Ok, I am not sure if this is mentioned already in the thread because I didn't read the whole thing ("freesoftware zealots blablabla"). There's one problem that I've experienced with distributing precompiled linux binaries. When you compile your app you might be using way different libraries that the user doesn't have or can't get (older or too new versions). It's a bit pain in the ass if you have a lot of library depencies.

That's why I didn't bother with distributing my game as a binary anymore (it's way easier to distribute just the source code).

And, if you release your IDE I can atleast try it out. I am currently using KDevelop and autotools etc. are really messy. I found SCons very good solution. It's way better than make and a lot cleaner (it uses python). You might not want to create your own replacement for autotools but use something already existing (Ant, Scons).

Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
On a different note, I don't see Richard and Linus as visionaries or leaders. They're just reasonably intelligent hackers (no better than thousands of others) that happened to be in the right place at the right time. The rest is inertia.

Wow, gives the guys (Linus at least) some credit please; Linux is a very impressive piece of work.

Quote:
The fact that linux is still stuck with crappy GUI (from user experience as well as development perspective),

GTK, QT and wxWindows are very mature cross-platform GUI toolkits. QT especially has excellent development tools. KDE and Gnome look very nice and their GUIs act just like you'd expect. I don't see how you can call them "crappy". Windows programming has recently become a lot nicer due to .NET, but just a couple of years ago the only choice you had was to work with the disgusting Win32/MFC libraries.

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obsolete development tools and lack of any coherent API standards where they're necessary speaks for itself.

Just because Linux doesn't have a Microsoft style entity which pushes for everyone to use the same APIs doesn't mean there are no "coherent API standards". Due to the open-source nature of Linux projects, everybody uses everyone else's libraries to avoid duplicating code so standards evolve naturally by what most programmers use. For example, most music playing software use the same MP3 libraries and all KDE applications use the excellent KDE framework libraries.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Following that logic, someone offering free meat to a known vegan has the right not to be flamed by said vegan.

You disagree with this? Not that it's a remotely valid analogy, but does offering meat to a known vegan give that vegan the right to flame you? (As to why the analogy is poor, Yann doesn't know these people to be opposed to closed source in principle. His criterion was Linux users, not "Free Software advocates.")

Quote: The analogy is extreme, but all analogies are fundamentally broken... :-)

No, the analogy is worthless.

Quote: Original post by seanw
Wow, gives the guys (Linus at least) some credit please; Linux is a very impressive piece of work.

He said they were reasonably intelligent. That's credit. Linus' greatest skill was evangelizing Linux, which is a clone/reinterpretation of Unix, and thus, by definition, not revolutionary or visionary. I don't see how stating that is not giving them credit.

Quote: Original post by seanw
Wow, gives the guys (Linus at least) some credit please; Linux is a very impressive piece of work.

Linux started out as a hobbyish school project. At the time it was no different than thousands of other hobby OS projects students wrote in their spare time for fun. Linus' project picked up out of sheer luck. He is a good programmer, just like thousands of others. He is an ok architect: there are no brilliant architectural solutions in linux kernel. He is a crappy visionary: he cannot see one inch farther than the next stable release of his kernel and every reasonable person knows that an OS is far more than just a kernel.

Quote: Original post by seanw
GTK, QT and wxWindows are very mature cross-platform GUI toolkits.

So at any point in time I have to deal with three potential toolkits, each of which provides a different feel to the end user. I can't code for KDE or Gnome directly because I can't lock my software to an environment my end user might not have installed. All of these barely manage to interoperate with each other. They may be mature *toolkits* but they're not GUI *solutions*.

Quote: Original post by seanw
KDE and Gnome look very nice and their GUIs act just like you'd expect.

To mainstream users linux gui feels like shit. Mainstream users are the ones that matter.

Quote: Original post by seanw
Just because Linux doesn't have a Microsoft style entity which pushes for everyone to use the same APIs doesn't mean there are no "coherent API standards".

Which is why linux gui barely manages to provide copy/paste support (doesn't always work accross toolkits) and can't even begin to dream about universal drag and drop.

Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
So at any point in time I have to deal with three potential toolkits, each of which provides a different feel to the end user. I can't code for KDE or Gnome directly because I can't lock my software to an environment my end user might not have installed. All of these barely manage to interoperate with each other. They may be mature *toolkits* but they're not GUI *solutions*.

Every major distribution supports GTK and QT applications so you can just use whichever one you want to use. What do you mean by GUI solutions? Have you looked at QT? It's a very well documented and mature library which also has visual designers and other tools available for it. Just because it doesn't work exactly the same way as some Microsoft tools doesn't mean it sucks.

