Family punchups

[Ken Ray]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:58:58 +0000, Peter Alcibiades wrote:

Peter, first of all let me say "thank you" for bringing up this 
perspective about Linux and its distros. I would venture to say that 
most people on this list either haven't used any distro of Linux at 
all, have only done so to address a specific Linux distro to which they 
are targeting, or have one or two distros that are used pretty 
exclusively for just seeing how the cross-platform apps look in an 
environment other than Mac or Windows.

And I am squarely in that camp as well. For example, when I developed 
the Linux version of StackRunner, I only tested it and adjusted the 
interface so it would look good on Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux and no 
other distros. As Jacque pointed out, it makes those of us in this camp 
wonder about Linux and how to distirbute apps to one or more of the 
distros. So perhaps you can answer a few questions:

> I do understand Richard's point of view about Linux, though without sharing 
> it, but if you all are not Linux users, but increasingly perhaps write for 
> them, you should be aware that there is a very distinctly different 
> point of view among a large section of them.

Any idea how large this section is? I mean what percent (about) would 
you say that is?

> This tendency has a positive abhorrence for Human Interface 
> Guidlines, which 
> it sees as misplaced authoritarianism, and that's one of the things that 
> makes us very uneasy about Gnome, and makes us absolutely detest MacOS and 
> Windows.  We can't understand why people really want to have all their 
> applications look and feel the same.  We happily mix KDE and Gnome apps and 
> don't even notice their different skins.  We often do not even use either 
> Gnome or KDE, but something much more minimal like Fluxbox.  We don't think 
> one size fits all in user interfaces.  We would say with Blake:
> 
> "One law for the lion and the ox is oppression".

So does this mean that we shouldn't be too wrapped up about how our 
apps look on different Linux distros? Or should we tweak the look for a 
couple of distros and for the rest "let the chips fall where they may"?

> So don't, whatever you do, think that all you have to do to support 
> Linux or get it, is run Ubuntu.  Especially not virtually.  You will be 
missing the 
> heart of the matter.

Understood. It would be really great to get some good advice on 
"developing for Linux" (however you interpret that) using Revolution... 
any suggestions you have would be great.

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/