What 2008 May Hold In Store for FOSS

eldavojohn writes to mention that LinuxPlanet has a brief discussion on what 2008 may hold for FOSS. The list includes thoughts on KDE 4, OOXML, DRM, and 3-D desktops. What boons for FOSS are you looking forward to in 2008?

opengl console

[rucs_hack]

That's what I'd like, a version of bash implemented in opengl, so I can make the console apps I write look funky.

Not perhaps the highest priority of the FOSS world, but sometimes you just gotta go with 'it`d be fun'.

heh, half mentioned in the summary

[ByOhTek]

KDE4 is half of what I want.

The other half is FreeBSD 7. Given it is on RC1 now, it'll be there in Feb is my guess.

Re:heh, half mentioned in the summary

[ByOhTek]

actually, that site has been excessively modified.

it was originally supposed to have the final build on Dec 12. In the new schedule, RC1 was Dec. 12 and it wasn't built until last friday morning (Dec 28), RC2 was Dec 26, and not out yet. Beta4 (not listed on the page) was, I believe, second week in Dec, and not Nov 28.

It's perpetually late. But perpetually late is better than badly bugged.

Samba 4

[div_2n]

And while I'm at it, hopefully improved compatibility due to the Samba team finally getting the proper documentation from Microsoft.

How about fixing what we have now?

[rueger]

I'm among those who would be happy if existing apps could get fixed, Firefox being the prime example. On my G4 Mac every new realease of FF brings more crashes, more memory leaks, and generally more sluggish performance. I finally abandoned it last month for Opera, which I am liking very much.

When most Open Source apps were small, simple and fast I could tolerate the inevitable bugs, and assume that they would be fixed up in the next release. Now it feels like everyone is working to add more and more features and "widgets," but no-one is worrying about overall stability and reliability.

Re:Clueless

[abigor]

Yeah, I know. My quote refers to the "major challenger" part. There's infinitely more (well, not really, but close) Java deployed on enterprise Linux servers than .Net/Mono, free or not. I'm not sure what the "challenge" is. Obviously, a GPL'd Java is a good thing, but how that will help Java meet this "challenge" that doesn't exist mystifies me.

Re:2008

[sm62704]

No, 2008: Year of the crystal balls. Or was that 2007? Come on, guys, I don't get it. Yes, there are the religious here but it seems the vast majority are either atyhiest or agnostic.

So why are so many of these crystal gazing, horiscope reading, entrail of toad prognostications showing up on slashdot?

Well, to quote the much maligned Christian Bible (2 Peter chapter 2): [holy-bible.us]

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

And to quote myself (Happy nude year!): [slashdot.org]

OK, it's that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowlege that when the next New Year comes along nobody will remember that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash.

I might as well, too.

And to quote myself again: "The future is now. The future is bunk." [slashdot.org]

I often see articles at slashdot about The Future of [X} and I invariably ask in a comment "where do I go to get my PhD in Futurism?" The fact, of course, is that nobody holds a PhD in futurism. Futurism is no more real than astrology, Tarot, or divining tea leaves. I've been listening to these guys all my fifty five year long life and haven't once heard a single prediction pan out.

While we're doing this, a letter from prison [slashdot.org] rings in the new year.

Here's hoping 2008 sees you healthy and happy, and that Linda gets out of prison. I miss her.

-mcgrew

JADE

[Anonymous Coward]

I am looking forward to JADE, a roguelike, successor of ADOM.

http://www.adom.de/ [www.adom.de]

What they're missing

[Dasher42]

I predict that LLVM [llvm.org] and HLVM [hlvm.org] will gain steam. People are going to realize that this pair of abstractions is cleaner, leaner, and meaner than the current virtual machine + language + API way of doing things characterized by Java and .NET. The fact that a GPU can be used as a processor transparently where appropriate, just the way Apple already has with LLVM, is going to start the rethink that was cut short by Java and .NET's fiascoes of ownership or patents. They'll also start making development in compiled languages easier.

This will be the open source response to the blurring lines between CPU and GPU task-wise, as the vector computing tasks could be done much quicker on the GPU based on the advances of LLVM, and applications will benefit transparently. It will be very cool.

Amarok?

[SanityInAnarchy]

There are other players than xmms...

Though I suppose when you have 3D, spinning spectrum analyzers, things are looking pretty good.

Re:ReactOS

[Anonymous Coward]

ReactOS is awesome, to be sure... but...

If you want to break Microsoft's dominance on the desktop, this is where to look, not Linux.

Linux + Wine is much, much closer to achieving full compatibility for Windows Apps than ReactOS is. (E.g. right now ReactOS is alpha and can't be used for anything serious, whereas Linux right now is fully functional and Wine support for Windows apps is very good, though not perfect).

Again, I support the ReactOS project. It's a neat idea. But Linux+Wine is much, much closer to being a viable replacement for Windows than ReactOS is. Linux+Wine gives you "the best of both worlds": a stable OSS core, access to a huge vetted repository of applications, and ability to run unmodified Windows binaries if you need to.

