From all of us at OSNews, we’d like to wish you a happy and healthy new year. In honor of the new year, we’d like to ask you: what headlines do you expect to read in the tech world in 2008? Are you expecting iPhone rev2? Or maybe Vista SP1’s success? Perhaps Hardy Heron’s world domination? Will Google’s Android swallow the cellphone market? Can Facebook continue to rule the roost in social networking? Tell us what you expect in the comments!
Happy New Year… Tell Us What to Expect in 2008
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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Its the year of the Linux Desktop!
Every year is a bit more the year of the Linux desktop. I realize that when my barber knows what I’m talking of when I tell him I use Linux as my main OS on my two PCs. And my barber is not at all a computer nerd like I am. He’s just a normal citizen who’s telling more and more people are becoming aware of the presence of Linux.
Now, if 2008 is going to revolutionize the Linux presence on desktop computers, I don’t know, we’ll see 🙂
From time to time Linux development confuses me. Current Linux distros have GPU accelerated effects on the desktop. When I plug in an external hard drive, it works immediately, but when I add an additional internal hard drive, I still have to edit /etc/fstab manually.
When I switched the graphics card in my Linux PC a few weeks ago, I had to reconfigure Xorg from the command line, because the driver from the older graphic card failed to load (obviously, as it’s different hardware). Xorg didn’t load the “radeon” driver by itself, even though it was installed. At least it could have fallen back to the Vesa driver.
I’m experienced enough to use the CLI. For me it wasn’t really a huge problem. But I wonder about the development priorities from the Linux distributors. Why do they pay people to write compiz etc. to produce eye candy effects, when changing/adding internal hardware components is still a bitch? Do they think that eye candy is more important to common users than getting a system to work? Do they think that common users never change internal hardware after the initial Linux installation that it isn’t needed to use the hardware detection techniques used during installation at a later time?
AFAIK many operating systems work like this: During boot a small program launches to check if the hardware configuration changed. If yes, the best driver on the system is loaded and the new hardware configuration gets saved.
To be fair, I didn’t try every Linux distribution out there. I did, however, made above experiences with current releases of Ubuntu (7.10) and openSUSE (10.3).
My personal “year of the linux desktop” will be the year when fstab and xorg.conf are no longer needed.
I did the ATI->NVIDIA switch recently too. It stuffs up Linux something bad.
I don’t know why X.org doesn’t scan lspci and then load drivers for the cards it find there but only if it detects that the hardware actually has changed. There are two conflicting things here. One is that autodetection overwrites most peoples settings but then again if those settings are wrong it doesn’t matter. The system needs to be a better judge on which of the settings need to be changed and when.
Ubuntu supposedly has this safe-mode that activates the third time X.org fails to load but you cannot reliably change your video settings from there it stuffs up the X.org file. You can however load your desktop from that point.
It would be nice if X.org could become more dynamic and switch video systems without needing to be reloaded. I’m sure someone is working on all this stuff.
I don’t know why X.org doesn’t scan lspci and then load drivers for the cards it find there but only if it detects that the hardware actually has changed.
Probably because lspci is Linux-specific, and doesn’t work anywhere else (I can’t remember if it works under GNU, but I seem to remember GNU Mach having support).
Okay I will give you the hard drive issue, but I know I have read to drop to vesa before switching video cards in a few linux book, a couple of guides, and a few forums.
“””
Its the year of the Linux Desktop!
“””
Indeed it will be. I fully expect to see evolutionary improvements in quality and capability, along with modest increases in usage share on corporate desktops, and to a lesser extent, home desktops. Just as we have seen every year.
I’ve been watching and waiting for 11 years. And if it takes another 11 I can accept that. These kinds of sea changes don’t happen overnight. And in the end, I envision a more mixed, multiplatform landscape, and not one in which any one player, even Linux, dominates. I do not want or expect to see Microsoft obliterated. Only tamed.
Edited 2008-01-01 18:39
Good one. Been coming here for about 3-4 years and every year seems to be same.
