If you use Jabber just to talk to your AIM buddies, then you are defeating the whole purpose of the Jabber system. You're right, you might as well just use Trillian or Everybuddy.
Jabber, on the other hand, is an IM system. "Transports" allow you to communicate with other IM systems through Jabber, which can aid you in talking with your old buddies. However, the main reason to make the switch to Jabber is because it is a distributed network with an open protocol just like all other important Internet protocols. WWW is open, E-mail is open. Shouldn't IM be also?
By itself, Jabber is a decentralized network that operates almost exactly the same way e-mail does. Who cares about AOL and these other services? Dump AIM. Dump ICQ. Dump it all. Use transports like training wheels, but remember Jabber is where the future is. It is the way IM should have been all along. Grab a client at jabbercentral.com and get involved.
This is similar to the Jabber battle. "Windows Messenger" is going to be installed by default on 90% of the desktops out there in the near future. We need to win over users NOW, or everyone out there is going to get way too comfortable using the centralized Microsoft alternatives.
Btw, on topic, there was mention in the jabber.org forums of a Passport-like identification to layer that could be used over the already working decentralized Jabber network: Jident. This would be ideal IMO, and Jabber+Jident could be a perfect counter to Hailstorm+Passport.
Have a look at the Qt C++ GUI library from Trolltech. Qt is the basis of KDE development, and the library works 100% on Windows. doc.trolltech.com has a tutorial section with many example programs. Try making a few applications on Windows first, and then switch over to Linux. They recently released a non-commercial version of Qt/Windows, so check it out!
The transports that allow you to use AIM/MSN/ICQ defeat the purpose of using Jabber. Those services still have to be accessed the usual way, so if MSN goes down then it goes down for everybody. Transports are useful though, as they allow you to talk to people who haven't switched to Jabber yet.
ICQ's features and "user float" are client-specific. The trouble with Jabber clients is that most of them are not that developed. There is no reason they couldn't have these features in the future. I'm a big fan of the ICQ interface though, so I actually started developing a client myself, called Psi. I hope one day it can replace Licq.
Any business that heavily relies on IM should take a look at Jabber. Just look at the benefits:
In the Jabber world, a mass outage would never occur unless there was a problem with the Internet. With Jabber, if your server goes down then that doesn't affect the rest of us (just like if your mailserver went down).
Businesses should especially like this, because they can run their own company server, leaving them with nothing to worry about but their own network. And of course, unlike deploying a local ICQ server, and local Jabber server can talk with the rest of the world since Jabber is _supposed_ to operate decentralized like that.
No need to worry about a corrupt central corporation sniffing your conversations. No need to worry about a server going down that's not under your control. No proprietary protocols either, as Jabber's protocol is fully opened (see docs.jabber.org). Want to add new features? No problem. With its clean XML design, adding new tags is a breeze and won't break existing clients.
Also handy is you have control of the contact lists at the server. If someone gets hired into the business, the Jabber admin guy can just add the new person to everybody's list with some script. No need for all the employees to have to go through the add/authorization process with fellow workers.
Jabber is clearly the future of IM, for both business and home users (I envision a world where each ISP runs a Jabber server alongside the usual Mail servers). I just hope it gets widely adopted. People tend to use whatever MS hands them, and I dread that WinXP / MSN may have the majority of the world doing their IM through Microsoft and their central server. This is so clearly backwards when compared to any other core Internet system (WWW,Email,News).
Everyone should get involved with Jabber. Head over to jabbercentral.com and grab yourself a client. Advocate. Pitch in. Cross your fingers.
I should also add that KDE is probably always compiled with debugging enabled, to aid in bug catching. This easily doubles the size of the KDE libs and executables.
Konqueror - web browser
KMail - email app
KNode - news reader
KOrganizer/kab - pim
Kate - Powerful multi-file text editor (kinda like Textpad for windows)
Konsole - awesome console program. full history, and multiple tabbed sessions.
26 games
Lots of tray apps: system resource monitor, news ticker, external taskbar, WindowMaker dock support
Multiple desktops
AIM client
IRC client
VNC client
PPP dialer
Desktop Locking
Media player
User/System/Process management
Bunch of utilities: calculator, clipboard history, character selector, etc
Powerful theming, coded widget styles (shows true flexibility of KDE/Qt rendering)
KDM - KDE display manager, for setting up a thin client network.
There is also KDevelop and KOffice, which is part of a standard KDE installation.