Wine has been getting very good of late (e.g. runs Photoshop 7 flawlessly, runs Office 2003 with some bugs). In fact, I see Wine's Windows-compatibility over the next few years becoming a major selling point for transitioning to Linux.

Re:opengl console

[caluml]

Yeah, Amarok, sure. If I need a quick little app to listen to streaming audio at work, of course I want to install some all-singing, all-dancing thing that pulls in Postgres, Ruby, etc.

$ ldd /usr/bin/amarokapp | wc -l
69

No, XMMS did fine. And now I'm using Audacious, although it doesn't do some things as well as XMMS did. Amarok, while great isn't even in the same section as XMMS.

Re:How about fixing what we have now?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and generally more sluggish performance. I finally abandoned it last month for Opera, which I am liking very much.

Insert bitter laughter here. Sorry, but you'd like Opera more on Windows. I prefer Opera, I've been using it since 3.5, but it too is a Linux app that goes under the category How about fixing what we have now?

I guess my big wish for 2008 is that KDE4 lives up to the promotion. I like Ubuntu better than Windows, but jeeze that's not much of a compliment, you know? It's frankly sluggish, and so many freakin apps have wee glitches and feature-shortcomings that don't exist in the Win equivalents.

It's a little like buying organic produce back in the 80s. You knew it was a better idea, you knew it had advantages, you knew it was worth the extra effort, but damn you were getting tired of how much of it was sub-par, spotty and bruised. But that changed. By the end of the decade the market and retailers were big enough to demand and support organic produce that was every bit as good as regular issue. I'd hoped Linux would be there by now, but not quite. Maybe KDE4 will bring us over the top of the hump though.

I'm greedy: I want Linux to be hands-down stinking better than Windows, not just better.

Re:opengl console

[morgan_greywolf]

Speaking as a fairly competent Python programmer (you may look at my code and disagree, but I digress :), I have to say that while Python does smooth over some of the differences between platforms and distributions, it doesn't solve all the problems.

Here's an example: I have a program for Epson Stylus printers that is a GUI front-end for escputil called Stylus Toolbox. Stylus Toolbox reads things like ink status from the printer. In order to do that, it must pass the raw printer device to escputil.

Now, the user shouldn't have to configure Stylus Toolbox with the raw printer device. Stylus Toolbox should be able to get this information from CUPS (which escputil already relies upon). So, imagine a USB printer. Unfortunately, CUPS used to give information like usb:/dev/usb/lp0, but now it gives information like usb://vendor/identifier, so a single Stylus C88 connected to the box looks like usb://EPSON/Stylus%20/C88 (I have no idea what it returns if there's more than one C88. Anyone who knows let me know! It's not in the docs!)

So, you have to get it from the USB port. Now there are multiple ways to do this. You could shell out to external commands like 'lsusb' and some combination of sending/receiving commands from the USB device, but this doesn't work well and isn't platform independent. You can also get the information from HAL, but this is only platform independent to a point -- what if a particular platform isn't supported by HAL? You're kinda screwed. And on Windows -- well, you gotta do it some other way.

So, you get the idea. My latest dev version is getting the information from HAL, because that's an open standard, but that means new versions won't work on platforms that don't use HAL -- or at least the user will have to manually specify the raw printer device.

Re:More Linux games! :(

[RandomStyuf]

Loki tried it, and failed miserably. There really isn't that much demand out there.

Actually, I believe that Loki were very successful, as in, the company was profitable and the business model worked, and everything company wise was ok... The problem, from what I understood was more of the CEO and his wife using the companies funds as their personal bank account. Even if not, though, don't forget that Linux has changes substantially since 2002! In 2002 I would have never considered giving my sister any distro of Linux. Now my sister is dual booting openSuSE and Ubuntu debating with herself which she wants more (she has been dual booting them for over half a year, but she still can't choose...). My point is, the leaps Linux has made since 2002 are substantial, and anything that happened back then can not be used as an excuse now, because the landscape of the market is different. Ubuntu has introduced the idea of free operating systems to teenagers worldwide (I know at least in the USA, Belgium and Israel, where I've been working lately and talking to many Linux users) and many more would jump ship from Windows in an instant if they could play their games on it. If someone were to start a porting house, that would negotiate and port games and important programs over to Linux (important programs like the Adobe suit(Photoshop for example) and Quicken's programs), it would probably, not only be successful (provided they manage to find a good "platform" to base the "linux platform" on) but they will probably become very influential in matters of computer software.

Re:Clueless

[plague3106]

That's a rather absurd statement to make. I could just as easily say "with features like object orientation, it makes me wonder if C++ developers really qualify as programmers anymore." Linq is a higher level abstraction to let you write less code. But it doesn't do anything you couldn't without it. Just like C++ allows you to write less code than if you used assembly.

