“Has it managed to completely escape the attention of the “open source” movement that Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, and so forth have blithely continued to remain virtually Windows-only while waiting for the dust to settle? Only now they have realized that it won’t settle and oh-so-quietly the rush of announcements of support for Linux has not translated into a rush of quality applications.” Read the editorial here. I’ve written a similar editorial a few years back.
Divide & Conquer: The Demise of Unix
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The reason why UNIX/Linux/BSD don’t get a lot of proprietary software is simple. It is a niche market. Sure, there are lots of people out there who use Linux, but they usually use it for server stuff. For example, I have a friend at the university who is a business major. This guy isn’t really a big computer geek, but he does trust Debian for his server machine. He uses windows on the desktop because it works for him, and he would rather not change. I suspect many people are like him.
Why is it a niche market? Simple. It isn’t based on centralized development. This isn’t that UNIX isn’t standardized, but there isn’t one big company in charge of it all. Redhat isn’t really like that, because they arguably don’t control anything with Linux. If they didn’t exist, Linux would still be usable. (I’m not trying to belittle them, but rather show that they aren’t part of its bottom-up development) There isn’t a centralized authority that makes the platform a “safe” bet for proprietary development. Imposing top-down order on it is pointless. The decentralized “bazaar” model has its advantages, but if you truly want a platform for commercial vendors to develop proprietary software, look elsewhere.
As for the toolkit “issue,” I don’t think that is a major issue. Companies will just use gtk, with few exceptions. This is not to say that qt is bad, or non-standard, but it seems that gtk has become the “defacto” standard for a graphical toolkit on UNIX systems. For free software development, this is irrelevant, but for proprietary software, vendors will probably just use gtk and think nothing more of it.
Finally, the multiple distributions might be a turnoff to vendors, but I don’t think that really is the reason why they don’t make UNIX ports of their programs. They want a platform developed and controlled by a centralized authority. If they had that, I don’t think they would really care if they had to tweak their software here and there to make a few more customers happy. Now, it would probably annoy them, but it’s not a fundamental turn-off.
I guess the cathedral model isn’t quite as dead as some people think it is. It has its uses.
Fragmentation equals democracy. When you want slightly over 50 percent of the people to decide how the whole will live, then you lose a core piece of democracy… protection of the minorities and their free expression.
Fragmentation is the natural expression of free people. After all we don’t all wear the same uniform. This guy is basically stating that we will all have to wear the same uniform, and if we’re not then we’re just not relevant.
I haven’t had a bsod or had to accept a suicidal EULA for months now, and that tells me something… I like freedom of choice, and so does linux.
Some examples: OpenOffice, GIMP and Scribus […] Having to save data to disk then import it into another app is not as efficient as copy and paste. If it was then there’d be no point in having copy and paste at all.
This is your opinion. When I did DTP (I did the layouts for several issues of Protoculture Addicts magazine), we always used the “Place” command (on PageMaker) to place texts and images. We never used copy and paste. And frankly, I don’t feel that I less efficient because of it (in fact, we used to produce a complete layout in a very short time).
For me, it is much more efficient to keep your images in a specified folder, treat them with Photoshop, then place them all in PageMaker (substitute Gimp and Scribus here). That’s what a normal DTP workflow should be like.
I do the same for the various documents I produce at work (game and level design documents, which have lots of images and diagrams in them). Our assets are saved to disk (and managed with a version control software), they are photoshopped until ready, and then we insert them in documents. So in this specific real-world scenario, I wouldn’t have any problems using Linux (which I don’t because my company is Windows-only).
Now, perhaps your work habits make it essential that you use copy/paste for images. If that’s the case, then it’s clear that this is going to be a problem for you with Linux. However, from my experience of desktop publishing, and my extensive experience of putting together documents in my current job, the lact of image copy/pasting is not an issue that has a significant impact on productivity.
It’s you who seems to be arrogantly claiming that your opinion determines what is or isn’t a problem. Just because something doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a significant problem for other people.
Of course my opinion determines what I consider to be a problem or not: it’s an opinion! I’m sorry for having an opinion, but that’s just the way it is. You’re welcome to have a different opinion. That’s called debate.
