Distribution-neutral packages? Then you are looking for Autopackage. Autopackage is a distribution-neutral installation system for Linux designed for desktop software (mostly). It does automatic dependancy resolution and real dependancy checking (does not rely on a database like RPM).
We've recently changed our plans a little and we are near a feature freeze and 1.0 release now. 1.0 won't be perfect, it will just be a "it works, and works well". The really cool features like RPM/Deb/apt/yum integration is scheduled for post-1.0.
Please lend us your support. You don't have to be a coder to help us - writing documentation or just being a tester is also good. We're trying to increase our userbase, and therebefore hopefully also gain more developers to help us with writing code, so Linux can get a good cross-distribution installation system.
Huh? All apps on RedHat, Fedora and Mandrake have the same look by default. If you don't use any of the above distros, it's not hard to install the Bluecurve or Galaxy themes yourself.
It doesn't matter how many frames per second the graphics subsystem can draw if the apps all hog tons of memory and make the system swap like mad. Hardware acceleration is only noticable for apps that redraw a lot of have lots of animation. The average user couldn't care less whether his word processor window draws everything in 10 miliseconds or 2 miliseconds.
XP does crash. I use Windows XP. It shows a BSOD from time to time. And if I play an MMORPG in full screen, and the ZoneAlarm window pops up, it will completely lock the entire system - even Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work anymore. This is completely unacceptable, there should always be a way to kill misbehaving processes but WinXP doesn't provide this.
No dude, Windows is far from perfect in contrast to popular Slashdot believe. Repeat after me: Windows is NOT perfect!
Unlike all the other standards, this one standard is interoperable with all the others.
Make an Autopackage, and you can install it on RedHat, Fedora, Mandrake, Slackware, etc. etc. Autopackage is designed to be cross-distribution from the start.
I also read an email from a Wine developer who says that IE in Wine loads faster than Linux FireFox/Mozilla/Epiphany. Ask Mike Hearn about it, I didn't save the URL.
"What applications do you have in mind?"
Yes server apps are very good. But I'm talking about desktop apps. For unknown reasons apps like Galeon and gedit can take more than 2 seconds to load. And Gtk, although a good toolkit, can be a bit slow at some things (running X over the network for example). Gtk 2 on my old Pentium 233 is noticably *much* slower. Gtk 2 on my Athlon 1.4 Ghz feels smoother than Gtk 1 though.
I don't know about all the other MS apps but according to a friend of mine (who's a Wine developer), IE preloading libraries at Windows startup is an urban myth. IE loads so rediculously fast because it's just written with startup performance in mind. Some people at MS are very skilled.
It would be nice if more open source apps can be optimized more.
"You can easily remove IE. I can name five free utilities to do it off the top of my head."
And then many, many applications will break.
"I already knew that. It doesn't change the fact that there is no difference."
There is a difference. MS being a monopoly IS the difference. And the fact that IE can't be removed *without breaking tons of stuff* is also a difference.
"Does it mean KDE will remove its integration once it reaches a certain percentage of acceptance?"
Yes! If KDE has a monopoly on the desktop, and Konqueror is integrated so tightly to the core of the operating system that it can't be removed without breaking tons of stuff, they'd have the same problem. Same story for Apple, or any other company/organization.
"Why? Again, nobody is holding a gun to your head to use IE...are they?"
That isn't the point. The point is that competitors don't have a chance.
"As it is, Mozilla is slower, bloated, and doesn't have as simple an interface as IE."
Hello, can you honestly say Firefox is slower, bloated and doesn't have a simple interface? Or how about Opera if you're no Firefox fan?
"I'm sure you think it does because you're a Linux guy, but the entire rest of the world is a little different than the niche that is Slashdot."
And it's exactly because of this elitist zealous attitude that people mod you down as troll. If you think assumptions and insulting others will help you then I'm afraid you have no social skills or are just a big jerk.
"Netscape is what killed Netscape."
