LWN.net Linux Timeline 2002

Cpyder writes "The fine folks over at Linux Weekly News have just released their 2002 Linux Timeline. It's nice to see what good things have happened to the community this year."

Actually...

[Twine]

It's been out for like a week, available to paying readers.

"This is version 0.9 of the 2002 timeline"

And I hope the editors here don't decide to post another story when 1.0 comes out.

To be the devil's advocate,

[Anonymous Coward]

has Linux actually improved over the last year in any real way?
I have a feeling better things will come in 2003.

Re:To be the devil's advocate,

[kasperd]

has Linux actually improved over the last year in any real way?

Yes, great things has happened in the development of 2.5.

I have a feeling better things will come in 2003.

I guess your feeling will prove correct. To be a litle more specific I expect the 2.5 development to finish and we will see a new stable kernel with the improvements we are looking forward for.

Forgotten Entry

[robbyjo]

I think lwn.net forgot this during November 2002:

RMS yet again tried to convince everyone to call Linux as GNU/Linux.

I guess he should change his name to GNU/Stallman first. :-)

Re:Forgotten Entry

[Anonymous Coward]

He lives in a brave GNU/World of his own ;)

Favorite Tidbits

[SuperDuG]

Red Hat announces a "pro forma" $1 million profit, though that turns into a $29 million actual loss in the fine print. The results also show that the company's embedded systems business is shrinking.

Ahhh the accounting practices of Americans, PROFIT.

CD copy protection schemes are defeated with a magic marker, but the movement to ban markers under the DMCA never quite gets off the ground.

Not by lack of trying ...

Disney buys a bunch of Linux systems from HP, despite the fact that the Disney-backed CBDTPA would make Linux illegal (HP press release).

You make it sound like Disney is a large member of the MPAA, and that my friend is an all out lie^H^H^H .. wait no ... that's right ...

Red Hat's "bluecurve" desktop draws criticism for its attempts to merge the GNOME and KDE desktops into a single environment. Other changes, such as the removal of the Taiwanese flag, also prove upsetting.

Hehehe this one still gets me, I love how people think it's a bad thing to merge the two biggest best open source window managers for linux/other OS's.

New Xbox security measures are broken within three weeks; the new hardware security had been meant to keep Linux (and other software) off the Xbox platform.

Hold on a minute here, are you trying to say that Microsoft is bad at security for technology related products?

The tcpdump source is compromised by a trojan horse. Experts agree that this stuff is getting old.

but I was under the impression that ALL people were inherently good ...

Linux comes ahead of Microsoft on Google's list of top search terms.

That's because people are trtying to find lennox air conditioners, DUH! Everyone knows that RedHat is linux, not linux.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Stallman quote

[Caractacus Potts]

RMS has a quote on the Dec 2002 page that says "What I can say is that Microsoft has enough cash on hand to pay 5,000 programmers to write free software for about a century. There is clearly no need for the proprietary software model".

I'm stuck in an infinite loop trying to parse this statement, could somebody help me.

Re:Stallman quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy, you can replace the first sentence with anything.
Like "The sun is shining, the sky is blue. There is clearly no need fot the proprietary software model."

Re:Stallman quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not speaking for RMS obviously, but you could deduce from the size of Microsoft's cash pile that people will pay lots of money for software. If instead of paying for software products, people paid to employ free software developers, there would be a superabundace of quality of free software and little demand for propietary solutions.

Gouvernments and Linux

[tsa]

What I miss in the timeline, and what I find the most striking thing that happened to Linux in the past year is the many stories we heard about gouvernments and also other large organisations migrating to Linux, or researching the merits of a move from Microsoft to Linux. This in relation to (I think) the new MS licenses. I have a feeling 2003 will be a difficult year for MS.

Linux != Nerd News

[pc-0x90]

Jon Johansen is indicted in Norway for his role in creating and posting the DeCSS code... FreeBSD development moves to the FreeBSD Mall (announcement). As expected, Wind River drops FreeBSD, which it acquired with BSDi in 2001... Microsoft decides that security is important, and leaks memos to prove it... Ok, that's just from the first page alone.. They did the same thing last year.. when will they just change the name, it's like they didn't even try to get linux centric news items...

Two observations

[Otter]

1) Only 12 posts? I remember when these timeline stories would get >200 posts. As Linux settles down and the gold rush mentality fades, there's a lot less excitement around it. Of course, this is just a draft version -- when the final version is released and Taco posts a new "Linux Timeline 2002 has been released!" story, maybe it will get more attention.

2) Anyway, what struck me the most about Linux in 2002 was how on the one hand, easy to use distributions (Lindows, Lycoris, Knoppix, that resurrected Corel thingy) made so much progress, while, on the other hand, the big excitement in desktop Linux focused on Gentoo and other source-based distributions. That's a worrisome sign for people hoping to see widespread new adoption of Linux on the desktop.

Re:Two observations

[HiThere]

Don't be disheartened. The interest tends to flow toward new developments. Linux already IS easy enough to use. Applications are nearly here. OpenOffice 1.0 is a big improvement over the betas. (I used it to file my most recent timesheet at work [kept in an XLS format that KSpread won't handle, didn't try gnumeric].) Last year at our office, there were two installations of Linux. Both sort of sub-rosa. This year there are around 6, with another on the way. These are for developers and servers, but that's a start. So far the only real hangup is the Novell Groupwise connection. You can look up appointments, but it won't remind you. (I guess I need to copy them over to evolution or something.) And it won't notify you when someone is proposing an appointment, you need to check. This is bad because one of the tech gurus likes to propose meetings at the last minute. With the Windows groupwise I immediately know, and can respond yes or no. With the Linux client (well, html access via a browser, really) I don't find out until the meeting is half over. Needs work.

For that matter, most of the Novell connection needs work. This may be ameliorated when we migrate to Netware6 next year. (January probably.)

But, as you can see, these are MINOR problems! There now is basically no reason for anyone to stick to windows. They might need to stay with Red Hat 7.3 until VMWare gets their act together and produces a version for Red Hat 8.0, if they have any applications that they NEED that simply must run on windows. (I'm currently planning on moving my wife's computer over to Linux, with a VMWare box for a couple of applications that haven't been ported to anything since Win95. [The main one doesn't even run on Win98!])

The importance of Lycoris, Lindows, Xanthro, etc. is that they allow someone to run Linux without having anyone nearby to hold their hand. (I may hate Lycoris setting the default use to be root, but it does make *some* sense. Still, that should be handled by install scripts, not by default.)

Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen a story on /. get so little responses.

Last Post!

[alpg]

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual
way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of
complaining.
-- Jeff Raskin

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