This is the biggest problem with Linux.
The applications that are being developed suck. I'm sorry, but you guys who are developing for Linux need to go and learn a little about quality assurance and documentation. Oh there are some very powerful applications out there and if you can figure out how they work, then you might get something done on them.
The really annoying things are the small attention to detail items. Things like tabbing through text entry fields. For instance, you an interface that asks you to fill out five items. OK great, I start down the list, fill in the first, then hit tab, and... hey what the heck, I just jumped to number 5? OK enter number 5 and hit tab, what? It submitted the form FROM A TAB!?!?!
YOu see what I am getting at? Spend some time and test your code. There are many things you can complain about MS about, but one thing for sure, the applications you get are well tested and work. THey also have the expected result, unless of course you download something open source (no one said Linux Open source developers have a corner on the quality deficiency department). Unfortunately, in Linux you don't have as much choice in the matter.
Here is the crux of the problem though, as long as the requirement is that these applications are open source, then Linux will never grow as there is no market value to do it. All you can really sell is support at that point. Anything seem odd to you about that?
"I'll give you the application for free, but charge you for supporting it, nevermind that I created it so convuluted and inadequate that only a Master's of Computer Science major can understand it"
Slashdot Mirror
This is the biggest problem with Linux. The applications that are being developed suck. I'm sorry, but you guys who are developing for Linux need to go and learn a little about quality assurance and documentation. Oh there are some very powerful applications out there and if you can figure out how they work, then you might get something done on them. The really annoying things are the small attention to detail items. Things like tabbing through text entry fields. For instance, you an interface that asks you to fill out five items. OK great, I start down the list, fill in the first, then hit tab, and... hey what the heck, I just jumped to number 5? OK enter number 5 and hit tab, what? It submitted the form FROM A TAB!?!?! YOu see what I am getting at? Spend some time and test your code. There are many things you can complain about MS about, but one thing for sure, the applications you get are well tested and work. THey also have the expected result, unless of course you download something open source (no one said Linux Open source developers have a corner on the quality deficiency department). Unfortunately, in Linux you don't have as much choice in the matter. Here is the crux of the problem though, as long as the requirement is that these applications are open source, then Linux will never grow as there is no market value to do it. All you can really sell is support at that point. Anything seem odd to you about that? "I'll give you the application for free, but charge you for supporting it, nevermind that I created it so convuluted and inadequate that only a Master's of Computer Science major can understand it"