Just for fun, I'm looking into my crystal ball and will make a few technology related predictions for 2013
Linux:
Ubuntu will continue to move away from the desktop, focusing more on servers, and reaching for the illusive tablet/smart phone market. It will continue to lose ground to Linux Mint and other Linux distributions.
Linux Mint is going to have a good year, continuing to gain ground on the desktop and Cinnamon will become a force by year's end. Mint Debian will continue to get little love, but a growing user base.
Fedora will be in decline because of its new installer and the buggy nature of the testbed OS. Redhat will stay strong, the other Redhat spins will keep their fans. Fuduntu will continue to impress.
Debian, the old Linux rock will remain strong, Wheezy will be its best ever release. It will gain new desktop fans and continue its popularity on servers.
SolusOS will either become the best Linux operating system in existence, or completely disappear.
Mepis, I suspect Mepis 12 will be the last release we see.
Desktops, MATE, Xfce, and KDE will continue to have fans and will grow more fans. LXDE will lose the spotlight for light desktops to E17. Cinnamon will be amazing. Unity will improve but still be unloved by Linux users. Gnome will try to right itself, but it will not shed its user hate in 2013.
Linux in general, Linus will continue to entertain us by cussing out people he thinks are idiots. Linux will be strong on just about everything except the desktop, will be continually important to Android, in appliances and electronic devices it will be in ever more use. Very small operating systems that run on sticks or cards you can plug into your TV or otherwise replace larger operating systems will become more popular, and new uses will be found for Linux in our everyday life in 2013.
Other:
Android will start to eat Apple for lunch. IOS will still be popular, but lose the spotlight of first place to Android.
Tablets in general will become the new user PC as desktop computers go into further decline. Smart phones and tablets will rule the future in personal computing.
Microsoft Windows will continue to become history as Windows 8 never fully takes off, too late MS will realize it is fighting the last war. Enterprise will move evermore to Apple, and perhaps Android if it can be made fully secure.
Ereaders will begin to see the season of decline. Ebooks will be more popular than ever, but one tablet rather than a tablet and a ereader will be the new norm for book lovers. Reader apps for tablets will be the important gateway to ebooks.
In general, by years' end we will see $99 tablets as the norm, and I'm not talking about the cheapo china tablets, but Kindle, Google, and Nook tablets among other leaders at $99. Apple will never try to match that price point so you see why I say Android will eat Apple's lunch in 2013.
Well my crystal ball may have it all wrong, so what are your predictions? Please comment below.
Linux:
Ubuntu will continue to move away from the desktop, focusing more on servers, and reaching for the illusive tablet/smart phone market. It will continue to lose ground to Linux Mint and other Linux distributions.
Linux Mint is going to have a good year, continuing to gain ground on the desktop and Cinnamon will become a force by year's end. Mint Debian will continue to get little love, but a growing user base.
Fedora will be in decline because of its new installer and the buggy nature of the testbed OS. Redhat will stay strong, the other Redhat spins will keep their fans. Fuduntu will continue to impress.
Debian, the old Linux rock will remain strong, Wheezy will be its best ever release. It will gain new desktop fans and continue its popularity on servers.
SolusOS will either become the best Linux operating system in existence, or completely disappear.
Mepis, I suspect Mepis 12 will be the last release we see.
Desktops, MATE, Xfce, and KDE will continue to have fans and will grow more fans. LXDE will lose the spotlight for light desktops to E17. Cinnamon will be amazing. Unity will improve but still be unloved by Linux users. Gnome will try to right itself, but it will not shed its user hate in 2013.
Linux in general, Linus will continue to entertain us by cussing out people he thinks are idiots. Linux will be strong on just about everything except the desktop, will be continually important to Android, in appliances and electronic devices it will be in ever more use. Very small operating systems that run on sticks or cards you can plug into your TV or otherwise replace larger operating systems will become more popular, and new uses will be found for Linux in our everyday life in 2013.
Other:
Android will start to eat Apple for lunch. IOS will still be popular, but lose the spotlight of first place to Android.
Tablets in general will become the new user PC as desktop computers go into further decline. Smart phones and tablets will rule the future in personal computing.
Microsoft Windows will continue to become history as Windows 8 never fully takes off, too late MS will realize it is fighting the last war. Enterprise will move evermore to Apple, and perhaps Android if it can be made fully secure.
Ereaders will begin to see the season of decline. Ebooks will be more popular than ever, but one tablet rather than a tablet and a ereader will be the new norm for book lovers. Reader apps for tablets will be the important gateway to ebooks.
