Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cestith 3354 days ago
If Intuit, Sage, and Adobe got together they could just go ahead and pick a winner among Linux distros on the desktop. The main complaint is always that there are too many to support. Put those three on one, maybe get Activision and EA on board, and whatever they chose would be the defacto standard on the desktop.
2 comments
azinman2 3354 days ago
Doesn't make sense from a business perspective. It's not like a Linux desktop is some new bet -- marketshare is small. Intuit barely supports the mac and even that is relatively new. Adobe has a disproportionate number of mac users for a variety of reasons, but that isn't the norm. With android and iOS already being 2 new platforms with little code shared, adding another platform that has little growth potential isn't cost effective.
link
cestith 3353 days ago
It's a bit of chicken and egg. Marketshare is small in part because there's not a clear winner (or even two clear major leaders). People don't invest because there's no consensus on which to support. Because there's no consensus, there's no impetus to invest. Because there's no support for these apps that are Windows only or Windows and Mac only, the users aren't there to demand the support.

If a coalition (or cabal if you'd like to phrase it that way) of software vendors formed to select, build, or define a distro for the business desktop it'd become a more viable option.

If it was installed broadly at work, many people in turn would look for it for home use. It's how MS-DOS and then MS Windows became the de facto standard in a time of CP/M, Unix, Apple DOS, Atari DOS, GEOS, Amiga Workspace, OS/2, and MacOS. Having a single majority OS didn't happen because it was superior. It happened because of network effects.

link
Hydraulix989 3354 days ago
Steam does a good job of covering all of the Linux distros, even if you're on your own for things like Arch Linux (the community maintains a great Wiki).

The only thing they need to do is fix high-DPI display support (it's broken even on Windows and there is a HUGE issue on GitHub that has been around for years now without any action being taken to resolve it, a little frustrating):

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3492

link
cestith 3353 days ago
They do. I agree. It's not going to help someone who needs QuickBooks, Peachtree, After Effects, Photoshop, and other apps to work as well as on Windows. WINE is neat, but it's not a solution for SMEs to run their businesses.
link
Hydraulix989 3353 days ago
What I'm saying is that if Steam can support many distros easily, then it is certainly possible for Intuit/Sage/Adobe to as well without that much extra work than just focusing on one distro. It really comes down to just providing packages for each package manager (Deb, RPM, etc.). Linux environments aren't all THAT different at the end of the day.
link