Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 11th Mar 2008 16:07 UTC, submitted by moleskine
"Unlike the myths that are behind the prevention of Linux adoption, this piece will closely examine the indisputable obstacles and what will have to be done to overcome each of them. In the past, many desktop Linux users have opted to simply point to the hardware industry or Microsoft as the root cause of a lack of mainstream adoption. In reality, there are actually core issues extending beyond hardware - and competition from the proprietary markets - that simply must be dealt with head on. With that said, hardware compatibility and competition from closed-source vendors are valid issues, just not solid core excuses for the lack of mainstream interest. Here are the real hurdles."
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Member since:
2006-09-18
I'm not sure about how commercial Apps fit into the wider picture of Linux Distros.
Often a commercial developer will (eg. Latest version of Maya 2008) standardize their App on one or two different distros. It may work with others but the developer will not provide support if anything goes wrong.
I read about an expensive engineering pro modeling app that simply refused to work on anything but the Redhat Distro. It turns out that it fails to load some libraries on Ubuntu because they're compiled in a different version of gcc.
The Distro fragmentation means that even though commercial Apps are made for Linux they are not guaranteed to work on other Distros and if they do work your often left with resorting to forums where users provide the advice (eg. converting RPMs to Debian packet manager etc) to make it install. Some Apps don't like wine others don't like xgl, Compiz etc.
The average mainstream user just can't afford deal with this.