What about suse, rhel and other distros?
Install snap and off you go.
Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
91–100 of 395 posts
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#92> Turns out there aren’t a lot of email clients for Linux users that work with Exchange / Office 365 Has Linux on the desktop really fallen so far in the last years? When did the decay really set in? How does open source friendly Microsoft not see Linux email clients support falling behind at least as a problem in MS documenting its APIs, if not an opportunity to participate in the major open source clients and influ…
As someone who was worked on an email client before:
IMAP and the raw message/rfc822 format is already a quite complex format to handle. Most open-source software starts by building their logic around these formats.
Exchange is a completely different model, everything from how you communicate with the server, how you store the bits on disk or in memory, or even the logical structure of messages. On top of this, it adds several features that don't really have a parallel in the standard RFCs. For most people working on email clients, it is far easier to tell users "enable IMAP on your Exchange server" than to actually implement the full top-to-bottom stack you need to get things working. Even then, given the likelihood of bugs and missing features, it's hard to justify making the switch from Exchange to $ALTERNATIVE, and if you didn't need those missing features, well go back to enabling IMAP and use that instead.
The APIs that MS uses for Exchange are largely public at this point. Even the mapping between MAPI messages and message/rfc822 that Outlook does is released in one of the documents.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#93The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need…
Yep, totally agree with you there. After reading the article that was my first thought when he mentioned adding support for Google IMAP. Full stop. Don't do it. You have a product that is doing well as the solution for something with a clear business case that's not well addressed elsewhere. Own that market and focus your development attention on that Exchange ecosystem. As soon as you branch to IMAP/Gmail/General pu…
Keep in mind that Google IMAP could mean Google Apps compatibility. And a good number of orgs use Google Apps.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it’s the same reason why you hear professional designers complain when they see Comic Sans used for body text, but laypersons rarely will mention it. A pro will notice things about implementation that interfere with the content, while the layperson often can’t articulate it even if they sense it’s not quite right.
A lot of people don't even realize that better is possible. I've had plenty of friends and acquaintances observe that browsing the web on my computer is very zippy compared to doing it on theirs, and ask what I do. I hate to then have to explain to them that it's because of a fairly hard-won set of JavaScript-blocking rules and suchlike. I especially hate it because the best alternative I can suggest to someone who d…
> I've had plenty of friends and acquaintances observe that browsing the web on my computer is very zippy
Wait, how often are people peering over your shoulder to even notice? Have been a programmer for 30+ years and no one has ever made an observation either way about my screen responsiveness...
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I barely see the problem. Sure, the header and footer aren't perfect, but stupidly large? I also don't feel any "cpu melting javascripts" and my PC is barely usable when I compile anything. For me, Medium provides a very readable experience that is much better than the average static blog. And I don't have to fear a malware ridden page like an old Wordpress installation.
This is how the article looks like on 1280x800: https://i.imgur.com/L07L4ce.png Sticky header/footer, cookie consent covering the menu, not a single line of the content visible. You consider this design good? I might be wrong with this specific site on the JS - it only loaded 121KB Javascript. The actual HTML of the entry is 30. WordPress nowadays upgrades itself to minor version - security patches - without touching…
Having the blog post outside Medium doesn't guarantee them all looking better. On the other side, it is easier to fix one site using custom CSS than it is to fix a bunch.
An on the other other side Firefox's reading mode makes this whole discussion irrelevant.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, totally agree with you there. After reading the article that was my first thought when he mentioned adding support for Google IMAP. Full stop. Don't do it. You have a product that is doing well as the solution for something with a clear business case that's not well addressed elsewhere. Own that market and focus your development attention on that Exchange ecosystem. As soon as you branch to IMAP/Gmail/General pu…
Keep in mind that Google IMAP could mean Google Apps compatibility. And a good number of orgs use Google Apps.
Oh I know, there's just so many existing IMAP clients that I can't imagine paying for a desktop email/calendar client to work with Google Apps. Not to mention all the web based bits like Google Inbox, etc.
The value proposition just isn't there with all of the free options already out there.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#97I am trying to make a living with a software product, a database in particular. RediSQL, SQL steroids for Redis: http://redbeardlab.tech/rediSQL/
So let me share a different point of view.
I find it extremely, extremely difficult.
As far as I know, if you need a solution for in memory SQL as cache layer or also as main persistent layer it is the only available solution, on top of that it works on top of existing, widely deployed solution.
But still I haven't received a single request for support or I have been able to make a single sale.
Of course, I believe is mostly my fault, because similar businesses models (sidekiq) seems to work but, if you ask me, it is definitely not worthed to enter this market.
I will try to focus more on marketing for the following months but if it doesn't work neither I am just going to remove the open source part and use it as an internal advantage for my consulting business. I found it just too convenient respect to Pg or MySQL or Mongo.
I really believe it is a pity, but I believe that if this product, by the end of the year, doesn't work I will just stop developing product for software developers. It is just not worthed.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#98Completely unrelated to the contents: Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium. It's terrible for us, your readers. Set up a static blog, with a domain, go WordPress, Grav, Typo3, anything, but without stupidly large sticky header/footer and without heavy javascript . EDIT: apparently 121KB javascript is not heavy. I still believe it's an overkill for 30KB content.
Why is it that I only ever hear those complaints on HN and never elsewhere... Are you all still using Pentium 3 PCs and 56k modems?
Try using a "modern" site on a spotty 2g connection.
Then realize that level of a connection is more common than you think. You never hear it elsewhere because those users just don't use your site, because they can't.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#99I don't understand, why is there such a hard dichotomy between "commercial - binary blob" and open source? Why can't most commercial software ship with sources, with a sane license that allows a license holder to study, recompile and modify, but not publish derivative work?
90% of the people who want the source would not pirate the software, and 100% the pirates are satisfied with a binary copy. And don't tell me about copy protection, in practice it's just as effective as a line in the EULA: for any worthwhile software, those who don't care about the license don't care about copy protection either.
I have no problem paying for software, but I don't want to surrender all control of my hardware for a 3rd party to run secret code on it.
Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux
#100Completely unrelated to the contents: Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium. It's terrible for us, your readers. Set up a static blog, with a domain, go WordPress, Grav, Typo3, anything, but without stupidly large sticky header/footer and without heavy javascript . EDIT: apparently 121KB javascript is not heavy. I still believe it's an overkill for 30KB content.
I think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. Not an easy thing to do with a static blog.
I get the impression that Medium is pretty low effort, brings in readers, and is fairly popular (mindshare is a thing). I considered it before doing github sites (now does ssl easily), which I’d recommend except that managing a simple blog with git isn’t for everyone.