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[Ratsia]

I just wanted to know why one would commit to such a thing as an OS that requires fiddling and usage of third party software if you're not that happy using it.

For most of the stuff, Linux is the OS choice that requires the least of that. Effectively all of the software comes directly bundled with the OS, so whenever you need a tool you just click once and it's right there. So, I can well understand why someone who does not enjoy trying to make 3rd party software work would choose Linux -- most users can often go years without ever installing anything outside the standard repositories.

For Windows in particular, but to some extent also for OSX, you always end up installing lots and lots of 3rd party stuff, so those are the OS choices for people who actually enjoy playing around with their system. In the past it also meant a lot of fiddling around to get everything working, but I presume it has become a lot better past few years. I stopped using MS after XP so I don't know for sure about that, but at least my OSX laptop requires almost as little maintenance/tuning as a regular Linux distributions do. It's not quite as automatic and safe, but close enough.


It's then an unfortunate thing that some specific cases, like Silverlight, are rather tricky for Linux. It's understandable that people who chose theirr OS because of wanting to never bother searching for 3rd party software are puzzled when they have to solve installation issues more complex than what you would typically encounter in the OS choices that are otherwise more high-maintenance.

[Kirian]

All of the software in Linux comes bundled with the OS? Really?  A full-fledged Office suite, AdobeCS, language-specific IDEs, Steam, dozens of games... all come with a Linux distro?

[Ratsia]

All of the software in Linux comes bundled with the OS? Really?  A full-fledged Office suite, AdobeCS, language-specific IDEs, Steam, dozens of games... all come with a Linux distro?

Of course not all of the software in the world, but the kind of software one is expected to use in that OS.

It's naturally not the right platform for games and specific software by MS/Adobe/whatever, but that's not because it would be somehow tricky to install them but simply because those programs are not available at all. The stuff that is, however, is easier to install and keep updated than in other systems. I can't remember when was the last time I installed anything outside the standard repositories for my work machine, and for my home machine the only such case over the past few years was when I started using Netflix. For my work laptop (OSX), on the other hand, I could easily list dozens of examples -- just yesterday I had to re-install two separate pieces of software to fix a program that had suddenly stopped working. For me it's merely an inconvenience, but for my grandmother I'd rather install a system that does not require stuff like that. Hence, I tend to see Linux as the choice for the least tech-oriented people, the ones that want easy maintenance.


The issues of "what is available" and "how easy things are for the stuff that is available" really should be treated separately. Both usually influence the OS choice, but only the latter is relevant in the context of the post I replied to.

[SCSN]

Good luck getting the kind of people who use Windows XP and the expanded edition of IE6 (the one that comes with twenty additional toolbars) to use Linux.

Most people don't care about ease of updating or maintenance because they simply don't update or maintain anything ever. Unless some kind of auto-updating function or program is enabled by default, which they then insist on turning off because they find the inevitable restarts they'll be prompted with extremely annoying.

[jl8e]

Meh, Unity is not supported on Linux AFAIK, so if they scrap this one for a unity one .. I'll be a bit sad even though I don't really play this one anymore.

It reads to me that they’re writing the mobile client in unity, and rewriting the back-end from scratch. Not clear if they’re rewriting the web client or not, but assuming the API is reasonably well-designed (stop laughing), they shouldn’t have to.