
Why Does the Linux Desktop So Lack Proprietary Apps? - unwantedLetters
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/why-does-the-linux-desktop-so-lack-proprietary-apps-1.html
======
bitwize
Because open source is the juggernaut, bitch. It's hard to outmatch a swarm of
coders doing it for kicks.

It's true that the library and packaging loadout in Linux tends to be always
in flux, and certainly not stable from distro to distro, making proprietary
application development on the Linux platform difficult (except for niche
markets like high-end modeling and rendering software; a typical Office
desktop will probably never take hold on Linux if it's proprietary). But what
that really means is that open source apps are the only thing which can keep
pace with an open source platform. And once there's a critical mass of app
developers working in a niche, open source apps rapidly come up to speed with
the proprietary world.

The other day I was messing around with recording my voice. I was doing some
voices from _Portal 2_ , and found that the post-production effects I needed
to make my voice sound like Rick the Adventure Sphere (specifically, an
equalizer to make it sound tinny and an Auto-Tune-like vocoder to make it
sound "computery") were all available in the Arch AUR and I could do
everything right from my Linux desktop with Audacity. That wasn't possible a
year ago. I would've needed an expensive tool and hoped it worked in Wine or
else used a VM to achieve this.