My opinion is based on real-world experience, involving just the type of task you’re referring to. It is therefore my opinion that the annoyance you’re referring to will not prevent the vast majority of users from being productive, while you obviously disagree. I don’t think there’s much more to say on this issue – in fact there wasn’t much more to say when you brought it up in the previous thread, yet you felt the need to bring it up again even though this wasn’t the actual topic of the discussion…and, might I add, said this issue made Linux DE UIs “vastly inferior”, going so far as to make analogies with a computer crashing constantly or running significantly slower.
For you that’s obviously true, but that isn’t necessarily true for other people. Are you really so conceited that you can’t understand that not everyone has the same needs as you?
It’s not being conceited to say that such a minor issue, for which there are workarounds (some being more efficient), should not have a serious impact on productivity. Sure, it may mean that you need to adjust your workflow, but that happens all the time with all sorts of programs and apps.
More smugness and arrogance.
It’s not arrogance. There are perfectly good workarounds for the situation you describe, and yet you continue to argue that this is as bad as if the OS was unstable or ran much slower. In other words, you keep making a mountain out of a molehill – I’m merely trying to point out that, though it is an irritant, it does not represent in my opinion a showstopper.
Does your ‘adaptability’ mean that you could happily adapt to using a single-tasking computer that crashes every hour and runs at 10% of the speed of your current system?
That’s completely irrelevant. You should talk of me making straw man argument, then go on to make such a comparison!
Instead I use the best tool for the job, one that doesn’t suffer from problems that make me less productive. Why is that so hard for you to accept?
Because you could be just as productive on a Linux system if you were ready to adapt your work flow.
Let me ask you this, though: if image copy/pasting did work, would you consider using a Linux system? Because that’s in the works – you can already copy and paste images between the Gimp and OpenOffice, for example.
ISVs are simply not going to write their own installers like Loki did
AFAIK, the Loki installer is open-source, therefore ISVs wouldn’t have to write their own installers – they could just modify the Loki installer (like Codeweavers did for Crossover Office).
AFAIK, the Loki installer is open-source, therefore ISVs wouldn’t have to write their own installers – they could just modify the Loki installer (like Codeweavers did for Crossover Office).
It’s not really an installer though. It doesn’t actually link into a central packaging system. All it does is install one software package and uninstall it. That’s great, but when you have desktop applications and the libraries they inevitably depend on thrown into the mix the situation becomes an awful lot more complex.
I know – it sounds like this should be really, really simple but it isn’t. Microsoft solves this by having releases of Windows every few years and periodic service packs in order to keep their system stable for developers in the interim – but still keeping it updated. However, not everyone upgrades to the latest Windows anymore (and that lead-time is getting longer and longer) and not everyone updates their systems or installs service packs. When people do run Windows Update, even with the integration of Windows, the whole thing becomes a moving target. Look at DLL hell in Windows, and how they’ve attempted to solve it with .Net, not very successfully IMO. That, on the other hand, is something that Linux distributions are pretty good at because they’ve faced those same problems.
Maddening, isn’t it?!
I haven’t had a chance to respond since my first post on page one so I might be repeating something someone has already said but the misinformation on this board is amazing and I feel a need to correct it. Most of the arguments against Linux would have fit in 1996 but it’s been a long time since then.
RE: Dev
Still there are issues with Libraries and locations – Linux/Unix people flamed Microsoft for DLL hell, well it’s no better on UNIX either.
It’s not at all like DLL hell. In fact centralized libraries in Linux/Unix is a way to avoid the DLL hell problem. If you use a program packaged from your distibution then they will be built on the same libraries. If you compile your system from source then you will compile your apps against the libraries present on your system. You only really run into trouble when you try to install some third party app that has been compiled for another system. This really isn’t a problem anymore unless you are using joe shmoe’s linux distribution.
Finally devices – SUSE uses devfs – so your root becomes /dev/disk/controller0/disk0/part1 and Redhat uses /dev/hda or whatever and so now where’s device compatibility?
Symlinks work fine and are usually set up for you by any decent distro.
Like when you install a software using c;m;mi your system has no record of what version is installed.
This is another problem that has been solved already. You can create a package for your compiled program without a hitch in most distros. Ever hear of checkinstall?
