linux users.

Since when did Linux have 8.9% marketshare?

Re:Wine

[cgenman]

Chrome got a lot of buzz and people talking this year. It also has a pretty solid / minimalistic interface UI, and brings forth some interesting ideas in browsing (generated start pages and dynamic searching comes to mind). Also, while Google has always been supportive of Mozilla, them putting their weight behind a browser *could* become quite significant.

Also, my understanding is that Chromium is Chrome with the logo / branding stripped out for trademark reasons, similar to Netscape / Mozilla in the early days. To say that they're separate at the moment is like arguing Linux vs Gnu/Linux. One's technically righter than the other, but they still both work.

And yes, Wine hitting 1.0 needs to be on that list.

Re:Wine

[Fri13]

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.

There are no "victories"...

[John Hasler]

...because there is no war.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Like2Byte]

When your opponent believes that you and he are not in a war, you have achieved 99% victory. When your opponent believes no one is at war with him he is a fool.

There is very much a campaign against open source and very much a campaign against closed source.

For example: There were many office suites until Microsoft entered the arena...then most fell. The OSS answer was OO.o and probably others.

IBM vs Sun
IBM vs Microsoft
Windows vs Linux
Windows vs Mac
Office vs OO.c
IE vs Moz/Firefox

then there was

Google Chrome vs Firefox.

I think the Mozilla Foundation is very nervous that Google created Chrome as Google is a major sponser of the Mozilla project. How long will it be before Google decides the marriage is no longer viable?

No war? I have to disagree.

Mono 2

[N!NJA]

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.

Re:Mono 2

[FishWithAHammer]

When you learn what estoppel means, you will know why that is extremely unlikely to happen.

Re:Awfulbar

[rdwald]

What, the extension that restores the original functionality doesn't count as a "way to restore the stripped functionality"? And saying "adding features I don't like counts as making your product less functional" is kind of cheating.

Re:Google Chrome

[djcapelis]

What about Google Chrome? I know it's currently only Windows only, but it's a very good browser and Open Source.

You mean the one that's the second item on the list in the article? That Google Chrome?

AMD Anyone?

[Josejx]

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.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[FishWithAHammer]

The Radeon 48xx cards kick the snot out of comparatively priced nVidia cards.

Sun xVM VirtualBox

[Eric Wayte]

I know it was originally released by InnoTek in 2007, but VirtualBox has really taken off since being acquired by Sun. 3 major releases (1.6, 2.0, 2.1) this year!

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[morgan_greywolf]

VirtualBox isn't truly open source. VirtualBox OSE is crippled. For example, it doesn't support USB.

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[morgan_greywolf]

They're intentionally trying to differentiate the versions. It's obvious. The OSE version doesn't have a GUI, doesn't support USB, doesn't support a virtual SATA adapter, doesn't support VRDP, etc.

The problem with lists

[Facetious]

I read the list in TFA, and generally agree that these are decent to good projects, but I think articles like this miss the point in large measure. I use gvSIG and Quantum GIS for part of my job (GIS). I use Drupal for another part of my job (web admin). Most people, even open source advocates, are likely not aware of all of these projects. They are all open source, but they cater to niches. Thus, they don't make lists. That's fine though. Open source has found its way into every dark corner of software development. I think the phrase "paradigm shift," before it was a buzz phrase, describes what has happened. That these projects and hundreds like them are thriving tells me more about the victory of open source than any top ten list.

Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Disclaimer: I am using KDE4. I like it for what it could be. As it is, I'm looking at alternatives.

Replace "4.0" with "Vista", "4.1" with "Vista SP1", and "4.2" with "Vista SP2" -- and, for good measure, "3.5" with "XP Pro", and you have a fair sense of what's going on here.

In fact, Microsoft has handled this better -- they still fix bugs in XP.

In KDE4, and in some of the bigger KDE4 apps (like AmaroK), there's this completely new, exciting, amazing version which almost has all the features you needed from the old version, in a very cool-looking but annoyingly different way, and sometimes crashes. Then there's the old, boring, unsupported version, which does everything you want it to do, but has some annoying bugs and deficiencies -- yet whenever you point them out, people close the bug "wontfix" as development has stopped on that branch, and the KDE4 version will be done so differently the bug is irrelevant.

At least Windows has a mostly-working version -- XP. KDE has no working version.