The distance between the “Linux desktop year” (f) and any year (Y) is defined as the following function:
f(Y) = 1/Y
I predict that will happen at least sooner than the year of the Windows server.
My bold predictions for ’08:
Ubuntu is synonymous with Linux; not that it matters, because it is the year of eComStation on the desktop!
Ubuntu made a bit of a mess of Gutsy. Fedora 8 is much better than Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. Another similar release for both projects will probably see Fedora becomes synonymous with Linux and Ubuntu start to decline. (However I think the next release of Ubuntu will be awesome.)
Fedora 8 is much better than Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.
Not on my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop. Gutsy installed flawlessly, found all drivers, wifi, everything.
FC8 took five times as long to configure, and it still wigs out whenever I use the trackpad … which is, like, all the time on a laptop.
As always with Linux … YMMV. That’s one reason why Windows still leads on the desktop … it pretty much behaves the same (for good or ill) on all hardware.
Edited 2008-01-02 15:29
I notice that the general opinion on these boards is that each Ubuntu release is worse than the last… I can’t help but wonder if it’s because they keep breaking something new and different with each release, and nobody bothers to show up and say “hey, hooray! They fixed {ndiswrapper}”
Anyway, I predict that this trend will continue with Ubuntu 8.04, and far into the future all the way to Ubuntu Pancreatic Puma…
Other predictions: Linux shows up on a lot more low-cost low-margin electronics like the Asus EeePC and the Classmate PC, and Motorola’s latest smartphones. (and maybe Android) The REAL story will be if/when we start to see some consensus on which embedded Linux version to use. Right now it seems like everyone is writing their own.
KDE4.0 will be released; several people will immediately start panning it for being incredibly unfinished and broken and whine about how Gnome is still better. KDE 4.0 will have an amazingly quick succession of point releases. KDE 4.1 may come out before year’s end.
Some entity involved in Linux or FOSS will file a legal challenge to Microsoft about “Put up or shut up”. Microsoft will effectively ignore them, but use the legal action as further evidence that Linux DOES infringe on their patents, and are running scared.
Drivers for Vista will finally catch up sufficiently that people will start to shut up about it. On the other hand, we won’t see anything further of MinWin/Windows 7 until it’s been given the marketing-inspired treatment of features and odd design decisions, and a new name like “Windows Ascendence”
Apple will release a new iPhone, an iPhone keyboard attachment accessory, an iTablet, and a new sub-10″ laptop for people who detest laptops larger than the palm of their hand (at a price that will make their wallets lighter, of course)
Cowon will announce the X7 DAP (replacement to their X5) at CES which will be too low-capacity, too big, still not support Vorbis tags properly, and won’t actually ship in the US until just around Christmas. I figure this one is inevitable since I broke down and bought an Insignia Pilot MP3 player after Christmas this year.
T-Mobile USA will finally get 3G service, but within a month will suffer a major problem that makes everyone laugh at them even harder. They still won’t have any S60 smartphones, and will continue to insist on 1.3 megapixel cameras.
and goes open-source – chuckle
Facebook may well stay as the top social networking site, but its luster will fade as “pure” social network sites start to decline in general.
Flash drives will become big is laptops.
It may not be the year of the Linux desktop, Linux will find its way into a lot of consumer computing devices, along the lines of the EeePC and n810. Though we probaly will see more pre-installed Linux options similar to Dell’s offerings, probably with Ubuntu and Suse battling it out.
Android based phones will probably gain a nice little niche, but won’t revolutionize the cell phone industry.
Vista will inch up in adoption, not because people want it, but because it’s what’s there.
It’s the year of SCO. 🙂
Good One 😉 +1 Funny :-p
I expect Haiku Beta 1 to come out.
CDE will be open sourced, in the same manner Blender was; ie, if a certain amount of $$$ is raised.
Haiku Alpha will be released.
SkyOS 5.0
Gnash will be able to be installed in FireFox the way Adobe Flash is now.
