Jono Bacon

Jono Bacon is an established consultant and author, as well as a regular contributor to the Open Source community. As a consultant at the UK government funded OpenAdvantage, Bacon works with a range of organisations in making use of Open Source for a wide range of needs.

As an author, Bacon co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks by O'Reilly, and is currently finishing his second O'Reilly title. In addition to this work, Bacon has written over 400 published articles for over 14 publications including Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, Linux Magazine, PC Plus, IBM developerWorks, O'Reilly Network, Digital Home, Sitepoint, MacTech, MacUser and more. Bacon has also contributed as a columnist for Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, PC Plus and soon for International Developer Magazine. Bacons regular O'Reilly Network weblog articles regularly feature in the site's Top 10 most read articles.

In addition to consultancy and writing, Bacon is an active contributor to Open Source. He built one of the UK's first Linux orientated news websites in 1998, then went on to be an active contributor to the KDE project, founding KDE::Enterpise, KDE Usability Study and represented KDE officially in the UK. Bacon has also founded Wolverhampton Linux User Group, PHP West Midlands, the Infopoint Project, Free Software Charities Register and wrote the XAMPP Control Panel, GNOME iRiver, KwebStat, DevCenter and contributed patches to PiTiVi and KOrganizer. Bacon has also been recently voted to the OpenDocument Fellowship committee.

Building the Next Generation Linux Desktop

In recent months there has been lots of discussion about the next generation desktop and how the KDE and GNOME projects are re-thinking how their desktops will work. Jono Bacon, an established writer and consultant, has sat down, scribbled some odd looking notes on a piece of paper and is here to discuss what needs to happen for this next generation Linux desktop to become reality. His presentation covers a range of anecdotal and technical issues including:

• Where we are - the current state of the desktop, what it looks like, how it works and how it is flawed.
• Usability - how usability needs to be at the forefront of desktop development, and how we can identify new and more usable ways of working.
• Everyone seems to love frameworks - the development of underlying technologies needed to support different desktop needs such as high definition video and graphics, multimedia, accessibility and networking and how tools such as Cairo, Avahi, X.org, GStreamer, HAL and others are working on this.
• Hooking the bits together - discussing methods in which applications and the desktop can better integrate to increase ease of use, improve usability and create a better desktop experience. With Open Source, there is so much potential to really optimise the way people work and integrate the desktop in different ways, some of which are discussed here.
• The challenges facing the Linux community - unfortunately, not everything is rosey in the Open Source garden, and there are some key underlying problems that need to be overcome such as handing device drivers better, more intuitive package management and standardisation.

Presentation Slides: OpenOffice