RE: TonyB
With respect to desktop software, it is a serious limitation. KDE or GNOME, or WindowMaker of Xfce, there’s no consensus on which is better and most have a strong dislike of one in favor of the other.
This is not a problem. First of all, WindowMaker is definitely not even in the running for desktop environments. Neither is XFCE. Both are good, in fact I use WindowMaker, but they definitely have not even been in competition with KDE and Gnome. Most corporate distro’s (specifically RHEL, Novell, and JDS) have standardized on Gnome. Choice is not a problem. Install Gnome and GTK as a standard desktop and toolkit but always leave the option open for alternatives. It’s obvious from the amount of “Windows Skins” out there that there is a market for alternative interfaces.
You know what I’d like to see? Apple to release the old NeXTSTEP windowing system as open source. That was a slick, streamlined, and beautiful interface. It worked quite well on 68040 systems running 25 MHz, on 12-bit graphics, with 16 MB of system RAM.
Then just use WindowMaker. It runs on very little resources and is an excellent NeXT-type environment.
I’ve said it a thousand times, and will probably say it a thousand more.
And you’ll still be wrong everytime you say it. A massive array of toolkits on windows doesn’t seem to be hurting it. Everyone who yells loudly about consistency on the desktop being the most important factor to acceptance fails to realize that Linux is far more consistent than Windows. For crying out loud at least Gnome/KDE only use their own toolkit. Windows itself uses at least three different toolkits for their own applications.
It’s not really an installer though. It doesn’t actually link into a central packaging system. All it does is install one software package and uninstall it. That’s great, but when you have desktop applications and the libraries they inevitably depend on thrown into the mix the situation becomes an awful lot more complex.
I agree. What this means is that not all software should have Loki-like installers. System software should be installed by a package manager, while user apps can either be installed through the package manager as well, or by a standalone installer.
Package managers help maintain a system up-to-date very easily (which is important if only for security fixes). Standalone installers are great for apps that are not finely integrated in the system (and may come with their own librairies for compatibility). This is how Codeweavers does it and it works pretty well.
The communities lack leadership (I’m not referring to the Linux or BSD kernels, but to other software) because there are a lot of ego-driven people in those communities, and because there are a lot of ego-driven people in the world as a whole, too. But at this point you may ask “Isn’t Microsoft ego-driven, too?” It definitely is, but the paycheck that it generates for its individual employees kind of forces those individual employees to unite as one coalesced ego, because they do not want to lose their paycheck. Whereas in the case of the FOSS communities, there’s (generally) no paycheck coming from a single source, so there is no stimulus for them to act as a single ego, and thus we get the fragmented situation that we have now.
If you disagree with my above 2 paragraphs, I’d love to know why.
You’re wrong and I’ll tell you why. Most OSS programmers that code for big projects DO get paid. Where have you been the past 5 years? Linus gets paid by the OSDL. Gnome hackers get paid by Red Hat and Novell, who also pays KDE developers. Firefox’s developer works for Google. The small projects don’t get steady paychecks to code but neither do freeware and shareware developers for Windows.
I;
It’s not really an installer though. It doesn’t actually link into a central packaging system. All it does is install one software package and uninstall it. That’s great, but when you have desktop applications and the libraries they inevitably depend on thrown into the mix the situation becomes an awful lot more complex.
A lot of propietary apps install into /opt and come with their own libraries, like Windows does.
The last gripe I have is with all these people complaining about the X11 protocol. What is exactly wrong with it? I hear a lot of complaints but no substance to those complaints. It does the job and it does it well. Perhaps you have a problem with the current free implementations of the X11 protocol (xorg/xfree) but I for one am happy at the progress that xorg has made. I’m actually surprised that X11 came up in this discussion because that was so last year. This year it’s time to complain about toolkits. Even that’s getting old. I’m sure all these “experts” will focus on something new pretty soon, although my personal favorite reason why Linux will inevitably fail was the whole SCO fiasco two years ago. Every year there is a new goup-blog-think that assures us Linux will never survive, and yet it does, not only that, it is flourishing. I’m not too worried about the future of Linux.
And finally I am going to repost this comment by slash because it is still cracking me up.
