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Why are Free-Desktop Developers Wedded to Linux?
An anonymous reader wonders: "We have been hearing promising predictions like 'This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop' for the last decade. However, the Linux of today seems to be as far away as ever from realizing the expectations of mass adoption we once had for it, without significant growth in home usage since the late 90s. Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third of Firefox's end user uptake over a much longer time-frame, there are deficiencies with the direction the GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/KDE system has taken. Of course, almost all free software and desktop efforts and development remain unquestioningly oriented around Linux.
Other free-desktop operating system projects which take different and innovative approaches like ReactOS, AROS, Mona and Syllable remain comparatively starved of developers and interest. An often cited reason for using a non-Microsoft OS is to avoid a monoculture, but free-desktop efforts have created a total monoculture around developing and promoting Linux, despite a decade of failure in supplanting Microsoft's proprietorial OSes with it. Why are free-desktop developers neglecting to consider an alternative to the penguin?"
This is simple. It would cost too much to develop free software on the MS platform. Just think of all the time you will spend working around stability issues and support problems. Then you have to figure out all the undocumented API's and hidden functionality. On top of that, Windows doesn't have half the support, libraries, and code that Linux/FreeBSD has. You have to even _pay_ for the stinking OS to program free software on it.
Why would you want to program free software on something that is not free to develop on?
The above is not worth reading.
Sorry, this simply isn't true. To get Windows to a point where I can use it, it's generally a four-hour process, and then gradual tweaking of things over the next few weeks.
Linux is about a four-hour process too, for just the basic installation. But getting it to a point where I can use it is far more involved. I've had to edit XF86Config files to get my desktop how I want it, locate and install special codecs for mplayer, edit httpd.conf for my web server. For a novice, each of these things is about half a day of researching the problems and playing around with different configuration options. Even now that I've done them, I still have to refresh my memory on the dozens of different configuration file formats if I ever have to dive into them again.
Windows *is* easier to use. Learn one interface (Next->Typical Install->Next->Next->Finish->Start Menu->All Programs->Click the program name), and you've learned 90% of what is involved in installing and configuring new software. For someone who's never used a computer before, maybe that is a half-day process as well. But Linux has different install interfaces every way you turn, and special cases out the yin-yang (not Linux' fault most of the time due to proprietary formats or patent issues, but that doesn't make the cases any less special)
Maybe it's changed in the two years since my last install, but I doubt it.
Bottom line - For a lot of things Linux is, more stable, more powerful, offers more fine control, and is simply a better OS for developers and sysadmins.
But ease of use? Forget about it.
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