The one point that I agree with the author on is that it is exceedingly hard to write a non-trivial closed-source application that is easy to install and works on all Linux distributions (or even just the major ones like RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Gentoo, Mint, Mandriva, CentOS, Xandros, and Slackware).
The app would have to support at least Gnome and KDE, and ideally should work with XFCE, Enlightenment, and [flux/black]box. And then you have to deal with the nightmare that is linux audio (oss, alsa, esound, arts, jack, gstreamer, phonon, etc).
I mean, static linking, autoconf, etc. all help, but it's still a lot of work. But testing each release on every (even major) combination of distribution, CPU-type, Window Manager, graphics tool-kit, and audio framework quickly becomes untenable. The return on investment for this sort of testing for a software author is staggeringly small.
And this is from someone who uses Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) as their primary OS.
The app would have to support at least Gnome and KDE, and ideally should work with XFCE, Enlightenment, and [flux/black]box. And then you have to deal with the nightmare that is linux audio (oss, alsa, esound, arts, jack, gstreamer, phonon, etc).
I mean, static linking, autoconf, etc. all help, but it's still a lot of work. But testing each release on every (even major) combination of distribution, CPU-type, Window Manager, graphics tool-kit, and audio framework quickly becomes untenable. The return on investment for this sort of testing for a software author is staggeringly small.
And this is from someone who uses Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) as their primary OS.