A healthy IT market has a clear market leader (60-70%) with a lot of smaller companies each making 10-20% of the market each.
How is the IT market magically different from every other market? Where did you come up with such a bogus idea anyway? Did that come directly from Microsoft’s marketing department? I really hope you didn’t actually pass any economics classes or your teacher should be fired.
For me, it is much more efficient to keep your images in a specified folder, treat them with Photoshop, then place them all in PageMaker (substitute Gimp and Scribus here). That’s what a normal DTP workflow should be like.
That may be what your DTP workflow is like, but again you can’t speak for other people. Copy and paste takes a few seconds. A few mouse clicks, a couple of keyboard shortcuts and it’s done, no messing around naming files and using file dialogs to save and import.
I find it difficult to believe that saving an image and importing it is even half as fast as copy and paste, especially if you need to go back and tweak the image a few times. It may be fast enough for you but it certainly isn’t for my. Why do you think copy and paste exists if it’s just as fast to save files to disk?
Of course my opinion determines what I consider to be a problem or not: it’s an opinion! I’m sorry for having an opinion, but that’s just the way it is. You’re welcome to have a different opinion. That’s called debate
The difference is that I don’t believe that my opinion determines what is universally true. I don’t assume that you must find this a problem just because I do. Yet you assume that it isn’t a real problem just because it doesn’t effect you. The world doesn’t revolve around you, your arrogant dismissal of other people’s problems doesn’t change reality.
My opinion is based on real-world experience, involving just the type of task you’re referring to.
Excuse me if I take my personal real-world experience more seriously than your claims.
in fact there wasn’t much more to say when you brought it up in the previous thread, yet you felt the need to bring it up again even though this wasn’t the actual topic of the discussion…
Actually it was you who felt the need to bring this up again and launch a sneering personal attack at the people who find this a problem.
and, might I add, said this issue made Linux DE UIs “vastly inferior”, going so far as to make analogies with a computer crashing constantly or running significantly slower.
To me this problem that can be as annoying as crashing or slow speed. To me it does make the Linux UIs inferior to windows or Mac OS. I haven’t claimed that to be true for everyone else, it’s just my personal opinion based on my personal experience.
It’s not being conceited to say that such a minor issue, for which there are workarounds (some being more efficient), should not have a serious impact on productivity.
Yes it is extremely conceited to say that, it’s very sad that you can’t see that yourself. You may see it as a minor issue and find workarounds that are efficient for you. But you shouldn’t assume that to be true for everyone. I’ve tried your workarounds and for me they aren’t anywhere near as efficient as copy and paste. I’m not going to switch to an OS that forces me to use workarounds that slow me down.
It’s not arrogance. There are perfectly good workarounds for the situation you describe, and yet you continue to argue that this is as bad as if the OS was unstable or ran much slower.
For me the workarounds are not perfectly good, any more than the restart button is a perfectly good ‘workaround’ for a computer crash. You seem to believe that your personal opinion should be shared by everyone, if that isn’t arrogance I don’t know what is.
That’s completely irrelevant. You should talk of me making straw man argument, then go on to make such a comparison!
Nice job at evading my point. I was trying to show you that not everyone has the same needs. I was trying to show you that some people may be able to adapt to certain problems that other people can’t happily adapt to.
You may not be able to adapt to a computer that crashes, but other people use unstable computers very happily. Does that mean that they’re more adaptable than you? If not, why do you smugly assume that you’re more adaptable than me because a Linux problem makes me less productive?
Because you could be just as productive on a Linux system if you were ready to adapt your work flow.
Just because that’s true for you doesn’t mean that it’s true for me. Would you take me seriously if I said that you could be just as productive using Windows 3.1 if you were ready to adapt your work flow?
I know people who are still happily using Windows 3.1 on 486 hardware for word processing, spreadsheets and even DTP. They don’t see all the Windows 3.1 problems as a big deal and see no reason to upgrade. Does that mean that everyone could switch to Windows 3.1 and be just as productive? Yet just because you’re happy on Linux you refuse to accept that it’s problems can really effect other people.
Let me ask you this, though: if image copy/pasting did work, would you consider using a Linux system?
