LWN.net Linux Timeline 2003

Ridgelift writes "Linux Weekly News have released Linux Timeline 2003, their annual year in review of the top stories around Linux and the Open Source Community. Their list has been available to subscribers for the last two weeks, but is now available for free. What a nice Christmas present, and what a year it's been."

Re:The timeline.

[t0ny]

Come on, man, this is Slashdot. If you are expecting to get non-biased technical info here, you are in the wrong place.

Hell, I get less bias in MCSE Magazine.

Is the letter open source?

[xintegerx]

Or do you we (to be legal) have to subscribe to see it because of copyright issues?

Perl ?

[Krapangor]

I'm pretty confused that the timeline ignored all Perl-related advancements in the last year.
Has this something to do with the Perl license or are there other reasons ?

Re:Perl ?

[Grizzlysmit]

I'm pretty confused that the timeline ignored all Perl-related advancements in the last year. Has this something to do with the Perl license or are there other reasons ?

Ummmmm I'd say it's because it's a Linux Time-line, not a Perl Time-line, Perl is great and all, but how does it belong in a give OS's time-line???

Linux developers.. post about the future here

[wackybrit]

I use Linux, and I develop on Linux, but being locked in the world of servers and system administration, I find it hard to keep up with all the latest app, GUI, and tool developments going on with Linux.

This timeline is great for the past, but since it's Christmas day and all, I figured it wouldn't be too bad if I could ask some Linux developers to post here about what they've got coming up in 2004.

For example, are you working on sub-pixel font rendering in X.. got a totally unique productivity tool ready to come out in 2004.. or..? What great new steps forward can I expect to see in terms of what you're developing, next year?

Re:Linux developers.. post about the future here

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux developers don't read slashdot.

Re:Linux developers.. post about the future here

[IamTheRealMike]

I'm not sure why so few people have posted to this story (having fun at christmas i guess :) but as my family are just taking a break between watching Monsters Inc and starting the evening meal, I might as well post the things that are most likely to happen. BTW this is most appropriate for new years day - maybe we can get an article posted.

First, my own projects. autopackage will hopefully make it to 1.0 this year, or very near to it. We're starting to get aggressive about dropping non-essential features and by the end of 2004 hopefully the Linux community will have:

• A nice framework for building installers that install Linux software on nearly any (sane) distribution, give you a pretty gui, detect and resolve dependencies regardless of how they were installed and integrates with existing RPM based technology.

• A guidebook on how to write portable binaries - Linux binary portability is much better than most people seem to think but a best practices document won't hurt.

• Some example packages that show how to do it.

Hopefully during 2004 Wine will release 0.9, which focusses amongst other things on ease of use. Or it might not. We're pretty bad at sticking to schedule there :(

On other fronts, expect to see multimedia finally start getting polished. We've got some really nice apps in development (in particular the Totem movie player and the Rhythmbox/JuK music players). These apps all still need a bit of work - for instance, inserting my Monsters Inc DVD today gave me a "Could not seek on NAV packet" or something equally cryptic: I needed libdvdcss installed. Easy for someone who's been around this block a few times already, useless for anybody else. Once that lib was installed though, it all worked perfectly, with a great user interface to boot.

Expect to see hardware integration getting into gear. Now RML is hired by Novell to hack exclusively on kernel desktop integration issues we're about to get *much* closer to plug and play hardware.

Gnome 2.6 will come out about half way through the year (prolly a bit earlier) and totally kick ass, as will KDE 3.2. In particular Gnome 2.6 will include Epiphany, which is one of the few native widgets browsers IMHO that I'd be happy presenting to my family. Firebird is great, but XUL/Gecko is still slower on X than Windows and has been for years, it's probably not going to improve much more soon.

Ephy was in Gnome 2.4 but unfortunately was release before it was really ready. The current version is buggy and missing essential features like popup blocking. You'll be pleased to hear that already in the Gnome development releases these problems are all gone, and it's a really cool little browser. It also takes advantage of lots of cool stuff from GTK 2.3, as well as some stuff still in development like a MacOS X style toolbar editor (with sliding buttons). Unfortunately that stuff won't get into GTK proper until it's proven itself in apps like Epiphany so it'll probably be 2005 before we start seeing it widespread.

The FDO X server (kdrive) will start getting usable in 2004. I have no idea if any major distros will switch, hard to tell while the driver situation is so uncertain, but where it works it'll bring Linux up to new levels of prettyness - not bad considering it already looks very professional IMHO.

Finally, expect to see lots of stupid desktop bugs and interop problems get nailed, as was the case during 2003, especially with things like removable media.

That's all I can think of! Definately we have to do this proper in the new year. Merry Christmas! :)

Re:No mention about Safari?

