What Will Linux Be Capable Of, 3 Years Down the Road? 679
An anonymous reader writes "In a prediction of the open-source future, InfoWeek speculates on What Linux Will Look Like In 2012. The most outlandish scenario foresees Linux forsaking its free usage model to embrace more paid distros where you get free Linux along with (much-needed) licenses to use patent-restricted codecs. Also predicted is an advance for the desktop based on — surprise — good acceptance for KDE 4. Finally, Linux is seen as making its biggest imprint not on the PC, but on mobile devices, eventually powering 40 million smartphones and netbooks. Do you agree? And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?"
Think Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
You might be just right about that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a conversation I found from a fedora discussion [fedoraproject.org]:
Non linear ogg editor/ screencast helper
Status: Proposed
Summary of idea: Still we are missing a good non linear editor for ogg videos. This can be a simple GUI based application to do non linear editing of ogg. Like cutting, mixing the videos. Adding still frames to the video etc. Though this is not a project to be finished within 2-3 months, but we should be able to have a basic application running to do simple edits. May be having feature of upload videos to fedoratv or integrate itself with recordmydesktop to get screencasts directly. I am looking for more ideas on this.
Contacts: KushalDas kushaldas AT fedoraproject {NOSPAM} DOT org
Notes: Recommended choice of language is Python or C
ValentTurkovic: I have 2 suggestions; First is to try and resurrect Diva Project who started as GSC project in 2006. Second is to work with Pitivi Project because it is on a good path and has ogg editing functionality and easy enough interface. To get an overview of this Diva Project rise and fall please read these two posts. UPDATE: There are two projects that look promissing: saya-videoeditor [2 [blogspot.com]] and myvideoeditor [3 [blogspot.com]]
So between these and Cinelerra's successor, Lumiera [lumiera.org], I'm sure 4 years will be more than enough to have an actually usable professional Video Editor for Linux.
And I think that these 4 years will give Krita and GIMP the time they need to become full-featured and more user-friendly, respectively.
(And don't get me started on WINE, these guys are advancing fast!)
Mod parent funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, reread that post. If you think he's serious about "4 years will be more than enough to have an actually usable professional Video Editor for Linux" is serious, then you must be new to software, and open source software especially.
>And I think that these 4 years will give Krita and GIMP the time they need to become full-featured and more user-friendly, respectively.
Yeah, GIMP, which was started in *1995*, just needs another 4 years to be not such a piece of shit.
Do you guys get it now? It's *funny*, *laugh*.
Re:Mod parent funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Interesting)
Well as it turns out. It might never be Linux's year on the desk top. Fours years down the round, multimedia desknotes, UMPCs, smartphone/PDA, smartTVs and, maybe, just maybe, walk around virtual reality will be approaching. Now when it comes walk around virtual reality who seriously would want M$ DRMing your personal view of the world, talk about suck.
The real shift will be a hardware shift,with software supplied 'FREE' as in 'FREE' with the hardware, which combines compatibility across a broad range of different hardware platforms all free of licences. Typical family home, 4 phones, 2 Multimedia desknotes , 4 UMPCS, 2 smartTVs, 1 Family Server(email,VOIP messaging, streaming) yeah we are all stupid enough to pay for 12 OS licences every two years, or even every time we replace the hardware, then add to that another 12 office suite licences every two years now add the cost of fully functional unDRMed family server, plus additional user licences for guests. I am not even going to bother to calculate the cost, as it is obviously way out of the ballpark for the average family. Lets not of course forget some of the other content that still has to be paid for, games, movies and music.
So M$ is doomed, doomed I tell you ;), when it comes to windows and office, why else would ballmer be so myopic is his bid for yahoo as a result of a failing MSN if he did not know the writing was on the wall for M$'s monopoly OS and office suite pricing rip off (that monopoly is slowly but surely being eaten away by millions of voracious piranha penguins) ;D.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is (and has been for a few years now) fighting hard against the Linux tide on the sub-desktop. Currently, they say its 50-50 [linuxdevices.com]... but that was years ago. I guess that's why the first result in every API search at the time returned the WinCE version.
Fast forward today, and Windows is sliding [findarticles.com] against the Penguin, which could suggest why the first result in every API search returns the .NET equivalent, and how if you install the Platform SDK, you cannot uncheck the option for .NET embedded APIs.
So.. Linux for the future, I reckon so simply because the biggest and best weathervane for increasing Linux adoption is shouting how worried they are (ie Microsoft). If MS were ignoring Linux and F/OSS then I'd think it was all hype, but as they're coughing up cash for various OSS projects, declaring how open-source friendly they are, creating their own OSS repository sites (codeplex), getting various OSS projects better integrated with Windows.. all that just shows how worried they are, so Linux is a big deal at the moment.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:4, Insightful)
The ship has sailed. While 100,000 of us spent the late 90s grousing on /. about how next year would finally be the year of Linux on the desktop, a company named Apple went out and actually built the thing. Unix on the desktop has been done and done right. Linux had a huge window of opportunity in the early part of the last decade, and blew it. Draw whatever conclusions from that you want about the free software "movement." Mark my words: barring a direct meteor hit on Cupertino, Linux will never, ever be a major player in the desktop market.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
That was my fourth thought, the first 3 correspond to the 3 years in between now and then.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree 100% - wild and cute enough to make you want to play with it.
Linux has laid the foundation.
Firefox has taken good care of our browsing.
OpenOffice + Google docs have given us portable information.
KDE 4 has given us a flashy desktop, GNOME has given us a simple yet powerful one - both are beautiful in their own right.
