5 ms·

Why you should support Mac OS X and Linux

54 points by nickb 18y ago

cperciva 18y ago
This would be great, except that it's impossible to "support Linux". You can support Debian, or Gentoo, or CentOS, or Slackware, or one of the many other linux distributions; but the fact that your code works on one distribution doesn't necessarily mean that it will work on another. I'm dealing with this with tarsnap right now -- I know the code works on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, and OpenSolaris; but for Linux all I can say is that it works on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Slackware, Gentoo, and RedHat. Does it work on SUSE, Mandriva, Xandros, MontaVista, or Linspire? I don't know. (But if anyone here runs any of those, I'd be happy to hear from you.) Yes, I could install N different distributions of linux and test them all; but testing on N different distributions is much more work than testing on 1, and many people simply won't have the time.
- makecheck 18y ago
  In my experience, Linux platform compatibility boils down to a few things: - architecture (usually i686 or x86_64) - availability of the right library versions in /usr/lib (however, you can combat this by "shipping" the versions you need with your app) - (rarely) kernel version - (even more rarely) glibc version In other words, most of the time, if it's an Intel binary, it seems to work pretty well. If a particular Linux distribution seems necessary, it usually just means that one of the above features of that distribution is important.
  - wheels 18y ago
    It's really a lot more complicated than that on the packager's side. What you're seeing is likely the result of the person building the binaries already linking everything statically that's possible, using older compatibility versions of the shared libraries, and hoping for the best on the rest, being certain not to make use of recent or volatile features.
  - gaius 18y ago
    It's getting to the point now that you might as well distribute your app in the form of a VM image.
    - olefoo 18y ago
      I'm curious as to why that isn't more common, although you get a similar compatibility issue with your choice of vmware, xen or virtualbox; and there is some overhead; but yes, it sounds like a good idea to me. http://www.rpath.org/ http://www.rpath.org/ does something like that for server side software, and I know vmware supports that model.
    - CUViper 18y ago
      A VM is great for trying out an app, but if I'm really going to use something, it becomes a PITA to have it in it's own sandbox. I don't want to deal with network sharing and all that just to move files between all my apps.
    - jamesbritt 18y ago
      That's the JumpBox (http://www.jumpbox.com/ http://www.jumpbox.com/) people are doing.
  - cperciva 18y ago
    I've had problems with inter-distribution linux compatibility in tarsnap due to * varying definitions of off_t (fortunately autoconf fixed this for me). * the linux 2.4 kernel returning EINVAL for the interaction of TCP_NODELAY and TCP_CORK (fixed by avoiding the problematic interaction on all linuxes). * the header files for openssl, zlib, and ext2fs/ext2_fs.h sometimes being installed and sometimes being part of packages with a wide variety of names (which I'm attempting to work around by providing a list of "the package you need should have a name something like this..."). I think there was a library version issue at one point too, but I can't remember what it was. Yes, I could avoid problems with header files if I only provided binaries; but even leaving aside the question of security, this would mean that I'd have to deal with the problem of packaging binaries in N different ways.
- cgranade 18y ago
  Test a few the big ones (Fedora and Ubuntu spring to mind), play nice with native package managers and use a liberal enough license that someone can make a package of your game for another distro, even if they still need to install the data separately. This makes it the responsibility of package maintainers to modify the package you've already made to point at the right directories. Another approach may be to use autopackage or similar.
- nailer 18y ago
  As cgrenade already mentioned, most Linux users use something either based on Debian (which includes Ubuntu) or Fedora (including RHEL). Also, consider that the major Linux ditros have far more users than the different BSDs or Solaris do (OK, there's a lot of old projects running Solaris, but it's very rare to pick for new projects, so I doubt this would be a big source of customers for new software).
- gaius 18y ago
  Indeed. To most major vendors (that I deal with anyway) Linux is synonymous with RHEL 4 or 5 and that's it. Sometimes only one of those.
- brl 18y ago