An example of something that worked in 3, but is broken in 4: The panel. Everyone always said, "Don't mind that, it's fixed in 4.1." Well, I'm running 4.1, and I can tell you, it's not even close. How do I make the panel thinner vertically? How do I adjust its translucency -- how do I give it a completely transparent background, but solid foreground?

An example of something that doesn't work anywhere (wontfix in 3, not done yet in 4) is encoding scripts in AmaroK. There's no longer a GUI option to tell AmaroK what your preferred format for a device is -- if you've got an iPod, it's going to give you mp3s, whether you want them or not, even if you can handle AAC just fine. Yet the KDE4 version of AmaroK doesn't yet support encoding scripts in any way, so my choice is mp3s, or no encoding at all. WTF?

Maybe I'm just using the wrong distro? I was pretty appalled at Kubuntu's handling of Intrepid. Bluetooth is broken, due to conflicting versions of a few packages. The only available solutions are, use the commandline (I tried, didn't work), go back to Hardy, or use the Gnome bluetooth GUI.

Isn't that why you use a distro in the first place? So bullshit like this doesn't happen?

Here's hoping by 4.5, they'll finally attain the functionality of 3.5. Maybe they'll still have some users left by then. Meanwhile, I'm going to take a long, hard look at going back to Fluxbox or straight Compiz.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[AceofSpades19]

At least Windows has a mostly-working version -- XP. KDE has no working version.

Is kde 3.5 not mostly working?, or did I misread most of your rant? Have you actually thought about trying any other distros that have kde 4 and see if they have those problems?

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[The Master Control P]

KDE4's panel is one of those things that you figure out and then say "WhereTF was the tutorial for this?" That is, after you figure out that you have to manually add it because it's not there by default. You can right-click where it doesn't have any programs or on the edge, and there's a rectangle you can click+hold and drag to change size I think.

I've got my fair share of complaints about KDE4. kwrite's tabbing - dude, WTF went wrong here? Konqueror's default icon view - Tiny icons AND shitloads of whitespace - sucks, and my sane settings won't seem to save Its file-management performace is heartbreakingly bad. Konq 3.5 and 4 both take some time to generate previews for the 4000 lolcats floating around my documents dir; 3.5 smoothly scrolls while doing so - I right well expect OpenGl-accelerated 4.2beta to. And please, God, make it so that when I switch to konqueror tab Y typing resumes going where it was if I had a textbox selected.

And since you mention Amarok 2 I'll join you in crying about that disappointment. 2.0, to be blunt, stunk, and it really turned me off to KDE4 since 1.4 won't start due to different audio architectures. In hindsight, I think it was the dealbreaker. mp3blaster is nice and mplayer -loop 1000 works, but I like being able to hit meta-z/c/b to go through things.

• A full third of the window is taken by an about-song panel with no obvious way to get rid of it. 1.4 does it right by letting you click an unobtrusive context label on the sidebar.
• Totally screwed up playlist display. Different entries are different sizes? They look like they're vaguely trying to group themselves, but failing. WTH, over! One song = one 12-point bar with name, serial number and rank. And due to the aforementioned about-song taking 1/3 of the screen, I can't get my song info all on one line.
• Gives up too easily. I recently pulled half a gig of random classical MP3s down and tossed 'em into Amarok so I could get a feel. Knowing how p2p is, several were corrupt. Amarok 1.4 will keep trying to play (skipping whatever it can't) until hell freezes over. 2.0 pops up a "too many errors" message inside its window (which will not be seen if it's minimized) and gives up. If it's going to give up that easily, at least make it grab my attention and say why my music keeps stopping.
• My pause button doesn't work! How in the fuck did it get to alpha, let alone release, with a broken pause button? I hit pause, it blinks and goes right back to playing.

Now, I really like KDE 3. I've been using it since whatever came with Mandrake 8.2 was new. I knew KDE 4 would be different, it being a total rework and all. And there are a lot of things I really like that were done really well. The windowing system (sans a few configuration menu fubars), the scribble-on-desktop applet, the color scheme and widgets - awesome job. Konqueror 4 (as long as I don't try to save a file or browse my porn) - awesome job. Yep, that plus Konsole covers 9/10 of what I do. But until at least some of the issues I join SanityInAnarchy in ranting about are fixed, I'm not going to make the full leap (marked by copying my email from ~/.kde to ~/.kde4.

