Linked by Adam S on Tue 6th Aug 2002 03:52 UTC
Just a few weeks after the beta release of the next version of their Linux based OS, Red Hat has released 7.3.93 of their software, once again, code-named Limbo. Those of you who read my first Limbo review know that I gave it a favorable review. After downloading and installing the second beta, I had to take a few days before writing this article.
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"my original point was that there are still a lot of developers and companies out there that just want to make software, but don't want to have to spend hundreds or thousands after buying a computer and/or buying windows just to start developing. a lot of people turn to alternatives (ex. java) because of this."
You know, there ARE things out there between $0 and "thousands" of dollars. I am surprised that no Linux company (except for Inprise maybe) has jumped on that yet. If there was something easy to use out there, it would get used.
As a developer you are forced to make a decision early on: GTK, QT, or something else. Getting started in either is not that easy, especially for new developers. Why is nobody providing a great IDE for a simple programming language where you can develop applications in a matter of minutes? No library dependencies or other similar things.
On Windows, there are companies that do just that. Take Object Arts, for example. They have a great Smalltalk IDE that integrates wonderfully with Windows. If something like that was available for Linux, then I would be writing code instead of this comment...
Microsoft may not be the most innovative company, but neither are Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc. True innovation comes from small companies like the one I mentioned above.
I tried Limbo with some updates that now appeared in Limbo 2. It has ways to go before being a Windows killer. Whenever I use Linux there is "something wrong". It starts with the usually ugly boot messages. Continues with the horrible gray X background (why can't they switch it to just black or something, for goodness sakes!) and flashes of X (again, a simple black background would help, probably). Then you log in and click on one of those icons and - nothing happens. For a while, that is. Linux is utterly "slow". Windows was blamed for bloat, what about the bloat in Linux?
Overall Windows and Linux might be more or less the same from a end user's perspective. But the feeling is different. Linux always makes me wonder if something is going to go wrong anytime soon now. Like the other day when I tried to install software and nothing happened.
The shortcomings of Linux are so obvious. Where are all those OSS developers finally fixing these things? It is not that hard (simple things as fixing the annoying gray X background). Maybe it takes more than just Open Source to get a job done...