I notice you mentioned XFce in a few of your replies to others. XFce is all well and good, and it's nice that it has a small memory footprint. However, you can't expect KDE to be that small. Look at the power of the kdelibs! Full url support throughout the system (open and save files from ftp within the text editor), shared HTML component (for KMail and Konqueror), shared addressbook, etc. It's also all written in C++, which means large programs (but, of course, small source code).
Linux / Open source has always been about taking the best of all worlds. While Apple users may still bicker about Microsoft stealing their UI (which Apple stole originally, but that's another story), the Linux/KDE/GNOME,etc folks don't give a rat's. They just take what's good. Who cares if something was on another system first? In a recent KDE mailing list comment, someone thought it would be cool if Konqueror had a sidebar like Mozilla and IE. So guess what? Now Konq has an optional sidebar. It all boils down to: "Why the hell not?"
Btw, the problems people have with Microsoft are not related to the look of Windows. Rather, it's about their proprietary code, licensing issues, etc.
The only real stability problems come from Javascript. Try turning it off and you should probably never encounter a problem. Don't worry though, the Javacript code is continually being improved, and I've heard good things about it in the new KDE2.2 Beta1.
Last time I checked, KDE came with more applications than any version of Windows ever has, and the apps are much more useful and stable too. Out of the box, KDE is a working system. With Windows 95, all you have is solitaire.
I have to ask: did you pay for your copy of Windows 2000? Most of my Windows-using friends have all upgraded from Win98 to Win2k, as it's the "in thing" to do. However, none of them own a legal copy.
My gut tells me this holds true for the majority of the/. crowd. And if you don't legally own a copy, it's hard to justify it as an alternative to Linux. It's sort of like the GIMP vs Photoshop wars. How many people actually paid for Photoshop? If you didn't pay for it, then the discussion is over.
How many home users here actually *own* Windows 2000? I certainly don't.. but then I don't use it either.:)
I only know about the University of California at Davis. The computer labs are almost entirely Unix (HP-UX / DEC running CDE), with a new block put in last year running Linux and KDE1. I would venture to guess that *nix is already the favorite at all CS labs, so making the small step to Linux isn't too difficult.
KDE is certainly nice, but for your average Joe Sixpack, it still isn't quite there
Actually, it is there. Heck, it's more than there. KDE is probably 10 times more configurable and stable than Windows, and it's not for just novices. Believe me, this "Joe Sixpack" you speak of doesn't care about such configurability. All he cares about is that clicking an X in the corner of a window causes it to close. I believe KDE is overqualified.
corporations already have a huge installed workforce already trained and familiar with Windows.
This is the real problem, as well as your Catch-22 about Linux software.
You should check out the changelog for Konqueror in KDE 2.2beta1. There is a plugin for HTML validation, a recursive downloader for offline browsing, and a DOM tree viewer (not exactly a "Link Manager", but maybe more powerful?).
Also present in 2.2 is the option to be prompted whenever a site attempts to use popups (the old popups checkbox has been replaced with 3 radio buttons: Allow/Ask/Deny). This way you can still have popups when you need them, and just click "No" whenever you don't. A ~15 line patch by yours truly. Especially funny is when you get the prompt after closing Konqueror. Pesky onunloads! *click*
Actually, being online in an airplane would allow you to communicate with people during a plane crash, something passengers normally can't do.
Imagine being in IRC and explaining to your friends that these are your last moments. Kinda freaky. You could start spouting your passwords, or leave a love note. Think of the things people wished they could say on the way down.
I actually first thought of this with cellphone text messaging, but the problem is you don't have signal (at least with ground-tower based service) until you are near ground. So if you were quick, you could fire off a "So long..." to one of your buddies just before impact.
With the 'net though, you could discuss the entire situation much sooner. Write entire emails.
Geez, maybe I should stop now. I have a 10 hour plane flight tomorrow after all...
...or you could just use one that's free and cross-platform already. [wxWindows]
You could, although you would have more power using Qt. I haven't used wxWindows, but what I do know about it is that it's a wrapper toolkit. This has advantages (app looks correctly on the target platform) but one big disadvantage is you have to work with the Least Common Denominator. I'd imagine you can't get real specific in your program because some widget or control may not exist on one of your target platforms. I believe wxWindows includes some of its own extra widgets (for those situations) but it means the ones that do exist are not extendable.
