Linked by Jason Vagner on Fri 16th Apr 2004 20:37 UTC
O'Reilly's latest entry in the "Pocket" series, "Linux Pocket Guide", bills itself as a "quick reference for experienced users and a guided tour for beginners".
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The point is that there are _hundreds_ of rebrands of Linux. A package that works for one distro, in my experience often does not work for another, or even a different version of the same distro for that matter. If my app has 2 packages (see above GAIM example) and I want to build it for the last 3 version of the 20 most popular distrobutions I have to build and test 120 packages. Even with 120 packages this can still break on systems where someone upgraded their version of QT.
If I update my application I also have to update all 120 packages. On windows or Mac I build one package.
This _forces_ me to make my software on Linux open source. Where is the freedom in that??
And don't tell me to switch to another distro if I cannot find packages for the one I am using. I have enough trouble finding working packages with RH and Mandrake which are the 2 most popular distros in case you missed the memo.
I won't even go into library incompatibilities. The OS was simply never designed for the desktop.