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Cherry on Linux
John Cherry is a long-time Linux advocate dedicated to facilitating the adoption of Linux in various markets. John has held positions with the OSDL and Linux Foundation.
The honor goes to the Desktop Linux workgroup
April 9, 2007 |
Last week, eWeek posted a list of the top 100 most influential people in IT. Much to my surprise, my watercolor picture found its way onto this list. When I looked at the list containing a plethora of CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs, I suddenly felt a bit out of place. However, this honor makes it obvious that the IT industry is looking closely at the emerging viability of Linux desktops in enterprise environments and more specifically to the work that is being done in the Desktop Linux workgroup and in the Linux Community with the Destkop Architects.
Since December of 2005, the Linux desktop community architects have met three times with the goal of pulling together the various desktop community organizations, distros, ISVs, and platform vendors to assess the maturity of the Linux desktop and to identify focus areas which would make Linux platforms more viable for deployment. It is no surprise that the availability of key applications always rises to the top. The desktop architects have focused on cross-desktop (i.e. Portland Project) and cross-distro (i.e. LSB) areas in moving to an environment where application vendors can move their application(s) to the “Linux platform”, not to some Linux variant or desktop environment flavor. The desktop communty has also focused on those key capability areas such as printing, wireless, power management, and text layout by coordinating several technical summits on these topics. Other key topics, such as sound and multimedia, are also emerging.
By the way, the forth Destkop Architects Meeting (DAM-4) is coming up in June at the Googleplex in Mountain View. Event planning info for DAM-4 can be found here, and event logistics for the larger Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit can be found here.
Desktop Architects Meeting - 4
June 14-15
Google Headquarters - Mountain View, CA
Results are being seen on many fronts and in many market segments. As more and more applications become available for Linux, more markets will be open for Linux-based desktops. We have already seen significant penetration into the fixed use markets (point of sale, ATMs, airline kiosks, etc.) as well as technical workstations (software development, animation, movie production, CAD/CAM, etc.) and transactional environments (banking, call centers, travel agents, etc.). Now, we are hearing the starting gun for basic office use in the enterprise as well as some basic consumer markets. Challenges that will be addressed by the hardware vendors delivering pre-installed Linux include hardware support (especially for non-open hardware and the latest plugglable widgets), support for open and proprietary media formats (should be easy in pre-installed systems), and the ability for 3rd party software vendors to easily create and install software on the platform. By the way, the Linux desktop ecosystem already offers hundreds of quality open source applications that exceed the capabilities of much of the proprietary offerings and are certainly more satisfying than the pre-installed “cripple-ware” that is bundled with many of the Windows platforms.
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Comments
6 Comments so far
U DA MAN!
Ed
woAh! you rock dude.
No longer an “unsung” hero!
Congratulations!
Steve
What a great honor. Looks like all of your hard work while at OSDL is finally being appreciated!
Congratulations John. Thanks for sharing. A great award for a most deserving man.
Taylor