Happy New Year

In 2022 we definitely went out with a bang. Once again we got hit with this thing called a "bomb cyclone". I am no atmospheric scientists So I can't make heads or tails about this particular cyclone. All I can say from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande, there was snow high winds and frigid temperatures. About two-thirds of the U.S. population was under a winter weather warning or advisory. The storm caused flight delays and cancellations during the busy holiday travel season, with Southwest Airlines canceling more than 70 percent of its flights on Dec. 26 and more than 60 percent on Dec. 27. 

Going into 2023 there are three things for certain. After 3 years we are coming out of the Covid pandemic no more seeing 4,000 deaths a day again in the United States. The weather this winter season will continue to wreak havoc across United States. And last but not least, Linux is growing in popularity. The Gnu/Linux operating system has become so popular that we have a Linux distribution for every type of computer user. We have a Linux distro for a powerful advanced computing machine as well as for old machines having low-end hardware. 

Things to keep an eye on in 2023

• Desktop Linux is now at 2.7 percent in the United States. It was at 1.87 percent this time last year. These days nearly 90% of Hollywood special effects can be achieved using Gnu/Linux.  It is more popular in the cinema space due to its flexibility, open-source code, and superior performance. According to the StackOverflow developer survey more developers use Gnu/Linux than Mac. Things are definitely changing.

• The code name for the next major Debian release is called Bookworm. After 29 years starting with Debian 12, aka Bookworm, will include proprietary firmware. In other words, if your computer for example, has Wi-Fi hardware that requires "Binary Large Objects" (BLOB) firmware to work, the new Debian installer will offer to install it by default. For those who insist on running a Linux distribution with no proprietary code, you still can.  The "Debian-based" PureOS and "Ubuntu-based" Trisquel are excellent alternatives. Debain 12 will probably come with the long-term supported Linux 6.1 kernel. The final release is expected the summer of 2023.

• Arch-based Linux distributions will get even more popular as they make "vanilla Arch" easier to set up and use. Vanilla Arch Linux in general is not an ideal Linux distro for users with little or no Linux experience. A lot of background reading is necessary for things to make sense. These arch based distributions want to change that.

Note:These are in no particular order. This is not a ranking list.

ArcoLinux (previously known as ArchMerge)

RebornOS 

Artix Linux

Storm OS

Archcraft

Note: Arch-based distributions are not supported by the Arch community or Arch developers.

• The Organization for Ethical Source (OES) is a non-profit organization founded by Coraline Ada Ehmke in December, 2020, to support the ethical source movement, which promotes that "software freedom must always be in service of human freedom". I will say up front I believe in the concept of "Freedom Zero".Freedom Zero is "the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose." It's fundamental to how "open code" software is made and used. If someone wants to license their software under "Ethical Open Source", it is their right to do so. However, that kind of license is never going to be a free software or open-source license.

• Will we finally see SteamOS 3 on the desktop version in 2023? We can hope.