Taking it to the next level

Linux has roughly one more year until Longhorn comes out in 2006. We will see a beta sometime in 2005 I'm sure. With support from IBM/HP/Novell and others we should begin to see better improvements in Linux shortly. The next version of Suse Linux should be in the works by now though nobody has heard anything about it yet. Strange becuase by now you usually hear something a few months after each release about the next release. It's possible that they're extending release cycles out a little bit but I dont see it being a big problem if they did two releases a year as long as software is kept up to date with bugfixes. Much like OSX releases go.

Another thing I'd like to see is some sort of enforced standard. LSB would be a start if everyone would stick with it. Also some sort of standard package management that works cross platform as much as possible would also be good. Portage comes to mind but I'm sure everyone does not want to compile their own packages everytime they install something. Imagine compiling OoO!

The driver situation needs to be resolved fairly soon also. Nvidia has done a great job making it easy to install. ATI has a lot of catching up to do in this arena. We could probably use a lobbying group to press hardware makers to release specs so drivers can be built or for them to release their own drivers. Broadcom and their dominance in the 54g chipset market and refusal to release Linux drivers on vuage excuses has probably caused me the most irritation. We should be working to have drivers install just as easily as in Windows. This is another problem related to package management.

I've got more things I'd like to see but I'll save them for another day.