What is your answer to solve the top inhibitor for the Linuxdesktop adoption? (was Re: [Desktop_architects] Most wantedApplication: Email)

Aaron J. Seigo aseigo at kde.org
Tue Jan 3 21:18:01 PST 2006


On Tuesday 03 January 2006 22:00, Mike Shaver wrote:
> to target people who are not already Linux ISVs.  Why doesn't Adobe
> have Photoshop for Linux?

photoshop (at least certain versions of it?) run under WINE thanks to Disney 
(IIRC) paying for that devel. the fact that it runs on WINE to the 
satisfaction of some (most?) of their potential Photoshop-for-Linux 
purchasers (as opposed to users ;) probably doesn't particularly help 
convincing them to spend more money on a native port.

with time, though... =)

> I suspect that the answer will probably be more of "market too small"

versus potential return here in the year 2005, that's quite likely =)

> and less of "too hard to figure out the APIs/they're all different"

but this is an issue for many other ISVs, both open and closed. i say this 
based on having talked to some scores of them this past year at various dev 
conferences.

> inhibitor" might boil down to something gut-wrenching like "too much
> focus on enterprise", but at least people who are looking to grow the
> Linux desktop will have some new data to chew on,

i don't think it's the top inhibitor (market share is almost certainly the top 
inhibitor), but it's one of them. sometimes a few bronze bullets can sum up 
pretty close to one silver bullet ;)

there is a reason Microsoft has MSDN, Apple has http://developer.apple.com/, 
Sun has SDN, Oracle has TechNet, etc.... 

> hopefully of higher quality than self-selecting web polls. 

i like you more and more ;)

> inform some interesting experiments.  And, man, if the answer _is_
> "need better API docs", are we ever sitting pretty!

heh.. no, i'd expect it to be a piece of the puzzle only.

> actually come out and said why we want a great doc portal.  If it's I

because it's a frightening nightmare to figure out how to develop for the 
Linux desktop (even if you've already picked or are leaning towards one 
specific API). i hear this constantly. i wish i didn't. i really do. *sob*

it's particularly painful to repeat the same development related answers at 
show after show only to be presented with "wow! i didn't know that was 
possible!" hell, i got this at the meeting in portland even. and trust me, 
having me and the other few dozen trench soldiers doing the same thing is not 
a particularly efficient way to get the message out in a useful manner. ;)

this also happens to be one of the #1 blockers to getting more open source 
developers (in the traditional sense of the term) on board. it's simply too 
much of a learning investment for most people to make.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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