VLC/Mplayer have given us independence of video formats.
Linux + Firefox + KDE 4/GNOME + OpenOffice + VLC/Mplayer = desktop independence. Only piece of the puzzle left is gaming. Once we have gaming, drivers on Linux (for anything consumer oriented atleast) will no longer be a problem. I definitely see that happening within the next 3 years, but we as a Linux community HAVE TO back whichever video card manufacturer gives us the best Linux drivers. Make them work for our cash and very soon, Linux will be a standard platform to release for.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people continue to insist that PC gaming, which is only done by a small percentage of computer users, is so important to Linux. It would be a simple matter to capture 90% of the PC market without ever having a single 3d driver, let alone anything more than the casual games Linux already has.
Hell, before Aero was announced, most systems had almost no graphics (and thus gaming) ability anyway.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Insightful)
I would bet you that 90% of the nerdy guys who know how computers work, support the average user working at helpdesks and IT shops, and sell things to the average consumer at best buy play (or have played) games.
I am one of these nerdy guys. I learned how to use linux when I was a kid to run bots for an efnet channel and bsod windows clients and stupid shit. I liked it because it was robust, I could do things without a GUI, and everything worked off of C, which I knew enough of to get around. So, I imagine I am about as willing to use linux as the average nerd. The thing is, I haven't touched it since I was 16 because it doesn't run games.
I think it's great, but would I be comfortable installing it on a friends' or a coworkers computer? heck no! I don't have the years of experience supporting it that I do with windows based systems, so when they ran into some strange driver error or something, I wouldn't really be able to help.
And again, I want to emphasize that the only reason I don't have this experience is that Linux doesn't support the games I play, so I have no lasting motivation to switch my OS.
When I think about how many people I know who feel pretty much the same, and work in similar positions supporting end users, it's really wholly apparent how important gaming is to the Linux movement. If you truly cared about Linux, it seems to me you would do everything in your power to bridge this divide.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:5, Insightful)
(Before I go further, I want to note that I am not trying to start a flamewar.)
With all due respect, I think you're forgetting a few things thing. Let's start with what's the biggest for me: a distro that handles the install properly. I have tried many distros over the last few years, and while they've all moved forward with leaps and bounds, none of them "just work" out of the box.
Let's use Ubuntu as an example. It's far better than it was even a year ago, but it's still not perfect. For example, on Saturday, I started the quest of installing Ubuntu as the primary operating system on an older PC. The install seemed to go fine, but after doing the updates, I suddenly had no sound from my SB Live! I managed to resuscitate it after a bit, but that's the sort of thing that just shouldn't happen. Also, earlier today, BMPx randomly stopped working. I had closed everything and put my computer to sleep, and when I came back three hours later, BMPx refused to start.
You make a good point with your video comment: it's pretty easy to play video on Linux now. Will pretty much any video play? Yes. Is it blindly obvious as to how to play an encrypted DVD? It's getting there. Audio's the problem now. People seem to be focusing so much on video now that information on installing support for such things as WMA audio (c'mon, do you really expect people to rerip everything that they most certainly own? :P ).
And then there's the ubiquitous gaming comment. Thankfully, Wine's making progress, but contrary to what Linux zealots want us to think, it's not actually perfect! Support for games using OpenGL is pretty good, and as someone said earlier today in another comment (forgotten where, sorry), so is support for programs that were actually written the "right" way, but it's still far from perfect.
So, I guess, to sum up: these days, Linux is pretty (or at least, not butt-ugly as it used to be), user-friendly (once it's all working properly), and there's a wide range of utility programs out there. It just needs better gaming, easier-to-find information on installing support and codecs for protected audio formats, and it needs to just work (and keep working!) out of the box.
--- Mr. DOS
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever combination of distro and package code that enables PC gaming on Linux will BE the standard.
We can talk about standards being determined by an educated and enlightened board all we want, but people still code web pages to deal with IE quirks because most people us it - despite it NOT conforming to W3C standards.
Tell a gamer they can play any game they want on a free OS and make EASILY it work. You have the numbers you need to set the "social" standard.
Re:Think Antarctica (Score:4, Interesting)
>Whatever combination of distro and package code that enables PC gaming on Linux will BE the standard.
One of the... many... many reasons there are no virtually no games on Linux is because *there are no standards* so software written a few years ago doesn't work a few years later if it's distributed in binary form.
Windows has games because not just because it has a large audience, but also because you can ship a game for windows and the exact same binary will still run years later.
Even on the transition to vista, most software actually worked if you turned compatibility mode on, and UAC off. You can still run *starcraft* on vista. Starcraft from *1995*.
Here's a link to a commercial Linux game from the 90s.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/exile3/linuxexile3.html [spiderwebsoftware.com]
Go ahead, download the demo. Have fun getting that to run...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Three years can do a lot. Remember what Linux was like 3 years ago. Be patient and if you want it to improve, CONTRIBUTE. If the majority of games can work on even one distro out of the box, the other distros will lose users. It is the simple model of evolution at work - the other distros will adapt to suit the environment they are in. Open source will make sure the knowledge is shared.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Four years from now will gaming still be on a PC platform, with the success of the Xbox 360 and other current generation consoles?
Because the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are the first ever consoles yes?
The same thing was asked when the paint was still wet on the PS2 and original xbox. Consoles are much more powerful now than the last generation, and not as powerful as the next generation, but console games are not PC games. The two are different, and appeal to different people.
Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Funny)
1998 Nope
2000 Nope
2002 Nope
2004 Nope
2006 Nope
2008 Nope
2011 YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
With the way desktop software is heading, to get Linux on the desktop all that has to be done is for it to remain "free", as in "I'm free to do whatever I want with my computer".
Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't think of any M$ product from inception in '70s that was anything but below sub-par, frought with bugs, hard to use and way overpriced.
No love for Microsoft Flight Simulator?
MicroCrud will disappear from the world o' desktop because they've pissed everybody off on this planet. The sooner they're gone the better.
You think so, don't you? Keep dreaming. Most big corporations aren't ready to drop MS on the desktop yet - although it doesn't look promising based on Vista adoption rates.
Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Informative)
What Will Linux Be Capable Of, 3 Years Down the Road?
And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?
I also will go out on a limb and say it will enable Slashdot editors to make titles consistent with summaries!
Re:Linux on the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
The desktop may ruin it... If their "open source expert" is to be believed "...command-line hacking for basic system configuration is a thing of the past"
Now, if you consider 'sudo vim /etc/apache2/httpd.conf' or whatever invocation you prefer/require as anything approaching "hacking" you may be in need of a little more learning.
If this guy is to be believed I'll be running unnecessary X sessions to start BIND...
...or maybe just a little, very simple text file manipulation is all that's required to get a service going the way you like it.
The shell will never be a "thing of the past" as it is (and probably will be) the most efficient way to achieve certain simple (and very advanced) things.
KDE4 (Score:5, Insightful)
based on â" surprise â" good acceptance for KDE 4.
Definitely agree there. KDE4 is going to dramatically improve very quickly. They've made a huge development investment in the underlying libraries, and that will come to fruition this year (and already has somewhat with KDE 4.1). My impression is that it's going to get better. Couple that with a maturing X.org, and you have the makings of a beautiful desktop.
Re:KDE4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of thinking about a beautiful desktop, let's think about a more usable desktop. The underlying base makes it possible and very easy to do everything you want to do with it in virtually no time at all. I have seen eye candy enough... it's time for some serious evolution.
Speaking of evolution: X.org touchscreen support? There already YouTube videos of people gaming on Linux with touchscreens!
Re:KDE4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely, I'm always confused why Linux so often comes with a default desktop environment which is as bloated as Windows' is. I realize that not all distros are like that, but most of the ones I've tested out over the years have.
It's really a shame considering how much progress has been made over the years to scum it up with a UI which mimics the bloatedness of Windows.
But then again, perhaps that's just my fondness for just a window manager sans most of the environment.
Re:KDE4 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:KDE4 (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we're going to see that Plasma/Plasmoids are the genius invention that will propel innovation. They will do for the desktop what Compiz/Beryl/Compiz-Fusion plugins have done for the window manager: let loads of programmers make up innovative or simply good-looking things they can do.
This, of course, will lead to a boom that will result in a few really good Plasmoids that will draw in additional effort and lots of crappy ones. But I think by 2012 everyone will look back and wonder how they once got along back when XYZ had to be a whole custom application written in C instead of a Plasmoid or Plasmoid containment written in C/C++, Python, Ruby, or any other language with KDE4 bindings.
GNOME will have at least started moving in such a direction, but will have more restrictions to make sure the system stays easy to use.
Re:KDE4 (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the main difference is the integration that you state, and this enabled the whole desktop to be built with those gadgets/plasmoids/widgets/etc. So the desktop interface (menu, taskbar, system tray, etc etc) and the plasmoids are the same thing and that enables you to make much more integrated stuff. All the other "gadget" systems are not integrated with the rest of the system, they're just living in their own world separate from the rest of the desktop.
I think the ability to create native plasmoids is also unique. When your taskbar is a plasmoid, you don't really want it all to be running in JS or something.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:KDE4 (Score:4, Informative)
These are the things that don't get much attention, but really, KDE4 is constantly evaluated in terms of usability.
Compiz FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Base window manager is irrelevant. Users don't care whether it's KDE or Gnome. Behold the Cube! Behold the wobbly windows. Behold the 3D tiling! Behold I say! [compiz.org]
Show potential Linux users a demo of that floating cube, and you will ship millions of Linux boxes. I have observed this effect, first hand [slashdot.org]. If you've got a business selling Linux boxes and you don't have such a demo set up in shop, you are wasting your time. You think OSX got where it is because of its Kernel features?
Re:Compiz FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but too many geeks say that "shiny" doesn't matter. It's "shiny" that sells. Sure looking back Windows 95 and 98 and even XP, aren't all that sexy, but compared to what was available at the time, their interfaces were cutting edge, sleek and sexy looking.
More people are buying Mac purely because of how sexy it looks. It sure as hell ain't the price, it's purely because it looks cool.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:KDE4 (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been a KDE3 user for quite awhile. My first impression of KDE4 was "WTF, are they trying to copy Vista?"
As a whole, I'm hoping it will turn out quite well, but the colour scheme and little boxes everywhere really do seem reminiscent of certain Redmond OS's. C'mon guys, I know you can be more creative than that!
No Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
No it's not predictable. I am not (well at least not trying to be) flamebaiting and/or trolling but given this is Linux we are talking about FLOSS and innovation, so we can't possible know.
Innovation wouldn't be innovation if we allready knew what is going to happen in three years, now would it?