  Our application is written in Java which is a compatibility nightmare on Linux. There are half a dozen alternative Java implementations which are all slow and broken but that doesn't stop the important Linux distributions from preferring them strongly over the Sun JRE. This forced us to bundle the Sun JRE with our application on Linux, which effectively doubled the size of it. It was worth it though because we haven't seen any Linux incompatibility issues yet. (ps: I can test tarsnap on ArchLinux)
  - kragen 18y ago
    What's the current legal status of bundling the JRE with your application? I seem to recall that fairly recently (three or four years ago) you had to download it from Sun and "sign" a clickwrap agreement in order to get it working.
    - brl 18y ago
      You're allowed to redistribute the JRE with an application if you do it for the reason that we're doing it: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jre/README http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jre/README
      - kragen 18y ago
        Thanks!
- pmarin 18y ago
  I think that the only sane way is to "support Unix". Avoid conditional compiling and features that are only in one platform and use standard libraries. Of course this is the most difficult approach and usually impossible to make.
  - jbjohns 18y ago
    "I think that the only sane way is .... the most difficult approach and usually impossible to make." Sorry, but that doesn't sound very sane to me. :)
    - pmarin 18y ago
      Well, think about the time that you could spend in testing and debugging each platform and the time that you can spent in only one.
wheels 18y ago
In much shorter form: Don't ignore the preferences of trend-setters and early adopters.
- cperciva 18y ago
  Well put. This is one of the reasons why Tarsnap supports BSD, linux, and OS X, but not Windows -- people who run Windows are generally not trend-setters or early adopters... nor are people likely to take the advice of Windows users where security is concerned.
  - barrkel 18y ago
    Watch your hubris and bigotry. Windows is a far larger market, so early adopters and trend setters aren't as loud as they might be in an empty room, but that doesn't mean there are less of them. Instead, they tend to be visible only in niches of the PC market, rather than simply the Mac niche or FOSS niche. Also, I recommend that you moderate your intake of propaganda re Windows security too. Windows is the big target, and has by far the largest number of suckers (i.e. unsophisticated users). That doesn't make it inherently insecure, or savvy users of it incompetent.
    - brl 18y ago
      I would have to agree with this. We released the first version of our software for Linux and OS X only. It wasn't a deliberate plan to target 'trend setters', we simply didn't finish the work we need to do on Windows yet. Since we are in a technical niche (network security) a lot of the traffic to our site is from Linux and OS X users, but 85% of it is still from Windows. It's painful to watch people arrive at our site, realize in the first 30 seconds that there is no version of our software for Windows, then disappear (probably forever).
    - jgranby 18y ago
      It isn't just about how many early adopters there are -- it's that, with Linux and OS X, they make up a much larger proportion of users. There are probably a lot more savvy Windows users, but the high proportion of early adopters in Mac/Linux markets makes it easier to be recognised by those types of user if you're targeting them.
shiranaihito 18y ago
I would have been perfectly content with "Because Microsoft is evil".
- jmtame 18y ago
  It's interesting how they used to be the anti-IBM company too. Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
  - Herring 18y ago
    And now IBM is one of the biggest linux supporters. If MS ever loses its walled garden, you'll see it preaching standards & open protocols loud as anyone else.
jimbokun 18y ago
This is the model that brought fame and fortune to Bungie. "The team focused on the Macintosh platform, not Windows-based personal computers, because the Mac market was more open and Jones had been raised on the platform." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Founding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Founding They had a clear and open field making quality games exclusively for the Mac platform, and this brought them a devoted following and a steady flow of profits. They later branched out into Windows, and of course Microsoft bought them out so they would focus predominantly on the XBox. So, while ignoring Windows indefinitely may not be a great strategy, ignoring it at first can be.
albertni 18y ago
This was nice, pretty much straight to the point. At Dropbox we've noticed disproportionately more Mac/Linux users (relative to the "worldwide norm" or whatever that means, which is pretty standard). More importantly, we've definitely noticed disproportionately more vocal Mac/Linux users. We started as Mac and Windows but "investing" in a Linux (ok, Ubuntu/Nautilus to be specific, but it tends to work in most distributions and can work without Nautilus) client has certainly been worthwhile.

