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[marly421]

My two cents. Can I change my vote? No hate mail please but I said maybe but Linux is simply a lost cause. I've tried every distro (version) under the sun for the last 7 or 8 years and forget it. If you're a Linux power user maybe you can get something done...but for every one else, stay with windows or what you have. I tried to get a 1 year old HP printer to work properly and no go. I had to install a 5 year old ATI video card to get even the most basic of functions. My AMD HD7970 card works great in Windows...not Linux.

The Linux community won't pay. They won't buy into program software or support for same. My experience is the drivers for any hardware you might think of is 5 or 6 years behind. Video cards, scanners, printers, camera's, web-cams etc. is pitiful to the extreme. Modem and router support is woeful, even today.

Most of us can't or won't write drivers for Linux. I'm a Programmer and System Analysis and have been for years. Linux users have this issue: They want people like me to work for free. They want everything for free and be damned if someone wants to be able to feed or house themselves. I make $40 an hour, will the Linux folks pony up? Not in my lifetime.

Most all the 'free' programs for Linux is unsupportable, it's badly written and the simplest of documentation is either missing, simplistic and filled with simple misspellings. If JRiver does finish a media center for Linux, great but don't expect any rewards. Last thing I read, Linux had about 2% of the computer fan base. Unless you count smartphone and tablets as 'Computers' and I don't. Apple computer present is about 4% and Samsung is handing Apple smartphones a real whooping, selling more than double Apple numbers. 

[Matt]

Linux is important for JRiver because we believe it may open up hardware business.

You're right that Linux on the desktop is a bit of a question mark.  

Regardless, we're committed to doing it and are hoping for the best.

[notzippy]

My two cents. Can I change my vote? No hate mail please but I said maybe but Linux is simply a lost cause....

I am afraid you are misinformed. Most of your issues are not so much with linux but with the drivers. But business is changing - manufactures are realizing there is a large community of people running linux based distros and so they are releasing proper drivers for there hardware. This is especially true since steam for linux was released both AMD and nvida are releasing drivers for linux. It is true that older hardware can be a problem but to generalize by saying it is a lost cause is going overboard to the extreme.

Nz

[JimH]

You're right that Linux on the desktop is a bit of a question mark.  

I don't agree.  Linux is fine as a desktop OS.

[Matt]

I don't agree.  Linux is fine as a desktop OS.

The question mark isn't about either of our personal feelings towards Linux or the technology behind it.

The question mark is about whether the Year of Linux is really ever coming for home desktop use.

[JimH]

I didn't mean that she would be the next Miss America.

[jmone]

For 20 years, next year has always been the "Year of the Linux desktop (YoLD)" but it really has already happened for Unix with plenty of eyes on these spin offs:
- iOS
- Andriod

[6233638]

- iOS

OS X and iOS are based on BSD rather than Linux.

[jmone]

I agree - hence I said they were Unix spin offs

[XR219]

I was talking about this the other day with a colleague. Basically, until the Linux support documents and knowledge bases are written in plain English, it will never become a mass use desktop operating system. Even for noobs, most of the commands are random characters that a non techy cannot understand, so most folk who dabble glaze over and switch off. Even the old IBM System 36's and AS400's used commands that were very obviously shortened versions of what you wanted the system to do (GOLICPGM - Go licensed Program) Windows and OSX have a very much consumer focus. If you have a query on pretty much any of the Linux distros and you look for help on the web, there's no, click here, click here and click ok, its all command line driven. Its like the way you needed to know basic, back in the day, to get anything done on a Spectrum or BBC Micro (don't know if that will mean much to our friends across the pond). But in the 80's, computers were few and far between because you needed some basic knowledge of how to code to get much out of them. Windows / OS2 / Macs brought the GUI and the rest is history, command lines disappeared and usage globally shot through the roof. Commercially, it makes a lot of sense for the guys to work on a Linux version, but its not the same thing as end users switching on their Mac or Windows desktop and using it. Just my tuppence worth. 

[6233638]

I agree - hence I said they were Unix spin offs

Sorry, I thought you were saying they were Linux's "year of the desktop".

