I hv found this artical just, now.. and i saw many of us hv probs with linux based software, lyk running Games, Grapix, and GUI.. So pls Check this out..
KDE 4:
Just as the near year came about,
KDE 4.0 was released. This major overhaul to the K Desktop Environment included porting the applications to the Qt 4.x tool-kit, introducing a new device integration framework, bringing forth the Plasma desktop and interface tools, and the Phonon multimedia API. This Linux desktop environment update was so huge that Google had even hosted
a release event party.
WINE 1.0:
When the
WINE project began as a compatibility layer to run Windows programs atop Linux, the Windows 3.1 operating system was dominating the market. It took fifteen years for this free software project to come out with
a version 1.0 release, but it reached this milestone in June. WINE now is able to run many Windows programs out there, and even many OpenGL / DirectX video games, but the development community has been continuing in a steadfast manner working to prepare the
WINE 1.2 stable release for next year. WINE is now even
being used by Google for their Picasa Linux port as well as other uses.
64-bit Flash & Java Plug-Ins:
This is not exactly an innovation and should have been around a while ago, but it's important nevertheless. A month ago
Adobe had released 64-bit Flash For Linux, which allow those running a x86_64 user-land to easily use the Flash plug-in without needing to run a 32-bit web browser, use NSPluginWrapper, or rely upon an alternative player like
Gnash. Partially what makes 64-bit Flash for Linux significant is that it was released before any 64-bit Flash for Microsoft Windows.
Just a few weeks after 64-bit Flash arrived, Sun Microsystems released a
64-bit Java Plug-In for Linux. This x86_64 plug-in for Linux was released at the same time as their first Windows x64 build, but before making it available for their own
Solaris or
OpenSolaris operating systems.
With native 64-bit plug-ins, it makes the Linux x86_64 experience easier for many users.
Graphics Execution Manager:
At the start of this year, most X.Org developers would have thought Tungsten's
TTM memory manager would have entered the mainline Linux kernel and become the de facto standard for GPU memory management within the kernel, but Intel's
Graphics Execution Manager shook everything up. As developers
voiced concerns over TTM and its complicated API, the Intel team led by
Keith Packard had announced
GEM, or the Graphics Execution Manager.
Since its May introduction, it has rattled the X.Org scene and was released with the mainline
Linux 2.6.28 kernel earlier this month. While the Graphics Execution Manager can be looked at as being superior to the Translation Table Maps, its timing wasn't ideal since it caused
DRI2 to be stripped out from
X.Org 7.4 /
X Server 1.5 and when it was first proposed to enter the mainline kernel it was referred to as
untested crap.
GEM by itself isn't something for end-users to get excited over, but it will allow for faster performance once the code has been optimized, kernel memory management is a prerequisite for
kernel mode-setting, and also caused the introduction of
a new but faster acceleration API.
The
Intel driver fully utilizes the Graphics Execution Manager while the open-source ATI and NVIDIA drivers will be using a mix of TTM and GEM. The drivers will implement the GEM API but internally will be using a form of TTM (
A GEM-ified TTM manager).
Open-Source Hardware Drivers:
Late last year AMD made the major announcement of their open-source initiative to provide fully open-source 2D/3D ATI drivers for all of their hardware on Linux while continuing to produce their performance-oriented Catalyst Linux driver. AMD has continued pushing out new code and documentation this year, but many other hardware companies have joined the open-source bandwagon too.
Atheros is another company that was once notorious with Linux users, but this year they had turned around after they hired two
MadWiFi developers and then proceeded to release
an open-source 802.11n Linux driver (named ath9k) and then in September released the
Atheros 802.11a/b/g HAL under a BSD-derived free software license.
NetworkManager 0.7:
Making the process of configuring wired and wireless networks on Linux is made dramatically easier by NetworkManager, which started out four years ago as a Red Hat project. While in development for quite a while and development snapshots had appeared in recent Fedora releases, NetworkManager 0.7 came to fruition this year.
NetworkManager 0.7 brings to desktop users PPP integration so that SM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HDSPA/HSUPA/EVDO cellular cards now work "out of the box" on Linux, support for having multiple simultaneous network devices, enhanced wireless security support, system-wide configuration support with boot-time connection capabilities, Internet connection sharing support, and full static IP support.
What didn't make its way into NetworkManager 0.7.0 though were more Bluetooth enhancements and IPV6 support. NetworkManager 0.7.0 can be found in recent Linux distributions like
Fedora 10 and
Ubuntu 8.10 with all of its wonderful network connection management features.
GIMP 2.6:
The GIMP may still have a tough time competing against Adobe Photoshop, but
GIMP 2.6 was released in October with some significant changes. In particular, major changes were made to the GIMP user-interface. GIMP 2.6 also marked the first release partially supporting GEGL, the Generic Graphics Library. GEGL has been in development for eight years but is finally getting ready to enter the limelight. Some of the other improvements in GIMP 2.6 include an enhanced free select tool, brush dynamics, and other tool optimizations.
VirtualBox 2:
Earlier this year Sun Microsystems had acquired the company behind the
VirtualBox virtualization software and this year this project has seen several new features that push the limits for OS virtualization. VirtualBox 2.0 was released in September with a new GUI written in Qt4, support for VHD disk images, networking improvements, and 64-bit guest support, but more significant was VirtualBox 2.1.
VirtualBox 2.1 was released earlier this month and most notably it features experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL.
VDPAU:
The API for XvMC, or
X-Video Motion Compensation, has been around for a number of years now, is riddled with limitations, and is only able to accelerate MPEG-2 files. On modern hardware XvMC has been of limited use, but Intel remains interested in
extending XvMC. Last month though NVIDIA had introduced the
Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix. VDPAU offloads the video decoding and processing to the GPU for MPEG, H.264, VC-1, and WMV3 video files.
As our
VDPAU benchmarks have shown, this video API with its implementation within NVIDIA's binary driver has done a great job at offloading HD video decoding to the GPU and we were even able to play high definition videos on Linux using
a $20 CPU and $30 GPU.