Qt solves this problem by working at the lowest level on each platform. All widgets are remade in Qt, from a color selector to a file dialog, so every widget is under your full control. It also mimics the native look of the target platform. This is one of the big powerful parts of Qt: Styles. Not only look, but the behavior as well can be changed. This is why Qt looks like an MFC app on Windows, SGI-like on SGI, and Aqua-ified on MacOS X. Insane? Maybe. But definitely powerful.
Sure, Qt is not free on Windows, but I believe paying for a license is worth it. There are many Trolltech customers who use Qt only on Windows simply because they think it is better than other Windows development alternatives! Maybe because it's easier to learn and maintain? I would agree, considering a "Hello, World" app in Qt is roughly 10 lines.
Anyway, use what works best for your project. I just wanted to point out that Qt is a pretty cool deal.
It doesn't matter if cellphone radiation is actually damaging. What matters is that these things will sell, simply because of public curiousity/fear/uncertainty/doubt (CFUD?).
There are other things that may not work, but people buy anyway, like health suppliments.
Also, why is there fat-free water? It must be better than regular water.
Excellent, I was hoping to get a reply from a developer.
1) Do you use Linux much? Have you used it for any game/non-game development? It is definitely capable of running games. Windows is only worthy of games because of the huge marketshare, not because it is a better gaming platform. It is also obvious that the Linux community wants games. Are you part of that community? Do you not agree?
2) Still, using OpenGL would make a Mac port easier. Choosing OpenGL over DirectX is mainly a portability decision. Do you not want your game to run on Mac either?
3) True. Any game worth its salt has its own GUI library. I meant to bring up Qt as a reference to application developers, broadening my argument for crossplatform programming to include all types of software. I must say Qt may be a good in-house tool at a game company though, for developing map editors, game editors, etc if you have a heterogenous development environment. It may encourage a crossplatform mindset in your company as well. Do any of your developers wish they could be working in Linux?
I understand what you mean though. It all comes down to whether or not you consider portability important, and whether or not it would turn a profit.
I totally agree. This even makes sense when combined with my other post in this thread. MacOS has a fairly low market share, just like Linux, but it has a better reputation as a desktop OS and so it gets lots of good commercial applications and games. No doubt these developers (like Adobe, Blizzard, etc) are interested in easy crossplatform development.
With SDL and OpenGL working on Mac, and Qt on its way there, companies may be very interested in utilizing these libraries/technologies for crossplatform Windows/Mac development. The kicker though is that these are also supported fully on Linux. If these libraries catch on in the Mac world, I'm fairly sure Linux will see lots of the same apps merely by side-effect.
That's why there is SDL. It uses DirectX on Windows and DRI on X (as well as many other graphics layers / OS's).
I think the problem with Windows developers in general is that they don't think of coding crossplatform in the first place. It's easy to understand why: they are taught DirectX and MFC, and Windows has a huge percent of the desktop market. Also, some games are coded so horribly (compare the duct-tape-that-is-EverQuest to any Blizzard product) that porting certain games look like they would be a nightmare.
On the other hand, I think Linux developers are more trained to code portably. With all the unix flavors out there, source portability is already a must. It also seems that these developers care about porting to Windows. Many apps for X are available on Windows (like a lot of the Gtk stuff), but not the other way around.
So Linux developers actually care about portability, but Windows developers do not. Maybe we can convince them to change their ways?
Surely the Windows developers out there don't thoroughly enjoy Windows-only programming, do they? I've used DirectX, and it was ludicrous. It isn't direct at all (Come on, DirectMusic? DirectPlay? Direct is just a buzzword..) and the classes are a mess. I haven't heard much good about MFC either, but I've heard only good about Qt (and I've used both).
Qt works on Windows. There's no reason to use MFC. Yes it does cost money, but aren't we talking about real game companies here? SDL works on Windows. There's no reason to use DirectX "directly" (whatever that means). You know how long it would take to port Windows apps/games to Linux that were all written in Qt and SDL? All of a recompile.
Seriously. The people whining and moaning are the ones using the OS. I rarely use Windows anymore, and so I have no reason to complain about it. Just switch if you don't like it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you use Jabber just to talk to your AIM buddies, then you are defeating the whole purpose of the Jabber system. You're right, you might as well just use Trillian or Everybuddy.
Jabber, on the other hand, is an IM system. "Transports" allow you to communicate with other IM systems through Jabber, which can aid you in talking with your old buddies. However, the main reason to make the switch to Jabber is because it is a distributed network with an open protocol just like all other important Internet protocols. WWW is open, E-mail is open. Shouldn't IM be also?
