What the Linux Desktop Needs (OS Views)

What the Linux Desktop Needs (OS Views)

Having examined some of the available packages I conclude that it could just as easily have been two or three different Windows packages (one each for Win95, Win NT4, and one or two for the rest) and three or four Linux packages (say one for Debian, one for older RPM-based distros and one for more recent RPM distros, plus optionally a binary installer)

Obviously someone felt that it would be better to have just one Windows package, even if sometimes that meant making decisions that the NXclient wouldn't work as well as it could on Windows XP.

Meanwhile someone (else?) decided that Linux users would want binaries recompiled for every possible version, just in case it makes a difference. So although the FC1 binaries will run on FC3, they provide separate binaries and separate packages.

The fact that these conflicting approaches happened in the same project says nothing whatsoever about "What the Linux Desktop needs"... The Linux downloads for NX are tiny when compared to the Windows download, because they don't have to bundle everything that was thought of between 1995 and today, for some people that's going to be an advantage, and if those people choose NX on Linux that more than out-weighs the small cost of running rpmbuild an extra dozen times.

(Because yes, literally the difference between these packages is typically the same build script run on a machine with a different distro. RPM obeys the rule from Joel on Software, among others, that says a complete build must be just one button push, no supervision or interaction needed)

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