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To mainstream users linux gui feels like shit. Mainstream users are the ones that matter.

Exactly why do you think that? I use the KDE desktop and KDE applications (there are a lot of them) almost exclusively and my desktop envirnoment is extremely consistent, nice looking, responsive and feels much better than Windows in my opinion. Then there are applications like Firefox and OpenOffice which are great and work exactly the same in Windows and Linux. Members of my family use Linux for web-browsing and email for spyware/virus free computer use and for all they know, they are using Windows because there is nothing significantly different about the GUI.

Do you have any concrete examples of mainstream users not liking GUI systems on Linux? I'm sure you could pick some nasty Motif GUI application, but things like KDE and Gnome applications are very nice. You can theme them and change their behaviour to act just like Windows if you want to.

Quote: Which is why linux gui barely manages to provide copy/paste support (doesn't always work accross toolkits) and can't even begin to dream about universal drag and drop.

The copy/paste problem disappeared a long time ago and is no longer an issue. www.freedesktop.org has done a lot of good work in improving the interoperability of KDE and Gnome (the major desktop environments) and is a good example of how standard evolve from communication from different projects. There's obviously going to be some problems with people using different toolkits, but I don't like the way you seem to be implying that Linux development is pointless because of this.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Following that logic, someone offering free meat to a known vegan has the right not to be flamed by said vegan.

You disagree with this? Not that it's a remotely valid analogy, but does offering meat to a known vegan give that vegan the right to flame you?

Being a vegan, I'll answer that yes, offering me free meat while knowing that I'm a vegan gives me the right to flame you, because I'm human and thus emotional, and it gets horribly old after a few such offers. Maybe will you do that out of good will, but I don't think it's so hard to understand that I can eventually grow tired of having my beliefs stomped over and over again.

Quote:
(As to why the analogy is poor, Yann doesn't know these people to be opposed to closed source in principle. His criterion was Linux users, not "Free Software advocates.")

Well:

Quote: Original post by Yann L
Well, wrong. We contacted a few Linux groups we knew, since we needed some input, ideas for some a the more complex features, and maybe some help with the eye candy (icons, etc). I can't even describe you the flak we got.

This is open to interpretation. Yours apparently differs from mine.

Quote:

Quote: The analogy is extreme, but all analogies are fundamentally broken... :-)

No, the analogy is worthless.

So are opinions and everything under the sun. I found it valid enough.


Hope this helps.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Being a vegan, I'll answer that yes, offering me free meat while knowing that I'm a vegan gives me the right to flame you, because I'm human and thus emotional, and it gets horribly old after a few such offers. Maybe will you do that out of good will, but I don't think it's so hard to understand that I can eventually grow tired of having my beliefs stomped over and over again.

Hmm, that's an interesting extrapolation. You consider being offered meat "having your beliefs stomped on," which is inference as to the intent of the other individual. I suppose the problem is that "vegan" is indistinguishable from "vegetarian" for most people, so to them it's not a matter of beliefs/convictions/religion, but simply one of dietary need/choice.

Similarly, for most people Linux is a matter of choice (Open Source attempts to make a rational/pragmatic case for Linux and other such software, in opposition to Free Software, which makes an ideological one).

By the way, if I offered someone meat and they started to flame me, I'd slap them with it. It's an offer; the civilized thing to do is to decline. Now, if I were to persist/insist/get belligerent, then he'd be within his rights to slap me with... a brussel sprout? [smile]

Hey I'd definatly try any MSVC-like Linux IDE. Anjuta is the best I've found but MSVC .Net is so much better. Open Source is a plus, I can easily live without it. [smile]
Many OpenSource freaks are obssesed with GPL and OpenSource Software but don't give a damn about the source. It is just like everything that isn't open source sucks. GPLed open source software is so cool..

I would absolutely love to try your IDE. I have been using Kdevelop 3.x and while I can force it to do most of what I need, it is like pulling teeth sometimes. I don't care if it is open/closed source, or free. If it will let me do what I can do with my Windows IDE, I'll sell a few of my friend for it.

Yann, give us a shout when you're ready to release it. I'll sure as hell use it. I use Linux almost exclusively, and I am usually sublimely indifferent to whether or not something I use is open source. I've only directly benefited from some tool or other being open source (and thus hackable) a very few times, and I've got more than enough code of my own to deal with; I don't need to deal with the code for the tools I use. I'm sorry that this has been such a bad experience for you.