Desktop Linux Poll Results

DesktopLinux.com's 2006 poll results are in.

The most popular distro?
Ubuntu

The most popular desktop environment?
Read on.

There's some other interesting stats there as well. I'm suprised that Gentoo has more users than Fedora. It's nice to see Xfce doing pretty good as well (I used it for a few months a couple of years ago, before I switched over to GNOME/Ubuntu).
I'd like to think these numbers are decently accurate too, seeing as the number of votes is almost 15,000. I can't see posting a link to the poll in a distro-related forum having skewed the numbers too much...
Interesting stuff though.

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Posted in: desktop,linux

What kernel would Jesus compile?

Does the bluescreen of death make you spew forth fire and brimstone, or are you the type that just says a quiet prayer? Now, God can be on your desktop, with Ubuntu: Christian Edition.

Read on at APC Magazine...
(It's funny)

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Posted in: linux,ubuntu

The Agora Project

The Agora Project seems like an interesting idea for a library.

dpope from the Compiz.net forums explains that:

Several people expressed interest in working on a library that would package opengl graphics/animation in a useful way so that this functionality can be cleanly and easily integrated into windowing libraries such as gtk or qt.

Quinnstorm later suggested:

[W]hat if agora was the frameworks, and CoDE was the actual desktop environment?

To which MacSlow replied:

Sure, that's the main idea behind "Agora". Be a framework or library (libraries) pulling together the nice low-level bits like OpenGL, cairo, gstreamer & Co and offer a solid set of ready to use animations, effects and filters for everything put on the screen. Kind of the Xgl/compiz on the application- and toolkit-level of things.

What you want to build with it afterwards... the next gtk+, Qt or desktop-environment is up to you.

It looks like this might the Linux community's answer to Apple's CoreImage and new CoreAnimation APIs (and probably others as well). It'll allow application programmers to add a little more bling to their apps. However, don't get too excited yet - Whatever the Agora Project ends up becoming, it's certainly at least a year off. Building a library that melds together several APIs requires a deep understanding of each of those APIs, which is not something tha comes easily. However, if the project attracts good talent like MacSlow (who's made a name for himself by creating some pretty cool apps), it certainly won't be an impossible feat. We'll see where this one goes. :)

If you'd like to follow or contribute to the development, check out the Agora Project forum that has been set up.

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Posted in: agora project,bling,linux