Killer apps/"selling" points of FC and GNU/Linux

Avi Alkalay avibrazil at gmail.com
Fri Nov 26 14:57:15 UTC 2004


On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 15:26:53 +0100, Harald Hoyer <harald at redhat.com> wrote:
> Avi Alkalay wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:27:33 +0100, Kyrre Ness Sjobak
> > <kyrre at solution-forge.net> wrote:
> >
> >>On the server side things are looking better - as far as i can see,
> >>Linux is often the preferred platform here for developers to develop on,
> >>simply because it is the most widespread.
> >
> >
> > Unfortunatelly this is not true. I worked with several Windows
> > developers that were starting projects on Linux, and they couldn't
> > wait for the day they'll go back to Windows IDEs. Linux is a
> > wonderfull platform for developers as long as they have that
> > hacker-spirit, as we have :-). Linux drawbacks for developers are too
> > much configuration files to edit while deploying their software, like
> > add user access to tty on /etc/security/console.perms, or simply
> > activating a needed Apache module for their CGI. Oh, and configuration
> > files location and format differ from distro to distro, so all
> > deployments must be done by hand, with a human brain, and almost not
> > automations (they usally don't know sed, perl, rpm, etc, and probably
> > will not learn it). Also, the FHS is wonderful, but they don't know
> > it, so they ask "why /etc, why /bin, why /usr/bin ?".
> >
> > Microsoft's most killer apps are their IDEs and development
> > frameworks. Because they know how strategic is to have the developers
> > (killer and business apps) working for them.
> 
> Did you show them kdevelop??


Yes, and they don't really like it, compared to MS' tools.
I use KDeveloper. It is so so... has some annoying usability bugs.
To manage open source autoconfig source packages is a huge chalenge
for KDeveloper.

The most difficult part is packaging and deployment.
Windows developers don't know how to integrate their (killer) apps
into the OS. They are not aware of the FHS, they don't know how to
RPMize, every distribution has different approaches to /etc/sysconfig,
/etc/security stuff, etc. So the final experience is: "This Linux
stuff, too confusing and it doesn't work".

Just my impressions from the market and commercial development ecosystem....

Regards,
Avi




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