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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