[osflash] Stop being Windows-oriented!

[Glen Pike]

I agree with Keith Peters on this - it's down to business and I guess 
Adobe have realised that the majority of people developing on Linux 
would be coders so this would be the first market that they satisfy...

Here is my take on Linux vs Windows situation:

I would consider Linux, but I don't think it is marketed as an 
alternative to Windows/Mac on the desktop - what I mean is that I know 
Linux is out there, because I have used it, but I don't know which 
flavour is going to be suitable because there are so many.

My use of Linux involved creating, maintaining & repairing webservers, 
databases and heavyweight server oriented applications and I got fed up 
of having to download and compile 6 different lib's just to get PHP 
image functions working, but Linux was the only machine that managed to 
still serve 75% of its websites whilst we patched all the software that 
had been wiped out when a hard disk dropped an entire platter - try that 
on Windows from a remote location.

In this arena I have found Windows is equally frustrating to work with 
so unless you are an uber geek with a deep understanding of these 
systems you are going to suffer. I am not a good 'sysadmin', but I have 
had to dive in and get my hands dirty because there was no-one else 
around to help.

I would choose Linux for enterprise / server applications everytime 
based on cost & more importantly my perception of it's reliability.

One thing that has seriously put me off Linux with the desktop side of 
things - again this is a perception - is only just starting to get good. 
It took me 2 days to get Gnome up and running on RH9 2 years ago and 
when I got it running, it looked only marginally better than Windows 3.1 
- that sucked.

The problem is that I still don't know any better because no-one is 
telling me or, showing me that Linux is probably miles better now. I am 
fairly lazy when switching my OS because although Windows is a pain in 
the a**, I have a million and one other things to learn about - adding 
learning a new OS to the equation would seriously hamper my development 
time and hence my ability to earn money.

If someone could demonstrate that I can transition over from Windows 
with only a slight bit of fuss, maintain my own computer without 
thinking about it and still use Thunderbird, Firefox, a nice tool like 
Flash Develop & Eclipse I would seriously think about switching. I am 
probably going to reach a fork in the road soon anyway because I have 
recently had the misfortune to experience Vista - on my partners new 
laptop. She now expects me to support this and it is only common sense 
that enables me to do the basic stuff because the muppets at MS have 
moved important things around so configuring Ethernet may be easy, but 
you have to find the properties page first, etc. If I am given the 
choice between Vista and Linux, I may opt for Linux, but I will still be 
stuffed for FLA graphics development, so may have to maintain 2 OS's, 
which annoys me again and detracts from the benefits of switching.

HTH, even though it is OT...

Glen

Martin Wood-Mitrovski wrote:
> I agree 100%
>
> About a month ago i finally had enough and moved to linux full time, id always 
> had a linux machine here for running apache / mysql and used it for various 
> other stuff, but i couldnt handle windows anymore for development. cmd is a joke 
> and cygwin just didnt cut it.
>
> now im running ubuntu and only use xp running under virtualbox so i can use the 
> Flash IDE to work with .fla's.
>
> id happily pay for decent software on linux, although how many people would I 
> cant say. I guess its a case of the chicken and the egg, if the software isnt 
> there people wont move and if the people arent there then the software wont move
> although what does give me some hope is seeing that Adobe have been putting some 
> work into FlexBuilder on linux and of course the flash player, so its obvious 
> its not being ignored, just not moving as fast as I would like.
>
> I was thinking that maybe this new wave of mini-computers (e.g sub-notebooks 
> like the Asus eee and OLPC XO-1) that come with linux installed will provide a 
> bigger incentive for the production of linux software. Thats the kind of 
> computer that I would buy for my daughter (when she is a little bit older)
>
> here's hoping :)
>
> martin.
>
> btw, dont know what terminal you use in ubuntu but i prefer xfce4-terminal over 
> any others. its worth a try :)
>
>
> Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote:
>   
>> We want freedom and high quality software.
>>     
>
>   
>> What do you think?
>>     
>
>
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>
>
>   

-- 

Glen Pike
01736 759321
www.glenpike.co.uk <http://www.glenpike.co.uk>

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