Re:No Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
we are talking about FLOSS and innovation
Technically, no we aren't. We're talking about where Linux will be in 3 years, and "in the same spot it is now" is a valid, though unlikely, possibility. Besides, a rather likely scenario is that there won't be any major innovations, but things will continue to evolve bit by bit, just like they are now. Innovation is rare.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whilst there is certainly innovation to be found all over the Free Software world, Linux (the kernel), GNU (the userspace collection) and the desktop environments ain't it. Kinda by definition - innovation and compliance (whether with standards or with users' preconceptions) are necessarily antonyms.
Linux the development process is a different matter, of course...
Re:No Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Some aspects of innovation are very predictable. There is a crude 10 year cycle for each stage of development (from blue-sky to usable prototype, from early garage to first home users, etc). This is repeated, over and over, until you finally get something that is an integral part of domestic life. Linux has shown much the same pattern, minus the initial blue-sky phase, as the concepts were already well-known.
Four years is a little soon for seeing significant pick-up in the home, but it's near enough the next boundary for me to say that carrier-grade Linux will have made dramatic inroads in the embedded market, and that Linux will EITHER kill off Windows Cluster Edition in the extreme-end market, OR be killed by it. The two cannot coexist, the market is simply too small.
So, anything that is experimental (in both concept and code) now and has been introduced within the last 3 years will not be close enough to the 10 year boundary in the next 3-4 years to move to the next stage of acceptance.
Anything that is experimental in only code, but is already widely adopted in concept, even if the code was introduced recently, may well hit the next level, but you can't really depend on it. Code, however, does mature faster than the conceptual and the underlying technology, so it's reasonable to expect some/all of it to have matured.
Anything that is stable but under-utilized now, but already widely adopted in concept, WILL be widely adopted as implemented within 3-4 years.
Anything that has been blue-sky for at least 6-7 years, but looks like it is making progress, AND out-of-mainstream work is being tried out, will likely become adopted by a significant group within 3-4 years AND make it into the mainstream kernel, but there is never a firm guarantee of things like that. The variable tends to be more of whose version goes in and whose vision is adopted. eg: Although there is now support for CAN buses, it was not the COMEDI code that got integrated. I expect the network code to improve in performance and tuning, but that doesn't mean it'll be Web100 that'll be added. There will be a parallel filesystem available, but there's no guarantee that that'll be Lustre. Polyserve's filesystem was - by all accounts - much better, and HP (who now own Polyserve) may use it as leverage to get into the Linux market, an area they've worked at for some time.
I expect distributed shared memory to appear in some form or other in 3-4 years - Infiniband is getting close to being fast enough, tipc is evolving nicely, and implementations of reliable multicast have existed long enough to push the concept onto the next ten year cycle. If it fails to make the transition, it will never appear at all.
maybe it'll be like ms word? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:maybe it'll be like ms word? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:maybe it'll be like ms word? (Score:5, Insightful)
D-BUS: have you heard of it?
OK, I'll stop the sarcasm and just state the facts. D-Bus is now used by both GNOME and KDE. It can also be installed for any customized DE a user creates. The future for Linux looks like the past, but more so: some distros will go for ease-of-use without customization and others will go for customization over ease-of-use, while the whole system gets more and more modular and scripted.
Re:maybe it'll be like ms word? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not very well-versed in OS X development. Could you tell me how those "system services" work?
I go to /System/Library/Services and drop in a file called "Wordservice.service". Then I copy your text into a text box in Safari (or any other program that uses the standard APIs), I highlight it, and select "Safari: Services: Convert: Rotate13" and the text is instantly transformed into the following:
V'z abg irel jryy-irefrq va BF K qrirybczrag. Pbhyq lbh gryy zr ubj gubfr "flfgrz freivprf" jbex?
In this same way Apple has added a (among many) spelling checker, dictionary/thesaurus/wikipedia lookup, and grammar checker to the OS, accessible to every application (they also added a GUI element in the right-click contextual menu for easier access). Before they added the grammar checker, I just added my own, along with the text manipulation service, language translation services, statistical analysis services, and some more I regularly use. I usually assign hotkeys to them rather than navigate to them from the menus. Even more services are offered automatically by other applications I installed, such as Graphiz offering automatic graphing of any tables of numbers I highlight and my LaTeX front end offering automatic formatting of any bibliography information I highlight.
In short it is drag and drop addition of arbitrary functionality that can be accessed from any application without developers needing to do squat to their applications.
Re:maybe it'll be like ms word? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly, it looks like KParts is the closest Linux has come to adding functionality to multiple apps. With OS X, Apple implemented system services, so adding grammar checking in 10.5 for all apps was just adding one service and it works nearly everywhere (including this text box I'm typing in). With KParts, the best they can do is add a standard grammar checking library and hope developers building apps for KDE will incorporate it in the next version of that app. I'm uncertain if user training of grammar checking from within one application will be able to easily make a difference in other applications as well (the way it does in OS X).
Don't exaggerate. Whenever you use a text edit box in KDE, there's default actions like select all, cut, copy, paste that all work alike in every KDE application. All they'd have to do is add spell check as standard to the KDElibs (or Qt) and all applications in KDE would "magically" get a spell checker. Probably same for GNOME and they could certainly use the same dictionary files etc. The rest well it's not there, but I see how it could be added without drastic effort. QT has support for plugins, create a "services" plugin dir that'll dynamically load those and add a standard menu option to send something to a service. If it's really as useful as you claim, it's probably something that will happen...
About like it does now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux hasn't had any major changes in the past three years, why would you think it'll have any in the next three?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux hasn't had any major changes in the past three years, why would you think it'll have any in the next three?
Sure it has, just not for the desktop. The reason some believe it might improve more over the next few years is that companies are starting to use it as the pre-installed OS on low-end and low-power systems. Those companies have a direct, financial incentive to spend money on making it a better desktop OS.
