Kent West wrote:
Erik Steffl wrote:Ryo Furue wrote:I think one of the biggest problems for developers of commercial software for Linux is that there's no such thing as "the" Linux OS. There are simply too many combinations of the kernel version, libc version, pthreads version, etc. to support all. The consequence is usually the vendor supports only the RedHat Linux.about particular software (nptl thread library) not being available for woody: why not install it yourself? just because it's not available as debian package does not mean you cannot install itSure, that works for sysadmins who know what they're doing. But that's not going to work for the masses. Which means the vendor must put in extra effort to get things to work. The result is that the vendor chooses not to go down that path, and Linux remains a niche product rather than moving into the mainstream, due to lack of "developers developers developers developers . . . " (courtesy of Steve "Monkey Boy" Balmer).
let's see another example. I bought a game for windows (few month ago, newly released game). Mainstream one, not a relatively obscure intel fortran compiler. it didn't work on my game machine (win xp pro). I sent an email to support, they said I need to run as non admin, I tried that, did work even less, in the end it would not even uninstall.
I wish there was a happy ending to this, in the spirit of 'sure, that works for sysadmins'. BTW the game ran fine on another computer that ran win 98 (IIRC).
so there you go, windows will remain a niche product blah blah blah...
I also heard from a programmer that her company develops software only forWindows because it's so uniform and ubiguitous.I don't understand it. if you (they) think that it is acceptable to buy computer with windows just to make sure that the client has OS that software company supports why wouldn't it be acceptable to buy computer with redhat linux?You keep looking at this from the customer's point of view; the customer
do you work for MS? why did you snipped my suggestion on how to deal with the issue FROM VENDOR SIDE and then you complain I don't look at it from vendor side?
quote from my email you responded to:
- statically link everything - provide your own shared libs (do not install in system dirs!) - have an experienced sysadmin set up the machine- develop portable software, do not depend on random quirks of kernels/libs
3 out of 4 are advices for a vendor (because the guy asked from the vendor perspective).
erik