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The 2008 Linux and Free Software Timeline
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:28 AM
from the year-in-review dept.
from the year-in-review dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "Here is LWN's eleventh annual timeline of significant events in the Linux and free software world for the year. As always, 2008 proved to be an interesting year, with great progress in useful software that made our systems better. Of course, there were some of the usual conflicts — patent woes, project politics, and arguments over freedom — but overall, the pace of free software progress stayed on its upwardly increasing trend. 2008 was a year that saw the end of SCO — or not — the rise of Linux-based 'netbooks,' multiple excellent distribution releases, more phones and embedded devices based on Linux, as well as major releases of software we will be using for years (X.org, Python, KDE, ...)."
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2009 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:2009 (Score:4, Insightful)
1999 was the year of Linux on my desktop. And 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, to infinity and beyond.
You got modded as funny because people who were raised on Microsoft desktops just can't imagine anything else. But remember that Linux doesn't have to destroy Microsoft to win. Linux just has to even the playing field, something that is occurring slowly but steadily. The moment that Microsoft loses its ability to dictate something because Linux provides an alternative, Microsoft has lost something. Over time, those little losses add up.
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Re:2009 (Score:5, Funny)
The last thing i want is Linux to be windows. Thats why i don't use windows.
You don't use Windows to stop Linux from being windows?
Is Linux following you?
You did give him some food, didn't you? Told you not to feed the OSs.
Parent
Re:2009 (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't use Windows to stop Linux from being windows?
If you were to go merely by looks, Windows 7 is now practically identical to KDE4 interface. In fact they are so frightfully similar, you'd get the impression that they have same GUI developers.
On the positive side, if they looked alike, people would have no problem transitioning to the *nix+KDE side
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And in turn KDE 4 looks like a lot of themes that existed in one form or the other for KDE 3.5 at kde-look.org
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Both seemed to have drawn ideas by looking at the popular themes from the OS skinning community associated with each interfaces. It's a shame that this wasn't done back in the Win9x+WindowsBlinds days when Microsoft thought Luna would impress everyone.
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And on the negative side, there would be no alternative to the notoriously bad interface design of Microsoft and those imitating them.
I just hope I can finish my current projects quickly and help fix this mess...
Re:2009 (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you care about a native client so much?
Having a native client doesn't make it better, in fact it'd probably be worse because it would be a crappy port of the windows version.
If this mythical port existed then running the windows client via WINE would most likely be better because WINE is very strictly tested where as a developer doing a crappy port wouldn't take as much care. The Linux client would also most likely lag behind the windows version.
Parent
Re:2009 (Score:4, Informative)
There are plenty of good reasons why cross platform is an impossibility right now. One is that major game developers have already invested in making a game engine which relies heavily in windows API calls. Oblivion's Engine was used in Fallout 3. Valve has spent millions on their Source engine which they license to other game companies.
From your post I can see you either haven't used wine for a long time or invested any real time in learning how to use it.
This is just simply wrong. WINE doesn't emulate anything. The very name WINE stands for "Wine is not an emulator".
What wine does is redirect API calls so that windows programs run.
If for example your windows program calls a d3d9 function example(x,y,z) then all wine does is implement this function as so..
HRESULT WINAPI example(x, y, z) {
(do whatever this function does on windows via linux libraries)
return WHATEVER;
}
There's no emulation (in the virtual machine sense) going on at all, it's all API redirections.
I don't know about that but users of Fallout 3, Left4Dead have no problems running wine. In fact if you visited wines appdb there's a whole load of games which run.
Fallout 3, Team Fortress, WoW, are all marked as Gold.
Like I said earlier they do, so you're just lying about the majority of games not working. There are no games that I know of apart from 2 (both microsoft games) which are DX10 only and I very much doubt there will be any outside of Microsoft which are for a very long time. When that time comes DX10 will probably be almost finished in wine.
DX10 support in wine is already progressing. If you download the latest version of wine you'll see implementations of D3D10 already there, however a lot of the functions are stubbed.
I don't quite understand how you got to that reasoning however like the rest of your post, it is all based on false assumptions.
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I didn't realise I had to however ok..
Age of Empires 3 - Gold rating [winehq.org]
D&D Online - Platinum rating [winehq.org]
Blind leading the blind. Good luck with that.
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Turkish delight is rose flavoured and it goes OK with coffee.
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As always (Score:5, Funny)
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As always, we live in interesting times.
Stand back, we're doing science! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. Our community has made excellent progress this past year. We created our first undead corporation. We shall now replicate this process to form legions of unkillable tech companies that are immune to lawyers, governments, and fanboys. And Microsoft outdid themselves... We thought Microsoft Bob was their rock bottom, but Vista proved that our expectations were, perhaps, not low enough. Wonder twin powers of Vampirism and Suck unite!
most exciting thing for me: Wine 1.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, I'm no longer playing nwn because I can run Civ IV, Medieval 2 and a bunch of other newer games using wine instead. Yes, I still have to dual-boot into windows to run the newest games at high resolutions and good frame-rates, but older games are getting very playable using wine and the number of hacks you have to do to get them to run is decreasing. It's great! Just about the only one that you have to install on a regular basis is the no-CD hack, but that's a useful thing to have anyway. Some stuff just makes me laugh, like when punkbuster runs for Far Cry 2 and bitches at you because it thinks you're a punk, you just close the window and the installation continues. (Unfortunately Far Cry 2 is one of those that doesn't run very well at high resolution.)
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E.g., this time last year, I was still having to run a patched version of winex from cedega to get the map editor in neverwinter nights to run and even then it still crashed periodically. This year, that app runs using the stock wine code.
The NWN map editor wasn't released as a Linux version like the NWN client was?