No doubt Netscape 4 sucked, but Firefox does not suck. It works better and faster than IE 6 in so many ways.
What about BeOS? It's a fast, stable and user friendly operating system. Yet it died off - BeOS wasn't able to make it ship with computers by default because the MS OEM licensing doesn't allow that. Or how about Apple? This much-praised operating system which is stable and extremely user friendly still don't have more than a few % market share.
Maybe you're looking for Autopackage. Autopackage is a cross-distribution installation system for Linux, mostly designed for desktop apps. With Autopackage it's very easy to create packages that automatically integrate with GNOME and KDE and support non-root installs.
We're close to 1.0. We've recently changed our plans a little to reach 1.0 earlier so we can have more users ==> which means more developers. Autopackage 1.0 will not be perfect, it will just be a "it works, and works well". The really cool features such as RPM/APT/YUM integration is scheduled for post-1.0.
Please lend your hand and support us. The more users/packagers we have, the better, because that means we'll probably also get more developers who can help us with the post-1.0 cool features and make Linux installation even better.
1. Konqueror can be removed without taking the entire system down. On Windows, you can remove the shortcuts for IE at most.
2. KDE and Linux don't have a monopoly. When you're a monopoly, the rules change (why do people *still* don't know this after all these years?). With great power comes great responsibility - Microsoft has great power, KDE does not.
"I don't see the big fucking deal. I run Windows XP at work yet--gasp--choose to run Firefox. Believe it or not, Microsoft isn't holding a gun to my head..."
Yeah that's great. How much % market share does Firefox have again? And that's the problem. As competitor, even though you can exist, the chance that you get a big enough market share is almost zero.
For example, you're the developer of BonchBrowser. BonOffice is smaller (only 500 KB!), faster (renders 10 MB HTML in 2 seconds), uses much less memory than IE (1 MB only), is 100% standards compliant, has popup and ad blocking, is secure, etc. etc. Can you get more than, say, 40% of the browser market share? I don't think so! IE is already installed on all Windows computers, people will not switch to BonchBrowser even if it really is better than IE. As competitor you simply has no chance to beat them no matter what you do, simply because MS has a monopoly.
Yeah right. I've seen tons of apps not written in MFC.
Norton AntiVirus uses a weird custom toolkit with gradients everywhere, totally inconsistant with the rest of the environment. Same story for ZoneAlarm, it looks totally out of the place. Not to mention other apps like Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger, etc.
"MFC still calls Win32."
And Gtk and Qt still call Xlib. What's your point?
"Microsoft is moving things over to.NET in Longhorn and replacing Win32. Your argument seems to fall a little flat. Win32 is the standard now, and.NET will be the Windows standard in 2006."
And the world will be filled with.NET apps, old legacy apps and new non-.NET apps, creating yet more inconsistancy. And mark my words: nobody in the Windows world will complain about the inconsistancies.
Oh yes, insulting someone will really convince people wouldn't it?
There is no 20 different environments. There are only 2 most popular environments: GNOME and KDE. GNOME for simplicity, KDE for power.
"Who the hell is going to write for your system if you have 20 different environments all half-adhering to some standard on a website?"
Didn't you just repeat the problem? "half-adhering to some standard"! Which means there wouldn't be a problem if they all 100% conform to a standard! Freedesktop.org standard are not "just some standards on a random website". They're the result of agreements between GNOME, KDE, and probably other parties.
When will you get it through your thick skulls that it's simply impossible to kill off alternatives? It can't be done! Advocating standards is far easier and better.
"But I'm saying that every year since 1999 has been "the year of linux desktop", so someone is pushing..."
Not everyone says that. I can roughly devide the community in 5 parts: 1. Conservatives (usually old-school Unix experts). 2. People who don't care. 3. People who are (more or less) happy with Linux right now but still want to see more improvements. I belong to this group. 4. People who keep pushing Linux on the desktop. These people are usually very vocal. 5. Zealots. Make no mistake, these people are a minority! They are however, very vocal.