Internet Explorer will continue to lose market share.
and my pipe dream: Adobe Framemaker will be made open source.
Open source? Never. Free as in beer? More likely.
“Fiona Apple To Marry Thom Holwerda.”
That’s all I’d ask for
.
I’m also a huge fan of fiona apple. I have the leaked extraordinary machine mp3’s as well as the legal CD.
I live in South Africa and I once ordered the “When the pawn” CD single from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com at the same time – I wanted the music videos which weren’t on the regular CD – because it was out of stock from both amazon’s. I planned on cancelling the one as soon as the other had stock. Unfortunately for me they both got stock the same day whats worse is the CD was like $7 but I used international courier for both which cost like $30 each so I paid about $74 for a CD single. They both arrived at the same time and I kept the one unopened as a reminder of my stupidity. Shortly after that I was robbed and all my CD’s were stolen
.
I don’t think I want to marry her though she is a bit wonky in the head.
Year-long: The death of television as an entertainment medium in the US — if the writer’s strike ended today, we’d first see new shows in Fall 2009. That’s enough time for television to become irrelevant.
Year-long: A dozen new operating systems with really innovative ideas will be created. Some will be lucky enough to be bought out by Microsoft; the rest will be ground to dust under the NT/Unix inertia.
Year-long: More and more companies will be sued by the FSF, now that the profits of such are the majority of their income.
February: Revelation that Vista is based of of FreeBSD. Linux community erupts into speculation and self-congradulation; BSD community shrugs, cares not, and continues to put the software first.
March: I will finally get off my butt, fix the bugs, and by March, put out a image for SkunkyOS. The few people who use it will whine and moan about how I didn’t give away the source code, because obviously I am obligated to do so by the geek code; further slings and arrows will be dealt for not following either the NT or *Nix models.
May: The release of the GPL 4.0 — the “We heard someone was making too much money with open source” edition, with new mandatory upgrade and perpetual licensing clauses. It will continue the GPL’s progression towards looking like a Microsoft EULA, except geeks will fawn over the GPL because of the FSF’s genius marketing strategy of calling the GPL “free.”
June: Announcement that personal editions of Windows 7 will be freeware, with corporate support options — the approach Opera’s used (and MS’s experimenting with Works). Plus, it nicely sidesteps that “starter/third-world Windows” issue — don’t gotta worry about piracy if you’re giving it away.
July: The Communist party serves the FSF with a suit, demanding they give back their slogans.
August: The resemblance of the Linux community to the evangelical Christian community continues to grow. Expect to see small 1-inch by 2-inch phamphlets left in truck stops and children’s centers nationwide.
September: As Microsoft continues their dominance in the home market and Linux continues their dominance in the server market, the world continues to refuse to blow up because of either.
October: Apple asks why OSX hasn’t taken the world by storm. Continuing to ignore the fact that their OS is linked to $2000 proprietary hardware that’s difficult to fix, they sue Microsoft. Because they sue in Europe, and all you need is the words ‘Antitrust’ to win an antitrust lawsuit there, they succeed. Look for Vista Hobbled Edition by the end of the month.
November: An announcement that Amiga 4.0 will be delayed again. In the meantime, Duke Nukem Forever will have beat it to launch.
December: Stallman writes a holy book. The First Church of GNU becomes a recognized religion somewhere in Europe.
next January: OSNews 4.0 is described as a “great experiment that we can’t use.”
Some of these predictions were not entirely serious. Use your satire sense to detect which.
Edited 2008-01-01 18:05
Pay close attention the next 72 hours.
Oh neat, V4 is launching soon.
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I hope we will still have a choice. I go to v4 only when I need a particular feature which v3 does not have. Otherwise, I choose v3. That’s not so much a put-down of v4 as a tribute to the quality, simplicity, and functionality of v3. It’s a tough act to follow.
Edited 2008-01-01 22:14
I think people who use v3 are lying zealots who’ve done the smackdown. I wouldn’t want to be in the company of a V3 User like you.
“””
people who use v3 are lying zealots who’ve done the smackdown.