In short, my KDE4 trial left me with the same handful of "If they would just fix this damn annoying thing" complaints that so many would-be Windows users walk away from Linux with. Which is a shame, because as of 4.2beta2 they've got about 90+% of "it" nailed as well as or better than 3.5. I truly think that most of these shenanigans could have been avoided if they'd tested the final RC on 100 people who'd never used the alphas or betas before and fixed the top ten complaints, whatever they were, before going gold.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

Development on KDE 3.5 has stopped and outstanding bugs, as the poster you replied to said, are marked WONTFIX.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[stilborne]

"KDE has no working version."

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

"How do I make the panel thinner vertically?"

in 4.1 is was rather "hidden": there's a little strip at the top of the panel controller (right click on the panel -> Panel Settings, or click the toolbox button on the far right of the panel) that you can click and drag on. in 4.2 there's a nice obvious button that says "Height" (or "Width" if it's a vertical panel)

" How do I adjust its translucency"

select a Plasma theme that provides a translucent panel, which the default theme does. it requires compositing (aka "desktop effects") to be working, however.

the fake translucency in kicker was an insane hack (trust me, i did the bulk of the coding to get it to work ;) and it of course wasn't perfect: it only showed your wallpaper, not windows and heaven forbid if the wallpaper was animated or anything like that.

"-- how do I give it a completely transparent background, but solid foreground?:"

use a completely transparent SVG. =) in 4.2 there is a control panel in system settings (in the Advanced area) that lets you mix and match individual SVGs should you wish to.

"Yet the KDE4 version of AmaroK doesn't yet support encoding scripts in any way, so my choice is mp3s, or no encoding at all. WTF?"

yes, there are some features missing in the first "dot-oh" release of Amarok2. there's an Amarok release coming in January that covers a lot of these (rather amazing how fast that goes, really), though i don't know if this is one of them. i do hope you've filed a feature request on bugs.kde.org.

oh, and if you're tempted to say "they should have just held 2.0 until January, then", don't bother: making releases from the code repository is an absolutely requirement to keep open source projects moving, and one of the downsides of that is that often a first release of a new series isn't what a consumer-grade user is going to what to cut their teeth on. that's why there is another step in row, e.g. distributions. not that they seem to always be doing their users the best favours lately in that regard. *shrug*

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Matt Perry]

"KDE has no working version."

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

Then that should be a clue that the KDE developers need to still be fixing bugs in 3.5.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

And is no longer maintained, to the point where big, obvious, probably easy-to-fix bugs are ignored, because it's in 3.5, not 4.x.

Either one is going to give me showstopper bugs.

in 4.1 is was rather "hidden": there's a little strip at the top of the panel controller (right click on the panel -> Panel Settings, or click the toolbox button on the far right of the panel) that you can click and drag on.

Thanks, someone else just pointed that out to me.

I've also noticed how when I do this, it breaks the clock applet more than it was before.

the fake translucency in kicker was an insane hack (trust me, i did the bulk of the coding to get it to work ;) and it of course wasn't perfect: it only showed your wallpaper, not windows and heaven forbid if the wallpaper was animated or anything like that.

Yes, I understand that. It would be nice if the real translucency/transparency at least provided the same features, though.

I said "adjust" its translucency, not "make it translucent by whatever the theme designer wants it to be."

use a completely transparent SVG. =)

Great, thanks. You realize in 3.5, this was a slider control. I should not have to build a fucking SVG to get basic functionality back.

i do hope you've filed a feature request on bugs.kde.org.

What, "Please support everything Amarok 1 did"? This seems kind of obvious. Maybe I should post it just so they realize there are people with iPods who have files other than mp3s to put on them.

No, I'm done. I'll keep using kde4 until I find something better -- at which point, I hope to be done with KDE.

oh, and if you're tempted to say "they should have just held 2.0 until January, then", don't bother: making releases from the code repository is an absolutely requirement to keep open source projects moving

Yes, that's why we call them "release candidates", or "betas", and most importantly, don't break the old one while you're working on the new one.

that's why there is another step in row, e.g. distributions. not that they seem to always be doing their users the best favours lately in that regard. *shrug*

True, plenty of blame to pass around, but this sounds a bit like passing the buck. KDE screwed up, in many spectacular ways. There is currently no consumer-grade version of KDE. But of course, let's blame the distros for not holding back to a sufficiently old version of 3 so as to keep things working until 4 is really ready.