"But what is the downside of this (especially on the linux desktop) is that my choices as a developer forces the user to make choices (for example choosing between kde and gnome). My choice of development tools should not end up dictating the look and feel of the program (ideally)."
Distributions like RedHat and Mandrake have unified themes so it doesn't matter what toolkit you use. Fortunately these two distributions are also among the most popular desktop distributions.
And we also have Qt-Gtk and Gtk-Qt (or whatever they're really called, I forgot their names). Qt-Gtk is a Qt theme which uses the Gtk to draw the user interface. Likewise, Gtk-Qt uses Qt to draw the user interface. If somebody integrates this stuff in GNOME and KDE properly, theme changes in KDE will automatically apply to Gtk apps too, and vice versa. I'm thinking about writing such a thing when I have time.
"Sadly, that is something that often happens to less experienced linux users, like me."
Huh? I've never, ever seen a KDE app refusing to start in GNOME or vice versa. Apps from one desktop work in another desktop, out-of-the-box. This has been the case ever since 1999 (and earlier), when I was using RedHat 6.2.
What exactly is your problem? Do you get any error messages?
"Those who like linux for the choices I realize are able to choose, and perhaps also very intelligent. Ordinary users however neither CAN nor WANT TO make any choices!"
They don't have to. Buy a Linux PC at Walmart and everything will work out-of-the-box. The user don't have to choose *anything* at all.
Or, if you're installing Linux yourself, click "Default install" and let the distributor take care of all the choices for you. Not having to choose is also a choice.
"And you are saying that if litestep was a bit more successful (say more than 1% of win desktops) that it would not hurt windows?"
Well, yes.
Windows Media Player is the default media player in Windows. WinAmp is very popular. WinAmp gives people choice. In what way did WinAmp hurt Windows? I don't hear anybody complaining! How does being able to choose between Fort, Renault, Peugot, Volkswagen, etc. hurt the car market?
"Every manual for the simplest of tasks would soon start with "now, depending on your windowmanager...""
Which wouldn't be necessary if all window managers are compatible and interoperable. Luckily more and mroe window managers are EWMH and ICCCM-compliant.
Again, the right solution is to make everything compatible and interoperable.
Windows drivers are not just files with some information, they are entire applications! Heck, the same is true for any driver under any kernel. The Windows kernel and the Linux kernel are fundamentally different. It's near impossible to make all Windows drivers work on Linux. Heck, even Microsoft didn't make Win9x drivers work on WinXP.
If you're an experienced programmer you'd know why it's nearly impossible. It's very difficult to explain it 100% clearly to a non-programmer, but it comes down to the fact that fundamental internal differences in kernel design makes it nearly impossible.
It's like trying to cross a cat and a dog. Cats and dogs can't make babies together. Not the best comparison but you get the idea.
Exactly. There's choice on the desktop area because people disagree! Forcing one implementation down everyone's throat will make about 50% of the userbase unhappy. Do you really want to pay that price just for the sake of avoiding potential confusing?
The top parent post is yet another example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem. What we need is interoperability and compatibility. Don't try to make a dictatorship, encourage effords like Freedesktop.org instead.
Luckily interoperability is improving more and more. I don't know about KDE but both GNOME 2.6 and ROX have adopted the Freedesktop.org MIME standard. All desktops have already adopted the Xdnd standard quite a while ago. KDE 3.0+ has adopted the clipboard standard. GNOME 2, and I believe KDE 3.2 too, have adopted the menu vFolder standard. This list goes on and on.
What people really want is to be able to write software that can integrate in every desktop. They want to write for one standard and work anywhere. That's exactly why we need interoperability and compatibility, not a single implementation.
This is a typical example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.
We don't need one implementation, we need implementations to be compatible and interoperable! Instead of trying to make a dictatorship, go support effords like Freedesktop.org.
GTK has C++ bindings and QT has C bindings, so it doesn't matter what language you use.