What does it matter if the other APIs are Windows only? I thought competition was a good thing. The fact that WPF is tied to Windows doesn't make it less powerful in the slightest. If I can get something done quicker and cheaper using the Windows platform, but that means I have to give up cross platform ability.. well, it doesn't become as cut and dry as "well its not cross platform so its not an option."

Check the Coverity Scans

[shis-ka-bob]

Look at http://scan.coverity.com/ [coverity.com]. This is a great project to improve the stability of open source projects by looking for all sorts of coding errors that can be very hard to spot manually. It may not be true that with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. But is it very clear that the Coverity eyeballs are exceptionally good at exposing lots of bug. It is all clear that the open source developers are excellent at fixing these bugs. If KDE can get 4.0 out the door and drive their Coverity defects closer to zero, then I think that we will see a very robust, efficient KDE 4.0 by year's end. The number of defects in my Linux/X.org/KDE 'desktop stack' has dramatically dropped, at least as measured by Coverity. Sorry for sounding like an advertisement. I know that there are other ways to find defects, but I am just so impressed with how open source developers have closed thousands of coding errors that have been identified by these automated code audits. This is the sorts of constant improvement that quietly leads to better stability and security.

Re:How about fixing what we have now?

[zsau]

The real answer is competition. Firefox was decent when it was competing against Mozilla and, on Windows, Internet Explorer (Safari and Konqueror aren't sexy enough for Mozilla to care). Now, it only competes against IE so Linux and Mac users are secondary (or worse) and the developers clearly think it's so much better than IE that it doesn't really need to be competitive.

If the GTK and Windows ports of WebKit can get to a state where browsers for the rest of us can be based on them, then maybe Firefox can improve. Hopefully, it'll happen before Firefox is completely sidelined because otherwise we'll just see the replacement browsers stagnating after an initial period of being the greatest thing since sliced bread.

(Yup folks, Vi and Gnome need Emacs and KDE. It'll be a sad day everywhere but Redmond if one ever wins.)

As silly as this sounds coming from a Linux user..

[centuren]

I'd like either a nice port of iTunes or to find a better jukebox-type music player. I know I can get 100 suggestions right now for players people swear by, but nothing I've tried so far handles browsing, selection, and playback of music as well. In fact, I'd like a better version of iTunes, with features like the ability to classify a song as multiple genres, and have it show up under each.

I've yet to try setting my Linux box up as a iTunes library sharing server (which makes sense with the Macs in the house but the media on my Linux desktop), but if that's not easy to maintain (adding/editing content) I'd like to see improvement there. I suppose that falls into the network media sharing server that's compatible with iTunes as a client category.

Also, the traditional complaint about having to fiddle around. Why should I have to assign keystrokes to 8 of my 12 mouse buttons for it to work across everything (comfiz-fusion/kde, wine/wow, fluxbox, etc)?

Re:opengl console

[jhol13]

Cheez ... I'd be happy with a terminal which handles ctrl-c (etc). as copy.

Besides, I'm already 2008! Bite that!

Re:What boons for FOSS are you looking forward to.

[falconwolf]

Copyright instills a limited supply (and source) onto something that by nature is unlimited

I am glad to say this is wrong. First someone has to write whatever it is, and copyrights give them an incentive to write it. Therefore copyrights are more likely to make sure something is written, and therefore increases the supply, than not having copyrights. As it is now, a writer does not have to copyright something, they can instead put whatever they create into the public domain. And how many books, movies, or songs are released into the public domain as compared to those copyrighted? I know of no such material that has been placed into the public domain but those for whom the copyright has expired. However as I said in a previous post I would shorten copyright terms, I'd only have copyrights last a few years from first publication.

Falcon

Re:More Linux games! :(

[kazade84]

SDL + OpenGL + OpenAL + OpenTNL (or HawkNL) + ODE + DevIL + FreeType. There you go, Windowing + Input + Threading, Graphics, Sound, Networking, Physics, Texture loading and Fonts all with a similar syntax (i.e. glEnable, alInit etc.) all also aim to be cross-platform and importantly, all bind together really well and will compile on pretty much any modern Linux distro, Windows or Mac OS. Of course Microsoft provides math functions (but honestly.. you only need to write a math lib once and there are plenty free ones out there anyway). Write a game using those libraries and you hardly need to do anything to make it completely cross-platform (just file paths *cough*boost-filesystem*cough* and a few other bits and pieces).

There are 2 reasons Microsoft has a hold on the games market:

1. They provided a decent, well-supported solution first (well by the time they got to DX7 or 8 anyway)
2. Big games developers can't just change the way they work without a very VERY good reason.

The only way we can expect a shift in Linux support in games is if Linux market share gets to about 20% and ATI/nVidia really start supporting open source drivers properly so Linux drivers can as fast (if not faster) than the Windows ones. It will happen... it'll just take time.