Re:About like it does now. (Score:5, Insightful)
No I doubt it. Linux is a server OS and I really think it is going to stay that way unless there is some huge change in attitudes among the FOSS Community.
Change one: Learning having more features doesn't make it better. Can linux do X... Most likely yes. However its defaults are not really setup for that.
Change two: Easy Drivers. Installing a driver should be as easy as drag and drop a tar ball, if it doesn't work drag it to the trash. It should be done via GUI alone
Change three: Make the command line last resort or if you really want to use it. Still there is a lot of stuff depending on the command line, Geeks like us have no problems but if you are use to Mac or windows and you get a blinking cursor what to type? beats me. For example for those who never used a VAX before login to a VAX terminal and try to move around without googling all the commands...
Change four: If you put it in make sure it works. I have seen many apps that just don't work correctly. If it doesn't work don't put it in.
Change five: Eye Candy is not a good GUI make. Yea it is fun for a bit then it gets annoying. Every eye candy element needs a good GUI reasoning for it.
Change six: Listen to complaints don't marginalize them. Yes yes you have invested emotional interest in Linux however people are having real problems with it, and just saying you are dumb or google it, or you google and give them a non working issue actually take it into account and see if you can fix the problem, or make it better. As well acknowledge it is a problem don't blame hardware for having closed source drivers if your open source one doesn't work. Just say it doesn't work or fix it or both.
Change seven: Learn other usage habits just don't copy your own. A software developer uses a computer much differently then a non-developer. You will be surprised how differently if you are willing to examine it. These people are not dumb they go the path that is most intuitive.
Change eight: Getting threw the boring stuff. There is fun stuff to code and annoying stuff. The stuff that is not really hard or easy just annoying. But it needs to get done to give it polish.
Change nine: Swallow you CS Degree pride. I am not saying make sloppy code but be willing to break the rules when it make sense. I have seen many apps that run very poorly because they try to make their CS Professor happy.
Change ten: swallow your pride, sometimes your ideas loose, embrace the winner and make the most out of it. Keeping you gopher client and adding new features is a wast. Or stop tinkering with the token ring driver in hopes it will kill TCP/IP in the future.
Re:About like it does now. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, installing a driver should be as easy and checking a box. Drivers aren't something you download as tarballs; they're something that comes with your kernel. They are part of the kernel, not add-ons. You don't install drivers, you enable them (assuming they were disabled for some reason).
Installing drivers is so 1900s.
That is the stupidest fucking anyone has said ever (Score:4, Insightful)
>They are part of the kernel, not add-ons
No, driver's are not part of your kernel, because if they were, then you would have to swap out your whole fucking kernel every time someone comes up with a new piece of hardware.
Oh, *you do* have to do that? And you think it is a *feature*?
Thank you anonymous coward for you contribution to this discussion.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? They say the same thing about FreeBSD and yet I'm using it as my desktop. And it does a damn fine job of that. Not as good as Linux, but that's mainly because of Flash, somewhat limited wine support and the nVidia binary drivers not being updated for amd64.
Linux does a pretty good job as is. I'll have to boot back into it to really check how the amd64 support is, but I'd doubt that it's too bad at this point. The amount of effort it takes to find hardware that support either Linux or *BSD these days is
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I wrote that token-ring driver, you insensitive clod!
Outlandish? (Score:5, Funny)
Wait ... are you saying that the Linux kernel will remain free in the future, but that people will pay for extras on top of that, including commercial software in some cases? That is just ... insane! What barking madman would even conceive of such a concept?
Incidentally, how do you go from what that article actually says:
Expect to see a three-way split among different versions of Linux. Not different distributions per se, but three basic usage models: ... For-pay ... Free to use ... Free/libre
...to "Linux forsaking its free usage model"? What are you, running for Congress?
I'm really starting to dislike a lumping of all... (Score:5, Insightful)
In four years Distros made to be user-friendly like Ubuntu will probably be heavier on system requirements but nearing the ease of use of Windows (IE easier driver and plugin installs as some are still a bit touch-and-go)
Distros like Puppy will still be lightweight and have little change to fit on those old Pentium 2s you just can't bear to part with.
Distros like Gentoo will still be hardcore users only with every option available only after heavy config and compiles.
I think usability for the average user will improve on the "fluffy" side of linux, but a lot of the distros do exactly what they're made to.
Finally, I understand... (Score:5, Funny)
This is history, not the future (Score:5, Informative)
Drivers? Codecs? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope it doesn't become a mess of binary drivers. Binary drivers are one of the worst things happening to Linux. They ruin the stability and the usefulness of hardware. As fas as I am concerned, they are not the pragmatic choice. I consider an idealist to be a pragmatist who thinks about the future. I have found that the "pragmatic' choice always comes back to bite me, at which time it stops being pragmatic.
Anyway, enough of that rant. On to CODECS. That depends on the patent systems in various countries. Currently FFMPEG has had a history of producing extremely find implementations of CODECS. They sometimes lag behind on the very newest ones, but their more mature ones suprass all others in terms of quality and speed. And they generally get better with time. Anyway, software patents don't exist everywhere and they are unlikely to do so within 3 years. So, it looks like codecs will remain free and FREE for a while yet.
Re:Drivers? Codecs? (Score:4, Interesting)
The patent situation will be a non-issue in 2012. All the major codec patents expire within the next 3 years, including MP3.
