What kind of year will 2006 really be?

[ahood]

Hi All,

I am a linux user. I use linux in as many devices as I can, such as desktops, severs, PVR and mp3 players. My life revolves around linux. I have often wondered whether linux will take off on the dekstop. Because I do quite a bit of reading of linux news, I noticed several articles that make a prediction about opensource software. For instance, I did a quick search of LinuxToday (http://www.linuxtoday.com) and came up with four articles.

Opinion: 2006 - the year for open source (http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39155423,00.htm) by Simon Moores
Mr. Moore pondered whether 2006 would be the year for opensource, but alas, was skeptical and mentioned several reason why.

TechWorld: Predictions for 2006: Operating Systems (http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureid=2134&inkc=0) by Carol Sliwa
Carol wrote a very nice article and concluded that virtualization software will the be the biggest thing in 2006.

SourceLabs: Bruce Perens' Forecasts for 2006 (http://perens.sourcelabs.com/articles/2005/12/07/bruce-perens-forecasts-for-2006) by Bruce Perens
Mr. Perens makes several predictions for 2006, but none are related to linux on the Desktop. The one that caught my eye was increased linux API in cellular phones; however, I don't think this is anything startling.

PC Magazine: Will 2006 Be Linux's Year? (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1836228,00.asp) by Oliver Kaven
Mr. Kaven ponders quite extensively about whether 2006 will be the year for linux on the desktop. He expresses an opinion about the hurdles (I don't necessarily agree with some of them) that linux faces for widespread adoption on the desktop. At the end of the article, Mr. Kaven expressed skepticism about whether 2006 is it for linux on the desktop (maybe rightly so).

So what will 2006 be remembered for in 2007?
Unfortunately, I too am skeptical that 2006 will be the year for linux on the desktop. Not unless, the linux communities rally together behind a common theme or some linux enthusiast/company with lots of cash goes on a media frenzy and works some magic. I also think that 2006 will NOT be the year for VISTA (IMHO 2007 more likely).

I think that 2006 will be most remembered as the 'security year'. Security is already a big deal in the first 2 weeks of 2006. A quick and simple search of Google News (http://news.google.com) using the terms 'windows + flaw' retrieved over 1,080 articles in the past 2 weeks! Gee, thats 500 articles a week! Wow! Hot Topic!

Note: The number of articles (1,080) does not in any way indicate the number of flaws in windows. It is meant to be a measure of how hot a topic is over a period of time (in this case 2 weeks).

The Windows WMF flaw has attracted a lot of bad press, and quite a few complaints that a patch wasn't released as quickly as some would have liked.

Another security issue that garnered a lot of headlines lately has been rootkits. Using the single term 'rootkit', Google News retrieved 211 articles over the past 2 weeks. I was a bit surprised that there weren't more articles on this topic. Rootkits apparently trouble consumers as they don't like install software that cannot be uninstalled and limits their ability to do what they want with their files. I think I can understand that, although I do not advocate breaking any law. I think rootkits will become an even hotter issue because it is likely that more vendors software that people pay for will be found to have installed a rootkit.

I believe that security (negative and possibly positive) issues will be the biggest topic of 2006. It will be inescapable and most software vendors (if not all) will be affected by it either directly or indirectly.

The questions in my mind are the following:

What security issue will surround linux in 2006 (maybe none)?

Is the linux community prepared to respond to any security issue (positive or negative) that might come up?

Lastly, I close with this tid bit of information....
I did a search in Google News using the terms 'linux' and 'flaws' and came up with 45 articles in the last 2 weeks. I guess flaws in linux is a pretty cold topic. Somehow, this doesn't seem to bother me.

Dr. Hood

[23meg]

What security issue will surround linux in 2006 (maybe none)?The usual MS-funded make believe thinktank statistics miscounting and mislabeling the quantity of security flaws in Linux packages and concluding that Windows is more secure than Linux.

[briancurtin]

it will be a year of asinine benchmarks, and TCO wars

X is faster than Y, but a week later Y is faster than X, and it goes on
linux costs more than windows, and a week later windows costs more than linux

[JimmyJazz]

it will be a year of many many predictions (oh how we love predictions)

[Qrk]

What security issue will surround linux in 2006 (maybe none)?

Is the linux community prepared to respond to any security issue (positive or negative) that might come up?


People switch from Windows to Linux based on how bad Windows' flaws are. And because the security concerns for desktop Linux are practically nill compared to Windows, what keeps people on Linux (or drives them back to Microsoft) is ease of use. Linux security is only relavent when people make the switch from Windows, or put differently, I don't think anyone switches back to windows for security reasons.

