
Support Linux by Not Writing Linux-Only Software - jhack
http://www.tannerhelland.com/3772/support-linux-stop-exclusive-software/
======
exDM69
As a developer, I gave up on supporting other operating systems because it was
simply not worth it after a decade of trying to write platform independent
software. Spending time to get software working for Windows is a pain in the
ass. So now I'm writing software for Linux only because it's a lot more
convenient in so many ways. Compatibility with BSD/OSX is something I can
still think of (but for now, I'm Linux only and using Linux-only APIs like
epoll, timerfd and SOCK_NONBLOCK).

If you actually get your software working on Windows, that's only the
beginning. Windows users expect to find a binary zipball or installers and/or
MSVC binary libraries. Making binaries is a fair amount of effort which I see
as largely pointless because they're always lagging behind the source.

Catering to Windows users is also frustrating, since there are so few Windows
coders and even fewer who are willing to contribute their effort to an open
source project. Instead, you'll get bugged with a variety of support requests
as if you have some kind of responsibility to "fix" your software to do what
someone else wants it to do.

But the biggest problem in writing cross platform software is the lack of good
cross-platform API's available. Windows users are never happy with x-platform
GUI's like GTK or Qt. There are some frameworks for other tasks than GUI, but
they tend to go with the lowest common denominator of the platforms they run
on, which is usually worse than working with native api's.

Finally, I feel that there's no need to try to lure more Windows users to
migrate to Linux. Linux has already passed the threshold of immortality and it
will stay alive and well whether it attracts more user from Windows or not.

~~~
sixtofour
"Finally, I feel that there's no need to try to lure more Windows users to
migrate to Linux. Linux has already passed the threshold of immortality and it
will stay alive and well whether it attracts more user from Windows or not."

It would be a great cost savings to the world, in terms of direct money saved
as well as indirect incompatibilities, if a significant part of the software
using world used Linux and other open products. In other words, it's not just
to improve the lot of Linux, it's also to improve (change) the world.

------
smosher
I've come to this conclusion myself, for similar reasons. Fighting with
software that has been poorly ported to Linux as an afterthought has burned me
too many times. The solution is to reverse the flow ( _and_ do better.)