"The linux people need to understand that ONE half-assed product is better than the choice between TWO superb products."
What?! Being forced to use one car that breaks down every week is better than being able to choose between two cars that don't break down for years? Being forced to use DOS as a server OS is better than being able to choose between Linux and Solaris? You are heavily underestimating peoples' intelligence and their ability to choose.
Again, we need interoperability and compatibility, not a dictatorship.
How does this one more choice hurt Linux? XPde is not included in any distribution. Saying XPde will hurt Linux is like saying LiteStep will hurt Windows because it provides choice.
We don't need one desktop to replace them all. We need different desktops to be interoperable. Nobody in Windows land complains that there's more than one widget set (MFC vs VCL vs Qt vs pure Win32 API vs resource controls vs.NET WinForms vs whatever weird toolkits Photoshop, Norton AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm, etc. use), or that there are more than one way to do something (Win9x and XP don't exactly look like each other, lots of things changed).
You can't use CD-RW like a floppy disk. It's not "random access writable". And you can only write a CD-RW so many times before you can't use it anymore...
"AMD"
AMD CPUs are x86.
"Linux".............. Are you serious? Just look at this story from a day ago! People were massively modding Linux down. They said Linux and open source software in general have the worst user interfaces possible. One guy declared Linux as a "failure" and even got modded up. Furthermore, in every story about Linux vulnerabilities, people jump out and say Linux is insecure, and get modded up.
And now you suddenly jump out and say Linux is better than Windows?
"DVDs"
There are too many computer systems out there who don't have a DVD player. And DVD writers are still way too expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
My parents can use Linux. So what does that mean?
Distribution-neutral packages? Then you are looking for Autopackage. Autopackage is a distribution-neutral installation system for Linux designed for desktop software (mostly). It does automatic dependancy resolution and real dependancy checking (does not rely on a database like RPM).
We've recently changed our plans a little and we are near a feature freeze and 1.0 release now.
1.0 won't be perfect, it will just be a "it works, and works well". The really cool features like RPM/Deb/apt/yum integration is scheduled for post-1.0.
Please lend us your support. You don't have to be a coder to help us - writing documentation or just being a tester is also good.
We're trying to increase our userbase, and therebefore hopefully also gain more developers to help us with writing code, so Linux can get a good cross-distribution installation system.
Huh? All apps on RedHat, Fedora and Mandrake have the same look by default.
If you don't use any of the above distros, it's not hard to install the Bluecurve or Galaxy themes yourself.
Isn't that a DMCA violation?
It doesn't matter how many frames per second the graphics subsystem can draw if the apps all hog tons of memory and make the system swap like mad. Hardware acceleration is only noticable for apps that redraw a lot of have lots of animation. The average user couldn't care less whether his word processor window draws everything in 10 miliseconds or 2 miliseconds.
XP does crash. I use Windows XP. It shows a BSOD from time to time.
And if I play an MMORPG in full screen, and the ZoneAlarm window pops up, it will completely lock the entire system - even Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work anymore. This is completely unacceptable, there should always be a way to kill misbehaving processes but WinXP doesn't provide this.
No dude, Windows is far from perfect in contrast to popular Slashdot believe. Repeat after me: Windows is NOT perfect!
Unlike all the other standards, this one standard is interoperable with all the others.
Make an Autopackage, and you can install it on RedHat, Fedora, Mandrake, Slackware, etc. etc. Autopackage is designed to be cross-distribution from the start.
I also read an email from a Wine developer who says that IE in Wine loads faster than Linux FireFox/Mozilla/Epiphany. Ask Mike Hearn about it, I didn't save the URL.
"What applications do you have in mind?"
Yes server apps are very good. But I'm talking about desktop apps. For unknown reasons apps like Galeon and gedit can take more than 2 seconds to load.
And Gtk, although a good toolkit, can be a bit slow at some things (running X over the network for example). Gtk 2 on my old Pentium 233 is noticably *much* slower. Gtk 2 on my Athlon 1.4 Ghz feels smoother than Gtk 1 though.
