Comment Re:Bravo (Score 1) 710
Is it a bad thing that we have both Gnome and KDE?
Yes.
Freedom is great. However, freedom requires choices. Choices impede adoption. Imagine there was one Linux distro. Well, now to convince people to try it out, they have to partition their drive and set up a dual-boot. Icky, but a well-written setup program can accomidate this. So, let's say you can make a Windows installer that re-partitions the drive, and installs Linux, sets up the dual-boot properly. Now, you can convince people to download and try Linux.
Now, every choice you make means I have to try to research what I want, and every bit of extra time you ask for me to make a choice between two things, I have three options. A, B or screw it.
From your entire post, and also your later response to another commenter, it seems to me that as a hard-working developer, you are getting somewhat burned out on computing altogether. I'm not a dev, but even so, I can sympathize with the "A, B, or screw it!" part of your comment.
IMO, GNU/Linux is just a different creature. . . It's not about A or B. This is not an election for prom queen between Ms. Windows and Miss Linux. I don't care whether or not Linux users ever outnumber MS-Windows users, or whether forever and a day it's vice-versa.
Free Open Source Software is about the ability to innovate and choose. If you don't want to, or are too tired to do so, nobody is going to _force_ you to do so. But GNU/Linux exists because there are people who want to be free to tweak, free to take part of A, part of B and add a dash of something else to make _my_ computer work exactly the way I want it to work.
Back in the day when "shade tree" mechanics could do their thing, some of us weren't happy to just accept a showroom stock automobile. Bore & stroke the engine, add a 4 barrel carb, glasspacks for the exhaust. . . my machine! BUT that was not for everyone --or even for a significant minority. Still, many people, then and now, want to be able to customize at _some_ level.
Some people will never so much as change a flat tire, let alone do major engine mods. And they shouldn't be expected to have to do so. But those who want to, _must_ be able to have the means to do so!
I don't mind reparitioning and installing a new OS... I did that so I could dualboot 2000 and XP. But I really don't want to have to make tons of little choices. I don't give a shit, but my pride doesn't let me choose arbitarily. Give me one thing that works. I don't want to tinker with the OS.
There are a couple Linux Distros I don't much need to "tinker with" . .
So, KDE + Gnome slows adoption by quite a bit, which means that fewer people write apps, which has a chilling effect, etc.
I'd further argue that the MS platform is, as the GP said, filled with a ton of little issues that can make working with it not as much as a 'finite learning curve' as you think. Digging to see why some API call is not working correctly because MS wants to obscure it for whatever reason is no fun.
Sure. And as a developer I have to do dig through a heap of inaccurate documentation. I hate it. But my customers (for the reasons I outlined above and many others) use Windows. I create software to make money, so I create software for Windows.
And yes, we try to abstract out the OS, so that we can port it later. But it's never been worth our while to actually do so.
Nobody should expect "somebody else" to do a job if it isn't in her/his interest to do so, I agree.
The point of GNU/Linux, though, is that there are people who _do_ have the extra time and energy to happily work on FOSS projects because of the pleasure and attraction in having everything in the open, shared and in full view (code-wise).
Literally, the Linux kernel was born when a grad student built on the work of others, threw it out there for folks to look at, and a bunch of people said "Way cool! Let's run with this!"
I guess I'd sum it up as the difference between the joy of living, as opposed to just surviving, just getting by. . .
