2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners Announced
 

The polls are closed and the results are in for the 2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. I'd like to congratulate each and every nominee. Winners will be receiving an email in the next 48 hours or so and will be able to pick their award up at LinuxWorld. We'll also be sending out small logo's that can be put up.

Browser of the Year - Firefox (77.12%)
Distribution of the Year - Slackware (19.36%)
LiveCD Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (57.69%)
Database of the Year - MySQL (53.51%)
Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (58.25%)
Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (31.14%)
Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (84.85%)
Word Processor of the Year - oowriter (63.75%)
Spreadsheet of the Year - oocalc (57.57%)
Audio Multimedia Application of the Year - XMMS (45.83%)
Video Multimedia Application of the Year - mplayer (49.85%)
Security App of the Year - nmap (37.14%)
Hardening App of the Year - SELinux (68.65%)
Editor of the Year - vi/vim (36.37%)
Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (50.88%)
IDE of the Year - Kdevelop (37.77%)
Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (47.60%)
Open Source Game of the Year - Frozen Bubble (25.52%)
Commercial Game of the Year - UT2004 (38.86%)
Windows on Linux App of the Year - Wine (42.59%)
File Manager of the Year - Konqueror (30.59%)
Messaging App of the Year - Gaim (56.00%)
Graphics App of the Year - GIMP (72.82%)
MTA of the Year - PostFix (45.57%)

--jeremy

No real surprises there. Congrats to the winners, commiserations to the ones who didn't win. :D

Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (58.25%) hmm surprising id guess gnome

Nope, KDE has always been favored over Gnome it seems, well, ever since I started using Linux back in '99 ;)

I'm kinda surprised XMMS is still so popular though it's so "ancient". Why didn't y'all vote for amarok ;)

Amarok gives me problems. I'm running the latest 1.2 version in SUSE 9.2 and the first song is always muted with the counter going about 3 or 4 times faster than real time. The second song plays fine.

Fedora and Gentoo beat out SUSE? I never would've thought. I read a lot of complaints about Fedora 3.

still cant believe metacity (of all the window managers) beat fvwm2 .....

owell... next year I'm sure there will be more options to vote for... as a few nominations (never can nominate to early), RSBAC for hardening app, and ... planeshift, vegastrike, cube, and Globulation 2 (all missed this years ballots, by next year I'm sure they will have even better gameplay) for OSS game section

I dislike metacity so much, I replaced it on GNOME with xfwm4. So my GNOME desktop looks like xfce, pretty cool :)

hey

were there any prizes for guessing thr correct winners??

haha and who would pay for them?

No real surprises. What a pity!

I thought slackware was dead?! How could it beat gentoo and fedora???

what makes u think that

slackware is the best Distro i have tried !!

Just some discussions :D, but what has slackware that other distros haven't?

Masand's desire and Student04's answer
 

It is in reply to Masand's will and Student04's answer. Student04, I think Masand did not intend for cash awards.....it may me some other kinds also. By putting their name in the web site one by one or two, three, four.....etc. in a day. They would also be happy to take the warmth to be associated with this site. Prize need not be only cash or in kinds, afterall it is a voluntary site and every valuable members knows it well.
But how r u Masand?
My respected members, do u know who is masand? he is an expert in this trade and i think he is well associated with this site also. He helped me a lot to solve my problems i faced in linux.
May God bless this site........and special blessings to Masand, Student04 too otherwise I could not get chance to write this letter.
Anindya

I surely did not intend for any prizes that was just fun!!

and i want to thank "anindyanuri" for the kind words

but i am no expert here! i am also learning a lot form this site

we have many gurus out here.

regards

Clean package management.
Tagfile installs.
Clean file structure.


**Less than an hour for a manual install and customization for my desktops at work.
ie... open box... set on desk... connect to kvm... boot from cd with floppy in drive... partition hard disk and format... "setup" choose "tagfile" install. scp "build" files to new box and run script.

