Austin Ziegler wrote:
> My criteria limited me to Wintel machines. I won't use Linux -- it's
> not ready for primetime. I despise Gnome and dislike KDE. There is a
> striking inconsistency in the usability of Linux GUI applications,
> mostly toward the "how can you use this stinking pile of..." sort of
> comment. (Interestingly, with my most recent system recovery, I was
> looking at doing a dual-boot to the machine I'm talking about; no
> Linux out there supported my hardware properly. I would have been
> looking at a 70% functionality limit.)

Which hardware is it that you're trying to support?  The tablet PC?  If
so, there's no surprise there, that's the type of hardware that's least
likely to be well supported under Linux, since it's new and very windowsey.

Hardware support, and drivers in general, are one of the biggest
weaknesses in Linux.  Personally, I blame the short-sighted
manufacturers.  They focus all their efforts into making sure that their
software works on windows, even to the point of making themed GUIs and
other useless eye candy.  On the Linux side, they won't even put in
enough support effort so that other people can write the drivers for them.

Sure, Linux users are only about 1% of the market, but they get much
less than 1% of the effort.

In any case, Linux UIs are getting better all the time.  KDE 3.4 is very
good, and very consistent -- but only if you stick to KDE applications.
 It's still a bit annoying for me, since I use Thunderbird, Firefox and
Emacs.  I can get Thunderbird and Firefox to use the same widgets as the
other KDE apps with the help of gtk-qt-engine, but some things like
printing and clipboard usage, etc. are still inconsistent.

OTOH, I get the commandline.  Having a native ZSH, a simple to use
package manager, and everything for free means that there's no reason
for me to use Windows at all anymore.  Windows just didn't work the way
I needed, Linux does.  I should say *nix does, because I also have an
iBook which I love.

The other factor for me is cost.  I have thousands of packages on my
system, all of which are free.  My work PC cost nothing more than the
components, but every Windows PC at work also requires an OS ($), Office
($), an IDE ($), a virus scanner ($), and so on.  My PC is so hassle and
cost-free for IT that they want to give me hardware instead.

Of course, YMMV.  I'm glad that we have really good Ruby people using
every OS out there.  That helps make sure that all platforms work well
with Ruby, and that none of the platforms get left behind.  Having a
good, consistent Ruby environment on every platform is a great help for
Ruby coders and users of Ruby apps and libs.

Ben