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There's more hacker affection for Linux than Windows, but somehow the year of Linux on the desktop was always right around the corner. Palm also had a devoted d

There's more hacker affection for Linux than Windows, but somehow the year of Linux on the desktop was always right around the corner. Palm also had a devoted developer following, but it couldn't make up for mistakes at the mothership. In short history may repeat itself, but not the way you hope.

kylec 16y ago
This is true. Money is a better predictor for success of a platform than hacker buzz, and right now iOS is still very dominant in terms of how many users are willing and able to buy apps and in-app purchases, and how much they're willing to spend. The Android Market is still largely dominated by freeware, which is partially due to restrictions that limit the countries in which users are able to buy apps.
samiq 16y ago
just take a look at http://bit.ly/cUF0zC http://bit.ly/cUF0zC and see the disruption of experience there is between the myriad of flavor implementations in android... just for a single task which btw... is not implemented across all phones. android still has a good way to go to catch up and in order to google get there they have to add more control to the experience and succeed because it is good and not because is good enough
Daishiman 16y ago
Yet most of the software development done nowadays is web, and guess which is the favorite target for web deployments? Linux is coming of age in a post-desktop world, so the question is almost irrelevant. What IS relevant is that the biggest web technologies being used right now, as well as the technologies that will some day become dominant (Ruby, Scala, Haskell, Node.js, and others) are primarily for Linux and by Linux devs. But as far as smartphones go, the question is still open, the market is still up for grabs, so developer-friendliness is going to be a top priority. Right now iPhone may be the top platform, but I would not underestimate Google's ability to appeal to developers (neither Apple's ability to make successive, giant leaps).
- blub 16y ago
  Most of the technologies you have enumerated only have mind-share on places like Reddit & HN. The exception is Ruby, which is still a drop in the ocean when compared to big players like PHP or Java. I'll give you the benefit of doubt and assume that you're just joking with Haskell and Scala. There are exactly ZERO Haskell jobs available in my country. Second of all, those technologies are not Linux-centric, they are all cross-platform. A one-OS programming language/library is worthless in the present, except in rare cases such as specialized hardware-software solutions or in-house software.
patrickaljord 16y ago
> There's more hacker affection for Linux than Windows, but somehow the year of Linux on the desktop was always right around the corner. Just like the year of Mac on the desktop, Linux is around 1% and Mac 5%... and Mac is backed by a multi-billion dollar company. I think it has more to do with Microsoft winning the desktop platform a long time ago than anything else. Where Linux and Mac can make a dent is in the web and mobile, and they already did.
tomjen3 16y ago
Yeah but the main issue with Linux versus Windows was always that Linux was more difficult to get to work than Windows, you had to do magic to get it to work with your hardware, and it was much too difficult to get to use out of the box. Android has none of these problems, it is on a large amount of devices (more than ios), it is as shiny as Apples, but it has developers loving programming it. Heck Linux own the server market so completely, that the only thing that could reasonably replace it would be another Unix.

kylec 16y ago

This is true. Money is a better predictor for success of a platform than hacker buzz, and right now iOS is still very dominant in terms of how many users are willing and able to buy apps and in-app purchases, and how much they're willing to spend. The Android Market is still largely dominated by freeware, which is partially due to restrictions that limit the countries in which users are able to buy apps.

samiq 16y ago

just take a look at http://bit.ly/cUF0zC http://bit.ly/cUF0zC and see the disruption of experience there is between the myriad of flavor implementations in android... just for a single task which btw... is not implemented across all phones. android still has a good way to go to catch up and in order to google get there they have to add more control to the experience and succeed because it is good and not because is good enough

Daishiman 16y ago

Yet most of the software development done nowadays is web, and guess which is the favorite target for web deployments? Linux is coming of age in a post-desktop world, so the question is almost irrelevant. What IS relevant is that the biggest web technologies being used right now, as well as the technologies that will some day become dominant (Ruby, Scala, Haskell, Node.js, and others) are primarily for Linux and by Linux devs. But as far as smartphones go, the question is still open, the market is still up for grabs, so developer-friendliness is going to be a top priority. Right now iPhone may be the top platform, but I would not underestimate Google's ability to appeal to developers (neither Apple's ability to make successive, giant leaps).

blub 16y ago
Most of the technologies you have enumerated only have mind-share on places like Reddit & HN. The exception is Ruby, which is still a drop in the ocean when compared to big players like PHP or Java. I'll give you the benefit of doubt and assume that you're just joking with Haskell and Scala. There are exactly ZERO Haskell jobs available in my country. Second of all, those technologies are not Linux-centric, they are all cross-platform. A one-OS programming language/library is worthless in the present, except in rare cases such as specialized hardware-software solutions or in-house software.

patrickaljord 16y ago

> There's more hacker affection for Linux than Windows, but somehow the year of Linux on the desktop was always right around the corner. Just like the year of Mac on the desktop, Linux is around 1% and Mac 5%... and Mac is backed by a multi-billion dollar company. I think it has more to do with Microsoft winning the desktop platform a long time ago than anything else. Where Linux and Mac can make a dent is in the web and mobile, and they already did.

tomjen3 16y ago

Yeah but the main issue with Linux versus Windows was always that Linux was more difficult to get to work than Windows, you had to do magic to get it to work with your hardware, and it was much too difficult to get to use out of the box. Android has none of these problems, it is on a large amount of devices (more than ios), it is as shiny as Apples, but it has developers loving programming it. Heck Linux own the server market so completely, that the only thing that could reasonably replace it would be another Unix.