Not that they are blameless -- I place the blame for my current lack of Bluetooth squarely on Kubuntu's shoulders. But when most open source projects make a dot-oh release, it's ready for general consumption. Firefox was.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Risen888]

What hardware would that be?

Okay, but don't laugh. It's a Pentium D processor, Intel onboard graphics, and I just recently upgraded from 1 to 2 gig of RAM. Compiz barely runs (haven't tried since the memory upgrade, to be fair). Kwin absolutely flies. I realize this is a battle of anecdotes and proves nothing, but it's my experience, fwiw. Also, I have never gotten artifacts with Kwin. I don't think I've ever seen it crash on me either (Plasma is another story altogether...)

The desktop and the panel are still different, although the same widgets can now go in both places.

No they're not. Plasma is built on the idea of "containments." Widgets, the desktop, and the panel are all containments. They can contain data and/or they can contain other containments. I wish I could find the link to Seigo's blog that explains this better...

And they do have to be widgets -- applications won't do.

This guy made a "window-swallowing" widget within about four months of the dot-oh release. Also, see the "web browser" plasmoid which is really just a stripped-down version of Konqueror. Granted, that "window-swallowing" link is more of a concept piece than a working idea, but yeah, it can totally be done.

The desktop background is not drawn by a widget.

No, the desktop is a containment. See above. Which is one of the cool things about this. There's no more "coding for a desktop widget" or "coding for a panel applet" or "coding for X or Y." You're just coding for Plasma. And as an added bonus, you can write for Plasma in whatever language you like. This is the same thing that allows Plasma to use Google Widgets, Screenlets, etc.

Really, I am far more interested in the technical improvements and concepts of Plasma than I am the eye candy factor. Not that that isn't cool, but as you say, it's been done. But this stuff hasn't been done before. No, it's not a paradigm shift in terms of user interface, but it most certainly is a pretty major shift in how you code for the desktop.

(This is the part where I skip over Amarok, because really it's not related to the topic, and I certainly don't like Amarok all that much either.)

And they did so by perverting the meaning of version numbers in the same way Microsoft has for decades.

Way to drag out Microsoft as a strawman there. Whether you like their version numbering or not, they told you what was coming. Some people did not listen, and that's their own damn fault. Some distribution packagers did not listen, and that's a damn shame, but there it is.

Granted. But Firefox 3 was over two years in the making, and they still managed to pull off a solid release.

Okay, but again, "making" means something totally different in the context of a single application (especially something like a web browser, which is a pretty well mapped-out space already), and it certainly means something different when your "making" means adapting and updating an existing code base. There may be other examples you could use in this spot, but Firefox isn't one.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[betterunixthanunix]

Except that you do not need to write KDE apps or Qt apps for your program to run properly in KDE. You can run GTK applications in KDE, I do it all the time, and it is not a problem at all.

phoronix

[buchner.johannes]

Check out this list:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=great_linux_innovations_2008&num=1

What about open source development platforms

[postmortem]

NetBeans and Eclipse namely.

They cover C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, UML, XML, SVN, and many more - totally free. The compilers and interpreters for listed languages exist freely on Windows, and all are open source.

The best part is - these platforms are as good, and often better than paid versions such as Visual Studio.

They are also very popular in enterprise...

Re:What about open source development platforms

[postmortem]

I absolutely agree that there are things where VS are better, but even you have stated some advantages of Eclipse.

Evaluating which is better is a very difficult task. Even if one would try to make an objective analysis of each, not many would agree with such findings. Eclipse and Visual Studio are covering two different platforms and they don't have much common ground. Eclipse doesn't support .NET; and VS doesn't support Java. VS doesn't support makefiles, but you might not need them. Even code editors have different features; for example I haven't seen 'Call Hierarchy' feature in VS.

Generally, NetBeans is more polished than Eclipse, it needs less configuring, but is still underdog compared to Eclipse.

My conclusion is that you can work decently with all things they support. And they do support a lot of things.

Re:Wine?

[deraj123]

Okay, mod me flamebait if you want, but I fail to see how Wine is any sort of win for the open source community. Wine is a pretty good open source implementation of an ugly, broken and virtually unimplementable API that really shows its age and irrelevance in an increasingly Internet-driven world.