Binary drivers are also becoming less of an issue. Nvidia and Broadcom are the last two holdouts. Nvidia is doing a good job of driving themselves into bankruptcy, and since every other major wireless chipset manufacturer now has open-source drivers, you can just not buy Broadcom.
Re:Drivers? Codecs? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate it how the way major distros are packaged (regarding patents/etc.) is tailored towards US market...why do I (and...most people on the planet) have to download mp3 codec or dvd decrypting library after installation? (necessitating internet connection - yes, it happened few times that I could switch to Linux somebody without net access; but...nope, way too much hassle with installing all the things that should be there from the start)
Why "two versions, full and castrated one for US" model didn't ever c
What it will look like to me in 3 years.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Id rather take my chances with those two, then having to type my damn password every 5 seconds
sudo stores passwords for 15 minutes after each execution, and you can extend the timeout period in the sudoers file. Try a little Googling next time.
it'll be in things like toasters. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see linux being on a 2-4 GB flash card and the "computer" being the same size and the entire device running inside your tv, LCD picture frames, microwave oven, toaster, refrigator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, or your air conditioner. The price for the computer and storage will be like $2-5 on the bulk side so that cost has to be able to be hidden in the products. Linux'll be running all sorts of things that you never really figured even needed a computer per se or even 2-4 GB of storage. What the heck does my dishwasher or toaster need 2 Gb of storage for? Well, we'd find out when it's "cheap enough" to through in everything. Licensing and cost is what'll get Linux in the door and keep MS out. MS just can't afford to give away MS embedded edition.
Of course Linux will run on things like cell phones and DVRs as well, but you'll shortly find it running things like McDonalds' toys as well. What could a McDonalds' Toy use Linux for? I haven't a clue, but, once the hardware is cheap enough, we'll find out.
more importantly, is there linux w/o linus? (Score:4, Interesting)
This probably won't be an issue by 2012, but it will be interesting to see how linux fares when Linux and/or people like Andrew Morton are eventually forced to remove themselves from the day-to-day maintenance of the kernel. We saw what happened to ReiserFS when it lost its namesake. In that situation, it was easy to chuck ReiserFS in the trash because there were several other mature alternatives. If/when Linus dies/retires, does Linux adoption falter?
Uptime (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy questions in the summary. (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux forsaking its free usage model to embrace more paid distros
The two are not mutually exclusive.
where you get free Linux along with (much-needed) licenses to use patent-restricted codecs
As if. Just because the US has a broken patent system. Or was that the whole world? Ih wait, the US is the whole world.
Also predicted is an advance for the desktop based on â" surprise â" good acceptance for KDE 4.
Whether you like it or not, GNOME will be the big one, because nobody controls it. With Nokia owning Trolltech, no other company (whose primary business is not Linux itself) will touch KDE. I know that's not justified, but don't expect large corporations to care.
Finally, Linux is seen as making its biggest imprint not on the PC, but on mobile devices, eventually powering 40 million smartphones and netbooks.
That's clearly the future. The question is - besides having Linux as the kernel, will the phone of the future be any different? Will free userspace triumph on phones, or are we going to see locked-down Linux? That's the interesting and harder question.
And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?
Let's see... a kernel that supports the latest hardware and runs the latest software?
The article is nonsense, but the discussion should be good.
Re:Easy questions in the summary. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether you like it or not, GNOME will be the big one, because nobody controls it.
That makes sense. Just like no businesses would ever use Windows because Microsoft controls it.
Trolltech never controlled KDE and Nokia can't either. Same as Novell can't control Gnome.
Linux in flash BIOS (Score:4, Interesting)
equilibrium (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Linux has gotten to a level of equilibrium where it's probably not going to improve vastly in any ways that will be obvious to users. There are some things that are just design decisions, and aren't going to change. E.g., for audio applications, it can sometimes be a problem that linux doesn't have a lot of real-time support; there are real-time patches, but they don't look like they'll ever make it into the mainstream kernel, and in any case linux was never intended as a hard real-time system like qnx. There are some things that aren't going to change because of economics. Currently, we have decent hardware support for many devices, but it's still often a hassle, the quality is often lousy, and the drivers are often binary blobs; even if linux increases its share of the desktop significantly in the next four years, it will still be a tiny niche compared to Windows, so we'll still probably have a lot of the same hassles. Similar situation for availability of more preinstalled systems through more retail channels -- there just aren't enough people interested, for example, to allow linux boxes to be sold at places like Circuit City, and I don't think that will change in 4 years.
Ease of installation is already pretty good, and I think the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. The vast majority of users will never be able to handle installing an OS on their own, and that's not going to change. I'm still experiencing problems like x.org not being able to handle odd-sized flatscreen monitors, and I kind of doubt that's going to improve vastly, because it's like whack-a-mole with the low-end hardware manufacturers in Asia who basically want to sell as many widgets as possible to Windows users in its 1-year product lifetime.
As far as codecs ... well, you can already pay for codecs, so if you can pay for codecs in 2012, how does that qualify as a change? For mp3, decoding is already royalty-free, and as far as encoding it kind of depends on which patents you really think are valid and which are just trolls, but I've seen statements that encoding will be patent-free by 2010.
Apps? Firefox is already a browser, and in 2012 it will still be a browser. I think OOo has already long since reached a state of equilibrium in which the codebase is such a mess, and the developer community so closed, that there is basically no more improvement going on. E.g., users (myself included) have been begging for years now for better curve fitting, and better integration of curve fitting into the GUI; the result is that over all those years there has been marginal improvement in this area, but it's still way behind what my students are used to in Excel.