“””
It’s been awfully quiet around here since December 18th. And, coincidentally, the systematic modding down, by one, of each of my posts, shortly after I make them, ceased on the same day. Whaz up? 😉
“Year-long: The death of television as an entertainment medium in the US — if the writer’s strike ended today, we’d first see new shows in Fall 2009. That’s enough time for television to become irrelevant.”
Dont know if you are joking on that one but I wish one day all the television sets in the world explode all at once in a very contained fashion resulting no injuries.Then a portal opens up in the sky and huge spaceships appear and teleport the remains onboard.They put a loud speaker on from the mothership:
THE EXPERIMENT IS OVER.YOU HUMANOIDS HAVE PROVEN THAT YOU CAN BE EVILLY ENSLAVED BY THE MASTERY IN THE MAKING OF YOUR INVENTIONS.
The ships leave and something wonderful happens…common sense becomes common.
🙂
Ps.Happy New Year Everybody!
Edited 2008-01-01 18:48
…and you think YouTube is any better?
Nope.
Ying and Yang.
There will always be something else.
Any kind of bidirectional communications medium is better than a one-way broadcast model. Culture is fundamentally about an exchange of ideas, and we can’t have that kind of relationship with television.
What we have is a perpetual showcase on how a vanishingly small slice of humanity sees the world, or rather how this elite caste would like their plebeian subjects to see their world.
I’m not going to suggest that YouTube in particular is the ultimate solution. It’s one small step for user-created content and one giant leap for media diversity.
Similarly, YouTube is having a very positive impact on American electoral politics, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to everything else that’s wrong with our democratic process.
YouTube, blogs, and other web-based media outlets are having an undesirable impact on media ownership regulations, where their very existence is enough evidence to allow further consolidation despite enormous public outcry.
To see FCC Chairman Kevin Martin (on YouTube, btw) essentially argue that he had to sit through so many hours of complaints from concerned citizens that he has the right to completely ignore them all suggests that there may be no practical remedy for the lack of diversity within the established television and newspaper industries.
If we’re to hear the voices of the unheard, discover what’s really going on in the world, satisfy our curiosities and interests, learn from other cultures, and have any discernible culture of our own, then we must have an inclusive, decentralized, participatory medium for exchanging content.
So, yes, YouTube is infinitely better than television in certain respects, in others it’s apples and oranges, and some kinds of content just aren’t going to ever come from ordinary citizens. Pending the outcome of the WGA strike, they might not be distributed on television either.
Edited 2008-01-01 21:02
+1.Great insight.Nice post.
Without any doubt, yes.
I can always find something to watch on Youtube – I can find obscure music, short films, visual art of all sorts, informative videos, and so on.
Whereas I can flip through the 200 channels (or whatever it is on my cable) and find not a single thing to watch, most nights.
Today, I talked seriously with my wife about simply canceling cable TV altogether. Television, with a few notable exceptions, has become a lot like pop music. I don’t *want* to see the “latest blockbusters.” I don’t want “reality” TV or endless “educational” shows about bizarre medical conditions. Maybe other people want that but I don’t.
Television shoves information at you. Open wide and swallow.
With Youtube, you can choose what you watch. If people choose to watch stupidity, that’s their business (not that I don’t enjoy very specific types of stupidity now and again myself). I’ve found some really quality stuff on youtube. Even at its worst, it has far more diversity than television, at least here in the United States.
I’ve heard people slag youtube a lot – I have to wonder what it is they’re choosing to watch. Garbage in, garbage out. That is much less true with television, which is driven almost exclusively by the basest concerns of our species. I like Mythbusters like everyone else – is that worth something like $95.00 a month (that’s what digital cable costs here).
Nope.
Well, I guess it’s like the internet as a whole.
The good thing about it is that anyone can publish anything. The bad thing about it is that anyone is publishing anything.
THE EXPERIMENT IS OVER.YOU HUMANOIDS HAVE PROVEN THAT YOU CAN BE EVILLY ENSLAVED BY THE MASTERY IN THE MAKING OF YOUR INVENTIONS.