Hmmm, perhaps we will get an imaging solution.... but then again 1 hour aint half bad! ;-)

Slackware is the cleanest and most well built distribution I have seen. I started playing with linux in '97 so.... not an old hat hacker by any means. I started with redhat and played with others... when redhat announced the end of the non-pro product, I switched to mandrake.... which has it's own pros/cons. On a whim I downloaded Slackware 9.0 (i played with version 7 in 2000 I recall), when I popped the single install CD into the drive and ran the install with "full" (everything) I was amazed that it did not prompt me every few seconds for input. It finished in about 45 minutes.

I have run Slackware on my web server for about a year now.... and have re-installed all of my other boxen except 1 which I reserve for breaking (trying other distros)..... only problem is that I have not had much desire to play with other distributions since I started using Slackware.

It does force you to do some things in the true fashion rather than with a gui handicap.... but you can choose to install any type of gui utils that you want.... Slack is VERY open!

enjoy...

Re: 2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners Announced
 

Will the madness never end?

Re: Masand's desire and Student04's answer
 

Yes, I guess I forgot about those... And as masand said, thanks for the kind words :)

AmaroK's KDE-specific isn't it? xmms has been kinda coasting for awhile but it plays on anything. Didn't stop Konqueror (blech) from winning file manager and so on, but being desktop-specific can't help.

'Course, I'm a wm-freak, so maybe I'm just putting my own spin on it. ;)

Its a very distro-neutral feeling. Not much in the way of auto configuration. Its all about setting it up yourself the way you want to. Has a very snappy feel to it. Even running the standard 2.4 up against debian with a 2.6 on the same machine. I know some gentoo users have 2cents to add to this, but compiling time vs. the performance outcome was a bit disappointing oh my system. Hence my vote for slack.

slackware is very much alive. check it out here:

http://www.slackware.com/

try it to see what it has over other distros. for me, it feels clean and everything is in it's proper place. there are no heavy customizations unlike other distros.

kde has always been much more popular than GNOME. I went from kde1.x ->gnome 1.2->kde 2.x->gnome 2.x->xfce4 myself. Good to see xfce get a lot of votes!

it would be cool to see what came in second in each category to know how much of a margin the first place app won by. :cool:

You can check the poll results in each category - they're visible now. No real nail-biters this year, though some were reasonably close. Couple-three of the usual landslides, too, of course.

yeah xfce4 got my vote as well, good stuff.

I could never get amarok to play CDs right. Good for mp3's, etc.... but perhaps lacking in other places.

I will say that xmms is extremely buggy though... has a lot of plugins though.

Slackware does give one the feeling of being able to build a house with an axe, a hammer and a forest.
Ubuntu came in with a nice result for such a young distro - and it is well-deserved, in my opinion. One might stop to think who won, if we added together all the Debian spin-offs...

AmaroK is far better than anything you will find on the Gnome platform (or Windows or OSX for that matter.) If you (or anyone) is not using applications simply because of the toolkit used to build it then you are only hurting yourself (and the OS community.)

If you think
1) that a simple mathematical extrapolation of 'restricted user base = fewer users to vote' is an attack
2) that I'd run anything Gnome-specific any more than I would something KDE-specific
3) that it would be relevant either way
4) that a desktop equals a toolkit
5) that KDE and amaroK are required apps in Linux
6) that your self-inflicted wounds regarding your feelings equal my hurting anyone or anything else
then you are sadly mistaken six times over.

Who wins?

We all do. And the grand prize is freedom of choice!


Look at all the choices we have. I can choose what I like and you can choose what you like.

Instead of Mr. Bill telling us what we must use.

I just noticed that there are no gnome-based applications in that winner's list. Am I missing something?

Not complaining, I am a KDE user.