With that in mind, all eyes are on Vista this year; Linux's fate (on the desktop at least) depends on how well Vista is received. If Vista is secure and stable, I think Linux adoption will continue has it is: steadily increasing but a little too slowly for those of us here. An increase will probably occur no matter what as people buy new machines for Vista and try out Linux on their old ones. (thats a great market for Linux right there, what do I do with my old XP machine?) If Vista is no better in terms of security than XP I think we will see a larger increase in Linux adoption.

Vista is a huge gamble for Microsoft. They have to proove to the consumer that they have made improvements worthy of the five year wait. The ball is in Microsoft's court in 2006; but even if Vista is a grand slam Linux will slowly errode their market share.

[curuxz]

Vista is guna dive bomb. And as for all this linux going to be worse than windows stuff just look at the statistics. There has yet to be one single person I have met or heard of (on the forums) that has started life as a linux user become skilled then found windows and go on over to the other side. However hundreds and hundreds around here have become skilled windows users then ditched it for nix first chance they get. 2006 will be the year people realise this and start to come here in droves, even more so than now.

[asimon]

There has yet to be one single person I have met or heard of (on the forums) that has started life as a linux user become skilled then found windows and go on over to the other side.
Actually I've met a couple of this rare species at the Gentoo forum. Not many, but they exist. ;-)

My prediction, altough not new, is that 2006 will be a great year for Ruby and the general push to dynamic typed languages will be carried forward.

[curuxz]

Never used Ruby, what does it do and why so good that it hogs up your 2006 predictions ;)

By the way thanks for the heads up on the gentoo forum trators, im just loading the shotgun now and will make my post 100% correct shortly....

[awakatanka]

People switch from Windows to Linux based on how bad Windows' flaws are. And because the security concerns for desktop Linux are practically nill compared to Windows, what keeps people on Linux (or drives them back to Microsoft) is ease of use. Linux security is only relavent when people make the switch from Windows, or put differently, I don't think anyone switches back to windows for security reasons.

With that in mind, all eyes are on Vista this year; Linux's fate (on the desktop at least) depends on how well Vista is received. If Vista is secure and stable, I think Linux adoption will continue has it is: steadily increasing but a little too slowly for those of us here. An increase will probably occur no matter what as people buy new machines for Vista and try out Linux on their old ones. (thats a great market for Linux right there, what do I do with my old XP machine?) If Vista is no better in terms of security than XP I think we will see a larger increase in Linux adoption.

Vista is a huge gamble for Microsoft. They have to proove to the consumer that they have made improvements worthy of the five year wait. The ball is in Microsoft's court in 2006; but even if Vista is a grand slam Linux will slowly errode their market share.
The people that know a little more are the linux tryers atm, Vista will be a hit like all other windows versions before it,most users don't know better and never hear from linux. They will use it even with the flaws windows has.

If you want a linux year then OEM company's have start to preinstall linux distro's more, and more advertising from one of the distro's.

I think it will be the DRM year.

[curuxz]

The people that know a little more are the linux tryers atm, Vista will be a hit like all other windows versions before it,most users don't know better and never hear from linux. They will use it even with the flaws windows has.



I have to say I disagree with this, While normaly this was possible Vista's requirements are so large, its alterations so fundementaly stupid and its price set to be equaly so that the average user may indeed try to use windows vista but for many it simply will not work most users pc's simply are not fast enough. MS is giving us a golden opertunity in 2006 its when vista screws over these users that we can offer them something better. They will be ready for change...

[23meg]

I think it will be the DRM year.I have to say I agree with this; to go into a bit more detail it will be the "DRM pissing people off and making them think again about intellectual property" year.

[awakatanka]

I have to say I disagree with this, While normaly this was possible Vista's requirements are so large, its alterations so fundementaly stupid and its price set to be equaly so that the average user may indeed try to use windows vista but for many it simply will not work most users pc's simply are not fast enough. MS is giving us a golden opertunity in 2006 its when vista screws over these users that we can offer them something better. They will be ready for change...
No one is knowing the system spec for vista atm and it will also work on pc's with a little less power but without the eyecandy,you can't build youre opinion on a beta version because its not ready.

I still see on a daily base users with older versions of windows, not everyone will buy a new windows copy if there is a new version, only the people that knows a little more will buy a new copy the rest will stick to there working version that has come with there pc.

The people that know a little more are mostly also people with a little more power in there pc so its hoping that some will go to linux.

The average user is a user that buys a pc preinstalled and mostly stick to the os that is preinstalled on it.