I haven’t left, nor do I plan to, Desktop Linux (I know, who cares), but I think it’s important to think about what might be broken in our development model and figure out how to fix it,
I think the problem is:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/0506.linuxmyth4.1.html
“Worse is Better – Linux is designed to be good enough to get the job done when the job could be most anything. Linus Torvalds doesn’t claim that Linux is a perfect architecture and avoids comparisons about having the best design. Linux’ code quality is not unquestioned.”

http://apcmag.com/interview_with_con_kolivas_part_1_computing_is_boring.htm
“Of course it did. There were so many subsystems being repeatedly rewritten that there was never-ending breakage. And rewriting working subsystems and breaking them is far more important than something that might improve the desktop right?”

“Even worse than that, while I obviously like to see Linux run on 1024 CPUs and 1000 hard drives, I loathe the fact that to implement that we have to kill performance on the desktop. What’s that? Kill performance? Yes, that’s what I mean”

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo.html
“Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run.”

Here Mac OSX vs Linux:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/8510F3F6-AA84-4324-8882-1319FB939E8A.html

just like people are happy to buy software from Adobe even if Microsoft doesn’t help in the transaction or the upkeep of that software.

When you buy software from Adobe it still works with the Windows program manager. Microsoft still helps in making sure the program integrates with the system.

Without distro support you wouldn’t have that same level of integration.

ah, i should also note that it probably wouldn’t matter if major distros supported it. if there is a market for the software on Linux, people will happily buy it from your store without caring if their distro supports it.

just like people are happy to buy software from Adobe even if Microsoft doesn’t help in the transaction or the upkeep of that software.

i guess you missed the part where i noted why Linux doesn’t show up in those kinds of stats.

No I think you missed that Linux is the red line at the bottom with .068%.

why don’t you build it, Eric? that’d be a great project. you could clone Suse’s build service’s features, targeting the selection of distros that represent the overwhelming majority of desktop users in your target market(s).

Thanks for proving how unappealing Linux is to proprietary developers by suggesting that I build my own distribution service. That’s almost as funny as suggesting that I build my own distro (which I have been told before).

Anyways the first distro who builds an app store will get the FOSS army up their ass over violating Stallman’s newspeak definition of freedom. So even if a third-party built such a system there is no guarantee that the major distros would support it. Building it without their support would result in lousy integration.

So expect the current clusterfuck situation to continue. I’ll stick with Windows and OSX.

Is it a GUI application that has to be deployed on multiple distros? If so then you are lying.

Do you really think it is just as easy for Opera to maintain a dozen packages for a dozen different distros (plus extra packages for multiple versions of those distros) than it is for them to maintain a single executable for 7/Vista/XP? Why can’t Opera provide even a single binary for Ubuntu 8.04 and 9.10?

You guys can choose to live in denial but don’t expect everyone else to.

Ian Murdock of debIAN
Unless an application is included with your Linux distribution of choice, installing that application on Linux is a nightmare compared to Windows.
http://ianmurdock.com/linux/software-installation-on-linux-today-it-sucks-part-1/

Firefox lead Ben Goodger on porting to Linux
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/05/30/1740205/Harsh-Words-From-Google-On-Linux-Development?art

The attitude of the kernel devs is fuck proprietary drivers, even if that is what most hardware companies want to release.

The attitude of the distro maintainers is fuck proprietary software, even if that is what most developers want to release.

For years Linux advocates have said to just give it time. Just give it time, hardware companies will relent and developers will either open their source code or a gpl alternative will develop eventually.

Well we have given it time. Linux was more popular in 1998. It’s been flatlined at 1% since 2000.

The fuck proprietary software attitude is not working. More people would rather buy a $1700 macbook than run Linux.

But I’ll let you get back to your little denial tea party where you can blame OEMS or M$ for the failure of Linux on the desktop.

yes, i know. note that i suggested Eric takes a proprietary-friendly clone of it on as a project. but the Suse build services shows it’s doable in a practical, user friendly way. which makes Eric’s bellyaching just that: bellyaching.

step up or get the hell out of the way, right?

@Roy Orson: just because you say something as if it were factual doesn’t make it a fact. you really need to back up your assertions. if you have a good point, you should be able to explain it and then perhaps something will get done about it. otherwise, it’s useless noise that serves only to discourage and reinforce a self-defeating attitude.

Work better in what way? Not that I’ve noticed anyway, so please elaborate.

Linux is a complete, irreparable mess the moment you go further than the command line. That’s why server and embedded Linux is doing just fine, and desktop Linux is nowhere to be found.

I don’t expect it to ever change, only more and more denial for many years to come.

That’s one of the problems of putting “internal” discussions into a different context, e.g. application development.

It is something that is below the layer an application developer would usually work with unless the application uses its own multimedia framework, e.g. Apple’s QuickTime player.

Communication among developers working on infrastructure is usually available for proprietary platforms, so blogs like the one from Lennard are easily misunderstandable as communication with developers using the infrastructure.

Bringing them up in the context of issues third party developers are facing makes it harder to see these issues, they kind of get shadowed by the more serious sounding internal ones.

And it makes it next to impossible to motivate people to work on solutions to these problems because they know any work will be ignored and academic problems reiterated instead.