MinGW and why Linux users should care [LWN.net]

MinGW and why Linux users should care

Posted Nov 22, 2008 3:57 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413)
Parent article: MinGW and why Linux users should care

Hmm, this seems to be "MinGW and why Linux developers and free software advocates should care". Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I see nothing here to care about as a Linux user. Ho hum, some stuff can run on windows, which I don't use.

Sure the theory is that making these tools available to windows users will enable them to transition away from proprietary tools, but I don't buy it. I switched from windows to Linux in 1996 with no pain at all. If what Linux offers was compelling to most people, they would have already transitioned. I don't see any benefit to those who care about free software, because they're already off windows. I don't see any benefit to linux users in making linux desktop apps run on windows. The basic tools already work after a fashion in cygwin, and have for a long time.

I'm certainly not upset with these developers for working on this project, but I don't really see a benefit to me, the Linux user.

to post comments

MinGW and why Linux users should care

Posted Nov 22, 2008 8:25 UTC (Sat) by bockman (guest, #3650) [Link] (4 responses)

How about this:

1. Porting applications to Windows makes for a larger user base

2. A larger user base makes open source developers happier (as long as windows users
don't whine too much ... but then at least windows users don't flame much )

3. An happier open-source developer makes better open-source software

4. Better open-source software makes linux user happier

MinGW and why Linux users should care

Posted Nov 23, 2008 19:23 UTC (Sun) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, porting apps to windows means a larger user base, but it often means a worse program. Windows imposes all kinds of stupid expectations that developers bow to. Witness backspace going to the previous page on all versions of Firefox. I have an example at my place of work about how we ended up having to implement our own timezone code because the windows timezone stuff is broken in various ways. Now our code has timezone bugs from time to time that affect all our platforms.

My expectation as a Linux user is that programs that are available on Windows as well will cater primarily to Windows users (the larger potential market), and will become less usable.

MinGW and why Linux users should care

Posted Nov 24, 2008 9:52 UTC (Mon) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link]

But that's your choice if you are the developer of a program. You could look at it another way and say by keeping up your standards you are bringing better UI concepts / timezone handling / whatever to Windows users.

Anyway there is nothing in the Fedora MinGW work which prevents you from #ifdef'ing pieces of code, or even removing troublesome features from the Windows port entirely.

MinGW and why Linux users should care

Posted Nov 24, 2008 11:33 UTC (Mon) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (1 responses)

Your first example (backspace going to previous pages in Firefox on all platforms) has nothing to do with Windows - you could design Firefox not to do this, and I'm sure a user can change this behaviour, or at least an extension.

The sheer volume of users on Windows can be beneficial for OSS software, by stimulating bug fixes and features, as well as providing people to support the software.

As a co-developer of TWiki (before the recent fork by most of the developers, i.e. http://foswiki.org/ ), I supported it on Windows for a few years, and used it myself on Windows for a time when I didn't have a Linux server available. This helped Linux users, e.g. I18N hacks that I did to work around Windows Perl's (very broken) locale support also worked for Linux platforms with broken locales, Perl 5.005 hosting users where I18N regexes were more basic, etc.

Where Windows is somewhat broken but you still have ported the app, you can also deliver a Linux virtual machine using VMware, which is what the TWiki team did as well - this ends up being a good advert for Linux as well.

Doing cross-platform code always risks introduction of bugs, so wherever possible it's best to use a third party portability library, or a portable language such as Perl, Python, etc.

MinGW and why Linux users should care

Posted Dec 1, 2008 5:35 UTC (Mon) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

But firefox using backspace for previous page is exactly the problem with targetting windows users. You first think: okay, we just want to make the program available to windows users, so you do a straight port. Then you get pushback from your new userbase and you think: okay, we should really make this application more reasonable for windows users by meeting their expectations. Then you think: well most of my users are windows users, and doing things different ways for different platforms is redundant code; I can improve quality by doing things the same way on all platforms. Then you have stupid windows behavior on all platforms.