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Your editor, not generally known for his good sense, has long made a tradition of putting together a set of Linux-related predictions at the beginning of each year and posting them for the world to see. There is no particular source of inside knowledge behind these predictions, and no real reason to give them more credence than is merited by much of the material found in one's spam folder. Still, it's a fun exercise in pondering how things could go and trying to guess what the important themes will be.

Phoronix hasn't gotten to it yet, but now done a quick test with the Moblin distribution IVI version with supposed GMA 500 support (moblin-2.1-preview-ivi-20091208.img) to see how well it's working on my netbook and what feature advantages its IEGD driver may have over the psb driver.

The first thing which put me off after logging in to the kubuntu (9.10) desktop for the first time was the fonts. They are two problems I have with the default Kubuntu fonts (Well the first one is not much of a problem but personal taste.)

For those that prefer wicd to NetworkManager or other programs for managing network connections under Linux, a new release of the Wireless Interface Connection Daemon is now available. Wicd 1.7.0 is arriving just about six months after the release of wicd 1.6.0, but this 2010 release does bring some new features.

I've been approaching the point over the past year where I'm becoming much less a free, open-source software-using hobbyist, trying out the various Linux distributions and BSD projects to see how they run, and am now pretty much a regular user of one open-source operating environment, with productivity and stability being the only thing that matters.

The Perl CPAN Testers have been suffering issues accessing their sites, databases and mirrors. According to a posting on the CPAN Testers' blog, the CPAN Testers' server has been being aggressively scanned by "20-30 bots every few seconds" in what they call "a dedicated denial of service attack"; these bots "completely ignore the rules specified in robots.txt".

I know this is quite political, but it's open source politics: A new initiative has been taken to propose a EU directive that prevents software patents. I have just signed the petition and invite you do to so as well. http://petition.stopsoftwarepatents.eu/

One of the most mentioned ideas at Ubuntu Brainstorm is creating a custom installation/live cd website-as-service which would allow users to customize their install/live cd, in the spirit of Linux and open-source in general. A service like this already exists: Reconstructor, a web based GNU/Linux distribution customization and creation toolkit. It allows for the customization of the Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux distributions. Customizations include boot logo image and text color, wallpaper, themes, icons, applications, and more.

Several times in the last few months, I’ve closed discussion on one of my blogs. Each time, some people have howled in outrage. Their anger makes them nearly inarticulate, but their position is apparently that I have no right to stop discussion. I am an enemy of free speech, they proclaim, a censor and cowardly, and downright evil as well. I don’t see that, myself.

A recent official post on the Ubuntu Forums asks users to complete a survey with the applications they would like to see in upcoming version of Ubuntu:

Tomorrow morning, the third major North American KDE event will start with an introduction by Jeff Mitchell and Aaron Johnson. At 11:00 a keynote by University of California San Diego professor Philip Bourne will introduce us to the university's Open Data initiative and after a lunch we'll get going with the various presentations.

Writing an opinion piece is like throwing a stone in a pond: you're bound to produce ripples. Writing an opinion piece is taking sides, otherwise it wouldn't be an opinion piece. It also implies that there is another side to consider. Writing an opinion piece is also an ego thing: my opinion is important.

Want to get Unix/Linux techies arguing? Besides classic flame wars such as whether vi or EMACS is the better text editor, another surefire way to start a fight is to talk about which file systems are the best. Google, which knows a thing or two about fast systems has decided, for their purposes anyway, that Ext4 is the best and close to the fastest file system of all.

The eighth annual KDE PIM developer meeting in Osnabrück, Germany started out with an extended snowball fight among the Scottish, German and Dutch contingencies. That actual work was being done was evidenced by enhancements to Akonadi, KDE 4.4 and 4.5, and planned further development of the Kontact groupware client.

The Linux Foundation has announced the launch of a new jobs portal on its community driven Linux.com site. According to the JobThread Network, an online recruitment platform established in 2006, demand for Linux-related jobs has increased 80% since 2005. The Linux Foundation hopes that the new Linux Jobs Board will act as an online forum to help employers find the "best and brightest Linux talent". Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation said, “Linux.com reaches millions of Linux professionals from all over the world. By providing a Jobs Board feature on the popular community site, we can bring together employers, recruiters and job seekers to lay the intellectual foundation for tomorrow’s IT industry.”

Every once in a while we here at MakeTechEasier like to take a look at where things stand with the notoriously still-in-development Enlightenment window manager. I say “notorious” because version 0.17 (hereafter called E17) has been in development almost 10 years, long enough to invite a fair share of Duke Nukem Forever analogies. While some have got tired of waiting and just think of E17 as vaporware, the fact is that it has been making progress the entire time. Slow progress, sure, but progress nonetheless. These days E17, while not complete, is still a very slick and powerful desktop with some beautiful graphics and effects. Today we’ll cover how to install E17 onto a standard Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) system.

Here we are not long after the release of many different operating systems and hardware platforms. What an exciting time in the industry! With Google launching phones, Apple confirming a tablet, Oracle buying Sun, Microsoft releasing Windows 7 and talk of a new gaming device, and companies like Novel and Red Hat standing back to see what happens. This is certainly a contentious atmosphere. Of course, the success and failure of any company comes down to dollars and cents, so what is the data there telling us? What information can we gleam. Well, for one we can certainly say that Apple and Google are our heaviest hitters.

Is 2010 the "year of open source"? Probably not, but by the end of the year expect to see open source software everywhere.

With its online-only retail strategy resulting in just 20,000 Nexus One sales the first week, Google goes on offensive on AdSense, but risks cutting into the most profitable part of their business to prop up an under performing one.

I admit, I'm one of those people who dual-boots so I can play video games. I've tried running programs like CrossOver Games in order to feed my need for fragging, but in the end, it seems I always have to install Windows to enjoy some real gaming fun.