Osho

Re: 2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners Announced
 

I expected Distro to be Gentoo, File manager to be ROX and Messaging App aMSN, but people vote, so here are the winners. Congratulations to them for the good work

hey Jemery

i mean its all a wonderful incentive - to have these prizes and all

but a *lot* of applications were missing -
i'd suggest next year we all have a more complete listing of all applications on each category

that will also encourage people to revive an otherwise slow project?

take amaya for instance - a true WYSIWYG Html editor but people don't know about that.

take Hancom Office applications and those of Softmaker
Textmaker offers much better Word compatibility than OpenOffice.
but was not even mentioned.

I am not shouting "Foul!!" or anything like that, please.
I am equally happy whoever wins.

But I am personally *not* happy that so many applications were left out
- even when a few users were shouting for their inclusion.

How can the Linux software industry progress (and other open source projects?)

We should let people know that there are many more apps out there - than the usual "KGizmo" or "gFooBar".

Lastly , many companies stopped producing a Linux application because of such lack of interest.
Lack of interest does *not* necessarily correlate to how good or bad an app is.
Maybe they are really bad at marketting and advertising - that can happen with software houses.

So we should do the advertising for them - be it commercial or open-source - that shouldn't matter.
All to expand the myriad of great choices offered to the Linux user.

I am trying to fight this feeling - but I can't help feeling very down.

.. No its not because my favourite whatever-app didn't win
but because many other people's favourites was not even listed
- and that is wrong, I am sorry but it is.

Well no surprises here, but I'm curious... Firefox only 70something? Should be 100% why r u ppl wasting time with other browsers? :D :cool:

Here is my biased opinion

Browser of the Year - Firefox (77.12%) [100% agree]
Distribution of the Year - Slackware (19.36%) [That is weird - i think
unbuntu came out of the nowhere and took a lot of press room]
LiveCD Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (57.69%) [ED: here i think
unbuntu is the best]
Database of the Year - MySQL (53.51%) [Wish firebird won on this]
Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (58.25%) [KDE ? omg gnome rocks
the desktop - Unbuntu , Suse , redhat fedora ...]
Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (31.14%) [Ok no comments ]
Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (84.85%) [No alternative yet
or do we ? I started using AbiWord and gnumeric and they rock and they
are fast!]
Word Processor of the Year - oowriter (63.75%) [Abi? maybe ]
Spreadsheet of the Year - oocalc (57.57%) [Slow]
Audio Multimedia Application of the Year - XMMS (45.83%) [I started
using ryhtmbox and is simple without so many skinns ]
Video Multimedia Application of the Year - mplayer (49.85%) [Totem
installed with the distro and works on all! moovies ]
Security App of the Year - nmap (37.14%) [agree]
Hardening App of the Year - SELinux (68.65%) [ok i'm using lids]
Editor of the Year - vi/vim (36.37%) [Eclipse]
Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (50.88%) [Who the hack is
using that : nvu is the only dw alternative i use on linux/windows]
IDE of the Year - Kdevelop (37.77%) [Hhahhahahah, Why don't we use
Eclipse - the mother of all ides]
Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (47.60%) [agree]
Open Source Game of the Year - Frozen Bubble (25.52%) [ok]
Commercial Game of the Year - UT2004 (38.86%)[ok]
Windows on Linux App of the Year - Wine (42.59%) [ok]
File Manager of the Year - Konqueror (30.59%) [mc]
Messaging App of the Year - Gaim (56.00%) [OK]
Graphics App of the Year - GIMP (72.82%) [ok]
MTA of the Year - PostFix (45.57%) [exim it has support for firebird and other databases]

this poll was for the users who are memebers of LQ!!

maybe we do not have so much ubuntu users here .and slackware is really good ,

i will be trying out ubuntu next,heard a lot about it

regards

I tried Ubuntu and it was a painless install for a minimal workstation setup but I couldn't do much with adding applications because the libraries and development packages I'm used to weren't there. So I went right back to Slack which has never let me down and is just as good a desktop in my opion.
The only package that I use regularly that did not take 1st place is PostgreSQL. My thanks go out to all the developers, programmers, and everyday people that have given us such a fantastic selection of free and open source software to run on the best OS that ever was (and I started with CPM on an old Kaypro).

