Desktop Linux Summit 2005: Interest Continues to Grow

By: Dee-Ann LeBlanc
Friday, February 11, 2005 09:39:58 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/5741/1/

Third Time is Definitely a Charm

The Desktop Linux Summit in Del Mar, California, is on its third year and has grown to at least six-hundred attendees. Some of those who come to the three-day show have been attending from the very beginning, flying in and soaking up the non-stop talks and the chance to talk to vendors and preview products. This is still a Linspire-focused show in many ways, with various Linspire initiatives--LTunes, LPhotos, and so on--spanning booths not in use by other companies and projects, but according to Founder and CEO Michael Robertson, all of the major players were invited. Some have booths (such as Novell), and others have no booths but sent speakers (such as Sun).

One thing's for sure. Not only is the Linux desktop itself growing, but so is interest in it. The European presence is again particularly strong; in fact, it's stronger than I see at most of the shows I attend. There are more members of the general public and Linux community than there are suits, and I've even seen members of the military in uniform speaking with vendors. A number of announcements have been made at this show, and some of the new products previewed have some real promise.

Voice Over IP (VoIP)

Interestingly, the biggest single group of products on display here are for Internet telephony, otherwise referred to as Voice over IP. Three companies have products on display here: SIPphone, Inc., New Avenue, and SwitchVox. While they all deal with VOIP, they are all quite different as far as their particular niche, market, and approach.

SIPphone operates both as a primary vendor, and by providing software so that others can provide VOIP services. You can purchase your own VOIP phone and VOIP-enabled router directly from SIPphone, you can download the software and purchase an appropriate headphone and microphone set to entirely use the phone through your computer, or you can purchase the hardware and service through one of the companies that are using SIPphone technology. For example, SingTel is one of the largest telephone companies in Asia, and uses rebranded SIPphone technologies under the hood.

New Avenue Systems offers a number of ways to use its products, but of particular interest to many will be that their VOIP client integrates seamlessly with the Thunderbird email client. Once you install the New Avenue module, you can use your existing Thunderbird address book to make a VOIP call with just a few clicks and no extra software getting in your way. You can also use Thunderbird to check your voice mail, again reducing the number of programs you need to have running. It doesn't matter whether you're using Thunderbird on Linux, Windows, or the Mac, the process is exactly the same. This client/server software stores your information through Web services, allowing you to also access your VOIP setup through either Web browsers or Java clients. The client should be ready by mid-2005, and will be open source and free. The server will be sold, and is where New Avenue intends to make its money.

On the other hand, Switchvox is a phone system for small to medium-sized businesses. It's software-based, runs on Linux, offers voice mail and the much dreaded IVR (Interactive Voice Response, "Press 1 for service in English..."), call views, the ability to have your voicemail sent to your email inbox, call logs, call forwarding, diagnostics, and can be used for Voice over IP as well as a regular phone PBX.

Linspire Keeps Pushing Forward

Of course, Linspire is a major presence. At one booth, a beta preview of Linspire 5.0 is available. The final release is expected by the end of the second quarter of 2005, if not by the end of the first quarter. According to Robertson, "We're working really hard on the polish, because that's what we think Linux needs to be able to go into Best Buy, and say, 'Best Buy, it's time for you guys to start selling a desktop'... It really requires a real attention to detail that Linux hasn't been known for."

New features include a wireless control panel that lets you jump access points and automatically join your home network or your office network, software that was not previous bundled in--the Nvu HTML editor, PhoneGAIM for VOIP and instant messaging, and a VPN client for those who need to be able to connect to their office networks--along with the ability to share folders by right clicking and other features requested by users.

Lphoto and Lsongs have both been updated with new features, and Linspire has also launched a new product called MP3tunes (www.mp3tunes.com)-- which is not surprising since he was the CEO of MP3.com. This music download site serves up music without DRM (Digital Rights Management) annoyances. It's stocked with independent musicians and the site has been slammed by interested onlookers since its launch announcement. You can purchase individual songs, or have custom CDs burned and shipped.

In conjunction with MP3tunes is the MP3 Beamer. This music server comes as software along with Linspire 5.0, so you can install it yourself, or you can purchase it as an appliance. The appliance will immediately rip CDs when you put them into the drive, and also allows you to upload the songs you have already. It understands more than MP3 (ogg, for example) and can re-encode music on the fly if it needs to for a particular device. The MP3 Beamer runs Linspire, and can be used to serve music to any device with an Internet connection, so you can use it to listen to your music on your desktop your laptop, your PDA, your phone, or anything else that can access your server and play the music. While the unit has an 80GB hard drive, which is "only" big enough to contain 1500 CDs, it has two PCI slots and so can be expanded.

Robertson also refers to the MP3 Beamer as a "non-traditional approach to get inside someone's house." Selling desktop Linux in North America is, as Robertson puts it, much like "hand-to hand-combat with Microsoft... it's slow and it's messy."

