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It’s all about the desktop
I used Linux the first time 3 years ago, when I was 12.
The first distribution I installed was Fedora 7, with Gnome. What a good times.
All was new and excitement.
But Fedora was too boring so my father installed Kubuntu 8.04 in my old laptop (that nowadays is dead). That version of Kubuntu shipped KDE 3.5, the funniest desktop I have ever seen. I remember the hours of customizing the desktop or when I used Kommander to create my firsts apps. I loved KDE 3.5.
Cause of my love with Linux I decided to start a small Linux distribution, Asturix.
The first version came with (surprise!) KDE 4.0, the most unstable desktop :-P
Later I made another version with Gnome 2.24.
Gnome just bored me. Always the same stuff in the same form. Boring.
KDE 4 was a new form of made things, perhaps more cool. Just funny.
Months later I made the Lite version of Asturix, using LXDE, that added fresh air to the desktop scene.
I chose Gnome as primary desktop for the second version of Asturix. KDE was very unstable, but I made a version with KDE 4.2.
After that the game started to change: KDE 4.3 was a stable desktop.
So in Asturix 3 we (a lot of incredible people joined the Asturix ship) chose KDE 4.5 for the standard edition and LXDE for the lite edition.
Nowadays KDE is a stable, productive desktop that is easy to use but has a lot of advanced stuff too.
LXDE now is… okay, I understand that is a small project (not as big as KDE or Gnome) but it’s obsolete. As XFCE, just need more love.
And when all the desktop scene looked so boring, Canonical launched Unity.
I love Canonical cause they make good products but, after all, it’s a company, so they have economic influences.
And sometimes that isn’t good for users.
Then Gnome 3 was released. I really love parts of the Gnome 3 UI, it’s a totally rethink of the desktop. But it’s very closed for the user (sometimes unusable) and it has very few options. But at all is a UI refresh, nothing more. There aren’t changes of how we interact with our computer.
But now people doesn’t want a desktop. Now people wants social networks, and a browser to access it. Cloud computing and other stuff. I like the concept of cloud computing because the data can be accessed everywhere, but I don’t like the cloud computing the big companies want to sell us. Cloud computing rocks if you have your data, perhaps your private cloud. If a big company has your data, the data isn’t yours. That’s a problem.
Nowadays we have another risk, or perhaps a vintage: SaaS (Software as a Service). We are seeing a lot of software that runs on the cloud. That’s cool! You can access the app from everywhere and the developer can update the app quickly. But it’s a very important risk, because you have a huge dependency.
The web technologies are moving forward very fast, and now our browsers aren’t just a tool to see information, they can run apps.
There is an OS that is a browser: ChromeOS. ChromeOS isn’t nothing revolutionary, is a thin client oriented to the web. A normal user surf the web, so the user only need a browser. The apps and data are in the cloud.
Where is the free (as freedom) software here? It isn’t. Richard Stallman said that a lot of times. So we have to make something to help free software.
As Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes and Jolicloud, said in the Forum Impulsa: “We can’t change the world. But we can change the rules of the world”.
So we can use the web technologies to make local and hybrid apps. That’s what Mozilla announced to the world with its Open Apps project. We use existing tools for a different purpose.
People need to continue owning theirs data. People need to continue owning their apps. People need to continue using their desktop.
So I announce that the Asturix project is developing the next-generation desktop: Asturix On.
It’s a minimalist and content-centric connected desktop. It’s based on the latest and most rocking web technologies.
It isn’t only a desktop, it is a wrapper for creating and porting webapps to any Linux environment.
It doesn’t pretend to be another boring framework to amplify fragmentation, but a tool for helping developers to make incredible web-based UIs or hybrid apps, or porting existent with few clicks.
It will work on mobile devices such as tablets. At now the targets are desktops and 8.9-10.1 tablets.
We will anounce more news at asturix.com
Stay tuned!
