Predictions 2016

Is that time of the year again. Half the World is expecting it. Is the time for:

Linux for targets: Predictions 2016

Retrospective of predictions 2015.

I will write few-to-none new posts on this blog.

Correct. This one was easy.

There will be zero new projects made on Adobe Flash.

Correct! as far as I know. Except for those crappy free online games.

WebRTC will support VP9 and kick ass.

Well, that sentence does not even make sense. I guess I meant that Firefox would support VP9 for WebRTC. It has not been the case :(

Related: I tried Firefox Hello during the year and, even though the video was OK, the audio was crap. To the level of "I can barely understand you". Pfff no replacement for Skype at sight yet.

Somebody at YouTube will realize that refreshing the page on log-in sucks, and will do that on Ajax

HAHA no.

The most interesting OS in the world (Firefox OS) will continue to be shipped only on infra-hardware

Correct. I guess creating drivers for average 200-300 USD phones is so fucking hard. Is still sad not being able to use one of them with Firefox. Who called "high-end" to this?

Will buy a new battery for my 4 year old laptop, since newer laptops are not really that better.

Did not happen. I'm seeing nearly interesting replacements appearing, although above 1000 USD. My dream is something based on a 14- nm Atom (or Core M) expandable up to 16+ GB of RAM. I would pay whatever it takes for that. Whatever factor it has.

And now, predictions 2016.

• JavaScript will start to raise as platform for native applications, as it has just done with Calypso.
• Eww who cares about the desktop anymore. Life goes on the web. Let's just hope Mozilla can really focus on Firefox and save us from doom.

What if XFCE on a 4K monitor

From Xfce 4.12 tour:

Window tiling mode was improved by providing support for corner-tiling

This little addition might just be enough to make XFCE 4K-friendly.

By tiling a Full HD window on each corner of the screen, one can work as having four Full HD monitors.

With window searching reduced to a fourth of what it used to be, time savings for professional uses are massive.

Loving to see those 4K TVs dropping price in the last year.

The pressure for cheaper HiDPI displays will continue over 2016 thanks to mobile.

That will make 4K monitors affordable for most freelancers and companies by 2017.

XFCE is alive

XFCE, imo the only desktop non-crazy, non-underdeveloped as of 2015, just got a new release that according to the release notes, it keeps the good things getting better: XFCE 4.12!.

Which is great, because after 3 years from the previous release, I thought XFCE was dead and buried.

Meanwhile, pre-1.0 LXQt releases still look promising. When I tried 0.8 it gave me a black screen, but I really believe that it is working for someone out there. Will try 0.9 soon.