Re:equilibrium (Score:5, Informative)
"there just aren't enough people interested, for example, to allow linux boxes to be sold at places like Circuit City, and I don't think that will change in 4 years."
Linux boxes ARE being sold at places like Circuit City, and people like them. Asus eeepc and aspire, hp small notepad, etc.
As to the rest? Not equilibrium yet. Linux is growing in datacenters; support for large SMP will improve (especially in management; I'd look for the most growth in virtualization). The "GUI" will improve also. There should be growth with 3D drivers (especially AMD(ATI) chipsets). Intel Larrabee should inspire growth in super-computing.
OpenOffice.org/Firefox/other standard applications are coming along nicely. But, with improved 3D will come standard 3D desktop *and* application support (currently, only available with nVidia's hardware and drivers). This should also be possible with ATI and Intel graphic stacks. In turn, this should inspire extra visual support in applications (think real-time graphics rendered from a spreadsheet). Also, I would expect growth in media transcoding.
What should remain stable is the CLI interface, and base software (VIM should still be VI, with enhancements, GCC should improve, but not be radically different, LaTeX will still be kicking, etc.)
By 2012, Linux will.... (Score:4, Funny)
~
I predict something completely different (Score:4, Interesting)
People who use "desktop" computing, your days are numbered... I just have no idea what that number may be. ;)
With this interest in cloud computing growing, I predict that specific-purpose devices will be used and linked in through various networking technologies (mobile phones, wi-fi, bluetooth, ethernet, something that hasn't been thought of yet, quantum link networking, whatever) to personal servers. These personal servers will be without a direct user interface although us hackers will still have terminals to connect to them to do our hacking and developing, but our personal devices will all link to our personal servers using whatever means is available to do so that is appropriate and capable for the application we're using. The fact that our personal servers will run Linux will be irrelevant to most people... it'll just work or not work.
All of our personal devices will be from various manufacturers using a similar pool of networking technologies that, hopefully Microsoft will not have patented or controlled in some way, and serve our purposes accordingly. For most people, they will simply have their TVs, phones, mobile phones and gaming consoles linked through our personal servers and the public network infrastructure. The rest of us will continue using laptops and desktops because we're busy developing, hacking, analyzing and all that sort of thing.
Business apps will continue to follow similar models of client/server because business cares where their data is stored and what network channels are allowed to access it. I don't care how "non-evil" Google is, they aren't going to store my company's data. They just AREN'T.
But it is because Linux works SO well in dedicated devices (especially hand-held) this is where Linux will grow the most. I find it difficult to predict whether or not it will be proprietary and/or restricted protocols that will interconnect our devices to our personal servers, but I can only hope the protocol will be open for all to use without being worried about getting sued and crap like that.
I predict an environment where it will be the device that is important to users, and not the OS that runs on them. This will make the OS a bit less relevant to all but the gadget-hackers. Microsoft will be a player in this scheme, and they will likely their their interoperability monkey-wrench into everything they can... business as usual for Microsoft... but as long as they don't buy laws that restrict people from making stuff compatible with Microsoft's crap, then, like Samba, we'll all be fine in the end. (But then again, there's the lords of copyright to interfere with this notion... technologies "forbidden" to work with like DVDCSS on our personal networks... who knows.)
Well, duh, (Score:3, Insightful)
.
The OEM system install has been the gold standard in the home and SOHO market for close on to thirty years.
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the system that "just works" is what sells - and that there is no room at the bottom.
gOS at WalMart.com is being unloaded at fire sale prices - and the chain has effectively black-flagged the OEM Linux box as a do-little web appliance.
MS Vista at Walmart.com is priced from $350 to $1700.
The budget netbook to the 64 bit MS Vista Quad Core HP Elite with 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA DX10 graphics. Blu-Ray play, HDTV tuner and a tetrabyte of storage.
The very notion may throw the geek into cardiac arrest - but the "upgrade" to XP or Linux is utter fantasy when you look at systems with specs like these - and what is high-end for MS Vista today will be mid-line tomorrow.
2012 will be the year of the Desktop Linux! (Score:5, Funny)
And the US Supreme Court will rule that software is not patentable, software is copyrightable but EULA's are 100% unenforcable. And DRM will be outlawed.
And Microsoft, the RIAA, and most of the telecom industry will be broken up for various illegal activities, and forced to reform as smaller non-profit organizations with strict oversight.
Maybe I'll even have a date by then.
Re:2012 will be the year of the Desktop Linux! (Score:5, Funny)
You had me going until that last one. I almost believed you.
And what do you see for Linux in 4 years? (Score:5, Funny)
100,000 packages in Debian.
New frontiers (Score:3, Interesting)
- Usability: will be one of main objectives for developing things for it, including new widely available devices like multitouch screens.
- Mobility: cheap and powerful for today standards cellphones based on linux (Android, LiMo, whatever) probably will be the most used. Not sure if will be market for tablets/subnotebooks/etc or cellphones will take that role, in any case, probably linux will be the most used core OS for those devices.
- Embeddable: It happens now, it will happen far more then. Internet will be the main reason for this.
- Security, linux will be more attacked, specially in preinstalled computers, cellphones and devices.
Better filesystems, more uptake (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happens, there'll be more people using Linux-based OSes in 3/4 years. However, there's a long way to go before it can properly overtake Windows, IMO: there are several major problems that stop GNU/Linux becoming the ideal consumer desktop OS.
