from Hacker News

Some Unlikely 2021 Predictions

by Ianvdl on 1/13/21, 6:40 AM with 61 comments

by osoba on 1/13/21, 12:17 PM
Regarding that GNOME update, do GNOME developers just don't have any competence in UX design? That screencast is suggesting you need to click the activities button in the top left corner to be able to reveal a nav panel that's all the way at the bottom.
Similarly, right now, in current versions, in the file selection interface the Select button is in one corner of the window and Cancel all the way in the other.
Or the annoying unnecessary dialogue when you uncompress from an archive (no I don't want an app-blocking notification that the file extracted successfully).
by weinzierl on 1/13/21, 11:58 AM
> "We can read this SolarWinds blog entry from 2019 [1] with amusement; it claimed that open-source software makes one's chance of downloading malicious software "much higher". That post has not aged well, but this attack could also happen with free software, which is distributed in binary form through a large number of trusted channels. Malicious code inserted into one of those supply chains could be used with devastating effect; we can only hope that the suppliers we trust are truly trustworthy."*
The side-cut at SolarWinds made me smile. I don't like the last sentence though. We should strive for more than good hope here.
[1] https://thwack.solarwinds.com/t5/Geek-Speak-Blogs/The-Pros-a...
by bmarquez on 1/13/21, 8:51 AM
If you're curious about how the 2020 predictions turned out: https://lwn.net/Articles/808260/
by l0b0 on 1/13/21, 8:58 AM
Some big Python shops will move to faster languages with static types, stable package management, stable configuration management and well-defined change management.
by the-dude on 1/13/21, 9:55 AM
For sure 2021 will be the year of the Linux desktop. Seems likely.
by loosescrews on 1/13/21, 2:27 PM
The GNOME prediction doesn't seem like the others. It seems like a very minor planned change. The most significant part appears to be changing the version number drastically to adopt the trend of making version numbers meaningless. Or at least that is what I am assuming they are doing. I didn't see it specified, but changing to version 40 only seems to make sense if the plan is to regularly increment the major version. Regardless, the changes don't seem controversial at all.
I have been using GNOME 3 daily for a couple of years now. I have gotten used to it, but I still think it is genuinely bad. These minor changes don't address any of my gripes, and in one case makes things ever so slightly worse. Honestly though, I don't think these super minor changes are going to change anyone's mind about GNOME 3.
Back to version numbers, if you are going to make them purely based on date like projects such as Chromium and Firefox have done, why not make the version number a date like Ubuntu does? The major version is meaningless in the normal major version sense and mapping the version number to the release date requires a per-project formula/table.
by raxxorrax on 1/13/21, 8:05 AM
I don't think these are too unlikely.
Shame about CentOS. Never used it myself, but I know many IT-provider do use it as a base for their infrastructure. Perhaps devs can nudge them to Debian.
by clavalle on 1/13/21, 3:13 PM
SolarWinds was a wakeup call but it was also a special case. I remember when I got the first demo of SolarWinds years ago and the cold sweat feeling when they drilled down all the way into individual calls to the database and thinking 'That's cool, no doubt, but that's a /lot/ of access'.
I've only installed it on dev and qa systems with scrambled, nonsense data.
A little common sense goes a long way.
by WillFlux on 1/13/21, 10:13 AM
“The end of CentOS could have the unintended effect of undermining the demand for ultra-stable ‘enterprise’ distributions in general.”
That seems possible. Perhaps like the UNIX of old, Solaris et al, the ultra-stable ‘enterprise’ Linux distributions will retreat to large enterprise customers?