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Quotes of the weekQuotes of the weekPosted Mar 26, 2012 14:50 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)In reply to: Quotes of the week by khim Parent article: Quotes of the week
My argument is the opposite: if Linux will not offer such app store then people will not switch from MacOS and Windows to Linux and existing users will leave it, too. As I've said myself: I'm Linux user so far only because I strongly dislike MacBook's keyboard, but I will probably decide that I don't dislike it that much one of these days. And I was Linux user for more then 10 years. I was a Linux user back when MCC-Interim was considered a cool distribution. That was when if you wanted Perl on your Linux machine, you had to compile it yourself. Perl 4, that is. Having got that out of the way, I agree that an »app store« would be nice to have for new users if it could be made to work. However, I don't think its absence is the only thing that is keeping MacOS or Windows users from switching to Linux. These people would still be thoroughly confused as to whether to install Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Debian, or Mint, or Chrome OS, or any of the other distributions that market themselves to new Linux users. The single most useful thing that the Linux community could do to make Linux more attractive to new users would be to rally behind one single distribution (an existing one or a suitably assembled new one) and one single desktop environment in order to give people something they can identify with – rather than a confusing choice of roughly equivalent distributions and desktop environments that all do the same thing in subtly different ways. This incidentally would pretty much take care of the »app store« issue, too. However, this would basically be the same as all major Christian churches getting together to present an amalgamated version of their faith in order to convince Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc. to convert – and about as likely to come to pass, or succeed.
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Quotes of the week Posted Mar 26, 2012 15:12 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]
Web standards (plus NaCl for the hard parts) are _way_ closer to being an ISV-friendly platform than any of the Linux-native alternatives. Yes, the distribution still has to fill in the plumbing layers such as display and audio servers, but that's doable within the current system.
Quotes of the week Posted Mar 26, 2012 15:38 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Having got that out of the way, I agree that an »app store« would be nice to have for new users if it could be made to work. However, I don't think its absence is the only thing that is keeping MacOS or Windows users from switching to Linux. Of course not! That's one of the obstacles. As Joe puts it: Lack of the app store is one serious problem, but of course it's not the only one. Think of these barriers as an obstacle course that people have to run before you can count them as your customers. If you start out with a field of 1000 runners, about half of them will trip on the tires; half of the survivors won't be strong enough to jump the wall; half of those survivors will fall off the rope ladder into the mud, and so on, until only 1 or 2 people actually overcome all the hurdles. With 8 or 9 barriers, everybody will have one non-negotiable deal killer. These people would still be thoroughly confused as to whether to install Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Debian, or Mint, or Chrome OS, or any of the other distributions that market themselves to new Linux users. Oh, yeah. That's another deal-breaker. Joe Average installs OS exactly zero times. Most of them don't even install service packs unless they are pushed really hard on them. This approach is fundamentally incompatible with distribution's way of life where the only way to get new applications is to install new version of OS. The problem here is that you usually need the new application (or rather: you need some feature only available a new version of the applications) when you absolutely can not deal with the hassle of full-OS upgrade (when you are on tight deadline and new to actually do something with said feature).
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