2004 Linux New Media Awards Hall of Fame

The danger of software patents, the first steps toward desktop Linux migration, and Novell's effort to take over the helm at Suse were big topics in the Linux and open source community in 2004. But there were also many developments in other areas. Linux New Media, the world's biggest Linux publisher, asked well-known representatives of the free software developer community, Linux protagonists from industry, and some of our own editorial staff to cast their votes for projects and organizations that deserve notice for their contribution to the year in open source. This year's winners offer a good representation of current trends.

And the Winners Are...

The members of the jury gave the well-deserved top spot in the category Best Newcomer Linux Distribution to the Norwegian Skole Linux http://www.skolelinux.org project. Skole Linux is a distribution that is specially designed for use in schools.

In the same category, Ubuntu Linux http://www.ubuntulinux.org was commended. The jury expects to see a lot more of Ubuntu Linux, a newbie-friendly Debian-based distribution by a team grouped around South African and former Thawte CEO Mark Shuttleworth.

Almost half of the jury members voted for Suse Linux as the Best Distribution for Beginners. Nuremberg-based Suse has an enormous following, which was not affected in the least by the takeover by US network specialist Novell. This explains why Suse easily outpaced the second- and third-placed contenders, Fedora Core 2 and Mandrake Linux.

The breathtaking features of X.org http://www.x.org, the XFree86 successor, obviously looked promising enough to convince a majority of jury members to choose it as the Best Free Project for Hardware Support.

Figure 1: Winners and members of the jury share the stage at the Linux New Media Awards ceremony.

2004 Linux New Media Awards
Hardware1
Favorite Notebook Vendor
1. IBM	33.6 %
2. Apple	23.2 %
3. HP	13.6 %
Best Free Project for Hardware Support
1. X.Org	36.3 %
2. ACPI4Linux	13.1 %
3. Linuxprinting.org	11.3 %
3. growisofs/mkisofs for DVD Support	11.3 %
3. Ndiswrapper	11.3 %
Linux Friendliest Printer Vendor
1. HP	45.8 %
2. Canon	18.1 %
3. Kyocera	16.0 %
Software
Best Newcomer Linux Distribution
1. SkoleLinux	31.9 %
2. Ubuntu Linux	21.6 %
3. UserLinux	19.8 %
Best Distribution for Beginners
1. Suse Personal/Professional	47.4 %
2. Fedora Core	18.1 %
3. Mandrake Linux	17.2 %
Best Multimedia Framework
1. Jack	20.2 %
2. GStreamer	17.5 %
3. SDL	16.7 %
Best Media Player
1. MPlayer	29.8 %
2. Xine/Kaffeine	25.8 %
3. XMMS	23.4 %
Best Mail Client
1. Mutt	23.7 %
1. Kontact/KMail	23.7 %
2. Thunderbird/Mozilla Mail	22.9 %
3. Evolution	22.1 %
Best Database System
1. PostgreSQL 8	48.7 %
2. MySQL 5.0	37.0 %
3. Oracle 10g	5.9 %
Special Award for Outstanding Promotion of Linux and Open Source
1. Eurolinux/FFII	23.1 %
2. Free Software Foundation	16.2 %
3. City of Munich	13.7 %
3. Groklaw	13.7 %

Under the Hood

Less visible, but just as vital, is ACPI support. The ACPI4Linux project http://acpi.sourceforge.net has led to a lot of hard work but little acclaim for project members. The jury rewarded the team's effort with the second place award in the catagory of Best Free Project for Hardware Support. Two projects, http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ and Growisofs for DVD Support http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net, share the third spot. The tight competition in this catagory just shows that the free software movement has many worthy projects aspiring to provide comprehensive hardware support.

This year saw yet another neck-and-neck race in the Favorite Notebook Vendor category. Apple took the top notch by a short head last year, but this year IBM's mobile device just beat them to the post, with the mobile PowerPC coming in a close second.

Against Software Patents

Eurolinux/FFII http://www.eurolinux.org was awarded a prize for its battle against software patents. Eurolinux members campaigned throughout the year, organizing events and collecting signatures against the patentability of software, business process, and algorithms.

2004 Awards Jury

This year, the jury was made up of community members, industry representatives, the Linux World Expo program committee, and experts from the IT industry. Of course, the Linux New Media Award would not deserve that name without members of the editorial staff from Linux Magazine and five of the non-English magazines published by Linux New Media, including LinuxUser and EasyLinux, on the jury. This year, voting was a two-tier process aimed at selecting candidates who had demonstrated the most activity or originality over the past 12 months. No less than one hundred people took part in a secret ballot covering ten subcategories. The jury members included: Elisabeth Bauer, a member of the EasyLinux editorial staff (EasyLinux is a German language magazine dedicated to Linux newcomers) who puts a lot of work into the Wikipedia project. Zack Brown. Zack has been monitoring discussions on the kernel mailing list for years and regularly lets Linux Magazine readers in on his latest findings. Eva Brucherseifer, a developer and Vice President of KDE e.V. Simon Budig, who has been working on The Gimp, the free image manipulation software for a long time. He also helps to promote the propagation of free software. Alan Cox is a first gene-ration kernel hacker and has taken up Linux kernel programming again after taking a year out to concentrate on his studies. Lars Eilebrecht is an open source evangelist and one of the founder members of the Apache Software Foundation. Lars has written several books on the Apache web server and is currently employed as a Senior IT Consultant. Hong Feng is a campaigner for the propagation of free software in China; he regularly publishes his work on various topics in or around the field of open source. Jutta Horstmann is a system administrator for databases who investigates the usability of applications at Relevantive AG. Miguel de Icaza founded the Gnome project and the Ximian open source enterprise. His latest project is the Mono framework. Klaus Knopper is the man behind the Knoppix Linux Live CD, which has given many users their first look at Linux and spawned a variety of new projects. Marc Lehmann is a long-standing GCC developer and promoter of free software. Yuwei Lin researches hacker cultures at the University of York. Jörg Luther is an IT journalist who worked for Internet World and Tecchannel.de. He became Editor in Chief of German language LinuxUser in October 2004. Martin Michlmayer is the Debian Project Leader. He promotes free software in general and contributes to many projects in his leisure time. Arturo Fernandez Montoro is a web developer and freelance author for a variety of Linux publications. Christian Ney is a Unix and firewall administrator who contributes to many open source projects. Frauke Oster is a member of the KDE development team, where she mainly focuses on the Kivio and KDE Women projects. Rafael Peregrino da Silva moved from hardware manufacturer Cyclades to Linux Magazine do Brasil, where he is now Editor in Chief. Christian Perle a developer at Secunet AG. He also maintains the minimalistic HAL 91 distribution and regularly writes for LinuxUser. Chris Schläger is the Chief Developer at Suse Linux and a first generation KDE developer. Franz Schmid taught himself to program and launched the Scribus DTP project. Richard Seibt was IBM Software's Head of Marketing and Sales for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He is now responsible for Novell Europe. Marcelo Tosatti is currently employed by Cyclades. Marcelo became the Kernel 2.4 maintainer at the age of 18. Andrew Tridgell comes from Australia and founded the Samba project, which has helped establish Linux as a mainstay in Windows networks. Oliver Zendel is the Chairperson of Linuxtag e.V., a non-profit organization that organizes the biggest Linux event in Europe.