RE: [GD-Linux] ANN: Candy Cruncher for Linux shipped

[Vincent Penquerc'h <Vin...@ar...>]

> > Why don't people complain that there isn't a unified way to do
> > ANYTHING in Linux instead? That would solve the problem much
> > better...we could remove half of SDL's code, and 75% of the
> > installer system.
> 
> Evolutionary systems don't norm towards such standards until the
> respective areas have become so entrenched as to no longer be
> (significantly) subject to evolutionary forces.  Or more simply:
> norming happens when the potential value of norming to the
> individual exceeds the perceived value of differentiation.

Indeed.
About the top comment, I'm not too sure it is the right question.
In fact, the perceived unified way of doing things in Win32 is only
that, perceived. There are a number of installation programs that
work in a very similar way. Much of it is because the majority of
users are not computer specialists. They thus need something that
gets the job done and don't care how it does so. They would be very
happy if the underlying program mangled their filesystem, provided
it did work.
Programmers, on the other hand, routinely deal with the filesystem
or other areas of a computer the typical Windows user would not
use, or only when unable to do otherwise. I then understand that
one doesn't like a given way of doing things, like a non technical
computer user would not like an installation program to, say, put
some icons in the wrong menu, or something.
For instance, I don't like how the Windows installation programs
default to spamming the c:\Program\ Files directory, or tend to
put data in strange places within the filesystem tree (this may
have changed with XP which apparently really handles users), etc.
But to many users, these things do not matter. That's just system
internals. Linux users just tend to have more programmers and
technical people.
They also have more whiners (I know, I'm one) too, I grant you :)
But all this to say that I don't think the question is the right
one. The lack of a standard way is caused by the lack of a good
one way that could become a standard. For now.

-- 
Vincent Penquerc'h