A year with the penguin

By most counts, the past year has been a good one for Linux and the open source community. The year has not only seen rapid advances in the kernel - which currently stands at around 2.4.16 for the stable release, while 2.5 is already in beta - but more importantly the operating system has started the long road to corporate and consumer acceptance.

Clearly the worldwide developer base has been very busy this year, resulting in significant developments and improvements over the past year.

Alastair Otter, Journalist, ITWeb

This improved level of acceptance has a lot to do with Linux starting to come of age in the past year along with the many applications that make up the GNU matrix. Clearly the worldwide developer base has been very busy this year, resulting in significant developments and improvements over the past year.

Ximian`s Gnome contribution surely ranks very high on this list, as does the latest releases of KDE. Both these projects make Linux a viable contender in the desktop market. Other applications that stand out for the year include Galeon, which has stolen a lot of the limelight from the Mozilla project, and AbiWord, which must be incredibly close to a full release in the early half of next year.

But the desktop application of the year has to be Evolution, the all-in-one Outlook clone that could well be the strongest persuasion when it comes to convincing users to switch to Linux.

There were losers, however, and one has to wonder what happened to the Eazel project. Eazel`s Nautilus desktop browser had just about everything: the ex-Macintosh designers, an exceptionally good idea and a wide-ranging support base, yet it all fell through.

On the server side, the question that has to be asked is whether the Apache Software Foundation has not lost the plot just a bit? The Apache Webserver still stands head and shoulders above the competition, and particularly with regard to security. But for how long? Version 2 of the server has been in development for longer than most users can remember, and when it is eventually shipped, chances are it will lack a lot of the features that businesses on the Internet require. No doubt it will remain a perennial favourite among hackers and ISPs, but I suspect the product will lose significant ground over the coming months.

In SA, Linux made a small but notable impact on the local IT scene in the past 12 months. The Linux Professionals` Association kicked off the inaugural Linux in Africa conference, which, although relatively small, hopefully bodes well for future events.

Linux in Africa also brought Jon "Maddog" Hall, head of Linux International, to SA, a big coup for the local open source community. But the Linux "visitor of the year" had to be Richard Stallman, founder and chief architect of the Gnu movement. Not one to compromise, Stallman did nothing to tone down his rhetoric during his tour of the country. Known for his eccentricities, such as literally living in his office for a number of years, Stallman lived up to his image and gave a unique insight into the dedication and mindset that it takes to build a free operating system from the ground up.

Another project that stands out locally is the LinuxLab project that plans to set-up Linux-based computers in schools. Even as a small-budget operation, it is great to see the open source community doing something to both spread the use of Linux more widely, as well as give something back to education.

A related project is Translate.org, which is in the process of translating many of the desktop applications for Linux into indigenous languages. What makes the project different to others that have gone before is that the translation is being done at a very low level, so that the end-project is a comprehensive translation. Finally, it is also good to see that some of the schools involved in the Gauteng Online project will be given Linux machines.

All told, Linux has made significant headway over the past year and although the community still has many challenges to overcome, next year promises to be an exciting one.