If consistency between applications in Linux approached the level of consistency found between Windows apps then I’d definitely give Linux another try. The only remaining problems would be things like hardware support and system configuration. If I could see some real advantages to running Linux instead of Windows then I’d consider building my next PC with components that I know are supported by Linux.
Vesselin Peev wrote:
“The communities lack leadership (I’m not referring to the Linux or BSD kernels, but to other software) because there are a lot of ego-driven people in those communities, and because there are a lot of ego-driven people in the world as a whole, too. But at this point you may ask “Isn’t Microsoft ego-driven, too?” It definitely is, but the paycheck that it generates for its individual employees kind of forces those individual employees to unite as one coalesced ego, because they do not want to lose their paycheck. Whereas in the case of the FOSS communities, there’s (generally) no paycheck coming from a single source, so there is no stimulus for them to act as a single ego, and thus we get the fragmented situation that we have now.
If you disagree with my above 2 paragraphs, I’d love to know why.”
Abraxas wrote:
“You’re wrong and I’ll tell you why. Most OSS programmers that code for big projects DO get paid. Where have you been the past 5 years? Linus gets paid by the OSDL. Gnome hackers get paid by Red Hat and Novell, who also pays KDE developers. Firefox’s developer works for Google. The small projects don’t get steady paychecks to code but neither do freeware and shareware developers for Windows.”
Abraxas, what you say does not contradict my views. You didn’t comprehend my sentence “Whereas in the case of the FOSS communities, there’s (generally) no paycheck coming from a single source” — note “FROM A SINGLE SOURCE”.
I’ve been following the OSS developments closely. I know that most OSS developers ARE paid, but they are not paid from a ONE DOMINATING SINGLE source — you gave an example yourself with Red Hat and Novell — TWO MAJOR players working on MORE OR LESS THE SAME OSS STUFF. It is NOT BAD that they BOTH support OSS, but it is BAD that they try to introduce differences in the way the OSS stuff is configured and supported on their own platforms. For example, historically on Red Hat distributions KDE has NOT been as well supported as Gnome has been, and this is evident from the fact that Red Hat pays Gnome hackers exclusively. Can you deny that? You cannot. So if I, as an ISV am going to target KDE on both Novell’s distros and Red Hat’s, this introduces silly, unnecessary inconveniences for me. It is good for everyone Novell and Red Hat to compete, however it is NOT good for Novell and Red Hat to compete on the basis of SILLY differences in the support of KDE, for example, or differences in the directory structure, differences that HAVE NO TECHNICAL OR OTHER REASON TO EXIST if GNOME and KDE are both FREE OPEN-SOURCE software! The Linux Standards Base is a good step in the right direction, but it is only a step, and until we have good standards accross all distros, Windows is going to remain the more attractive OS platform for ISVs.
So, if the major players Red Hat and Novell are cooperating but still keeping differences that have no justifiable reason to exist, technological or otherwise, except “just to be different”, what is this called in regard to the OSS community? POOR LEADERSHIP. If Red Hat and Novell are so powerful as they claim to be, they have to have the leadership clout to iron out the NONSENSICAL differences and compete only on the basis of UNIQUENESS THAT IS JUSTIFIED.
Shifting the burden on ISV’s to go the extra mile to make a binary-only version that intelligently probes and adjusts to the differences between Novell and Red Hat distros is not a pleasant thing for the ISV’s. Yes, I know that source-only versions can be made to adjust, but we are not talking about that with regard to most ISVs.
Do you get my points now and do you still disagree? Any other takes?
I find it difficult to believe that saving an image and importing it is even half as fast as copy and paste, especially if you need to go back and tweak the image a few times.
How could you go back and tweak the image if you didn’t save it to disk, but rather only used copy and paste? And if the image is saved to disk, then what’s the problem in importing it rather than copy/pasting it?
And what if you lose a couple of seconds? Is it really going to make a difference over a week? What is it that you do that requires you to copy/paste so many images?
The difference is that I don’t believe that my opinion determines what is universally true.
Neither do I.
Yet you assume that it isn’t a real problem just because it doesn’t effect you.
No, I assume it’s not a serious problem because there are workarounds.
Excuse me if I take my personal real-world experience more seriously than your claims.