So, they’ll be taking personal computers, too? And we’ll have to actually re-learn how to converse with others face-to-face and have social interaction?
The horror … the horror …
KDE4 makes a bigger difference than people are expecting, especially 4.1 which will further the addition of new features.
Also, SSDs will continue to gain acceptance and affect how we use and view our computers from a performance and power consumption standpoint.
I expect Red Hat to really push the Global Desktop and get in the desktop game!
I hope that the Hans Reiser trial ends and reiser4 gets included in the Linux Kernel and further development of the file system speeds up.
By the way, you can follow the trial here at Threat Level. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/hans_reiser_trial/index.html
“””
“””
From Threat Level:
–
–
Ouch! That’s gotta hurt!
I can’t stomach the “applications” section that adds tons of crap to your profile just so I can see someone else’s photo that they need to be then grouped by someone else’s “application”, etc.
There really isn’t a ton of social interaction, but there sure is a helluva lot of “digital drinkin'” and “digital hugs” etc.
Puke.
Indeed. The applications are WAY out of control. Why do I need 5 different kinds of walls, all of which do the same thing (namely, letting me post things other than text)? Why can’t the Facebook devs themselves get off their lazy asses and improve the original wall themselves? Back in the day you could see what movies someone liked in their profile. Now you need to add a whole application, choose which permissions to give it, click through three screens that attempt to force you to forward invitations to all of your friends, then click around again till you find your way back to that person’s site and click the link again! That’s a “thriving ecosystem” for you….
And yes, as you said in your post’s title, Facebook is also The Closed Social Network. It will for instance never be able to serve as my sole choice for photo sharing, because hardly anyone over the age of 30 has an account (and honestly, I can understand why they wouldn’t really want one), and without an account, you can’t do diddly-squat. You’d think Facebook could at least implement “public” photo albums like, oh, every other photo sharing site on earth….
In a never ending quest to one-up the competition, open source developers decide to implement a 4-D window manager projected onto a standard 2-D monitor.
In a fit of frustration after trying this interface, the Fake Steve Jobs posts about Apple’s revolutionary new and easy to use 1-D user interface that works wonders with Apple’s 1-button mice.
The various companies involved in the Amiga will continue to file lawsuits one against the other, while promising the Best Operating System Ever (R,TM) as soon as legal questions are settled.
Microsoft will file patent infringement lawsuits against users of Linux. This will be thrown out of court but not soon enough to stop them from scaring the bejeezus out of many corporations who promptly switch to Windows. IT managers will congratulate themselves for their foresight when Microsoft sues Red Hat, Novell, & IBM for patent infringements. Discovery reveals that Microsoft’s kernel technology has been based on Linux since the late 90s. The subsequent FSF lawsuit makes the SCO debacle look like child’s play.
Minix and QNX tires of this nonsense, finally release usable desktop versions of their OS’s, and take over the world.
I would find that very surprising given that the NT kernel is so different functionality-wise and interface-wise from Linux.
It was completely tongue-in-cheek…
I expect the recording industry to still not get it how to sell music on the internet without evil hacks like sony’s rootkits or DRM. Or RIAAs own interpretation of the law (eg. cd rips are illegal copies even if you own the cd).
How is that the best seller of music is a software company not a recording company ?
I know we’re working very hard to get a new release of Syllable out. Hopefully that will be done before the end of the week.
The Open ATI specifications will begin to bear real fruit, nVidia will finally release specs for their hardware as well. 3D support in virtual machines will become to become usable. Firefox 3.0 will be released and continue to make steady progress. ODF adoption will continue across the world and Microsoft may begin to crack under the pressure and be forced to offer better ODF support in Office. Open Source wireless support will mature significantly.