By itself, Jabber is a decentralized network that operates almost exactly the same way e-mail does. Who cares about AOL and these other services? Dump AIM. Dump ICQ. Dump it all. Use transports like training wheels, but remember Jabber is where the future is. It is the way IM should have been all along. Grab a client at jabbercentral.com and get involved.
-Justin
Psi - ICQ-style Jabber client.
Think FTP, HTTP and SMTP. Instant messaging needs to lose the we-rely-on-a-single-server complex
Uhm.. Jabber is just as distributed as email. Delivery is even based on DNS and MX records.
Use e-mail addresses as IM addresses, not a new ID per network
Fortunately Jabber uses "user@host" for identification, which means any sane ISP would make your email and Jabber account the same.
This is similar to the Jabber battle. "Windows Messenger" is going to be installed by default on 90% of the desktops out there in the near future. We need to win over users NOW, or everyone out there is going to get way too comfortable using the centralized Microsoft alternatives.
Btw, on topic, there was mention in the jabber.org forums of a Passport-like identification to layer that could be used over the already working decentralized Jabber network: Jident. This would be ideal IMO, and Jabber+Jident could be a perfect counter to Hailstorm+Passport.
No need for a book.
Have a look at the Qt C++ GUI library from Trolltech. Qt is the basis of KDE development, and the library works 100% on Windows. doc.trolltech.com has a tutorial section with many example programs. Try making a few applications on Windows first, and then switch over to Linux. They recently released a non-commercial version of Qt/Windows, so check it out!
The transports that allow you to use AIM/MSN/ICQ defeat the purpose of using Jabber. Those services still have to be accessed the usual way, so if MSN goes down then it goes down for everybody. Transports are useful though, as they allow you to talk to people who haven't switched to Jabber yet.
ICQ's features and "user float" are client-specific. The trouble with Jabber clients is that most of them are not that developed. There is no reason they couldn't have these features in the future. I'm a big fan of the ICQ interface though, so I actually started developing a client myself, called Psi. I hope one day it can replace Licq.
Get it at Jabbercentral.com
Any business that heavily relies on IM should take a look at Jabber. Just look at the benefits:
In the Jabber world, a mass outage would never occur unless there was a problem with the Internet. With Jabber, if your server goes down then that doesn't affect the rest of us (just like if your mailserver went down).
Businesses should especially like this, because they can run their own company server, leaving them with nothing to worry about but their own network. And of course, unlike deploying a local ICQ server, and local Jabber server can talk with the rest of the world since Jabber is _supposed_ to operate decentralized like that.
No need to worry about a corrupt central corporation sniffing your conversations. No need to worry about a server going down that's not under your control. No proprietary protocols either, as Jabber's protocol is fully opened (see docs.jabber.org). Want to add new features? No problem. With its clean XML design, adding new tags is a breeze and won't break existing clients.
Also handy is you have control of the contact lists at the server. If someone gets hired into the business, the Jabber admin guy can just add the new person to everybody's list with some script. No need for all the employees to have to go through the add/authorization process with fellow workers.
Jabber is clearly the future of IM, for both business and home users (I envision a world where each ISP runs a Jabber server alongside the usual Mail servers). I just hope it gets widely adopted. People tend to use whatever MS hands them, and I dread that WinXP / MSN may have the majority of the world doing their IM through Microsoft and their central server. This is so clearly backwards when compared to any other core Internet system (WWW,Email,News).
Everyone should get involved with Jabber. Head over to jabbercentral.com and grab yourself a client. Advocate. Pitch in. Cross your fingers.
-Justin
I should also add that KDE is probably always compiled with debugging enabled, to aid in bug catching. This easily doubles the size of the KDE libs and executables.
Konqueror - web browser
KMail - email app
KNode - news reader
KOrganizer/kab - pim
Kate - Powerful multi-file text editor (kinda like Textpad for windows)
Konsole - awesome console program. full history, and multiple tabbed sessions.
26 games
Lots of tray apps: system resource monitor, news ticker, external taskbar, WindowMaker dock support
Multiple desktops
AIM client
IRC client
VNC client
PPP dialer
Desktop Locking
Media player
User/System/Process management
Bunch of utilities: calculator, clipboard history, character selector, etc
Powerful theming, coded widget styles (shows true flexibility of KDE/Qt rendering)
KDM - KDE display manager, for setting up a thin client network.