[Grizzlysmit]

January 2003: Apple released Safari browser based on khtml engine.

That definately should have been there.

Ummmm let me see apple releases Safari, it runs on ... oh yes Mac OS X, hmmmm this is at best peripheral to Linux, how would that fit in a Linux Time-line, an OS X time-line sure but not a Linux Time-line.

Were you worried Mac OS X wouldn't get a mention?? why should it this a story about a Linux Time-line, stop whoring.

Linux timeline?

[Dionysus]

Looks more like Slashdot timeline, especially if January is any indication.
I mean, what does Lexmark filing a DMCA suit against Smartek have to do with Linux?
Or Jon Johanssen (writer of a Windows GUI for DeCSS)? Sonny Bono copyright extension case? MS-SQL worm?

News to me

[Otter]

TurboLinux 10 Desktop was released? I didn't realize they still existed.

Also, SuSE Linux's name change to SUSE LINUX doesn't seem to have been mentioned on Slashdot; instead we get a policy of randomly switching between SuSE and SUSE, sometimes in the same post.

Explain software death.

[Futurepower(R)]

Help me understand software death. My understanding is that Microsoft's software death involves being pushed to an entirely new operating system, with new hardware requirements and many, many new bugs and training problems. This has certainly been true of the switch from Windows 98 to Windows XP. It certainly appears likely to be true of a switch from Windows XP to Windows Longhorn.

On the other hand, when Red Hat kills its products [theregister.co.uk], the upgrade is to something very similar. It is likely that no hardware upgrade and no new training will be necessary.

Is that correct? Or, is Red Hat just as much of a Dr. Jack Kevorkian as Microsoft?

Re:Explain software death.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux makes changes, new kernels are developed, gnome and kde gain more features, things evolve. Redhat killing it's product line is to keep everyone with current software. It also makes tech support on their reps easier. Redhat just gets a bad wrap.

XP Time line

[floydman]

Jan Release patch
Feb Release patch
.
.
.
. Release patch for patch
Dec No patch for IE, openwarez did it for us

Not a very encouraging year

[fishlet]

Since this story hasn't generated much chatter yet, I'll speak up. I cant help but feel somewhat underwhelmed by this past years happenings. There were some highlights, such as the 2.6 kernel finally coming out. But my expectations are far from met.

I saw many mentions of "Linux on the desktop" in this years list... but my personal experience hasn't improved much. I keep hoping for a quantum leap forward but have yet to see it (maybe next year). Some stuff I'm still waiting for:

* I want linux to auto detect my joystick and 3D card (with GL support) without me having to drop into VI and configure stuff (And don't tell me to use emacs!). I DO know how to configure this stuff but frankly I'm getting tired of doing it everytime I install linux.

* A WYSIWYG web application development suite thats *BETTER* than dreamweaver and Visual Studio .net combined. I have high hopes for Quanta but it's still a featherweight for features. Call me a troll if you like but some of the Windows development tools kick A**.

* GAMES... I want some more good games. If 90% of linux games developers would stop making rewrites of 20 year old games and work on something modern it would be a good start.

* One lousy control panel. Is that too much to ask? I use mandrake & KDE. I have a KDE control panel, a mandrake control panel, and others to choose from such as Webmin. Why can I click Start->Settings and have all configuration at one place. Throw in different distro's and this problem multiplies.

* Ditch KDE & Gnome and have all the developers work on the one true desktop (as if) I'm still plagued by inconsistancies between the gnome & kde programs that I use. Not to mention it just looks terrible when some windows are themed and others don't follow suit.

So there you have it, Linux on the desktop really didn't go that far this year IMHO. You can waste your mod points modding this down but a intelligent reply would be much better.

Re:Not a very encouraging year

[althalus1969]

>So there you have it, Linux on the desktop really >didn't go that far this year IMHO. You can waste >your mod points modding this down but a >intelligent reply would be much better.
Actually, I was going to mod this up, just because you summed everything up quite nicely.
I'm working as Admin and Consultant for a German Company and we're exclusively going for Linux, but until Open/Star Office went Gold this year, we wouldn't even talk about the Desktop. Now that this is finally changing, yeah,

Great Quote

[Grizzlysmit]

Although a lot of people are aware of how nice it is and a practical thing to be working with free software, most of them have never thought about the issues of freedom, and that weakens us, because people who don't value their freedom are likely to toss it away.

--Richard Stallman

I don't care what some of you think, RMS is a great man.

OpenBSD loses DARPA funding

[Grizzlysmit]

OpenBSD loses DARPA funding after the agency takes offense at Theo de Raadt's views.

Hmmm I not a BSD'er (for now at least), and I not sure why this is on a Linux Time-line, but still it good to see people not selling their integrity, Good on you Theo. It may have cost you but being a phony to get funding would cost you more.