I don't know about all the other MS apps but according to a friend of mine (who's a Wine developer), IE preloading libraries at Windows startup is an urban myth. IE loads so rediculously fast because it's just written with startup performance in mind. Some people at MS are very skilled.
It would be nice if more open source apps can be optimized more.
"You can easily remove IE. I can name five free utilities to do it off the top of my head."
And then many, many applications will break.
"I already knew that. It doesn't change the fact that there is no difference."
There is a difference. MS being a monopoly IS the difference.
And the fact that IE can't be removed *without breaking tons of stuff* is also a difference.
"Does it mean KDE will remove its integration once it reaches a certain percentage of acceptance?"
Yes! If KDE has a monopoly on the desktop, and Konqueror is integrated so tightly to the core of the operating system that it can't be removed without breaking tons of stuff, they'd have the same problem. Same story for Apple, or any other company/organization.
"Why? Again, nobody is holding a gun to your head to use IE...are they?"
That isn't the point. The point is that competitors don't have a chance.
"As it is, Mozilla is slower, bloated, and doesn't have as simple an interface as IE."
Hello, can you honestly say Firefox is slower, bloated and doesn't have a simple interface? Or how about Opera if you're no Firefox fan?
"I'm sure you think it does because you're a Linux guy, but the entire rest of the world is a little different than the niche that is Slashdot."
And it's exactly because of this elitist zealous attitude that people mod you down as troll. If you think assumptions and insulting others will help you then I'm afraid you have no social skills or are just a big jerk.
"Netscape is what killed Netscape."
No doubt Netscape 4 sucked, but Firefox does not suck. It works better and faster than IE 6 in so many ways.
What about BeOS? It's a fast, stable and user friendly operating system. Yet it died off - BeOS wasn't able to make it ship with computers by default because the MS OEM licensing doesn't allow that.
Or how about Apple? This much-praised operating system which is stable and extremely user friendly still don't have more than a few % market share.
Maybe you're looking for Autopackage.
Autopackage is a cross-distribution installation system for Linux, mostly designed for desktop apps. With Autopackage it's very easy to create packages that automatically integrate with GNOME and KDE and support non-root installs.
We're close to 1.0. We've recently changed our plans a little to reach 1.0 earlier so we can have more users ==> which means more developers.
Autopackage 1.0 will not be perfect, it will just be a "it works, and works well". The really cool features such as RPM/APT/YUM integration is scheduled for post-1.0.
Please lend your hand and support us. The more users/packagers we have, the better, because that means we'll probably also get more developers who can help us with the post-1.0 cool features and make Linux installation even better.
5) We win because this will shock all the anti-OSS MS zealots.
There are many differences:
1. Konqueror can be removed without taking the entire system down. On Windows, you can remove the shortcuts for IE at most.
2. KDE and Linux don't have a monopoly. When you're a monopoly, the rules change (why do people *still* don't know this after all these years?). With great power comes great responsibility - Microsoft has great power, KDE does not.
"I don't see the big fucking deal. I run Windows XP at work yet--gasp--choose to run Firefox. Believe it or not, Microsoft isn't holding a gun to my head..."
Yeah that's great. How much % market share does Firefox have again?
And that's the problem. As competitor, even though you can exist, the chance that you get a big enough market share is almost zero.
For example, you're the developer of BonchBrowser. BonOffice is smaller (only 500 KB!), faster (renders 10 MB HTML in 2 seconds), uses much less memory than IE (1 MB only), is 100% standards compliant, has popup and ad blocking, is secure, etc. etc.
Can you get more than, say, 40% of the browser market share? I don't think so! IE is already installed on all Windows computers, people will not switch to BonchBrowser even if it really is better than IE. As competitor you simply has no chance to beat them no matter what you do, simply because MS has a monopoly.
Yeah right. I've seen tons of apps not written in MFC.