54 points by nickb 18y ago

This would be great, except that it's impossible to "support Linux". You can support Debian, or Gentoo, or CentOS, or Slackware, or one of the many other linux distributions; but the fact that your code works on one distribution doesn't necessarily mean that it will work on another. I'm dealing with this with tarsnap right now -- I know the code works on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, and OpenSolaris; but for Linux all I can say is that it works on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Slackware, Gentoo, and RedHat. Does it work on SUSE, Mandriva, Xandros, MontaVista, or Linspire? I don't know. (But if anyone here runs any of those, I'd be happy to hear from you.) Yes, I could install N different distributions of linux and test them all; but testing on N different distributions is much more work than testing on 1, and many people simply won't have the time.

makecheck 18y ago
In my experience, Linux platform compatibility boils down to a few things: - architecture (usually i686 or x86_64) - availability of the right library versions in /usr/lib (however, you can combat this by "shipping" the versions you need with your app) - (rarely) kernel version - (even more rarely) glibc version In other words, most of the time, if it's an Intel binary, it seems to work pretty well. If a particular Linux distribution seems necessary, it usually just means that one of the above features of that distribution is important.
- wheels 18y ago
  It's really a lot more complicated than that on the packager's side. What you're seeing is likely the result of the person building the binaries already linking everything statically that's possible, using older compatibility versions of the shared libraries, and hoping for the best on the rest, being certain not to make use of recent or volatile features.
- gaius 18y ago
  It's getting to the point now that you might as well distribute your app in the form of a VM image.
  - olefoo 18y ago
    I'm curious as to why that isn't more common, although you get a similar compatibility issue with your choice of vmware, xen or virtualbox; and there is some overhead; but yes, it sounds like a good idea to me. http://www.rpath.org/ http://www.rpath.org/ does something like that for server side software, and I know vmware supports that model.
  - CUViper 18y ago
    A VM is great for trying out an app, but if I'm really going to use something, it becomes a PITA to have it in it's own sandbox. I don't want to deal with network sharing and all that just to move files between all my apps.
  - jamesbritt 18y ago
    That's the JumpBox (http://www.jumpbox.com/ http://www.jumpbox.com/) people are doing.
- cperciva 18y ago
  I've had problems with inter-distribution linux compatibility in tarsnap due to * varying definitions of off_t (fortunately autoconf fixed this for me). * the linux 2.4 kernel returning EINVAL for the interaction of TCP_NODELAY and TCP_CORK (fixed by avoiding the problematic interaction on all linuxes). * the header files for openssl, zlib, and ext2fs/ext2_fs.h sometimes being installed and sometimes being part of packages with a wide variety of names (which I'm attempting to work around by providing a list of "the package you need should have a name something like this..."). I think there was a library version issue at one point too, but I can't remember what it was. Yes, I could avoid problems with header files if I only provided binaries; but even leaving aside the question of security, this would mean that I'd have to deal with the problem of packaging binaries in N different ways.
cgranade 18y ago
Test a few the big ones (Fedora and Ubuntu spring to mind), play nice with native package managers and use a liberal enough license that someone can make a package of your game for another distro, even if they still need to install the data separately. This makes it the responsibility of package maintainers to modify the package you've already made to point at the right directories. Another approach may be to use autopackage or similar.
nailer 18y ago
As cgrenade already mentioned, most Linux users use something either based on Debian (which includes Ubuntu) or Fedora (including RHEL). Also, consider that the major Linux ditros have far more users than the different BSDs or Solaris do (OK, there's a lot of old projects running Solaris, but it's very rare to pick for new projects, so I doubt this would be a big source of customers for new software).
gaius 18y ago
Indeed. To most major vendors (that I deal with anyway) Linux is synonymous with RHEL 4 or 5 and that's it. Sometimes only one of those.
brl 18y ago
Our application is written in Java which is a compatibility nightmare on Linux. There are half a dozen alternative Java implementations which are all slow and broken but that doesn't stop the important Linux distributions from preferring them strongly over the Sun JRE. This forced us to bundle the Sun JRE with our application on Linux, which effectively doubled the size of it. It was worth it though because we haven't seen any Linux incompatibility issues yet. (ps: I can test tarsnap on ArchLinux)
- kragen 18y ago
  What's the current legal status of bundling the JRE with your application? I seem to recall that fairly recently (three or four years ago) you had to download it from Sun and "sign" a clickwrap agreement in order to get it working.
  - brl 18y ago
    You're allowed to redistribute the JRE with an application if you do it for the reason that we're doing it: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jre/README http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jre/README
    - kragen 18y ago
      Thanks!
pmarin 18y ago
I think that the only sane way is to "support Unix". Avoid conditional compiling and features that are only in one platform and use standard libraries. Of course this is the most difficult approach and usually impossible to make.
- jbjohns 18y ago
  "I think that the only sane way is .... the most difficult approach and usually impossible to make." Sorry, but that doesn't sound very sane to me. :)
  - pmarin 18y ago
    Well, think about the time that you could spend in testing and debugging each platform and the time that you can spent in only one.

