[ Thanks to John
Gowin for this link. ]
“Another year peels off the calendar, and it becomes time to
reflect upon the year gone by. This year was an interesting year
for Linux desktop aficionados. The release of KDE 2.0 was seen as a
huge leap forward in desktop environments. More distributions are
targeting the desktop market with user friendly installation
programs and easy-to-use utilities in their distributions. The two
largest desktop environments have received major industrial backing
in the form of the GNOME Foundation and the KDE League. And
finally, there has been a bounty of good software to ease the Linux
neophyte into the world of Open Source and free software (my
personal favorite is Konquerer).”
“I see 2001 being the year of the anti-aliased font as well
as the year of standardization. As larger software
manufacturers begin to write big-time applications for Linux, they
are not going to want to deal with the packaging requirements of
Red Hat, and then Debian, then Mandrake, then Slackware, etc…
These companies will find that wasteful and begin to package for
one or two distros, with the end goal of only developing and
packaging for one standard flavor of Linux. Package management
will be a key area of standardization in the coming year. It will
likely take the form of a universal installer that can install and
keep track of all package types. Helix Code’s Red Carpet and
Eazel’s Nautilus and services are already pointing us in that
direction.”
“Linux has indeed “come a long way, baby”. The OS has been the
hotpoint of tech news for a large part of the year, the desktop is
maturing faster than a teenager on growth hormones, and every day
someone from the community gives me another reason not to use
Windows. The year 2000 has definitely been a success for the Linux
desktop, and the future holds even more promise. Here’s hoping for
a stellar 2001, because we’ve come a long way, and we’ve got more
ground to cover before the race is done.”