this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
404 points (92.8% liked)
Linux
47233 readers
777 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is how you make “critical mass” adoption that much more difficult.
As much as I love Linux, if you are creating a program to be used by everyone and anyone, you achieve adoption inertia and public consciousness penetration by focusing on the largest platform first. And at 72% market share, that would be Windows.
I hope this initiative works. I really do. But intentionally ignoring three-quarters of the market is tantamount to breaking at least one leg before the starting gate even opens. This browser is likely to be relegated to being a highly niche and special-interest-only browser with minuscule adoption numbers, which means it will be virtually ignored by web developers and web policy makers.
Linux users tend to give much better bug reports than Windows users (if they do at all). That alone is probably a good enough reason to do Linux first. There are many more good reasons when the first goal is getting it functional and not getting as many users as possible (who will probably hate it if they're not a technically skilled user because there will be bugs).
You're making an assumption their first priority is the number of users. I would suspect that isn't true, and they're aware Windows has more users.
LadyBird is an unusable pre-alpha-quality web browser. The fact that they haven't bothered porting to Windows yet is both thoroughly unsurprising and entirely meaningless. In its current state, it wouldn't become popular either way. But I guess Linux users have this weird inferiority complex where everything must instantly be dropped to port to Windows even when it makes little sense to do so.
Ladybird was originally started as a browser for SerenityOS, a POSIX operating system. Well into the project, they decided to make it cross-platform but that still meant POSIX ( Linux and macOS ). As interest ( and sponsorships ) came in from outside SerenityOS, focus moved more and more to the browser and away from SerenityOS.
Just recently, Ladybird decided to split from SerenityOS, allow more outside code, and in fact has dropped SerenityOS as a supported OS.
The project is fairly pragmatic. I am sure they will add Windows support as the core browser engine matures.
I think you just read what you wanted to read don't you think?
One salty downvote from @rekabis@lemmy.ca :P
Can't win 'em all.