Ubuntu 8.04 will suck up even more memory on this machine and I’ll finally be forced to upgrade it with expensive proprietary memory or use a different machine instead. Failing that I’ll finally figure out why the hell Qemu and Pidgin 2.3.1 don’t work properly on Syllable and fix it so I can just use Syllable full time and run a virtual machine for the few bits I can’t run on Syllable…
I expect cheapers laptops that will compete with Asus Eee PC.
LOLCODE will continue its quest for world domination –
[code]
ON CATURDAY
IM IN YR BED
I IZ SLEEPIN!!10
VISIBLE “Z!”
KTHX
KTHXBYE
[/code]
http://lolcode.com/home
Edited 2008-01-01 20:48
If Ubuntu can deliver on its goals for Hardy Heron (like Slick booting), then it will indeed be an amazing release. I’m tired of being told my computer ‘is going matrix’ on someone simply because no one except for linux users are used to boot-text.
Most Desktop use will be replaced by many smaller computers that do single tasks well. Some Desktop use will be replaced by Ultra Light portables. Some people will still need to use the Desktop to do their work but more people will accomplish their work using the smaller machines.
As a consequence the demand for Desktop units will decrease and their costs will increase further accelerating us into the smaller computer world. Conversely as more people request smaller machines their costs will go down.
The silliness of people using quad core 3Ghz Processors with 2GByte RAM to send emails to their aunts will end. Coupled with the fact that more people will be looking for greener ways to do computing. Smaller computers mean a smaller carbon footprint.
Programmers will have to rethink the way they program as more and more machines have lower resources than the usual upgrade path they expect.
I don’t think this will happen. The Gnome team is determined to add as many Mono apps as possible. Open Office is a resource beast, and KOffice is not yet at the same level. Fire Fox has been growing bloat, though FF3 might be better.
Sadly, many people see the EeePC and the Everex desktop as mere toys. Until this perception changes, programmers won’t rethink how they write software.
1) Haiku finally making its first release.
2) OSS video (and other) devices finally become popular and on pair with proprietary ones. (but bulletproof-X is coming to make a bit less of a problem…).
3) Mobile phones finally stop sucking. Can be customized out-of-the-box (like installing programs, ringtones, etc), don’t have features cut-off by operators. They just agree upon standards for data storage (hardware and software), so you don’t go crazy with unnecessary and stupid sync software… charge via standard USB ports, etc.
4) Portable Devices/Appliances become more open to community code/enhancements and open source systems.
5) Jack Thompson finally gets medical treatment
6) DRM is past. Long live compatible standards (opening the door for open/patent-free standards in future)
7) Software patents going down
8) MAFIAA losing their lobbyists
9) Vendor lock-in made illegal. Better competition rules. (costumer gains back ownership of its own data)
10) Okay, let start writing these ones in fairy tales for the new generation (Cory is a good option here… congrats for the Little Brother by the way…)… maybe they can save the world! =]
P.S.: All suggestions in Creative Commons v3 Attribution/Public Domain dual license.
P.S.2: Happy Public Domain day! ( http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7941 )
oh I forgot,
Duke Nukem Forever will be released.
HAHAHA, funny! And Chinese Democracy will be too!
Just more *BSD =)
I’d expect having NetBSD more visible this year. It’s a very good OS.
I suspect that 2008 will be the year when the press about Google will turn from generally neutral to downright hostile and their soaring stock price will come down to a level more inline with their current profits. They’re not going away and they’re not becoming unprofitable, but they’ll lose the aura of credibility which they currently enjoy. Facebook will lose its lustre by the end of the year too.
2008 looks really bright for Apple as they leverage the latest technology that Intel has to offer. They’ve released Leopard, and people will forget the few initial troubles that showed up in the press as the kinks are worked out and everyone gets used to the new dock design. I don’t think they’re going to release a tablet. Fake Steve will quit writing by the end of the year.
Intel’s high performance GPU effort comes to fruition by the second half of the year and AMD runs for the hills. NVidia is not yet affected. No significantly reversals or changes on the CPU front.
With regards to Microsoft:
OOXML passes after the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting. Confusion will arise among the general public because Office will require some updates to conform to the new standardized version.