.NET in Longhorn and replacing Win32. Your argument seems to fall a little flat. Win32 is the standard now, and .NET will be the Windows standard in 2006."
.NET apps, old legacy apps and new non-.NET apps, creating yet more inconsistancy. And mark my words: nobody in the Windows world will complain about the inconsistancies.
Norton AntiVirus uses a weird custom toolkit with gradients everywhere, totally inconsistant with the rest of the environment. Same story for ZoneAlarm, it looks totally out of the place. Not to mention other apps like Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger, etc.
"MFC still calls Win32."
And Gtk and Qt still call Xlib. What's your point?
"Microsoft is moving things over to
And the world will be filled with
Oh yes, insulting someone will really convince people wouldn't it?
There is no 20 different environments. There are only 2 most popular environments: GNOME and KDE. GNOME for simplicity, KDE for power.
"Who the hell is going to write for your system if you have 20 different environments all half-adhering to some standard on a website?"
Didn't you just repeat the problem? "half-adhering to some standard"! Which means there wouldn't be a problem if they all 100% conform to a standard!
Freedesktop.org standard are not "just some standards on a random website". They're the result of agreements between GNOME, KDE, and probably other parties.
When will you get it through your thick skulls that it's simply impossible to kill off alternatives? It can't be done! Advocating standards is far easier and better.
3:20pm: "Score: 1, Flamebait"
3:30pm: "Score: 2, Flamebait"
3:40pm: "Score: 3, Funny"
"But I'm saying that every year since 1999 has been "the year of linux desktop", so someone is pushing..."
Not everyone says that. I can roughly devide the community in 5 parts:
1. Conservatives (usually old-school Unix experts).
2. People who don't care.
3. People who are (more or less) happy with Linux right now but still want to see more improvements. I belong to this group.
4. People who keep pushing Linux on the desktop. These people are usually very vocal.
5. Zealots. Make no mistake, these people are a minority! They are however, very vocal.
"But what is the downside of this (especially on the linux desktop) is that my choices as a developer forces the user to make choices (for example choosing between kde and gnome). My choice of development tools should not end up dictating the look and feel of the program (ideally)."
Distributions like RedHat and Mandrake have unified themes so it doesn't matter what toolkit you use. Fortunately these two distributions are also among the most popular desktop distributions.
And we also have Qt-Gtk and Gtk-Qt (or whatever they're really called, I forgot their names). Qt-Gtk is a Qt theme which uses the Gtk to draw the user interface. Likewise, Gtk-Qt uses Qt to draw the user interface. If somebody integrates this stuff in GNOME and KDE properly, theme changes in KDE will automatically apply to Gtk apps too, and vice versa.
I'm thinking about writing such a thing when I have time.
"Sadly, that is something that often happens to less experienced linux users, like me."
Huh? I've never, ever seen a KDE app refusing to start in GNOME or vice versa. Apps from one desktop work in another desktop, out-of-the-box. This has been the case ever since 1999 (and earlier), when I was using RedHat 6.2.
What exactly is your problem? Do you get any error messages?
"Those who like linux for the choices I realize are able to choose, and perhaps also very intelligent. Ordinary users however neither CAN nor WANT TO make any choices!"
They don't have to. Buy a Linux PC at Walmart and everything will work out-of-the-box. The user don't have to choose *anything* at all.
Or, if you're installing Linux yourself, click "Default install" and let the distributor take care of all the choices for you.
Not having to choose is also a choice.
"And you are saying that if litestep was a bit more successful (say more than 1% of win desktops) that it would not hurt windows?"
Well, yes.
Windows Media Player is the default media player in Windows. WinAmp is very popular. WinAmp gives people choice. In what way did WinAmp hurt Windows? I don't hear anybody complaining!
How does being able to choose between Fort, Renault, Peugot, Volkswagen, etc. hurt the car market?
"Every manual for the simplest of tasks would soon start with "now, depending on your windowmanager...""
