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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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.

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".

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.

There are no "victories"...

[John Hasler]

...because there is no war.

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.

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.

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!

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!

[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!

[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*

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: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: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?

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.

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).