No, you're not flamebait. The more applications that can work in Wine, the more options I have for migrating away from Windows. This year for the first time, I was able to get rid of my Windows box. Everything that I was keeping it for I can now run under Wine. I would say that Wine is a legacy layer that is continuously improving in a world that still needs it.

Re:Google Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it really is a rule. RTFA is hard and it takes mad clicking skillz. It's much easier to read 500 comments than RTFA, even if you have to pull the little slidy thing to "Full" and click "More" 5 times so you can get your AC nigger fix.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[wizardforce]

QT's restrictive licensing essentially blocks all non-GPL activity on KDE.

Qt4 has been released under GPLv3, Qt has been under the GPL since 2005, that's four years it's been free.

Re:Awfulbar

[Toonol]

No, simply that it's new isn't a problem. A few reasons:

1) It's big, ugly, and distracting, mixing a variety of font sizes, italics, etc. (That's my subjective opinion).

2) It is unpredictable, hence less useful. It used to bring up URLs that were previously typed in the field, that began with the letters typed. Now it searches other places and other fields, in a way that is not obvious, and can change unpredictably. My son was complaining about how the webcomic he reads keeps on turning up multiple times in the "awesomebar", because every strip has a different title.

3) It can pull up results that were never typed into the bar. That's non-intuitive; it should use the same 'type-ahead' system of selecting from previous entries that would work for other fields, such as html input fields. Don't make a crazy new interface for one field; make a interface that works sensibly for all fields.

4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

Doesn't it remind you of how the search feature in every MS OS has been getting worse and worse every version, despite the added features?

pseudo-victories?

[Eil]

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

Re:not a fan of ff3

[compro01]

The awesome bar is a learning thing. you need to use it for awhile before your sites float to the top of the list.

Also, there's a couple tweaks in about:config that make it nicer. Set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true and browser.urlbar.matchBehavior to 2 (respect word boundaries) or 3 (search only beginning of urls and titles).

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[FishWithAHammer]

Oh, and before some idiot comes in with "hurf durf we don't want your PROPRIETAAAAAAAARY code!!!111", note that I release code under the MPL and/or BSD licenses as the situation calls for--but not the rights-restrictive GPL. Developers deserve freedom too, not just downstream users.

Re:Open-source database

[FishWithAHammer]

If MySQL didn't suck, yes, it would be.

MySQL is a very fast database because it takes out the parts of a database that make it a database. Data validation? Pfft! Who needs that?!

Cheese with your Whine?

[mcrbids]

... And along with your increased ability and incentive to move away from 'doze, comes increased incentive for developers to NOT move away from WinXX API.

If Wine works well, why should I, (a developer) want to port my appz to *nix? (not that I haven't, and we've offered OSX support for some time, but in all these years I've NEVER been asked about a Linux port) Of course, I won't officially support Wine on XYZ Linux, so the end result is a perpetual second-rate support for Linux.

On top of this, there's no particular incentive for us to support Linux anyway, since it's such an incohesive environment. Support RPM? Apt? Tar? Compiled sources? CUPs? PDF through Adobe? Ghost? Kghost? KDE? Gnome?

Each of these is important, because end users often have trouble finding the power switch. In this environment, having 24,000 flavors of the same O/S is *NOT* a good thing. And I say this despite using Linux for ALL of our core infrastructure and tech workstations!

Is this what you wanted? 'Cause it's what you are getting...

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[dvice_null]

> 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.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[mcrbids]

Our stuff IS written to be cross-platform. We already support OSX. We can support Linux but why? The point is that there's no point in porting it, because the cost of supporting it would be too high, even if there was demand, which there isn't.

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.

And, that works for you in one of two scenarios:

A) The software has a broad need for applicability, EG: an O/S kernel or a word processor.

B) The software is very simple.

OSS pretty much fails at niche software - software with a small user base and a high cost of entry. Niche software can be very extensive, as business rules and requirements get written into the code. And ultimately, the cost of maintaining all these requirements has to come from *somewhere*. So it's either done in-house (in which case open-sourcing the software effectively destroys your company's investment) or by a small software house (such as mine) which reduces the cost of managing the software by distributing the cost across multiple clients.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big OSS advocate, I use OSS wherever I can, and have standardized on RedHat Linux for all of our infrastructure! We've extensively reviewed the idea of open sourcing our product, as well. But our product is a niche product, and there's really no point in releasing our wares to the world like that.

