Microsoft has released a list of 800 applications that should run properly on its new Windows Vista operating system. As expected, virtually all of Microsoft's own offerings are on the list - including the latest Office 2007 products. Also included are a host of business and security applications from vendors ranging from Intuit to Trend Micro. And desktop applications from Google, which ramped up its rivalry with Microsoft earlier this week with the introduction of online business applications, made the cut. However, noticeable by their absence are applications from a number of the world's biggest software companies, including Adobe Systems, IBM, and Symantec.
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Member since:2006-01-06
Once again, disregarding development tools and library packages, only considering packages marked stable on x86 (which is Vista's most supported platform), and only counting each package once even if multiple versions of that package are marked stable, I count 4734 packages.
Packages != Applications.
Firstly, many of those packages will be things that are part of the base system (ie. Bash, X, text editors, utilities, etc).
Secondly, many apps are made up of more than one package. OpenOffice is about 5 packages, GIMP is 2, etc.
Member since:2005-07-08
Excellent point. Packages do represent a finer level of granularity than what would typically be called an application. I don't really know how to take this into account in any reliable way. Many packages that we would certainly consider to be "applications" can serve as a dependencies for other "applications," so the distinction of not having any dependents is not useful. We could count the number of packages that attempt to install menu items in the native DE, but I feel that this list would be significantly too narrow. I guess we could define an application as a set of packages that share a unique project homepage?
This incongruence is a direct consequence of the practical considerations for delivering software on proprietary and open source systems. Applications in the proprietary world represent the largest set of code that provides a set of related features with minimal external dependencies. Packages in the open source model are rather the smallest set of code that provides a set of corequisite features with maximal external dependencies. At least these are the ideals. It's not hard to find OSS packages that could--and should--be split into finer-grained packages, such as the various components of OpenOffice.
Member since:
2005-07-08
I can't reply to myself for some reason, and it's past my edit time...
I just wanted to clarify my calculation and my statements as I have realized they aren't entirely consistent. I didn't check these packages to verify if they are indeed marked stable, as opposed to testing or unstable. I corrected my methods to take this into account.
Once again, disregarding development tools and library packages, only considering packages marked stable on x86 (which is Vista's most supported platform), and only counting each package once even if multiple versions of that package are marked stable, I count 4734 packages.