Well since KDE has been more popular over the past few years I think that explains why KDE applications are more popular. My favorite distro for awhile was Mandrake because I didn't know a lot about linux and all the other ones were a pain to set up and get working. Red Hat was alright but I really disliked GNOME at the time and it cost money like Suse (I didn't mind paying some, but I wanted to try out a whole bunch of different distributions).

Well recently I began testing other distributions again, and while I was kind of liking Fedora, some things were a little more difficult to set up, like nvidia drivers (which I need for graphics programming). But then I found Ubuntu and I must say it is my new favorite. Not only is it good, the package system is debian based which is better than rpm, and it's totally free (like slackware which does do a good job, but slackware is just too much of a pain to set up for me).

As far as Ubuntu not having a whole bunch of packages, that's not entirely true. Yes the Ubuntu packages (basically those sanctioned by Ubuntu), are limited. But they have other mirrors that are simple to add on (especially in the newer distro 'Hoary', not yet released though there are preview releases floating around). And working with synaptic just rocks.

Amoroke for me was always sort of buggy, and I've had far fewer problems with RhythmBox, and sound in general under GNOME. One thing I like about Ubuntu is the consistency of the look, which I couldn't get from Mandrake because I liked running Gaim and Firefox, and using the plastic theme didn't mesh well (yes I know theres a Firefox-plastic theme). Well Ubuntu needs a little work still, but updates come often and I usually update my system just about every day. It's like running a bleeding edge debian (very nice).

I really do hope more people support GNOME (or maybe just GTK). People talk about freedom of choice, but with segregation it takes longer to create masterful pieces of software. And then if a great application is made for one platform (GTK or QT or ?), then more libraries have to be installed, which means more hands in the mix, which means there is potential for more trouble (yes, I'm a programmer). I've always had a hard time of choosing GTK or QT, QT has a nice designer but GTK is truly free. But with less platforms I think there would be much better applications and a lot more consistency. Well, I just wanted to share some thoughts, anyone else?

Well well well...

Looks like i'll need to try KDE again... maybe i'll make more of an effort to make it look smooth and nice as opposed to jagged, shiny and abrupt this time. I'm kinda surprised at Slackware, but again I'll agree it seems to be a good distrobution. Still- this is why linux is so great- no matter what your tastes, there's always a flavour for you. And if you still don't like one, you can always create your own!

Firefox only got 77%? CMON PEOPLE! What, are you still browsing with your file manager here? :P

Ubuntu in the polls
 

The reason that Ubuntu did not score well in this linuxnewbie forum is:

1) Ubuntu works so good that ubuntu users don't come into this place.
2) In case of problems, the ubuntu forum works much better than this one.

(just teasing....)

the feel that you have total control of your box!

I thought the point was to *not* have a browser monopoly - of any browser?

I use mozilla, myself, but that still gives the 'Mozilla Foundation' 86% of the OSS browser market here at the LQ Polls. I think that's plenty. Not to say we don't need to be taking IE numbers down and pumping up firefox and others generally, but the MF monopoly in OSS is about as bad as the MS monopoly in proprietary software.

(I know some of these questions and complaints aren't entirely serious, but still...)

Beep Media Player makes a nice replacement for XMMS (a Gtk2 fork of XMMS, with some improvements). I don't always want all the bells and whistles on top :p

Congrats to all winners!

I knew this was a Slackware-ruled forum since the very beginning! They don't have a forum at their site and that's why they infest linuxquestions.org! (just teasing)

Go Ubuntu! Whoever wants to try Ubuntu and hasn't I suggest wait for the new version 5.04 Hoary which will come out in May..It will be 10 times better than Warty! Which is already cool...;)

Where are last year's results?
-

No real "apps" here.
Examples could be:
Best money manager,
Best calandering application,
Best asset management and call booking software,
Best bulletin board package (including what runs this site).

I mean, no core apps to really get the lay person using Linux.

End