Killer apps/"selling" points of FC and GNU/Linux

[Avi Alkalay]

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:27:33 +0100, Kyrre Ness Sjobak
<kyrre at solution-forge.net> wrote:
> On the server side things are looking better - as far as i can see,
> Linux is often the preferred platform here for developers to develop on,
> simply because it is the most widespread.

Unfortunatelly this is not true. I worked with several Windows
developers that were starting projects on Linux, and they couldn't
wait for the day they'll go back to Windows IDEs. Linux is a
wonderfull platform for developers as long as they have that
hacker-spirit, as we have :-). Linux drawbacks for developers are too
much configuration files to edit while deploying their software, like
add user access to tty on /etc/security/console.perms, or simply
activating a needed Apache module for their CGI. Oh, and configuration
files location and format differ from distro to distro, so all
deployments must be done by hand, with a human brain, and almost not
automations (they usally don't know sed, perl, rpm, etc, and probably
will not learn it). Also, the FHS is wonderful, but they don't know
it, so they ask "why /etc, why /bin, why /usr/bin ?".

Microsoft's most killer apps are their IDEs and development
frameworks. Because they know how strategic is to have the developers
(killer and business apps) working for them.

Regards,
Avi