Either support Linux/BSD or don't.

Re:Either support Linux/BSD or don't. by simonster on Monday October 22, 2012 @09:15AM (#4682962)

Properly supporting Windows and Mac OS X requires testing on the 3, maybe 4 latest OS releases. Properly supporting Linux requires testing on the last 3 or 4 versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Mint, Arch, Gentoo, and who knows what else. Furthermore, while code that works on Windows XP is almost guaranteed to work on Windows 7, and code that works on OS X 10.6 is almost guaranteed to work on 10.8, there's no such guarantee on Linux.

All we build is a browser extension, and we've seen issues on Linux that depend on the version of gcc used to build Firefox, the version of d-bus, the window manager, and the desktop environment. I can't imagine what it would be like to support a real app.

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Re:Either support Linux/BSD or don't. by cowsaysoink on Monday October 22, 2012 @02:03PM (#4684405)

The only cross-compatible apps (other than things like browsers) I've worked with are matlab and mathematica and although they had some differences between windows they both performed well on any linux version I was on from Slackware to Ubuntu provided underlying libraries (libc) existed in the right place.

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