Another project associated with Linsire is IRMA (International Resource Management Application), which is a fancy way of saying that the efforts happening at www.linspire.com/irma and www.irmateam.com revolve around trying to translate every little tiny part of Linux and its associated open source applications for localization purposes. Both managers and translators are needed to fulfill both the translation "grunt work" and help with verification and quality control, and according to the IRMA FAQ, "Linspire believes strongly in open source software and has committed significant financial support for various open source projects. All translations made through IRMA will be made available back to the open source community." The plan is to complete translations of seventy-eight different languages by 2006.

Finally, for the curious, check out www.lraiser.com. There, you can find out where Linspire computers have been installed and connected to the Internet all the way around the world. Linspire users don't worry, the application that reports this runs once just for an anonymous location, and then doesn't run again (and it only tracks down to a particular city).

OpenOffice.org Opens the Floodgates

The folks at OpenOffice.org have been busy, busy, busy. Perhaps the most exciting news for OOo users is that version 2.0 is available for beta testing. New features include a solution for those who have been begging for a replacement for Microsoft Access, called OpenOffice.org Database-- Daniel Carrera with OpenOffice.org confesses that the naming isn't particularly creative, but of course it isn't easy to confuse this component with another.

Other new items include the ability to select sections of text and do word counts of just those sections, nested tables and the ability to mark text as "hidden" in OOo Writer, OOo Calc's limit increased to 65,536 rows, new shapes available in OOo Draw, a new presentation engine for OOo Impress, support for digital signatures, and far more all across the suite. Exchanging documents with Microsoft Office users will also work better. For a full list of additions and changes, visit the OpenOffice Development page, select the latest "current snapshot build" link, and then Guide to New Features.

A special addition to OOo is the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) file format. Due to concerns over the dangers of being locked into proprietary file formats--what happens if the company goes under? what happens if the company is deemed to be a security liability but all of your file are in its formats? and so on--many companies and countries have been looking for a way out of the proprietary quagmire. Sponsors of OASIS read as the usual Who's Who of the tech and corporate community, including Reuters.

The really exciting part for OASIS however, is the interest level of many governments: the European Union released a requirements document in September, for future information systems purchases. These requirements specify an open standards, XML-based file format, and OASIS is very likely the only such format in existence. The EU has, in fact, been carefully working with OASIS to help make sure that the format will meet their needs. Such input is welcome, and according to Gary Edwards, an active OASIS member, has been quite well thought out in the case of the EU.

An interesting aside is that Microsoft has been an observer-level member of the OASIS group since its beginning.

In addition to Oasis, the OOo project has also generated a large collection of documentation that will be freely available for download. This documentation has been read over with usability in mind, given the unfortunately poor reputation of open source manuals, and is also available in print form as displayed at the OOo booth at this event. Each application has a separate manual.

Another project associated with OpenOffice.org that's making headway in non-traditional ways is the INGOTS (International Vocational Inclusive Participative Cross-Curricular) program. Ever since Ian Lynch, the Education Lead of OpenOffice.org, gave his INGOTS talk, I have personally witnessed educators of all stripes gravitating toward him to find out more. Why? INGOT offers four levels of certification suitable for a variety of ages and backgrounds, with a focus on practice and projects-based learning.

The catchphrase on the INGOTS site is:

Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me, and I'll understand.--Native American Proverb

In a way, the INGOTS program reminds me of achieving the Girl Scouts' Silver Award, which is a service-based achievement. You have to do more than just demonstrate capability with a program. There is no test to pass. Instead, for example, to achieve the Silver INGOT, you must complete a community-related task consisting of downloading and burning ISO images of OpenOffice.org to give away to people who need them, build a five-page Web site, and prepare an "office circular" (memo) without relying on auto-preparation wizards. While this particular community task may not seem like a big deal in locations like North America, the bandwidth to download ISOs--let alone the hardware to burn CD-ROMs--is not affordable everywhere.

OpenOffice.org doesn't have to be the only software you use. For tasks such as creating Web sites, for example, the primary objective is to test the site under at least three different browsers rather than assuming that only one browser matters.

Wrapping Up

Lots more is happening at the Desktop Linux Summit, such as Novell's passing out review copies of their Novell Linux Desktop (which some people have successfully sold on eBay, no less), a talk by Rob Lanphier, the "Helix Troublemaker" for Real Networks, a peek at how Linux has taken over the movie industry, and a heavy focus on practical problems such as migrating to Linux on the desktop. Given that so many Linux events are either focused on the server or on developers, it is important to have a venue where the average user can come and see Linux in action in ways they're likely to use, and learn about the possibilities and the reality that is Linux.

Dee-Ann LeBlanc is the award-winning author of thirteen computer books, including Linux for Dummies 6th Edition, and the award-winning author of over two-hundred articles. Her favorite topics range the span of the Linux space, from the desktop to the server, and as the Gaming Industry Editor of LinuxWorld Magazine she tries to have some fun as well.