Excuse me if I take my personal real-world experience more seriously than your claims. (BTW, I gave a concrete example of a publication I worked on. Care to do the same, since you’re raising doubts over what I said?)
Actually it was you who felt the need to bring this up again and launch a sneering personal attack at the people who find this a problem.
Come on, this is getting ridiculous. It can’t be a personal attack if I didn’t name anyone.
To me this problem that can be as annoying as crashing or slow speed.
And to me you are exaggerating.
I was trying to show you that not everyone has the same needs.
By using ridiculous analogies?
You may not be able to adapt to a computer that crashes, but other people use unstable computers very happily.
Really? In my 20 years of using computers, I’ve never met someone who enjoyed his computer crashing. Never.
I thought you had some arguments, but I can see you’re descending into incoherence now. I’ll stop before embarassing you further.
(Yes, that was arrogance. You deserve it.)
In case someone misunderstand my words above again — I’m not saying that there MUST be ONE dominating source of payment, I’m saying that since this is not the case, the major sources (note the plural) of payment for the OSS developers must both compete but also cooperate to avoid any nonsensical differences between them (see my above post for details) — because it is exactly those nonsensical, unjustifiable differences that are spoiling the GNU/Linux platforms (can’t say “platform”) today.
How could you go back and tweak the image if you didn’t save it to disk, but rather only used copy and paste?
Because it’s open in the image editor I’m using. I can tweak it and immediately copy and paste the selection. I don’t need to mess around saving to disk and importing.
But it’s clearly pointless to continue with this as nothing I say will convince you that this is a real problem. It’s clear that you’re too much of an irrational fanatic to accept that there are any real faults in your favourite OS. To you it’s a clearly religion, not a tool.
Come on, this is getting ridiculous. It can’t be a personal attack if I didn’t name anyone.
Don’t be so disingenuous, it’s very clear that you were making a snide little comment about our previous discussion of Linux consistency. Anyway, my point was that it was you who brought up consistency in this thread, not me.
Really? In my 20 years of using computers, I’ve never met someone who enjoyed his computer crashing. Never.
Work on your reading comprehension. I didn’t claim that people enjoy having their computer crash, I just said that there are many people who don’t consider instability to be a big problem. I know a lot of people who shrug off regular crashes and don’t see the point in spending even a few trying to fix the problem. Just like you shrug off Linux problems as no big deal.
I’ll stop before embarassing you further.
The only person you’re embarrassing is yourself. But if I was using Linux I’d be embarrassed to use the same OS as a smug irrational fanatic like you.
Because it’s open in the image editor I’m using. I can tweak it and immediately copy and paste the selection. I don’t need to mess around saving to disk and importing.
This doesn’t make sense. You complain that saving and importing slows down your work flow, but that will only matter if you have lots of images. However, if you work with lots of images, then it would be safe practice to save them on disk anyway (if only in case of a power failure).
You’ve given lots of hypothetical scenario. Now I’d like a real-world case where the lack of image copy/paste between some applications (remember, you can now copy/paste images between Gimp and OpenOffice) has a significant impact on the work flow.
But it’s clearly pointless to continue with this as nothing I say will convince you that this is a real problem.
In other words, you’re out of arguments.
It’s clear that you’re too much of an irrational fanatic to accept that there are any real faults in your favourite OS. To you it’s a clearly religion, not a tool.
Ah, the old fallback: I can’t come up with valid arguments, so I’ll use insults and reduce the opposing viewpoint to one based on irrational behavior.
Here’s a clue for you: Linux ain’t a religion for me. I use both Linux and Windows, and even Mac (i.e. the example I gave before of professionnal DTP. I work at a company producing proprietary software (console games), some of our products having sold up of 1,000,000 copies. We are a Windows-only shop (except for our mail server).
However, me being open to both Windows and Linux won’t prevent me from denouncing FUD when I see it – and claiming that Linux is inferior because image copy/paste doesn’t work between certain specific apps is in fact FUD.
Don’t be so disingenuous, it’s very clear that you were making a snide little comment about our previous discussion of Linux consistency. Anyway, my point was that it was you who brought up consistency in this thread, not me.
