Technogory

Presentation by John Walicki, Linux Foundation Desktop Workgroup, IBM

There were a couple of small issues while blogging and watching the presentation. So, a quick synopsis of what was missed!

* Wireless Dirvers - there are more OEMs taking advantage of the many new drivers available.

* More folks are taking advantage of the Network Manager architecture available.

* There continues to be advances in the web space. We thought this was over some time ago, but you have WebKit, Firefox, and KHTML continuing to improve service.

* Internationalization is becoming more important. The Linux distributions are finding there way to remote areas that have yet to experience a computer, much less a specific OS.

* There is still a lot of multimedia that needs to be done. The guess on the future is istros will leverage licensed commercial solutions so they don’t ahve to deal with the prevalent IP issues.

* Print is pretty stable, but there needs to be improved dialog management.

* Bluetooth - not simple today, and improvements need to include seamless integration.

* Netbook remixes - taking a distro and building down to the lowest common requirements for the hardware.

* Encrypted File Systems - Government is the biggest consumer/requirement driver for this.

* Linux desktops are growing in all markets, however it is tough to get the OEMs to share their internal numbers. Some estimate that just the netbook alone will net millions of units in the next year.

* Linux preloads are here - they are stable, and work well,.

* Linux has more device drivers than any other OS - think about it, from the smallest appliance device to the mainframe! It takes a lot of device drivers to do that!

* Forecast - Consistent and steady growth. The future is good - the question is, will the community developers sustain it?