There is also KDevelop and KOffice, which is part of a standard KDE installation.
I notice you mentioned XFce in a few of your replies to others. XFce is all well and good, and it's nice that it has a small memory footprint. However, you can't expect KDE to be that small. Look at the power of the kdelibs! Full url support throughout the system (open and save files from ftp within the text editor), shared HTML component (for KMail and Konqueror), shared addressbook, etc. It's also all written in C++, which means large programs (but, of course, small source code).
KDE is a poweful system, so it's going to be big.
Linux / Open source has always been about taking the best of all worlds. While Apple users may still bicker about Microsoft stealing their UI (which Apple stole originally, but that's another story), the Linux/KDE/GNOME,etc folks don't give a rat's. They just take what's good. Who cares if something was on another system first? In a recent KDE mailing list comment, someone thought it would be cool if Konqueror had a sidebar like Mozilla and IE. So guess what? Now Konq has an optional sidebar. It all boils down to: "Why the hell not?"
Btw, the problems people have with Microsoft are not related to the look of Windows. Rather, it's about their proprietary code, licensing issues, etc.
The only real stability problems come from Javascript. Try turning it off and you should probably never encounter a problem. Don't worry though, the Javacript code is continually being improved, and I've heard good things about it in the new KDE2.2 Beta1.
Last time I checked, KDE came with more applications than any version of Windows ever has, and the apps are much more useful and stable too. Out of the box, KDE is a working system. With Windows 95, all you have is solitaire.
I have to ask: did you pay for your copy of Windows 2000? Most of my Windows-using friends have all upgraded from Win98 to Win2k, as it's the "in thing" to do. However, none of them own a legal copy.
/. crowd. And if you don't legally own a copy, it's hard to justify it as an alternative to Linux. It's sort of like the GIMP vs Photoshop wars. How many people actually paid for Photoshop? If you didn't pay for it, then the discussion is over.
:)
My gut tells me this holds true for the majority of the
How many home users here actually *own* Windows 2000? I certainly don't.. but then I don't use it either.
-Justin
I only know about the University of California at Davis. The computer labs are almost entirely Unix (HP-UX / DEC running CDE), with a new block put in last year running Linux and KDE1. I would venture to guess that *nix is already the favorite at all CS labs, so making the small step to Linux isn't too difficult.
A peeve about your KDE remark:
KDE is certainly nice, but for your average Joe Sixpack, it still isn't quite there
Actually, it is there. Heck, it's more than there. KDE is probably 10 times more configurable and stable than Windows, and it's not for just novices. Believe me, this "Joe Sixpack" you speak of doesn't care about such configurability. All he cares about is that clicking an X in the corner of a window causes it to close. I believe KDE is overqualified.
corporations already have a huge installed workforce already trained and familiar with Windows.
This is the real problem, as well as your Catch-22 about Linux software.
You should check out the changelog for Konqueror in KDE 2.2beta1. There is a plugin for HTML validation, a recursive downloader for offline browsing, and a DOM tree viewer (not exactly a "Link Manager", but maybe more powerful?).
Also present in 2.2 is the option to be prompted whenever a site attempts to use popups (the old popups checkbox has been replaced with 3 radio buttons: Allow/Ask/Deny). This way you can still have popups when you need them, and just click "No" whenever you don't. A ~15 line patch by yours truly. Especially funny is when you get the prompt after closing Konqueror. Pesky onunloads! *click*
-Justin
You should take a look at Trolltech. They released their flagship product as GPL, and they're doing just dandy.
KParts and DCOP. Finished, done, working. Where have you been for the past year?
Actually, being online in an airplane would allow you to communicate with people during a plane crash, something passengers normally can't do.
Imagine being in IRC and explaining to your friends that these are your last moments. Kinda freaky. You could start spouting your passwords, or leave a love note. Think of the things people wished they could say on the way down.
I actually first thought of this with cellphone text messaging, but the problem is you don't have signal (at least with ground-tower based service) until you are near ground. So if you were quick, you could fire off a "So long..." to one of your buddies just before impact.
With the 'net though, you could discuss the entire situation much sooner. Write entire emails.
Geez, maybe I should stop now. I have a 10 hour plane flight tomorrow after all...
...or you could just use one that's free and cross-platform already. [wxWindows]
You could, although you would have more power using Qt. I haven't used wxWindows, but what I do know about it is that it's a wrapper toolkit. This has advantages (app looks correctly on the target platform) but one big disadvantage is you have to work with the Least Common Denominator. I'd imagine you can't get real specific in your program because some widget or control may not exist on one of your target platforms. I believe wxWindows includes some of its own extra widgets (for those situations) but it means the ones that do exist are not extendable.
