On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 11:53 PM, Kustaa Nyholm <kustaa.nyh...@planmeca.com> wrote: > Open Source and Free software will need to provide the > convenience of "AppStores" if they want to keep their > foot hold not to mention expand it.
Ubuntu is working toward that. On the other hand, I do not like Ubuntu Software center at all. I prefer Synaptic better and sometims use the command line apt. > In the same vein installation is something that most > user would be better off without, being a Mac user > I'm accustomed to just click on a web page link, > get a .dmg image, mount it by clicking and either > run the .app from there or drag it where I want it, > no installation no nothing. Typically takes about > 30 seconds, which is is about the attention span > of typical general population user, if it can't be > installed and tested in a matter of minutes, the > next app is just a download away, so why bother with > something that even difficult to install. This is > no small matter from the app developer point of view. It is no different for typical software for major Linux distros, you can use GUI or command line to install the packages if it is already packaged. The thing is the odd software like libusbx. Show me a dmg for libusbx (or libusb-1.0) if you can find one... Show me a few applications in dmg format which bundle libusb-1.0/libusbx if you can. I know one, Microchip's MPLAB X. Other than that, I do not know of any others. That is why I use Homebrew under Mac OS X. You have Fink and Macport for similar purpose. > As to Android, in my view, the preferred development > platform is Java and programming to the Android APIs > so this already mostly solves my concern. Libusb in > Android seems a bit moot as Android APIs already provide > more or less the same functionality built into the > platform freeing app developers from caring about it. > > It is an other matter if it is not technically possible, > or the task is otherwise too big to achieve binary > distribution in Linux world. > > Putting my app developer hat on I would be happy > with a solution that works for two or three main > stream distros, let the fringe compile from source. You can choose to support Debian/Ubuntu/Mint and that covers many user already. Adding Fedora/OpenSuse and probably you cover majority of the user already. > Having said that I would hope that the number of > distros in the world would get down and the pointless > and destructive profiliation and fragmentation would stop. There will be many distros and each play a niche. There are still many people who use the strange Gentoo distro or other source based distro (Linux from Stratch) who have enough time to care for building KDE/Gnome/etc from source. That is their choice and I respect their choice. I will think time should be better spend on other things myself... -- Xiaofan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb _______________________________________________ libusbx-devel mailing list libusbx-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/libusbx-devel
