how can you determine relevance while being impartial?
Well condoms are really not relevant to sexual education from a religious nut point of view. I mean sex eduction really just means telling them not to do it....
How many people would even notice. If they have a botnet node running on their machine do you really think they are going to notice if you screw it up more?
I think it is fairly safe to say the majority of the linux desktop is focused on 2 or 3 big distros. Everyone else is using a distro where they don't mind the challenge of getting the product to work in a unsupported fashion.
I'd think that if you targeted ubuntu, fedora, and maybe suse you would hit a large portion of the desktop. Plus if enough good commercial apps were targeting a single distro, that might make other distros adopt the locations, versions, and package management of that distro, or in the very least, make more users switch to that distro.
You could just make your installer install everything you need in a single folder and ignore the majority of the OS (a waste of space, but doable). Or even list a list of requirements and your own installer (must have libblah version 1.2+ etc).
However, I think my approach of treating each distro like a separate OS is good in the long run. Personally though, I use linux mostly in the server space so I really don't care. I use OSX on the desktop.
That is because of how you and your developers see linux.
Linux is not an operating system. No one runs linux on their computer. You can't make software for linux.
Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian on the other hand are operating systems. You can make software that runs on Ubuntu. If you think about developing software in this manner, then it becomes really easy to target an OS.
Pick one, two, or maybe three of the most popular distro's and support those. If your product is open source, then other distro's can build their own packages. If your product is commercial, you can release packages for the distro's you support and the rest are unsupported.
Big companies do this all the time. Sungard (a huge software company in education) will only let you run their software on Redhat, solaris, and windows (via cygwin no less!). Sure, I could most likely get their software to run on Ubuntu, and I damn sure can get it to run on CentOS, but if I want them to support me and provide easy packages and instructions, it has to be Redhat, solaris, or windows.
I think we need to get out of the idea of calling them distributions and calling linux an operating system. Instead let's call it the Ubuntu Operating system powered by linux or the Fedora Operating system powered by linux. Then you won't need to decided if you want to support 'linux'. You will need to decide if you want to support Ubuntu.
Windows and OSX developers do this all the time. Will my app still support windows 98? XP? Vista? 2003 server? Do I want to support OSX 10.4? 10.5? PowerPC? It's not exactly the same, but it's the same decisions.
My mom's computer 'died'. Of course she never listens to me and never made any backups. She called a local support company and they wanted to reinstall windows. I drove out and tried to fix it. Attempting all the normal windows fixes provided no help. I could not get the computer to boot.
The obvious solution was to format and reinstall windows (as if that is a solution). However, she would lose all her data! So a ubuntu CD later I had all her important data backed up to a USB drive.
I would have tried to talk her into linux, but she uses quickbooks and excel for her business and I'm not really in the mood to try to replace such stuff, and if something went wrong, she could lose money for days until I could get time to fix it. At least with windows she can always pay someone to fix it locally.
You should take your phone in for support. I've never had my phone require a reboot. In fact, besides updating the firmware/OS, I've never shut my iphone off.
Yea, I wouldn't want to try to run applications from a partition mounted with it. But to write some documents, it suffices.
I personally took the lazy way out. I have an router with a USB port sharing a 1tb disk via samba.
Exactly. My company has used OpenVPN for a long time. Recently I saw their nice pay product and convinced my boss that the features it offered was worth it (wasn't a hard sell at all). Now we have bought 20 user licenses of OpenVPN.
It allowed us to give back, and still look good to the business office.
Sadly I could never get the latest version to work on ubuntu the last time I tried. Too many errors and not enough time to figure out what was wrong. We ended up going with spiceworks (which required a windows server:-( )
I'd totally help test and debug. I've not done any professional work in C/C++ and I've never done any video/audio work.
I dont' want to see VLC die. It's one of my favorite applications.
I would be glad to help, but sadly I have no experience developing multimedia applications and jumping into would likely result in a big waste of time for all involved.
If they just need someone to compile in xcode and bug test, I'm all over it.
What about the gentoo user who uses ubuntu because he just wants to Do work on his computer and not work on his computer?
I used Gentoo for years. Now I use ubuntu and I can do what i want to do with my computer without spending a lot of time getting my computer ready to do what I want to do.
Maybe it's people borrowing the game.
Fake example:
I beat Dragon Age, my friend wanted to play it. I gave him my copy to use. I can not play while he has my copy, but he made a EA account and got the DLC so he could play. Now we have 2 times DLC for 1 copy.
Hey, i'm not saying a package manager is not a good idea (which is what chrome does on ubuntu, it adds to your apt sources)
I'm just saying it's better to have a application for all your google apps, then each app check for it's own updates. Its even better if that app doesn't run as a daemon, but runs only when you open a google application.
The advantage of googles is that you can use 1 updater for every google product.
Not that it makes it a good thing.
What they should do is install an updater and have each one of their products call that updater to run while you are using a google app.
That way it's not running when no google products are open. Although in my case there is always at least one google product running.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't make sure your treated like a professional, then you won't get paid like a professional.
how can you determine relevance while being impartial?
Well condoms are really not relevant to sexual education from a religious nut point of view. I mean sex eduction really just means telling them not to do it....
Granted, my spambox has hundreds of messages in it, but I never see them. I haven't had a false positive either.
if no one ever sees the spam, what is the point of sending it?