People on the web will become more interested in what Developer Division is doing with the introduction of a functional language for .NET (F# which is a mostly-compatible adaptation of OCAML with some .NETish extensions), and the addition of functional features to VB and C#. 20% chance that the seller of some Visual Studio plugin will sue MS for bundling a feature in the core language
.
I have some predictions about Windows, but I better not make them.
2008 looks really bright for Apple as they leverage the latest technology that Intel has to offer. They’ve released Leopard, and people will forget the few initial troubles that showed up in the press as the kinks are worked out and everyone gets used to the new dock design.
Leopard = Vista.
Now the Apple fanboys are going to vote me down
Leopard = Vista.
Just saying something like that without any single argument is not only stupid but a clear flamebait. Explain exactly HOW is Leopard so similar to Vista or just keep quiet.
Explain exactly HOW is Leopard so similar to Vista or just keep quiet.
Simple, both were introduced with great fanfares by their respective companies as being the greatest and best operating systems. Now judging by by the response of actual users from browsing the web many seem less than satisfied.
We have all heard the Vista complaints and the one user I know doesn’t like it and prefers XP but didn’t have any choice when she bought her new laptop. Mac users that have upgraded to Leopard have been complaining about problems too. For example on one blog I was reading a user was complaining about applications randomly and frequently crashing on his PPC system which didn’t happen with Tiger. I have just asked the two people in the Lab here who use Macs had they upgraded to leopard. They haven’t yet, so they have no first hand personal experiences.
So by saying:
Leopard = Vista
I was implicitly referring to these parallels (no pun intended).
I would say that Java revolution is to begin now (not in 1995!). We have almost all that we need, and I see symptoms of this coming more and more frequently.
We already have incredible good JVM which is open source (OpenJDK/IcedTea), we have great free software development tools (Netbeans 6.0) and we have some promissing technologies that will hit the market in 2008 (Android to be sold with real hardware or JavaFX to be completed).
On the other hand, I would say that we are going to see rise of Ruby on Rails (again!) and other free software web frameworks. This means companies will more likely to choose Linux/Unix servers than Microsoft.
Kde 4.0 will became usable somewhere in the middle of 2008, which will be a hit too.
People say about “desktop linux revolution”, since a few years now, and it never happens. It won’t. What we are going to see is “mobile Linux revolution” – GNU/Linux in ultra mobile laptops, cell phones and tablets. Normal size laptops and desktops will follow, but not as soon as some would expect.
Damn, it will be a good year!
First SP of Vista will cause more problems than expected.
Internet Explorer 8 will disable a few million systems when installed and will need reactivation.
Apple will introduce a fix for the Leopard operating system that users will have to pay for.
Linus Torvalds will change jobs.
Linux won’t conquer the desktop although its percentage will grow to at least 20%.
1. Better Xorg open source drivers with emphasis on OpenChrome
2. Coyotos+Hurd to show a really working prototype
3. UDI ported to Hurd
4. Opengraphics+projectvga to materialize
5. A working Haiku release
6. Midnightbsd + gentoo/bsd adoption
7. an EFIKA2 eepc
Edited 2008-01-02 13:31
I fully expect E17 to become a stable release this year.
I expect 2008 the following things to happen:
* GNOME just keeps getting better, though annoyingly slowly
* I’ll finally upgrade my PC
* I expect to get married and lose enough weight to fit in some nice dress ^^
* And..hmm, I expect still not to touch Vista voluntarily
Nah, seriously though, I don’t really expect anything groundshaking happening in 2008. Linux et al will probably get a little bit better and gain a few more users but not in any huge numbers.
My predictions:
1. Plan 9 will no longer be viewed as only a research/toy OS and development of this OS will build up in earnest.
2. With the emergence of touch screen technologies (i.e. Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s Surface), user interface designers will play a bigger part in an OS’s development. The “desktop” metaphor will be replaced by UI’s like Enso or something just as ground-breaking!
