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"Of course, specific choices don't tend to survive if nobody wants them--that, too, is part of a competitive marketplace. If there isn't demand for them, indivi

"Of course, specific choices don't tend to survive if nobody wants them--that, too, is part of a competitive marketplace. If there isn't demand for them, individual choices will disappear." The competitive market between desktop Linux distros is small and weak compared to the desktop OS market as a whole. Quality control seems non-existent from a naive user's perspective, as things often just don't work like they claim to, or work for the moment and regress when there's a software update they were prompted to install. This isn't an insoluble problem, but it's hard to see how we can get there from here. Microsoft solves this problem (in users' minds, at least) by throwing enormous resources at QA and bugfixing -- more resources that all desktop Linux vendors together even have. Apple solved this by limiting hardware to a comparatively few models, but if a desktop Linux vendor did this and had enough sales to justify it, they would have already either defragmented the market or grown sales enough to escape the trap. Basically, the lack of quality control in desktop Linux distros seems mostly attributable to the fragmentation, as distros try to differentiate themselves via UI design and package managers rather than helping solve the upstream problems that seem to be holding adoption back.

bad_user 16y ago
The server-side software I write works on any Linux server, be it Red Hat or Debian-based, and web-pages are served properly on any desktop, including Linux (minus desktops with IE6, for which I don't pay enough attention). > the lack of quality control in desktop Linux distros seems mostly attributable to the fragmentation I'm counting ~ 185 words in your reply, and you still haven't defined the "fragmentation" you're talking about, just some random rumble about lack of QA. The only thing Linux does differently (compared to alternatives) is a lack of binary backwards compatibility, but this is by choice since most software for Linux comes with source-code and can be recompiled. The other major gripe is that you've got multiple APIs you can choose to target (be it graphics, sound, UI) ... but every major distribution has compiled packages for everything that you can pull as dependencies. Case in point, XMMS, an ancient Winamp clone written with GTK+ ver.1 can still be made to work on every Linux distribution available. I cannot say the same thing about OS X, which breaks backwards compatibility more often than Linux (like once every 2 or 3 versions).
- randallsquared 16y ago
  you still haven't defined the "fragmentation" You're unfamiliar with Linux distros? There more than twenty "desktop Linux" distros mentioned here: http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7386380154.html http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7386380154.html , and that's merely the "especially interesting" ones. In contrast, there are probably less than 20% of OS X users on versions of OS X older than 10.4, and binary compatibility isn't a major issue for anyone except Windows. OS X, which breaks backwards compatibility more often than Linux (like once every 2 or 3 versions). That's true, but while there are tools to mitigate that (Rosetta, Classic), it's completely orthogonal to what I'm talking about, as is your server-side software. Your point about software that "can be made to work" is exactly spot on: virtually anything is possible, in a way that it's not always possible on Mac or Windows, but almost nothing is easy. I have never seen an install of desktop Linux where the install went smoothly and it found all the hardware and correctly set it up, and all the settings did what they say they do, and all the software available in the built-in software installation tool actually worked. As soon as a person unfamiliar with what to avoid starts playing around with a desktop Linux install, things start to go wrong, and if they're lucky it's a dozen little things that just don't quite work right, and if they're unlucky they stumble into things that really make the system unusable. I've seen this happen over and over with friends I'd encouraged to try Linux when they were griping about Windows, and I know of only one group (a family) who successfully made the switch. How did they do it? Well, they've learned not to try to adjust things too much, and they mostly keep their hands inside the cart and sit very still, and when things go wrong they quietly wait for the next Ubuntu release in the hopes that the problem will be fixed without too much other stuff breaking. Oh, and they purchased Ubuntu-specific hardware, but things still stop working randomly on update from time to time. This is what I mean by having a QA problem. Desktop Linux needs a thousand QA and dev people focused on tracking down and fixing all these issues, and it can't get them, and I don't see any way that's going to change. Edit: Oh, and you'd have to fork about a thousand different pieces of software to achieve consistency and interoperability that didn't immediately fall apart on the next minor release of those applications. Putting together a coherent Linux desktop seems like one of those things where we should be surpised that anyone succeeds at all, rather than upset that they didn't do well at it. "It's not how well the bear dances", and all that.

bad_user 16y ago

The server-side software I write works on any Linux server, be it Red Hat or Debian-based, and web-pages are served properly on any desktop, including Linux (minus desktops with IE6, for which I don't pay enough attention). > the lack of quality control in desktop Linux distros seems mostly attributable to the fragmentation I'm counting ~ 185 words in your reply, and you still haven't defined the "fragmentation" you're talking about, just some random rumble about lack of QA. The only thing Linux does differently (compared to alternatives) is a lack of binary backwards compatibility, but this is by choice since most software for Linux comes with source-code and can be recompiled. The other major gripe is that you've got multiple APIs you can choose to target (be it graphics, sound, UI) ... but every major distribution has compiled packages for everything that you can pull as dependencies. Case in point, XMMS, an ancient Winamp clone written with GTK+ ver.1 can still be made to work on every Linux distribution available. I cannot say the same thing about OS X, which breaks backwards compatibility more often than Linux (like once every 2 or 3 versions).

randallsquared 16y ago
you still haven't defined the "fragmentation" You're unfamiliar with Linux distros? There more than twenty "desktop Linux" distros mentioned here: http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7386380154.html http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7386380154.html , and that's merely the "especially interesting" ones. In contrast, there are probably less than 20% of OS X users on versions of OS X older than 10.4, and binary compatibility isn't a major issue for anyone except Windows. OS X, which breaks backwards compatibility more often than Linux (like once every 2 or 3 versions). That's true, but while there are tools to mitigate that (Rosetta, Classic), it's completely orthogonal to what I'm talking about, as is your server-side software. Your point about software that "can be made to work" is exactly spot on: virtually anything is possible, in a way that it's not always possible on Mac or Windows, but almost nothing is easy. I have never seen an install of desktop Linux where the install went smoothly and it found all the hardware and correctly set it up, and all the settings did what they say they do, and all the software available in the built-in software installation tool actually worked. As soon as a person unfamiliar with what to avoid starts playing around with a desktop Linux install, things start to go wrong, and if they're lucky it's a dozen little things that just don't quite work right, and if they're unlucky they stumble into things that really make the system unusable. I've seen this happen over and over with friends I'd encouraged to try Linux when they were griping about Windows, and I know of only one group (a family) who successfully made the switch. How did they do it? Well, they've learned not to try to adjust things too much, and they mostly keep their hands inside the cart and sit very still, and when things go wrong they quietly wait for the next Ubuntu release in the hopes that the problem will be fixed without too much other stuff breaking. Oh, and they purchased Ubuntu-specific hardware, but things still stop working randomly on update from time to time. This is what I mean by having a QA problem. Desktop Linux needs a thousand QA and dev people focused on tracking down and fixing all these issues, and it can't get them, and I don't see any way that's going to change. Edit: Oh, and you'd have to fork about a thousand different pieces of software to achieve consistency and interoperability that didn't immediately fall apart on the next minor release of those applications. Putting together a coherent Linux desktop seems like one of those things where we should be surpised that anyone succeeds at all, rather than upset that they didn't do well at it. "It's not how well the bear dances", and all that.