Have linux improvements been dropped?

Doesn’t the world of Linux itself make it a more difficult to support operating system. There are a lot of different versions of Linux and everyone likes to build it their way. Now, with that said, keep in mind that I have never fired up a Linux machine but I do often read postings here and on the Digest just for the heck of it and that is the feeling that I get in having done so. I don’t envy the Xojo crew trying to support that environment and it’s non-consistency.

Yeah supporting Linux is a big bag of suck, but you will notice that Xojo only officially supports a few commercial versions of it…

Everyone knows that the people writing the software do not make good testers :wink:

Yes, binary compatibility is hard when you try to target multiple distributions. This is why most of the companies I’ve seen that ship proprietary products on Linux end up only supporting a handful of distributions.

[quote=68774:Harrie Westphal]Doesn’t the world of Linux itself make it a more difficult to support operating system. There are a lot of different versions of Linux and everyone likes to build it their way. Now, with that said, keep in mind that I have never fired up a Linux machine but I do often read postings here and on the Digest just for the heck of it and that is the feeling that I get in having done so. I don’t envy the Xojo crew trying to support that environment and it’s non-consistency.[/quote]Actually I think that’s overplayed, there’s only really quite a small number of base distributions, others are derivatives of those base distributions and only differ by the default applications, package manager and repositories they include. For example Linux Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu which in turn is a derivative of Debian, Debian being the widest used base distribution by some margin. Of course there are Linux flavours for all sorts of different architectures but as Xojo only targets x86 that’s not a cause of any difficulties.

Xojo also need to take into consideration that they are selling a development tool, even if it were the case only 1% of their user base are using the Linux IDE that doesn’t necessarily translate to Linux being only 1% of a Xojo developer’s deployments. When I first bought Real Basic the IDE was not free, even though the compiler was cross platform I had to specify which OS I would be using the IDE on. Even though I bought the Windows version the fact is if Real Basic didn’t have to ability to compile for Linux I wouldn’t have bought it.

[quote=68420:@Christian Schmitz]Well, if you join the beta program, you could check if next version brings improvements.
Else you could at least create a feedback case and describe problems you have, like with a screen recording.[/quote]
But to do so you have to be Pro and as far as I can see, Vince is not.

All we can measure is our user base.
We don’t know if you distribute to millions or billions of users.
But then thats true of OS X and Windows as well.
Now it’s entirely possible that with Linux servers tending to dominate in the data center that there are lots of Linux deploys of your apps - and that would be awesome.
But it still doesn’t change the fact that about 1% of our user base is using the Linux IDE.

It doesn’t mean we ignore it - but we do apportion efforts based on what OUR user base is using and where we can have the most impact on the largest segments of our user base.

[quote=68820:@Norman Palardy]But it still doesn’t change the fact that about 1% of our user base is using the Linux IDE.

It doesn’t mean we ignore it - but we do apportion efforts based on what OUR user base is using and where we can have the most impact on the largest segments of our user base.

[/quote]

Somehow I don’t think the Xojo marketing department is a big fan of yours just about now! :wink:

I don’t think marketing has ever said “oh we prioritize features & fixes on every platform equally”.
Thats not realistic.
A lot of things we fix on one platform do tend to also fix issues on others.

But when it comes to “this bug only exists on platform X” we do have to prioritize

I doubt anyone in marketing is surprised by that

I was teasing!

You need to learn more about us Canadians - we are serious business, not humour :wink:

FWIW, I filed a bug report regarding Linux graphic.rect on September 2, 2013 and it was Fixed and Verified on November 22, 2013. ID: 29289

Now, this is not the issue that you are having as mentioned above, but given a clear description as to the problem and an attached example, Xojo responded quickly I thought.

Norman, I totally get it. I still realease apps for window apprx. 80% - 10% for Mac and 10% for Linux It’s just a shame that I have been using the RS Development tool for years and now no longer am able to continue using it properly without going back to MicroSuck. I finally got that monkey off my back after years frustrations.

Solution: Of course I could buy a separate computer with WinOS and run Xojo only and then build and deploy from there, but like I said the linux deploy still present problems.

[quote=68884:@Vince Francia]
Solution: Of course I could buy a separate computer with WinOS and run Xojo only and then build and deploy from there, but like I said the linux deploy still present problems.[/quote]
I’d buy a Mac & run Windows & Linux in VM’s on that
But that’s just my 2 cents after having lugged around multiple machines for several years

Deploying TO linux is not the same as developing ON linux
I’ve been mostly using Ubuntu 12 and 13 to test the IDE with although I also have other versions (I have about 15 different VMs with different combos of Linux and Windows - but most are Linux distros)

Here’s my take on it: Xojo Inc does not use the reporting engine in any of their selling products (no idea about internal projects). Therefore it is always a low priority for them. Same with the database editor. They don’t use it and not enough people scream about the bugs (and don’t use their Feedback points to those items). For Xojo they are marketing bullet points.

I have never recommended that anyone use the built-in Database Editor. That’s almost 14 years of suck! I had high hopes for the reporting tool, too, but instead we ended up creating BKeeney Shorts because the built-in reporting tool wasn’t good enough for us, or, our clients.

I agree Bob. Thank you.

This facts starts having a big impact on Xojo.
I understand Xojo has to prioritize problems which prevents to have a working IDE, but the simple idea that “when they don’t need it, they don’t invest time on it” seems silly to me.
In house software development can do this, but not a software development system sold to build applications. Every kind of applications, not only the Xojo IDE. Funny enough, the IDE is the only application that can´t be built :wink:

Why advertising features which doesn’t work as expected and why advertising a Linux IDE/Framework if this is not (actively) supported?
Yes, I know, Xojo can’t do everything.
But then, just strip that feature and stop supporting it before it becomes a boomerang.

Getting back to the Vince’s original subject, I’ve created a screen movie of Xojo 2013r4.1 running on a CentOS 6.2 machine running on a 32bit system with 2GB of RAM. However, the machine has a 2GB Nvidia GTX650 card with Nvidia’s Linux drivers.

This is totally usable as you can see if you watch the short MP4 movie:

Xojo 13r4.1 on CentOS w/2GB RAM

This is as quick as any other app I run on that box.

Is your Linux install running more slowly than that?

I know that I personally test both Alpha and Beta builds on 5 different live Linux systems and anywhere from 6 to 10 VM’s. I use everything from a raw, homemade Linux to the latest Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Mint, Fedora, Arch, and others. The only thing about all of these is that they have at least 2GB of RAM and relatively beefy video cards (most with Nvidia GTX 650 or 660 cards and Nvidia’s non-OSS drivers). I also keep some of my VMs virgin (no updates) and see no issues with those.

With Linux, all of my performance headaches have almost all been related to the graphics drivers (and that applies to other apps as well). By not using onboard video, I’ve solved every slow down that I’ve run into regardless of 64bit or 32bit.

I also test on Windows XP SP3, Windows 7 32 and 64 bit, Windows Server 2008r2, and Windows 8.1 (even on a Surface Pro).

I report everything that glares at me and (as Norman and William will testify) every time I run into sluggish behavior.

With the current shipping Xojo version (13r4.1), I can build all binaries on all three platforms and they run as good as my code allows them to run.

O/T - but one of the sessions I’m really looking forward to at XDC is the “Learning To Love Linux” session.