Target OS list? (Was: RE: The libevent issue (Was: Re: checking in))

[Eric S. Raymond]

Daniel Poirot <dtpoirot at gmail.com>:
> I just wasted the afternoon trying to coerce Outlook into bottom-posting.
> 
> What are folks using for am MUA? I am a grey-beard but not enough of one to
> use emacs for mail...

mutt, here.

> Speaking of the grey around the muzzle, after 15 years at NASA, I am in my
> second decade of selling and supporting commercial software development
> tools into the Linux market. 
> 
> All of Linux that matters can be divided into two parts - Red Hat-based
> (CentOS, Fedora) and Debian-based (Ubuntu). Capture them and the rest
> follow.
> 
> The *BSD's are strong in the enterprise server and Internet backbone.
> OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD are like the axis of Cartesian-space - common
> origin but orthogonal in every way that matters! 

That pretty much matches the assessment we have of how to get early adoption.
Our strategy has been Linux (mostly Debian family) first, FreeBSD second,
others as they fall in our laps, have a Windows port but don't stress out
about getting it quickly.

> I would expect a favorable reception in the Solaris camp but there is little
> else in the vendor UNIX world still around. The giants - Irix, Ultrix, HP-UX
> and AIX - are all but gone.

I had the impression AIX and HP-UX were still ponderable, though declining.

> I am very comfortable answering questions in the VM area. My desktop has 16
> cores and 72 GB RAM. There are usually several VMs running! One can stand up
> a minimal system in just a few minutes. I generally use type-2 hypervisors
> like VirtualBox or VMWare rather than the bare metal type.

Right, you should have a long conversation with Amar.  I'm trying to
stay walled off from those details; I have other things I have to focus on.

> The wild card in the quest for robust, secure time service may very well be
> Android! Mac OS seems well represented already and nobody wants to be
> bothered by Windows just yet...

Interesting.  NTP Classic traditionally has a Windowa port.

> Is DistroWatch still the best measure of the market?

Dunno.  Haven't followed it closely enough in years.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>