Which wouldn't be necessary if all window managers are compatible and interoperable. Luckily more and mroe window managers are EWMH and ICCCM-compliant.
Again, the right solution is to make everything compatible and interoperable.
Windows drivers are not just files with some information, they are entire applications! Heck, the same is true for any driver under any kernel.
The Windows kernel and the Linux kernel are fundamentally different. It's near impossible to make all Windows drivers work on Linux. Heck, even Microsoft didn't make Win9x drivers work on WinXP.
If you're an experienced programmer you'd know why it's nearly impossible. It's very difficult to explain it 100% clearly to a non-programmer, but it comes down to the fact that fundamental internal differences in kernel design makes it nearly impossible.
It's like trying to cross a cat and a dog. Cats and dogs can't make babies together. Not the best comparison but you get the idea.
That command doesn't work. Try it. Bash doesn't support globs like that.
Exactly. There's choice on the desktop area because people disagree! Forcing one implementation down everyone's throat will make about 50% of the userbase unhappy. Do you really want to pay that price just for the sake of avoiding potential confusing?
The top parent post is yet another example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.
What we need is interoperability and compatibility. Don't try to make a dictatorship, encourage effords like Freedesktop.org instead.
Luckily interoperability is improving more and more. I don't know about KDE but both GNOME 2.6 and ROX have adopted the Freedesktop.org MIME standard. All desktops have already adopted the Xdnd standard quite a while ago. KDE 3.0+ has adopted the clipboard standard. GNOME 2, and I believe KDE 3.2 too, have adopted the menu vFolder standard. This list goes on and on.
What people really want is to be able to write software that can integrate in every desktop. They want to write for one standard and work anywhere.
That's exactly why we need interoperability and compatibility, not a single implementation.
This is a typical example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.
We don't need one implementation, we need implementations to be compatible and interoperable! Instead of trying to make a dictatorship, go support effords like Freedesktop.org.
GTK has C++ bindings and QT has C bindings, so it doesn't matter what language you use.
"The linux people need to understand that ONE half-assed product is better than the choice between TWO superb products."
What?! Being forced to use one car that breaks down every week is better than being able to choose between two cars that don't break down for years?
Being forced to use DOS as a server OS is better than being able to choose between Linux and Solaris?
You are heavily underestimating peoples' intelligence and their ability to choose.
Again, we need interoperability and compatibility, not a dictatorship.
How does this one more choice hurt Linux? XPde is not included in any distribution. Saying XPde will hurt Linux is like saying LiteStep will hurt Windows because it provides choice.
.NET WinForms vs whatever weird toolkits Photoshop, Norton AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm, etc. use), or that there are more than one way to do something (Win9x and XP don't exactly look like each other, lots of things changed).
We don't need one desktop to replace them all. We need different desktops to be interoperable.
Nobody in Windows land complains that there's more than one widget set (MFC vs VCL vs Qt vs pure Win32 API vs resource controls vs
"CD-RW"
..............
You can't use CD-RW like a floppy disk. It's not "random access writable". And you can only write a CD-RW so many times before you can't use it anymore...
"AMD"
AMD CPUs are x86.
"Linux"
Are you serious? Just look at this story from a day ago! People were massively modding Linux down. They said Linux and open source software in general have the worst user interfaces possible. One guy declared Linux as a "failure" and even got modded up.
Furthermore, in every story about Linux vulnerabilities, people jump out and say Linux is insecure, and get modded up.
And now you suddenly jump out and say Linux is better than Windows?
"DVDs"
There are too many computer systems out there who don't have a DVD player. And DVD writers are still way too expensive.
"SSH"
Practically unheard of outside the Unix world.
"LCDs"
LCDs are way more expensive than CRTs.
"Windows XP"
Try running XP on that old 386.
You can drag & drop burn a CD. In GNOME, start a Nautilus window. Click Go->CD Creator. Drag & drop all the files you want and click Write CD. Done.