1. By the time I finalized a live CD that I determined was bug free and ran on all the hardware / virtual hardware that I could get my hands on Ubuntu 10.10 came out.
2. Ubuntu 10.10 broke a few dependencies and other things and is largely untested.
3. Ubuntu itself is a problem in regards to the long term efforts of my project.
4. What is my project?
5. Linux in general on the desktop.
Alright, you can read lots of articles about this, Linux for the most part is awesome when it comes to the server environment, and even with modern desktop distros such as 10.10 Ubuntu, which in my opinion right out of the box is very comparable to even a mac, the desktop Linux has largely failed due to its lack of applications. As good and amazing as some open source software is the simple fact is nothing besides GIMP has come even close to its commercial counterpart, and debatable GIMP still can't touch a well trained Photoshop user. I realize I will probably get a lot of hate mail for this, but it is the truth. Unless you have the millions of dollars , time, and resources to develop something like auto-cad inventor, or Maya, it will never compare.
Back to the point, even with amazing as Ubuntu 10.10 is out of the box, it will and the rest of desktop Linux is failing because of application support. This got me thinking, open source is a great thing for an Operating System but is for the most part counterproductive to software. Also open source doesn't necessarily have to be free of charge either.
Where am I going with this? I think it is fairly self evident that eventually the keyboard and mouse will disappear. The obvious replacement is touch screen which has in the land of mobile computing, largely if not entirely replaced the keypad, just look at iPhone's and Android's. Eventually touch, and naturally multi touch will take over the desktop interface.
As we all know there is really no standard what so ever when it comes to multi touch. There is not even a hardware standard. There is also no real application base out there either. Linux actually has a chance for a massive market gain here. To be the pioneer where others are not yet reaching. All of the building blocks are here they just need to be put together. One must choose an operating system to build these future applications on. I'm not going to get into the details of this one but Linux is the obvious choice here. As far as the hardware is concerned, if you are reading this I am sure you are all to familiar with LLP, FITR, DSI, and every other derivative out there.
I feel like I am getting lost in the sauce here and just rambling, okay to collect all of this into a sensible post:
Here is what I want to do. I want to develop an open hardware solution, a Linux headless TUIO server which will pretty much be an embedded device with the camera attached directly to it; and a Linux distribution with an OpenGL interface with standard application development platform, think Visual Studio and WPF for all Windows developers reading this.
I want to build a team of people that will work on all three of these aspects.
The reason for the open hardware solution, there needs to be a standard for multi touch hardware, so pretty much we will have to pick a technology and stick with it. If you don't understand why there needs to be a standard, I don't even know what to say about that...
The distribution, this is kinda a toughie. If you think about it no current operating system in existence is really suitable for multi touch development. All current operating systems are based around keyboard and mouse input. If Linux were to drop out to the command line and not start the x server on a multi touch table that has no keyboard and mouse it would be pretty hard to recover the system. And no, we are not going to making a new operating system. There are ways for us to work around this problem. As far as basing this new distribution off of a current one, there is not much point, the only reason for that would be package, dependency and application support, but seeing as how all these applications and even the GUI is based around a mouse and keyboard input it is completely useless the multi touch community. All we really need is a bare bones Linux distro with XServer on it and OpenGL support. Remember that a large portion of desktop users spend their time on the internet so the distribution will have to pull all the required pieces to support things such as flash player etc. Other than that, it will be pretty much a blank slate for us to roll with. We need the WPF / Visual Studio style standard because the new technology needs an amazing development platform if companies will ever develop applications for it.
So hardware is never free, but if we get the standard down, we can make a table / slate style design that can be mass manufactured, something that people can pick up at a best buy.
Linux based and open source operating system, free of charge installed on the hardware.
Standardized development platform for companies to develop software for. Software that people will pay for.
I have seen a lot of something in the multi touch community that I really do not like. So much time and argument is being put into creating a gui that is best for or which one is the most correct for multi touch. Something that I have learned from my time in the military is that a timely decision is better than a decision that took a very long time but is more "correct". In the military it costs people their lives. The same principle applies here. A timely decision must be made. That's why who ever joins me on this project, we will come up with a set of standards and stick with it. People will use whatever you give them. They will make it work, and things evolve towards the better over time. Look at windows 95 compared to windows 7. I imagine our first distribution will be more like windows 95 than windows 7. If we keep debating and "researching" critical time will be lost and some one else will come in and take the multi touch reigns.
As many of you can see I am proposing a sort of hybrid thing here. Open standards and an open source operating system, but something that will have the support and backing of privatization.
If you want to join this team, and project send me a comment, email or message, point is contact me some how and let me know. I look forward to hearing from you all some more. and hope you enjoyed my latest post.