[imugli]

I use Ubuntu on my laptop day to day and have done so for a few years now.
CUPS lets me print to my HP printer over wifi no problem.
Wifi just works, as does bluetooth these days.

Literally the only things I still keep windows on my drive for these days are MC and Adobe products (an even then GIMP and Gedit are OK most of the time for what I use them for).

Bring on Linux MC! :-)
 

[jmone]

Sorry, I thought you were saying they were Linux's "year of the desktop".

Edit - Sorry what I poorly communicated was:
- Unix spawned Linux and for 20 years, "next year" is always "the year for Desktop" but it never quite makes many eyeballs
- ....and yet other Unix decedents (iOS and Andriod) have already won more eyeballs than Linux ever has.

[sgomes]

I don't see the argument of "it's never going to be good enough to be the mainstream desktop" as reason enough to warrant abandoning this project. That's a bit of a short-sighted view when you take the entire entertainment market into account.

To start with, presumably JRiver's refactoring of the MC codebase made it economically feasible to explore new options, even if there's a bit of risk involved. We have OS X to thank for that, I suppose

You also need to remember that Linux isn't just the "desktop Linux" of years past. There is a huge range of devices out there using Linux as the OS, from routers to media centre units to, as recently announced, future home consoles (the upcoming range of Steamboxes). I can definitely see a market for people buying MC for these devices, or JRiver selling custom hardware of their own (which would be a lot more flexible and cheaper than shipping barebones PCs running a heavily customised Windows install).

Also, you need to remember that having MC on more OSes is *good* for the Windows version. This might sound counter-intuitive, but the more platforms a piece of software is on, the better the codebase usually becomes, since developers tend to try to rely on fewer and fewer platform-specific hacks. We've seen time and time again since JRiver started their massive porting effort that this leads to things like better performance across all OSes.

Really, Linux opens up a huge range of opportunities, and I'm excited to find out where we'll see MC running a year or two from now It'll be in my Linux media centre come October, that's for sure

[6233638]

Also, you need to remember that having MC on more OSes is *good* for the Windows version. This might sound counter-intuitive, but the more platforms a piece of software is on, the better the codebase usually becomes, since developers tend to try to rely on fewer and fewer platform-specific hacks. We've seen time and time again since JRiver started their massive porting effort that this leads to things like better performance across all OSes.

It also splits development resources and means you are less likely to have good OS integration, when focus is split over multiple operating systems and having feature parity across them all.

I would much rather see development focused on things like proper High DPI support on OS X/Windows, touch support, taskbar/dock integration, and general improvements, than focus on porting to other systems. Obviously we're past that point now though.

[sgomes]

It also splits development resources and means you are less likely to have good OS integration, when focus is split over multiple operating systems and having feature parity across them all.

I would much rather see development focused on things like proper High DPI support on OS X/Windows, touch support, taskbar/dock integration, and general improvements, than focus on porting to other systems. Obviously we're past that point now though.

Well, it's not really a zero-sum game, as new markets bring more money, which could be used to hire more people. But this is getting a bit too speculative, so I'll leave it at that.

[JimH]

It also splits development resources and means you are less likely to have good OS integration, when focus is split over multiple operating systems ...

I don't think that's necessarily true.

Two OS's are more difficult than one, but not twice as difficult.  Once the porting has been finished, the work on one is often easy to implement on the other.

[kstuart]

You also need to remember that Linux isn't just the "desktop Linux" of years past. There is a huge range of devices out there using Linux as the OS, from routers to media centre units to, as recently announced, future home consoles (the upcoming range of Steamboxes).

There seem to be _____boxes now for every OS variant (e.g. there is now a second version of Mintboxes).

The history of the past 50 years clearly illustrates that what drives consumer adoption is better/worse marketing (cf VHS/Betamax) and historical/political factors (cf QWERTY and 1080i).   Functionality is far down the list.  So, it is impossible to predict in advance (since one cannot know in advance which design idiots will be paired with marketing geniuses).

I agree that corporate customers are the best source of income, so it is sensible for JRiver to cater to their needs.   Beyond that, it is really odd that JRiver does everything possible to appeal to people who will never, ever use anything like MediaCenter (i.e. technophobes), and resists making improvements that would make it more appealing to the geeks and nerds who are their only consumer customers.