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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

> I used to think it'd be easier to just not support Macs at all for most smaller tech companies, and after reading this, I still think that.

There is only one platform to support: macOS. I can target all supported Mac users 100% of the time. Windows is similar and is also one OS to support and one can target their Windows software to Windows users 100% of the time.

> Screw 'em, release your software on Windows and Linux and don't look back.

How do you define Linux support especially when you cannot guarantee supporting all Linux users and distros?

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Best effort.

Binary Qt and GTK apps compiled even 10-15 years ago often still work, and do so on almost any distro. Games are a bit more iffy, depending on if it used SDL or not; and Steam on Linux has made great effort to make the (admittedly few) older Linux binaries remain alive (and if Steam doesn't, the community has).

I don't see this as an issue. Using Linux implies a level of competency from the customer, and I'd rather help a competent Linux customer try to get my stuff run on their odd distro (ex: Alpine) than help an incompetent Windows or OSX user. One gets me a customer for life, the other just reminds me that hell is other people.

> Binary Qt and GTK apps compiled even 10-15 years ago often still work, and do so on almost any distro.

That hasn’t been my experience at all. Also, the desktop Linux market is minuscule. It is an order of magnitude smaller than the macOS market. There’s a reason commercial software vendors don’t usually bother with it.

> Best effort.

That isn't good enough. It is not a guarantee of full OS support and you are forced to select a limited set of distros that you can support despite them all running a Linux kernel.

That is not the case with Windows or macOS which the majority of users have been using for their Desktops for decades. [0]

> I don't see this as an issue. Using Linux implies a level of competency from the customer, and I'd rather help a competent Linux customer try to get my stuff run on their odd distro (ex: Alpine) than help an incompetent Windows or OSX user.

Why should one always assume that their customers are kernel engineers or know what a compiler is to get their GUI app running on their system? I would not give free or paid support on unsupported systems, especially when the Linux user-base is vanishingly tiny.

If your software can be run by tech-illiterate users on Windows / Macs and they are paying for it, that is a much better outcome than wasting hours helping one Linux user run your software on an obscure distro either for free or paid.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

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