wheels 18y ago

In much shorter form: Don't ignore the preferences of trend-setters and early adopters.

cperciva 18y ago
Well put. This is one of the reasons why Tarsnap supports BSD, linux, and OS X, but not Windows -- people who run Windows are generally not trend-setters or early adopters... nor are people likely to take the advice of Windows users where security is concerned.
- barrkel 18y ago
  Watch your hubris and bigotry. Windows is a far larger market, so early adopters and trend setters aren't as loud as they might be in an empty room, but that doesn't mean there are less of them. Instead, they tend to be visible only in niches of the PC market, rather than simply the Mac niche or FOSS niche. Also, I recommend that you moderate your intake of propaganda re Windows security too. Windows is the big target, and has by far the largest number of suckers (i.e. unsophisticated users). That doesn't make it inherently insecure, or savvy users of it incompetent.
  - brl 18y ago
    I would have to agree with this. We released the first version of our software for Linux and OS X only. It wasn't a deliberate plan to target 'trend setters', we simply didn't finish the work we need to do on Windows yet. Since we are in a technical niche (network security) a lot of the traffic to our site is from Linux and OS X users, but 85% of it is still from Windows. It's painful to watch people arrive at our site, realize in the first 30 seconds that there is no version of our software for Windows, then disappear (probably forever).
  - jgranby 18y ago
    It isn't just about how many early adopters there are -- it's that, with Linux and OS X, they make up a much larger proportion of users. There are probably a lot more savvy Windows users, but the high proportion of early adopters in Mac/Linux markets makes it easier to be recognised by those types of user if you're targeting them.

shiranaihito 18y ago

I would have been perfectly content with "Because Microsoft is evil".

jmtame 18y ago
It's interesting how they used to be the anti-IBM company too. Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
- Herring 18y ago
  And now IBM is one of the biggest linux supporters. If MS ever loses its walled garden, you'll see it preaching standards & open protocols loud as anyone else.

jimbokun 18y ago

This is the model that brought fame and fortune to Bungie. "The team focused on the Macintosh platform, not Windows-based personal computers, because the Mac market was more open and Jones had been raised on the platform." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Founding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Founding They had a clear and open field making quality games exclusively for the Mac platform, and this brought them a devoted following and a steady flow of profits. They later branched out into Windows, and of course Microsoft bought them out so they would focus predominantly on the XBox. So, while ignoring Windows indefinitely may not be a great strategy, ignoring it at first can be.

albertni 18y ago

This was nice, pretty much straight to the point. At Dropbox we've noticed disproportionately more Mac/Linux users (relative to the "worldwide norm" or whatever that means, which is pretty standard). More importantly, we've definitely noticed disproportionately more vocal Mac/Linux users. We started as Mac and Windows but "investing" in a Linux (ok, Ubuntu/Nautilus to be specific, but it tends to work in most distributions and can work without Nautilus) client has certainly been worthwhile.