Iamlost: / Note: Debian Desktop gets sort of there but even it is not the plug and play version needed to compete against the easy simplicity aka hide the complexity behind the curtain the general public gets from MSFT.
Yes, and that's a very relevant truth.
graeme: Plug and play is available, in exactly the same way and under the same circumstances as Windows - buy hardware that has it pre-installed.
Plug and play on Linux is a very different beast than Windows. Buying hardware that has it preinstalled? what, do you mean Linux? Windows? (didn't get what you mean). Windows enjoys a far more mainstream distribution of options regarding hardware and software than Linux, this is a tricky topic because Linux suppose to make lots of things work, even those that won't work on Windows, but that's not the point (it's easy to get lost on the little things while making a point), but the point is "plug and play".
Things on Linux work out of the box easily as Android stuff in the sense of "
if that thing is in the kernel or supported by the kernel, that's easy", as long as it gets dropped (and it will be) nightmares begin, like Windows? nope, on Windows you can install lots of things when plug and play fails, that's aside from automatic detection and download, I mean pure manual installation. Linux? can be a real pain, after you spend hours and hours following different tutorials and finding it doesn't work, and each tutorial becomes more complex and you get tired of it, but there is always the "
oh, but you should download the source and compile", well... then someone will tell you that it's your fault (kinda) because you don't use general supported hardware. Mm If not careful the same thing that happened on Software happens with drivers and distros: you get tired of the repetitive search, being told do this do that, then oh you didn't use X, and then "it's our fault" kind of... and you wonder "hey, I thought this was supposed to work out of the box", this is also addressed to drivers and plug and play, not to mention the tutorials might just work with VERY specific versions of Linux and distros.
What I do is: if it works, excellent, if it doesn't, I try very hard to kill my desire to make it work (because it's possible, it should and Linux shouldn't fail me) and just move on to something that works. If it's something not mine, I just tell them to give me their hardware for a while for testing and then give it back to them, I want to save dear people of trying dead ends if that was the case. Positively, some things work because someone decided to put effort on it, and sadly, many things stop working because the one working on it moved on, it was a project, or "
I did it because I needed it at the time", in many cases the source code is left there and nobody picks it up, adding more unfinished stuff to the list, or you find sources "in progress" that work partially, but it's not a matter of finding guilty ones, after all it's just as simple as many hardware manufacturers not really interested on keeping the drivers alive or creating specific drivers for Linux.
tangor: You're talking what you CAN do to make money, I'm talking what kind of apps MOST FOLKS WANT (ala Win/Mac stuff) and a coder/company that can deliver can make a PROFIT from.
That's also something I consider relevant. User base is important, as important as people who want the apps, and people who can pay in one way or another to make profit from it. Sometimes the last piece might be missing and people would still put effort on coding, but if the first two are not there... then it doesn't make any sense to work that hard.
graeme: I would have thought given that is is a site for webmasters most people would make money from developing software for servers.
Can't post details, I don't know enough about that, casually this year I've been reading more and more (and listening to interviews with the creators) about tools like React, Vue, Node, etc. Things that run on the server side or are an important part of the web ecosystem, I'm curios about what tools they used and the business model. Crowd-funding has been important, the creator of Vue explains himself he wasn't actually creating a product for sale but it became so huge he found the means to get paid to fully work on it and get many collaborators and users (those two factors are very important on Linux for things to take off) and Laravel was a huge factor that made the difference.
Many things in Linux are not paid by the users, instead it's used, and some companies decide to place the funds because they use it or their business model allows them to sell their services and support-services, it's... collateral kind of, not direct business.
graeme: I asked why people do not want to use Linux to develop websites and server software and your answer is that its not a good platform for developing Mac and Windows apps?
This is quite relevant, coding? ok, but developing websites and server tools also involves graphic design and we might fall back into the issue of preferred tools by artists. In many cases the same person is doing many jobs and needs everything installed on the same machine, in some cases it's diff people doing diff things, but again many times, the task of developing websites IS tied to creating content and the need for the tools for that, sadly many times this brings the beaten horse of "but you can use Gimp..." oh not again.
graeme: Absolutely not true, and not what I said. My point was that you seemed to have no problems with developing with obscure tools, so you would have had a really good experience with something more mainstream.
I cannot see how developing even with C is less progressive than developing with Basic and Pascal!
I tried to describe in detail. I'm not particular interested on coding on C, just as coding websites I have been far way more efficient (my tools) Perl based, I'm not interested on fully coding on PHP. There was some old thread around here where I asked a question and people told me to move out of Perl, it was Brett who jumped in talking about how somethings by efficiency absolutely have no comparison. Well sometimes it's a preference, sometimes it's efficiency, anyway the thing is we shouldn't have so many tools on a platform to end up again and again talking about Phyton and C (that's very common on developer forums, and hated by many, both the tools and the attitude), tried to explain that.
When I coded X app (cross platform) I did so on MacOS, and that tool was great enough that I could build the binaries on the Mac FOR MAC, and also the binaries for Windows on the same Mac. I liked that, and the final app worked, then coded the next app network based also for Mac and Windows. I know many times we need virtual machines or separate computers to build and test things, and many things will not work being OS
glitchy, that's fine, but the overall service and simplicity was well received, enough to say "
free vs paid?, ohhh free doesn't feel free, and paid feels effective", there are lots of articles and videos talking about how great Linux is if you don't value your money, I can't say 100 negative comments VS 50 positive make the negative more true, even if one is actually feeling those 100 and those 50, the overall result is what you feel it makes the difference. Some tools I tried worked great but I needed more time to explore in depth and I was getting tired, and then suddenly some thing didn't work perfect in terms of GUI and rendering... I would feel like "oh not again...".
But as said, in all positivism: cross platform development is something that I would really like to see discussed, but average, not so low level that the arguments are based on low level tools coding on a basement some app that nobody will ever see or use, and also not on the other extreme of low level apps used by big players who happen to have tons of developers, after all each of those extremes are building things that we won't ever see or use.
Office suites BTW made a lot of noise on Linux and saving lots of money on big corporations. More of that on the next post, stay tuned (Zzzzz).
Why not Linux?