In general, by years' end we will see $99 tablets as the norm, and I'm not talking about the cheapo china tablets, but Kindle, Google, and Nook tablets among other leaders at $99. Apple will never try to match that price point so you see why I say Android will eat Apple's lunch in 2013.
Well my crystal ball may have it all wrong, so what are your predictions? Please comment below.
One I forgot: Firesales on laptops by next Christmas. The laptop will die out before the desktop computer does.
ReplyDeleteOne hope I have is that these abandoned laptops and desktops in the future can be save from landfills, have Linux installed on them, and given to people who need computers!
ReplyDeletePfft. SolusOS isn't going anywhere ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm counting on that Ikey, and that SolusOS becomes the best distro ever in 2013 :-)
ReplyDeleteHasn't the demise of Mepis been predicted every year for like the last 10 years? I just started using Mepis this summer, but as far as I can tell, Warren creates Mepis for himself and just lets others use it. I think as long as Warren is around Mepis will be around.
ReplyDeleteI laughed at your SolusOS prediction. I can completely understand why you would say that. Hard luck seems to find Ikey in his personal life. But from what I have seen in Ikey, the man is a true fighter and a coding genius with a never say die attitude. He won't give up without a good fight. SolusOS will be stronger than ever by the end of the year. However, I do fear that Ikey could burn out in several years if he keeps pushing as hard as he is currently. But then again, all great startups take a strong leader burning the midnight oil to gain there footings. Rock on Ikey and SolusOS.
Fargo
Yeah, I'm hoping Ikey avoids burnout :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments!
My thoughts:
ReplyDeleteLMDE will continue to have slow UP releases (although I'm crossing my fingers that UP 6 may let us revert to the monthly or every couple of month update packs), and people will become frustrated by the combination of older apps and lack of stability. I think it will eventually die (I hope not, though) or at least receive less attention, unless a significant amount of users move. I think the problem is that it's a secondary and less stable version because people don't use it because they're told is secondary and less stable.
I don't think Fedora is going to do well, but there are enough people who need it because they have red hat servers that it won't lose too much.
I completely agree about Debian. I thin non-Ubuntu-based Debian-based distros might make somewhat of a comeback, with SolusOS, LMDE, and Snow Linux (which I find to be somewhat a LM copy, but it's still cool).
I think SolusOS will have an amazing release, but I worry about ikey (who seems to unfortunately have a lot of personal problems) not being able to maintain all of the new things. Their divergence from apt worries me, but I am hoping that it will do well.
I hope that MEPIS remains, because it is a great distro. It has lost a lot of its former glory, but I tried it for the first time a few weeks ago, and I think it's my favorite KDE desktop. Fingers crossed.
I think Arch-based distros will become more common, with some distros (I'm thinking of Manjaro specifically) stabilizing arch. These distros will mature greatly, and they will have lots of things that are common on Debian and Ubuntu based distros like graphical installers and pre-configured applications. Arch will continue to be bleeding edge (I equate it to Debian Sid), but Manjaro and other distros will make a Debian Testing Arch equivalent. Some distros may even do an LMDE UP thing.
PCLinuxOS will continue to decline or hover at its current place. It will eventually become very good, with stable and rolling applications. They will only have a decent KDE desktop, though.
Some more applications will come to linux (like steam and lightworks), and they will only be available officially for Ubuntu. It won't be the year of the Linux Desktop, though.
E17 will replace LXDE, and Xfce will become more mainstream, with many features that Gnome 2 had. MATE and KDE will continue to have their traditional user base, but they won't grow to much. Unity will grow on Ubuntu because it's default, but Cinnamon will get lots of new features. Gnome will continue to go crazy (and I'm not talking about the UI). Eventually all of the Gnome forks and patches and etc will die, and only the ones that are well supported by big distros will go on. Pantheon, Pear Shell, Linux Deepin's new desktop, etc may continue, but they won't go anywhere significant.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I do wonder if, in the not too distant future, users will begin to filter back into Gnome Shell. Its extensions are starting to make it easier to configure the way a user wants, and tablet users may find it less onerous than traditional desktop users have in the past.
DeleteI definitely think gnome will at least make an effort to allow people to use extensions and get back to a normal desktop, but I don't think it will be good enough. I also think GnomeOS is crazy (that's more what I was referring to). I think that extensions are really cool, but desktops like Cinnamon and MATE have what you would do with extensions built in automatically.
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