On Saturday 05 September 2009 11:22:30 rixed@happyleptic.org wrote:
> > Using a very simple analysis from
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems,
> > 97.14%[1] of the computers in the world run an OS which does not have a
> > "Linux"-style package manager (very sad, but true).
>
> With OCaml you can distribute native code programs, so the installation
> problem is relevant only to programmers.

Don't bank on it. We shipped a product called Presenta a few years ago that 
was written in OCaml and distributed as a native code executable for Linux. 
It was a complete disaster with 80% of users experiencing random segfaults 
and we canned the product and will never try to distribute compiled OCaml 
programs again.

Linux is basically a complete disaster in this regard because it offers so 
little binary compatibility between distros. Building upon a decent VM solves 
this problem and many others, of course, but Linux has none.

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e