Uh, no. Consistency was brought up by the author, and yannick was the first one to mention it in the comments section (comment #16). I was specifically talking about consistency in look and feel, when you barged in and hijacked the discussion.
And I did not make any personal attacks. I did not name names. What I may have insinuated or not is irrelevant, as I did not attack you directly. You, on the other hand, have personally attacked me and questioned my credibility quite a few times, culminating in calling me a “fanatic.”
Before pointing out the straw in my eye, perhaps you should first remove that girder in yours.
Work on your reading comprehension. I didn’t claim that people enjoy having their computer crash, I just said that there are many people who don’t consider instability to be a big problem.
I don’t know about you, but everyone I’ve ever known who had instability problems with their PC was pretty ticked off about it. They considered it a big problem (and it is), even if they didn’t know how to solve it and therefore had to live with it.
That you would even dare to compare a minor annoyance (for which there are workarounds) involving copy/pasting images with a system constantly crashing shows how dishonest you are.
I know a lot of people who shrug off regular crashes and don’t see the point in spending even a few trying to fix the problem.
Because they don’t know how to fix it, because there’s no workaround, because they have no choice but to live with it despite the fact that it’s a big problem that will really slow down their work.
Just like you shrug off Linux problems as no big deal.
Because it’s a very minor problem and because there are workarounds that will barely slow down their work.
The only person you’re embarrassing is yourself.
Yeah, right.
But if I was using Linux I’d be embarrassed to use the same OS as a smug irrational fanatic like you.
You’re in trouble, dude, because I use Windows as much as I use Linux. Better put that paper bag on your head right now.
Because it’s a very minor problem and because there are workarounds that will barely slow down their work.
Sorry but repeating the same lie again and again doesn’t make it true, it just makes you look more and more dishonest. I’m not going to waste any more of my time with you, it’s clear that you’ve totally closed your mind to any criticism of Linux and nothing I can say will change that.
Abraxas, what you say does not contradict my views. You didn’t comprehend my sentence “Whereas in the case of the FOSS communities, there’s (generally) no paycheck coming from a single source” — note “FROM A SINGLE SOURCE”.
What point are you trying to make then? People who code for Windows are NOT paid by Microsoft unless they are working on Office or Media Player or whatever. Just think of how inconsistent those other apps are when you are trying to use them together. Microsoft is trying to change that by producing a lot of software themself but is that what you really want? Do you think that is a good idea? A total lack of software diversity. Sounds like a dead end to me.
You gave an example yourself with Red Hat and Novell — TWO MAJOR players working on MORE OR LESS THE SAME OSS STUFF. It is NOT BAD that they BOTH support OSS, but it is BAD that they try to introduce differences in the way the OSS stuff is configured and supported on their own platforms. For example, historically on Red Hat distributions KDE has NOT been as well supported as Gnome has been, and this is evident from the fact that Red Hat pays Gnome hackers exclusively. Can you deny that? You cannot. So if I, as an ISV am going to target KDE on both Novell’s distros and Red Hat’s, this introduces silly, unnecessary inconveniences for me
Then don’t target KDE. I answered this already. Gnome seems to already be the desktop of choice in the business world. Look at RHEL/Novell/JDS.
So, if the major players Red Hat and Novell are cooperating but still keeping differences that have no justifiable reason to exist, technological or otherwise, except “just to be different”, what is this called in regard to the OSS community? POOR LEADERSHIP.
It is only your opinion that there is no justifiable difference between Red Hat and Novell. You cannot make your case on the shaky ground of your own unsupported opinions.
Shifting the burden on ISV’s to go the extra mile to make a binary-only version that intelligently probes and adjusts to the differences between Novell and Red Hat distros is not a pleasant thing for the ISV’s. Yes, I know that source-only versions can be made to adjust, but we are not talking about that with regard to most ISVs.
It is not really that hard to support 3 or 4 major commercial distros. In fact there are only about 3 or 4 out there that would matter to ISV’s anyway. The differences between those 3 or 4 are no where near as drastic as the differences between the UNIXes anyway. I have seen commercial apps with installers that work on any distro. It’s not very difficult. How do you think Windows packagers manage to get their stuff to work on 98/ME/2000/XP? They’re not all the same ya know.