Eager to shed its reputation as a tool just for Java developers, Eclipse has quickly embraced newer languages such as PHP, Python and Ruby—as well as older ones like Ada, COBOL and C. The same is not happening on the Linux side. Only 9.6% of downloads of eclipse are for Linux platform compared to 86.7% of downloads are on windows.
Jennifer deJong explain in the article “Can Linux Get a Lift From Eclipse?” about the effects of the different levels of developers on the tools coming on linux. As eclipse facilitates the development of the cross-platform application development, linux is yet to get a lot of contributions from developer world.
As Mike Milinkovich says… “To be completely honest, hard-core developers [building Linux applications] aren’t going to use Eclipse.” Linux developers have relied on command-line tools such as the text editors Emacs and vi for years and years, and those tools are ingrained in their culture, he said. “But having modern tools like Eclipse is an important enabler for the future growth of Linux.”
Its interesting to see how eclipse can shape linux’s direction. Its impressive to see that the tools developed with eclipse works the same way in windows, linux and OSX.