Qt solves this problem by working at the lowest level on each platform. All widgets are remade in Qt, from a color selector to a file dialog, so every widget is under your full control. It also mimics the native look of the target platform. This is one of the big powerful parts of Qt: Styles. Not only look, but the behavior as well can be changed. This is why Qt looks like an MFC app on Windows, SGI-like on SGI, and Aqua-ified on MacOS X. Insane? Maybe. But definitely powerful.
Sure, Qt is not free on Windows, but I believe paying for a license is worth it. There are many Trolltech customers who use Qt only on Windows simply because they think it is better than other Windows development alternatives! Maybe because it's easier to learn and maintain? I would agree, considering a "Hello, World" app in Qt is roughly 10 lines.
Anyway, use what works best for your project. I just wanted to point out that Qt is a pretty cool deal.
Have fun!
-Justin
It doesn't matter if cellphone radiation is actually damaging. What matters is that these things will sell, simply because of public curiousity/fear/uncertainty/doubt (CFUD?).
There are other things that may not work, but people buy anyway, like health suppliments.
Also, why is there fat-free water? It must be better than regular water.
Excellent, I was hoping to get a reply from a developer.
1) Do you use Linux much? Have you used it for any game/non-game development? It is definitely capable of running games. Windows is only worthy of games because of the huge marketshare, not because it is a better gaming platform. It is also obvious that the Linux community wants games. Are you part of that community? Do you not agree?
2) Still, using OpenGL would make a Mac port easier. Choosing OpenGL over DirectX is mainly a portability decision. Do you not want your game to run on Mac either?
3) True. Any game worth its salt has its own GUI library. I meant to bring up Qt as a reference to application developers, broadening my argument for crossplatform programming to include all types of software. I must say Qt may be a good in-house tool at a game company though, for developing map editors, game editors, etc if you have a heterogenous development environment. It may encourage a crossplatform mindset in your company as well. Do any of your developers wish they could be working in Linux?
I understand what you mean though. It all comes down to whether or not you consider portability important, and whether or not it would turn a profit.
I totally agree. This even makes sense when combined with my other post in this thread. MacOS has a fairly low market share, just like Linux, but it has a better reputation as a desktop OS and so it gets lots of good commercial applications and games. No doubt these developers (like Adobe, Blizzard, etc) are interested in easy crossplatform development.
With SDL and OpenGL working on Mac, and Qt on its way there, companies may be very interested in utilizing these libraries/technologies for crossplatform Windows/Mac development. The kicker though is that these are also supported fully on Linux. If these libraries catch on in the Mac world, I'm fairly sure Linux will see lots of the same apps merely by side-effect.
-Justin
That's why there is SDL. It uses DirectX on Windows and DRI on X (as well as many other graphics layers / OS's).
I think the problem with Windows developers in general is that they don't think of coding crossplatform in the first place. It's easy to understand why: they are taught DirectX and MFC, and Windows has a huge percent of the desktop market. Also, some games are coded so horribly (compare the duct-tape-that-is-EverQuest to any Blizzard product) that porting certain games look like they would be a nightmare.
On the other hand, I think Linux developers are more trained to code portably. With all the unix flavors out there, source portability is already a must. It also seems that these developers care about porting to Windows. Many apps for X are available on Windows (like a lot of the Gtk stuff), but not the other way around.
So Linux developers actually care about portability, but Windows developers do not. Maybe we can convince them to change their ways?
Surely the Windows developers out there don't thoroughly enjoy Windows-only programming, do they? I've used DirectX, and it was ludicrous. It isn't direct at all (Come on, DirectMusic? DirectPlay? Direct is just a buzzword..) and the classes are a mess. I haven't heard much good about MFC either, but I've heard only good about Qt (and I've used both).
Qt works on Windows. There's no reason to use MFC. Yes it does cost money, but aren't we talking about real game companies here? SDL works on Windows. There's no reason to use DirectX "directly" (whatever that means). You know how long it would take to port Windows apps/games to Linux that were all written in Qt and SDL? All of a recompile.
Those are open standards, .doc is not.
Seriously. The people whining and moaning are the ones using the OS. I rarely use Windows anymore, and so I have no reason to complain about it. Just switch if you don't like it.