Strange Ordering.

[drolli]

In my opinion, the biggest victory is the availability of notebooks from larger manufacturers with linux preinstalled, for a low price (netbooks).

Victories and ...

[El Lobo]

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.

Re:Victories and ...

[Bert64]

Plenty of projects die, and their source sits on sourceforge untouched for years... But that source is there for anyone to see and use in the future if they so desire...
Plenty of proprietary apps die too, after which they're no use to anyone and only the original vendor can make use of the code.

There are also quite a lot of projects which haven't seen development for years because they do everything they're supposed to. How many applications have you used which reached a peak at some point, and all subsequent versions have been slower, more bloated and more annoying? Lots of people swear by win2k or xp and hate vista.... With open source, older functional versions can still be used instead of being forced to use the latest version against your will.

Re:Victories and ...

[squiggleslash]

I also notice nobody seems to be concerned any more about Feline Aids.

It's the number one killer of domestic cats.

Mwaah mwaaaaaaaaaah.

Wine, VMs, and 3d accel

[CarpetShark]

If this keeps up Linux becomes a solid games platform.

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.

Re:Wine?

[drinkypoo]

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.)

Re:Open-source database

[drinkypoo]

In 1995, Ulf Michael Widenius and David Axmark started writing an open-source database for their own needs. In 2008 Sun buys MySQL for $1B. Isn't that one of the greatest open-source achievement ?

Sure, if you measure success monetarily. I think the success story of MySQL is that everyone uses it even though it sucks.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[wrook]

Sigh... I'm giving up my moderations for this...

The FSF has published a fairly straight forward article describing their thoughts on whether software should be released under the GPL or a more permissive license such as the LGPL.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

The exceptions in the Qt license are all free software licenses. Some of them are already compatible with the GPL, but some are not.

This makes the Qt license less restrictive than the GPL, but more restrictive than the LGPL (all of those licenses and more would be acceptable under the LGPL).

The FSF's stated position is that a less restrictive license should be chosen when the library in question doesn't offer advantages that would sway people away from proprietary projects. But the overriding consideration is that the choice of license should try to increase the number of free software contributors.

In the case of Qt, I think it is clear that the exceptions are geared towards allowing people to choose a different free license. The reason (AFAICT) is that otherwise they might go with a different (probably proprietary) option. Thus the exception in the case of Qt is unquestionably good.

In fact, I did a quick google search and found no criticism from the FSF on this subject. Whether you agree with RMS or not, I think we can all agree that he has been very outspoken about his opinion of Qt licensing in the past. Thus, I am sure that the FSF is quite happy with the license as it is.

Hope that helps!

Re:Awfulbar

[nbates]

No, simply that it's new isn't a problem. A few reasons:

1) It's big, ugly, and distracting, mixing a variety of font sizes, italics, etc. (That's my subjective opinion).

I don't see what you mean with variety of font sizes, italics, etc... It looks good once you get used to it.

2) It is unpredictable, hence less useful. It used to bring up URLs that were previously typed in the field, that began with the letters typed. Now it searches other places and other fields, in a way that is not obvious, and can change unpredictably. My son was complaining about how the webcomic he reads keeps on turning up multiple times in the "awesomebar", because every strip has a different title.

The bar is supposed to guess what you want, not the other way around. I also think it adapts to what you choose when searching.

I don't have to type more than 3 letters to get exactly where I want.

Maybe you shouldn't try to predict what the bar will do and instead let the bar predict what you want.

4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

Ridiculous name? Unlike many other open source products?

Doesn't it remind you of how the search feature in every MS OS has been getting worse and worse every version, despite the added features?

No, it reminds me of how google toolbar does a great job at searching for everything in my desktop.

The only thing you didn't mention, and I could have agreed with that, is the issue of performance. The awesomebar can get really slow (unlike google toolbar, which searches my whole computer much faster) and that's something I dislike. But it is a common problem in firefox as a whole (it can take long to startup, long to shutdown, slow to run web applications, etc)

As for the functionality, I'm really glad they added it. Versatile search and tagging functionality are two great features in my experience.

I don't use history anymore, and bookmarks were replaced by tags.

That said, what features of firefox 3 do you need? I mean, why can't you just roll back to firefox 2 if you don't like ff3?