I'm surprised spam is really still an issue. I have not seen a spam message in m personal or work email accounts in at least a year.
It all stopped once we moved our mail to google.
How many people would even notice. If they have a botnet node running on their machine do you really think they are going to notice if you screw it up more?
I think it is fairly safe to say the majority of the linux desktop is focused on 2 or 3 big distros. Everyone else is using a distro where they don't mind the challenge of getting the product to work in a unsupported fashion.
I'd think that if you targeted ubuntu, fedora, and maybe suse you would hit a large portion of the desktop. Plus if enough good commercial apps were targeting a single distro, that might make other distros adopt the locations, versions, and package management of that distro, or in the very least, make more users switch to that distro.
You could just make your installer install everything you need in a single folder and ignore the majority of the OS (a waste of space, but doable). Or even list a list of requirements and your own installer (must have libblah version 1.2+ etc).
However, I think my approach of treating each distro like a separate OS is good in the long run. Personally though, I use linux mostly in the server space so I really don't care. I use OSX on the desktop.
What I still don't understand is why BSD didn't fill the void that linux filled. Just because of the permissive license?
That is because of how you and your developers see linux.
Linux is not an operating system. No one runs linux on their computer. You can't make software for linux.
Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian on the other hand are operating systems. You can make software that runs on Ubuntu. If you think about developing software in this manner, then it becomes really easy to target an OS.
Pick one, two, or maybe three of the most popular distro's and support those. If your product is open source, then other distro's can build their own packages. If your product is commercial, you can release packages for the distro's you support and the rest are unsupported.
Big companies do this all the time. Sungard (a huge software company in education) will only let you run their software on Redhat, solaris, and windows (via cygwin no less!). Sure, I could most likely get their software to run on Ubuntu, and I damn sure can get it to run on CentOS, but if I want them to support me and provide easy packages and instructions, it has to be Redhat, solaris, or windows.
I think we need to get out of the idea of calling them distributions and calling linux an operating system. Instead let's call it the Ubuntu Operating system powered by linux or the Fedora Operating system powered by linux. Then you won't need to decided if you want to support 'linux'. You will need to decide if you want to support Ubuntu.
Windows and OSX developers do this all the time. Will my app still support windows 98? XP? Vista? 2003 server? Do I want to support OSX 10.4? 10.5? PowerPC? It's not exactly the same, but it's the same decisions.
My mom's computer 'died'. Of course she never listens to me and never made any backups. She called a local support company and they wanted to reinstall windows. I drove out and tried to fix it. Attempting all the normal windows fixes provided no help. I could not get the computer to boot.
The obvious solution was to format and reinstall windows (as if that is a solution). However, she would lose all her data! So a ubuntu CD later I had all her important data backed up to a USB drive.
I would have tried to talk her into linux, but she uses quickbooks and excel for her business and I'm not really in the mood to try to replace such stuff, and if something went wrong, she could lose money for days until I could get time to fix it. At least with windows she can always pay someone to fix it locally.
Wait, seriously? no lspci out of the box? WTF...
You should take your phone in for support. I've never had my phone require a reboot. In fact, besides updating the firmware/OS, I've never shut my iphone off.
Yea, I wouldn't want to try to run applications from a partition mounted with it. But to write some documents, it suffices. I personally took the lazy way out. I have an router with a USB port sharing a 1tb disk via samba.
As I said previously, this is a great teaching tool for any age.
Scratch is a awesome teaching tool. I've used it to help college level kids get their first start into program during the 100 level courses.
Not if you use MacFUSE
Exactly. My company has used OpenVPN for a long time. Recently I saw their nice pay product and convinced my boss that the features it offered was worth it (wasn't a hard sell at all). Now we have bought 20 user licenses of OpenVPN. It allowed us to give back, and still look good to the business office.
Sadly I could never get the latest version to work on ubuntu the last time I tried. Too many errors and not enough time to figure out what was wrong. We ended up going with spiceworks (which required a windows server :-( )
Hmm, I might be able to help more then I thought then...
I'd totally help test and debug. I've not done any professional work in C/C++ and I've never done any video/audio work. I dont' want to see VLC die. It's one of my favorite applications.
I would be glad to help, but sadly I have no experience developing multimedia applications and jumping into would likely result in a big waste of time for all involved. If they just need someone to compile in xcode and bug test, I'm all over it.
except for one being a GUI....
What about the gentoo user who uses ubuntu because he just wants to Do work on his computer and not work on his computer? I used Gentoo for years. Now I use ubuntu and I can do what i want to do with my computer without spending a lot of time getting my computer ready to do what I want to do.
Maybe it's people borrowing the game. Fake example: I beat Dragon Age, my friend wanted to play it. I gave him my copy to use. I can not play while he has my copy, but he made a EA account and got the DLC so he could play. Now we have 2 times DLC for 1 copy.
Hey, i'm not saying a package manager is not a good idea (which is what chrome does on ubuntu, it adds to your apt sources) I'm just saying it's better to have a application for all your google apps, then each app check for it's own updates. Its even better if that app doesn't run as a daemon, but runs only when you open a google application.
The advantage of googles is that you can use 1 updater for every google product. Not that it makes it a good thing. What they should do is install an updater and have each one of their products call that updater to run while you are using a google app. That way it's not running when no google products are open. Although in my case there is always at least one google product running.