2009 will be the year of the Linux desktop, but on the up side, the tipping point will occur this year with KDE 4 and with Linux installed on a majority of low-cost PCs and laptops. When people see how good it is on the Linux side, they’ll know there are no good reasons left not to install it.
On the down side, Microsoft will continue to stumble. MS-OOXML will not pass ISO, and Vista SP1 will leave everyone with the same question they brought to Vista itself: that’s it?!
2009 will be the year of the Linux desktop, but on the up side, the tipping point will occur this year with KDE 4 and with Linux installed on a majority of low-cost PCs and laptops. When people see how good it is on the Linux side, they’ll know there are no good reasons left not to install it.
KDE 4 is supposed to be the tipping point? Err, I seriously doubt that…First of all, it’s not the desktop environment which matters the most, it’s the applications and general ease-of-use of an OS. And Linux just simply lacks the most needed apps..OO.o just ain’t as good as Office no matter how you spin it, nor does Gimp beat Photoshop. And as for “general” Joe/Jane User the OS doesn’t matter that much and they might not need a really professional office suite either, but they’ll use whatever comes preinstalled on their computer and that is still Windows. That “Linux installed on a majority of low-cost PCs and laptops” is plain utopia. Not going to happen this year. Or the next one. I find it hard to imagine even half of the low-cost PCs would come preinstalled with Linux during the next two years. Atleast here in Finland the only way to get a PC with Linux preinstalled is either to specifically order such from the internet or go to one of those small computer shops and tell them to install Linux on the machine.. AFAIK not a single one of the bigger shops or even major chains of shops sell PCs with Linux.
On the down side, Microsoft will continue to stumble. MS-OOXML will not pass ISO
Even if MS-OOXML did not pass ISO I still think it’ll become one of the major formats in use. Simply for the fact that MS Office is the most widely used office suite. Being the biggest one on the playground has its benefits: you don’t have to care if others approve or not..
I find it hard to imagine even half of the low-cost PCs would come preinstalled with Linux during the next two years
True – but even if over the next two years we were to get about 10% of them to be sold with Linux preinstalled would be a fantastic success and a major defeat for Microsoft. The rapid sellout of the first 100,000 GreenPC’s at WalMart in the US and the success of the eeePC all indicate that this ids possible. The effect would be similar to that when Firefox share exceeded 10% and blocked MS’s attempts to control access to the web by its traditional monopoly methods.
By the way WereCatf I went to your website, couldn’t read the Finnish – but I think your Goth look in the photo is pretty cool.
By the way WereCatf I went to your website, couldn’t read the Finnish – but I think your Goth look in the photo is pretty cool.
Hih, thanks ^^ But well, it’s just a finnish picture gallery, nothing more. I just haven’t got anything interesting to create a “real” website about
That´s it: after the Vista fiasco, Microsoft will have only one chance to save it´s relevance, wich will be… Windows Vista SP1.
But it won´t be enough – because actually, it´s just a collection of patchs. Actually, Microsoft just made this big mistake wich is called Windows Vista, wich really should be called “Windows Me: return edition”
I have no predictions, but a wishlist:
1). Open Source Software and Open Standards as the de facto;
2). Less FUD!;
3). Swapping for MINIX 3;
4). Another working release of ReactOS. (I was unable to boot the latest two releases on both a VM and “bare metal”).
5). Another AROS MAXX alike CD (AROS+ apps);
6). Interplay’s Redneck Rampage series ported to GNU/Linux (not very realistic I’m afraid).
7). Enough exiting new stuff for a new Free MultiOS release
8). Avoid OS flame wars (tough one).
Cheers!
I hope and believe it possible that by the end of 2008 reactos is compatible and stable enough to replace any windows 9x system.
I hope and believe it possible that by the end of 2008 reactos is compatible and stable enough to replace any windows 9x system.
I doubt that..It may very well be almost stable and all that but to replace any Win9x system ReactOS would have to be able run all the available drivers too. It just isn’t there yet.
true that is a lot of drivers to become compatible with or hack substitutes for.