Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 3rd Feb 2008 23:09 UTC, submitted by Moochman
This article details the story of a KDE-loving software engineer who was forced to use Windows for his job. "His only hope was that he knew Qt was cross compatible with Windows Linux and Mac, and there was talk that someday, KDE was to be ported to Windows. So he waited. Well, KDE4 was announced and there was much joy. Betas were released and there was much bitching. KDE4.0.0 was released and there again was much joy (and still a little bitching). More importantly an actual honest to goodness Windows port is released. Here follows that engineer's report."
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Member since:
2005-07-07
Oh come on, you've cited your own examples there-- The big closed legacy apps are: Netscape Communicator, Wordperfect 8 and 9, the Loki games, and the Transgaming release of the Sims. OK-- That's 2001 (and earlier). Tell you daughter what you like, but odds are she wasn't born or eating solid food when this stuff came out-- and there is a theororetical (and somwhat contrived) probability you might need Netscape, but come on.
Compare that what to how many hours you spend hunting software on a virgin Windows install. Let's see-- first of all you want to keep that virgin Windows box of the net. Then you probably need to find: A decent firewall, virus scanner, spyware remover, Web browser, and your fav plugins and codecs. Then you remove the crap the vendor installed. Then you connect the machine to the web and have to do microsoft and your vendor updates. Then you have to the hardware vendor's sites and and grab the even more recent than your system vendor's drivers. Then you get to use your computer, and still put up with all manner of new bugs in legacy apps. Then, unless your family and friends stay on top of all of this stuff you get to repeat the process in 6 months. (Don't I know it...)
I'll take the pain of google and a 4 line script to run 7 year old software any day... I fix enough Windows boxes for family and friends as it is... (Which is sad because I haven't worked on Windows boxes in years, and it left my desktop in 98 or so.)