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!
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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 :-)
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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.
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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.
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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).
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"""
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
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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.)
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2007-02-22
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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
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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
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"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
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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
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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.
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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 ...
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By the way, you can follow the trial here at Threat Level. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/hans_reiser_trial/index.html
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"""
"""
From Threat Level:
-
-
Ouch! That's gotta hurt!
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2005-11-21
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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.
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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....
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2006-09-21
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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.
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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.
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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 ?
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2005-07-06
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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...
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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
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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.