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That's pretty weird. I had nostalgic fun running NWN in Linux when the client came out, but I never tried using the map editor.
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Fuck you. Because of you I now have to reinstall a large bunch of old games on Wine to see if I can make them work again.
I hope you are proud of yourself now, asshole.
Re:most exciting thing for me: Wine 1.0 (Score:4, Informative)
And yet, bug 6971 [winehq.org] is still outstanding. It's the second highest voted bug on their bugzilla, and it's been open since 2006. They call it a "normal" severity bug, yet it clearly meets the definition for a "major" severity bug. That is: "Major loss of functionality for a wide range of applications." Just about every Unreal engine game is unplayable because of this bug. It was supposed to be fixed for 1.0, but it keeps getting deferred. I don't see why this isn't a higher priority for them. It obviously affects a lot of users, just look at all the duplicate bug reports for this one!
Parent
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Ah Yes... (Score:5, Funny)
As always, 2008 proved to be an interesting year
Yes, I remember the last time 2008 rolled around...we celebrated until dawn, frolicking in our pantaloons, firmly supported by our onion-garnished belts...
linux kernel: a year of standing still? (Score:2)
".. most of it really is one-liners, and mostly not very exciting ones at that."
So it seems to me that all the advances have been in products and peripheral applications, rather than in the fundamental core of Linux: the operating system. This is a rather ominous sign as it makes me think that the development initiative has pretty much stalled - since nothing new in th
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What I'm concerned about is that Linux seems to have stalled - if minor point releases, bug fixes and new hardware are all they're doing, then I think it will be hard to keep developers interested in doing kernel work - it will seem too much like real work, but unpaid. Linux used to b
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http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_24 [kernelnewbies.org]
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_25 [kernelnewbies.org]
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_26 [kernelnewbies.org]
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_27 [kernelnewbies.org]
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_28 [kernelnewbies.org]
Those are the 2008 kernel releases. They look exciting to me...
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Re:linux kernel: a year of standing still? (Score:5, Informative)
looky here [wordpress.com]
As far as quality of code, good news there as well, 2008 saw some nice updates to kernel scheduling, better virtualization, a completely new kernel-level graphic manager, and the EXT4 filesystem. These are all 'big deals' in both difficulty of coding and improvements they bring.
Parent
My Contribution To the Time LIne (Score:2, Offtopic)
Jan 3rd 2006 - Installed Gentoo Linux as a firewall+tarpit\snort\IDS\reporting server. Set up scheduled Emerge update world in Crontab
Sept 11th 2007 - rebooted said server moving to 2.6 kernel. Some issues with with portage after reboot but nothing the Gentoo Wiki didn't answer.
Sept 12th 2007 - Went to bar with friends.
Today - no reboots yet, 99.9% uptime for all reported services.
More Linux programs, amaaaaaaazing ^^ (Score:2)
Politics and such can be interesting sorta, but the most interesting things to me are the best new software features, and great new Linux software in general. IMO, Linux software projects should be much more of a focus in the media, and less politics. New features and new software, especially that which is cross-distro so everyone can have access. (was going to say cross-platform
When did Sun buy Lustre? (Score:2)
2008 timeline (Score:5, Funny)
Jan: Linux conquers the desktop! ...nnnnnnnnnnnn...
Feb: No, wait...
Mar: OK, now!
Apr: Nope. Hang on...
May: Linux conquers- no, wait.
Jun: Vacation
Jul: Staycation
Aug: OK, conquering in 3... 2... wait...
Sep: Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...
Oct:
Nov: nnnnnnnnnnnnow!
Dec: No, wait...
I switched, that's worth something, right? (Score:4)
Re:Correction (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Correction (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Actually they are based to silicon, powered by elecricity and run by Linux-Operating System when controlled with Gnome-desktop environment and plastic keyboard and mouse.
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when controlled with Gnome-desktop environment
Actually, the Asus EEE and the Acer Aspire One, probably the two most popular, use KDE. Not sure about the others. Sorry to be so pedantic.
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I think they use XFCE out of the box, but with a lot of KDE applications and the Qt libraries. Couldn't confirm this, though, I installed Ubuntu on my Eee :-)
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Ooooooh! So that's what the three E's refer to in the netbook by Asus.
* CannonballHead runs off to tell all his friends that his laptop is based on electricity but is powered by (wireless!) Linux
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I'd pay extra for one powered by Linus
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I'm afraid Microsoft will have felt the warm breath of the FOSS community in its fat neck, so I predict Windows 7 will actually be pleasant to use.
But that's good, right? After all, the point of all of this is that competition leads to improvements all around, and anything which makes something better for the consumer is a bonus. After all, this is about giving the consumer more and better choices, yes? Not just some arbitrary ego-massaging war...
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Of course it's great!
But part of me wants Microsoft to fail again, because that could drive them over the edge.
Competition's great and that's why without one monolithic company controlling 90% of the OS market, the consumer would be better off.
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8) a desktop based on "what do you want to do?", rather than "guess which one of the cutely named, but obscure application with far too many overly-complicated and poorly explained options, might just do half of what you want"
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1) Unified API for interacting with the umpteen number of desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, Englightenment, ad nauseam.
I'm not sure what you're actually asking here. Could you expand a bit?
2) Decent voice chat clients (no please do not tell me Skype Beta works in your *picked for linux* hardware)
The Skype client works just fine on my bog-standard-off-the-shelf hardware. But I agree that a free software client would be nice. Have you tried Ekiga?
3) Unified package management system.
You're making a classic mistake. Linux is an operating system kernel. Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and SuSE are operating system distributions. Windows is an operating system distribution and an operating system kernel. You should compare Windows to Ubuntu, or compare Windows to Fedora, or compa