In short, devs need to really get their fingers out and concentrate on creating a truly kick-ass operating system that'll work out of the box on practically any machine you throw it at. This is what led Apple out of its slump in the mid-90s - if the FOSS community can do it now, when the popularity of FOSS is booming, it will truly be a force for Monkey Boy to reckon with.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>> Linux still uses the outmoded FHS at the front end
Why do you even care where your files are? At first it bothered me too that files for one app are in multiple folders, but then I realized that I shouldn't even concern myself with such trivialities. That's the computer's job. Keeping track of files is what computers are good at. There's no benefit to having them all in one place aside from some abstract concept of "cleanness" which doesn't even apply here.
>> Linux needs to stop preaching
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For fuck's sake, that is completely irrelevant. I'm saying that all they'd have to do is package that Realtek WLAN driver into a simple .deb file, with no whining about GPL incompatibility, etc, and everything would have been fine and dandy. It wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have worked without Joe User having to drop to the terminal or even touch the make command.
This is part of two problems:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
BECAUSE, the user DOESN'T WANT to have to do it. I find it a pain in the arse and I've worked with computers for aeons, practically. Meanwhile, poor Johnny User, who's just installed Ubuntu for the first time, might get scared by the terminal, and consider Linux to be 'too techie'. All that needed to be done was for it to be packaged as a Debian/RPM/Netpkg/whatever package file, and it would have worked instantly.
Remember we're talking about the end user here, who wants to work with Facebook and YouTube rat
virtualization (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
...or is the author basically predicting that in 2012 we'll have the things we have now?
We currently have pay distros, free distros, and libre distros. KDE 4 already exists. There are already Linux netbooks, and major OEM preinstalls. In the future apparently we'll have Gmail and OpenOffice.
The author also MAGICALLY predicts storage costs will go down.
Linux will also be on servers, and support virtualization.
Will all this stuff happen before 2012?
I'd say so, considering it is all true today.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
How About Working on Mac G5's?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Working, with sound and video, on a late-model iMac G5? That would be nice. Might save me a few grand.
That's an easy question. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pick me! Pick me! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pick me! Pick me! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've also never seen much of a problem with video drivers. Intel help maintain the X.org driver, nVidia produce their own driver and AMD are doing syncronised Windows/Linux driver releases. What video do you have that isn't supported?
Re:Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
network adapter support is problem free? I still hear about a lot of problems with wireless nics. Granted they can often be worked around, but getting wireless working without being flaky is far from brainless. Windows isn't much better here, but I think my mom would figure it out in windows before she would figure it out on linux.
Video card support is good? I'd call it mediocre at best... You can spend 100 bucks or more on a card and you don't have drivers which can reliably utilize that power you paid for. 3d? Possibly, but 2d is more likely. Compositing? That's a maybe also.
I'm a Gentoo user. I actively avoid using windows, but I feel I have a realistic outlook on linux. Some around here do not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Compositing is a bit iffy - compiz and multi screens is flaky as hell - but it's better than no compositing WM at all in windows.
I know this is Slashdot, but... you could install Vista. Windows does have one, it'd had for, what, almost two years now?
It's no fair comparing a OS released in 2001 with one released, what, late last year and claim that Windows "doesn't have it." Try an apples-to-apples comparison, the version of Ubuntu (for instance) with compositing compared to Vista with compositing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Same story here with an X1550. New version of Ubuntu came out, with some sort of 'official' or 'improved' ATI drivers. Tried it, exact same results as a year prior: try to install 'special' drivers for my graphics, reboot to gibberish instead of desktop.
Call me back when real 3D drivers install as easily as they do in Windows. That's when we might finally be getting close to "the year of Linux." Until then it's certainly not worth my time messing with it.
Re:Drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
Having trouble with ATI or nVidia drivers? Don't blame Linux, blame ATI and nVidia for not releasing the specs so that OSS drivers can be written. All you get is binary blobs, which is better than you get for the newer Lexmark printers because Lexmark refuses to support Linux.
Re:Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Who said I was trying to find a scapegoat to pin the blame on??
It doesn't do what I want it to (yet), therefore it's useless for me. Simple as that.
Re:Drivers: HUH? (Score:3, Interesting)
I find that Linux, and especially Ubuntu has much better support, and behaves better than Windows XP.
Mass Storage devices: just plug in, and they are ready to go very quickly. No need to install drivers if you plug it into a different port.
GPS: same, it emulates a serial device so that GPSBabel can handle it easily.
My odd mouse [thinkgeek.com] had drivers built into the kernel by Ubuntu, there was no "insert CD to use this mouse" stage.
And that is on an AMD64 Ubuntu computer. How is the driver support in Vista 64-bit?
Ubunt
Re:It'll look like FreeBSD did 3 years ago (Score:4, Funny)
They'll remove SMP support?
Why would they?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hopefully it'll be huge (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't have to be huge. Take it from a guy a year older than you: learn Linux programming, learn it well. Get an internship with it in college. This makes your resume better than that of the college-educated code monkeys CS departments turn out nowadays who've never used anything but Java on Windows.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seconded. At least take a couple courses on C or C++. My friend started with Java, but a lot of the stuff he was doing finally "made sense" when he learned about C. Java hides too much of the actual machine's operation to make it a good learning language. Learn memory management. Even if you don't use it much, learn what it is and why it's important. Even Java needs hints from time to time. And that alone will make you a better programmer than 90% of them out there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, SQLite is in cell phones and PDAs. It's a modest-sized shared library. And, unlike text files, there's indexing. For example, if "getpwnam" uses the database, instead of the current linear search, it speeds up from O(N) to O(log N). So there's a big win on scaling.