What Dropbox Dropping Linux Support Says (techrepublic.com)

Jack Wallen, writing for TechRepublic: For a company to support Linux, they have to consider supporting: Multiple file systems, multiple distributions, multiple desktops, multiple init systems, multiple kernels. If you're an open source developer, focusing on a single distribution, that's not a problem. If you're a company that produces a product (and you stake your living on that product), those multiple points of entry do become a problem. Let's consider Adobe (and Photoshop). If Adobe wanted to port their industry-leading product to Linux, how do they do that? Do they spend the time developing support for ext4, btrfs, Ubuntu, Fedora, GNOME, Mate, KDE, systemd? You see how that might look from the eyes of any given company?

It becomes even more complicated when companies consider how accustomed to the idea of "free" (as in beer) Linux users are. Although I am very willing to pay for software on Linux, it's a rare occasion that I do (mostly because I haven't found a piece of must-have software that has an associated cost). Few companies will support the Linux desktop when the act of supporting means putting that much time and effort into a product that a large cross-section of users might wind up unwilling to pay the price of admission. That's not to say every Linux user is unwilling to shell out the cost for a piece of software. But many won't.

Comments

Why is the FS a problem?

[Tomahawk]

Surely the OS is providing standard access to every FS, so from an application perspective everything looks the same. So why is it a problem for applications to support ext4 and btrfs when, via the OS, they should look the same?

fopen() will still work, regardless, surely... no?

Re:Why is the FS a problem?

[marcelus]

I think that lower-level calls may be necessary to ensure a seamless performance. I don't know for Linux (where file locking rules are different), but as a Windows Dropbox user, I find it *very* nice that I can work on big Photoshop files, save them often and *never* have Dropbox get in the way by locking the file (and, furthermore, Dropbox only uploads or downloads chunks of the file that have changed) Google Drive, on the other hand, is a PITA when it comes to this: I was using it before and saving files often resulted in Photoshop complaining... a lot! (Google Drive is OK for backups or very small files, though) It might be that the naive approach of using posix-level calls is not really enough Just my $0.02

Are you retarded?

[dnaumov]

Why would an image editing program give 2 shits about: ext4, btrfs, GNOME, Mate, KDE and systemd?