Linux Desktops - Dead or Alive? 
by Jos Poortvliet (openSUSE)
Thursday, 08.05.2014, Stage E, 20:30-21:15 Uhr
Track: Desktop
Desktops are dead. Or so it is said. Certainly, the desktop market is declining and there seems to be little future for the Linux desktop communities. At the same time, user Interfaces are *far* from dead - they just have moved to a wider variety of devices. Desktops still sell by the hundreds of millions, but they have been joined by mobile devices with intricate interfaces and tablets and other devices with, often, a touch or gesture based interface.
Where does this leave Free Software? Android isn't very free - large parts of the stack are being taken properietary by Google every release. Not encouraging.
But there is work going on. The largest Free Desktop project, the KDE community, is transitioning. Not to a cross-device interface - Apple has been smart enough to not even try that, Microsoft has shown how unpleasant that is. Instead, KDE is building on the foundations laid many years ago, with the first incarnation of Plasma: true device convergence. Not one UI, but one CODE-BASE to rule them all, with smooth transitions between form factors.
Frameworks 5, Plasma Next, QtAddons, QML C++11, these are all building blocks for the future. Want to know more? Join this talk.
About the author Jos Poortvliet:
Jos Poortvliet works as community manager for ownCloud and has been Free Software evangelist for over 10 years. He has been at SUSE Linux before and volunteers in the KDE community in the marketing work group, writing, coordinating, talking to press and visiting conferences. His favorite pastime besides Free Software is experimenting in the kitchen, trying to come up with something edible.