Toaster wrote:My potential customers are companies that are developing system software. I know, a lot of osdevers in the hobby/private sector are using linux, but I don't think my potential customers would.
There are just a handful firms they are developing real operating system software, I think less then 10 in the whole world. And these companies are not very big, they have just a few people working or developing on their software, so they do not have to calculate a lot of money for Windows licenses (which is a big cause why companies use Linux I think).
Windows is a great operating system, but it is not free, though.
These firms are professional, there isn't any cause why they should use Linux instead of Windows. With Windows they have more productivity and efficiency with Windows (more development & management tools, more support for applications, etc.)
Would the program was developed for private people then it wouldn't be a good job dealing with Windows executables, I know.
I'm currently thinking how I can improve the interface, does anybody have some suggestions?
Toast'a
Hmm I see you're missing the point entirely. The choice between windows/linux isn't just " if(Can I afford windows?) getWindows(); else getLinux();" - If you're developing a UNIX-based solution (see later paragraph) then it seems logical to use a UNIX-based dev environment. Besides which the availability of low-level tools for windows is piss-poor at best due to the entire ethos of the OS - "Hide everything a stupid person user can break".
I also wonder at your target audience. What is your background? How much do you actually know about these components compared to the engineers in said companies?
A related point is: "Who develops mainstream operating systems for the X86 architecture?" Microsoft, linux, sun, Apple. That is unfortunately the whole list. I would assume the small companies you're looking at make embedded OSs for devices and as such would be working with the ARM architecture - which makes all your x86-based literature useless. Besides which you can find out everything you want about x86 via a simple google search - people have spent a lot of time getting these specs open-sourced - who would now pay for them?
So back to the kind of OSs these companies will be developing: How many will make OSs like windows? None. They can't. 'cos it's closed source! How many will follow a *nix design? 99+%. Why? Because then they can just use the free GNU tools/toolchain and have a working system in no time. So why develop on a windows system if you're developing a *nix product?
I refer you to my initial paragraph again, as it is very important. Companies don't use *nix boxen *just* for their price. They make a much better development platform for low-level development. Although windows fans will say windows can be used as such as well (and I won't deny this), I would put forward the informed opinion that *nix is much better at that particular job.
EDIT: Egads! I've just looked at your website! Please please take the ajax/javascript off the 'view full screenshot' functionality, although it works well it defies the logic of clicking a hyperlink. I don't want my window frozen for 6 seconds while something loads, especially with everything grayed out!
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