Update: Please read the article carefully before commenting. If you notice, most of the problems being described here is part of Eclipse, which is open source. So, usability issues are faced by open source programs as well, and not just proprietary programs on Linux. The reason I wrote that title was because this pain is usually felt by people who are making closed source packages that works on different Linux distributions. The real issue is about unneeded incompatibilities between different Linux distributions.

After working on the porting project to make Flex Builder run on

Linux,

I am starting to see why closed source software on Linux is

hard.

There are just a handful of closed source products on Linux (counting

only the famous ones) – Opera, Skype, Nero, Acrobat Reader, and Flash

Player. Hmmm, I can think of just 5.

Why is that important at all? Because software developers who are not

initiated to the FOSS philosophy will be scared off the platform

because of its inherent complexities. For example, in this project,

getting the software to run on the various Linux distros was, to put

it lightly, troublesome.

There are a number of issues that we faced, which I’m certain is the

reason others don’t want to get into this as well.

Let’s start with Eclipse. Eclipse runs fairly well on different

platforms (let’s ignore the memory-hogging issue here), but on Linux,

it’s a different ballgame. Somehow, the polishing of the UI is

markedly lacking. Yes, we’ve filed

bugs, but turns