Desktop

The news of Con Kolivas, a Linux kernel developer, quitting that role, along with an interview in which he explains why, could and should make loud noises around the Free Software community which is often touting GNU/Linux as the best operating system one could use, and not just because of freedom you have with it. In the interview he says certain things which should cause tectonic shifts in the mindset that we have all been having. Why didn't we realize these things before?

If "a year of GNU/Linux on the desktop" is defined as a year when GNU/Linux has finally started its steady encroachment to the desktop then 2006 is the year. A lot of users have started using GNU/Linux on their desktops long before, but it is 2006 which marked the two probably biggest GNU/Linux desktop releases to date, Ubuntu Dapper and Novell SuSE 10. It is 2006 which marks the biggest opportunity for GNU/Linux to steal the desktop market share from Windows due to the bad reputation behind the pending Windows Vista release. And the eyes and focus of both the GNU/Linux community and major GNU/Linux corporations such as Novell are fixed on that opportunity. Novell marketing is true: "Your Linux is ready."

In the last few months, there has been a lot of talk about Xgl, compiz, AIGLX et cetera. It seems that "Xgl" has become a synonym for fancy desktop on Linux - but nobody seems to talk about the alternatives or how it all works. I have had a little look into this and am going to summarize it for y'all. I will explain where the following come from and how they work:

• Xglx
• Xegl
• Luminocity
• AIGLX

The release of Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 caused a lot of buzz even before it happened. The actual release was originally planned for April 2006 and if it wasn't postponed for June 1st it would have been called 6.04 according to its version naming scheme (6 for the current year and 04 for month). Mark Shuttleworth's request for postponing, the consequential decision making process (which was open), but also some friction regarding the kubuntu project management only contributed to the already quite high awareness, or "buzz", around this popular GNU/Linux distribution.