[Discuss] Essentially all free apps will soon be available on Windows

[Adam Parkin]

Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> No. If somebody was using all free apps on windows, then the final step to
> move from windows underneath to the GNU/Linux OS underneath would be
> extremely easy for them. (I am drawing a distinction here and throughout
> this post between the OS which allows just the command-line to work and 
> apps
> that run on top of that OS.)

I just want to point out that while I am a very large open source 
supporter, and believe quite strongly in the principles of open source 
development, and that 90%+ of the applications I use on a day to day 
basis are open source, I still don't use Linux, nor do I have any 
intention to do so until Linux is as convenient to use as Windows is.

My point is just because people use FOSS doesn't mean they'll naturally 
migrate to Linux.

The "same apps are now available for both platforms" can go both ways, 
as now why switch to Linux when I can use Firefox (as an example) under 
Windows?  Ultimately people will switch to Linux when they want to use 
Linux, not when the programs they want to run are available for it 
(although the absence of such programs is certainly a knock against Linux).

> dependencies).  This is a big step forward compared to the previous
> situation where autotools did not allow a windows port at all. I think 

I think that's a bit of an overstatement, yes autotools are not the 
greatest, but certainly it is possible to work with projects that use 
them on Windows (I do some work on the Marsyas project which uses 
autoconf, etc, and all my work is done on a Windows machine under Cygwin).

At any rate thanks for pointing out CMake, as it is something I will 
check out..
-- 
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Adam Parkin
E-mail: pzelnip at gmail.com
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  Profanity is the language computer programmers know best.