Will Geolocation Find a Home on Linux Desktops?

“Potentially affecting everything from the metadata stored with
files to the mechanics of social networking, geolocation is already
starting to arrive in GNOME and KDE. But the first implementations
are only a hint of the features that geolocation might soon
provide.

“Why add geolocation now (other, of course, than because
developers can)? The main reason, according to KDE developer Aaron
Seigo, is that many computers are no longer stationary. “These
days, we pack around phones and PDAs, and laptops are continually
slung over our shoulders. We’re an increasingly mobile society
where we carry our computers with us. So computers now have a new
set of requirements that just emerged in the last ten years, and
they are now expected to work equally well in multiple human
contexts.”

“For example, Seigo says, “At work, we may not Web-surf or [use]
Facebook. At home or in a train station, sure, that’s what we want
to do, but probably the last thing we want to do is look over that
spreadsheet from work. That’s why geolocation is increasingly
important: It’s trying to make computers respond to the human
context, instead of the other way around.” He suggests that, in the
near future, geolocation could be used to change desktops and icons
sets automatically as your location changes.”

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