Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 19 Aug 1996 20:33:22 -0400 | From | Mark Hamstra <> | Subject | Re: Linux support denial in commercial products? |
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Jeff Gustafson wrote: > > Thomas Griffing (tom@dsworks.com) wrote: > > >By the way ... Did I really hear that Microsoft is going > >to port Explorer to Linux? > > I asked a Microsoft guy about this and he said the because Linux > can't do the graphics that other Unicies and (as he pointed to the large > screen) Windows can do, they cannot port it to Linux. ???????! I always > thought that X was X, but MS must make it more complex. When I said, > "But I thought X was just plain X." He said that no, Linux just doesn't > have the capability. Whatever. I think MS is afraid of Linux.
If your quote is accurate, that's just a plain stupid comment by MS. If anything Linux is *more* capable than other Unices. Much of the commercial X code is still written for and on X11R4 or R5, often without some of the extensions that are standard in R6. Add on MesaGL (as I have done for the MicroStation port), and you have a baseline graphics system that is nothing to be ashamed of. Shoot, I even ran into some bad assumptions in our code that couldn't handle the TrueColor capabilities of my Linux machine (all nicely repaired now, thank you.)
If you want to start looking at widget sets and other high-level graphics components, then you can make a somewhat better case that Linux is lacking. But in actuality, these bespeak more a lack in the applications programmers' abilities and resources than the operating system: for a company like Bentley that has it's own cross-platform gui toolkit, the port to Linux is not at all difficult.
Mark Hamstra Bentley Systems, Inc.
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