Linux users are usually happier with less bells and whistles then their peers on other platforms. Probably because the platform itself provides much more tools, so there's no real need to add even more on top of it. You say it's difficult to get program with complex GUI to run both under KDE and Gnome - I say, no one asked you to do that - if you can get it running under Gnome only - that's fine! Now, building on top of Eclipse - who asked Adobe to do that? A major mode for Emacs, but with normal compiler integration would do. No, seriously it would. But this would show commitment. Instead, there's FB3 with undefined license agreement (it's probably illegal today to own that program because all agreements had expired since the last time they were prolongated), and there's a guerrilla-patched FB4 (obviously, illegal, because Adobe has nothing to do with it - some good soul had patched a Windows version of FB4). You say it's difficult to get the designer view straight - again, no one asked to do that! FlashDevelop never had it, and no one complained, obviously, because it's free and opensource. It's OK to only get the essential features right, nobody was asking for more.
Intellij or Eclipse wouldn't even start on some weaker laptops :) well, because it's Java with too much memory, so much memory students some times cannot afford :) Fancy video cards with rare drivers? Yep, I own one, and I fight my distro for being stubborn and trying to replace my evil proprietary NVidea drivers with free and opensource substitutes, which, however, can only run my video card in 1024x726 mode. But I'm fully conscious of the reasons, and would accept the difficulties related to my hardware, again, because it's a different from Windows users mentality - I know what I'm doing and why do I suffer, if I do. I don't expect any program to suddenly figure out how to use my semi-standard hardware. If it doesn't function - that's my problem. So far I can get the sources, I'd try to fix it. The problem is in not having anything, neither the DIY nor a shrink-wrap. Developing for Linux is not immediately profitable - it would be crazy to expect that. It is however, profitable in the long run, because it is an investment in future developers. Of that 1% of desktops running Linux, 0.99% are used by programmers, while of the rest 99% of PCs, maybe 1% is used by programmers. Linux is a natural choice for young generation, hackers and people otherwise interested in either computer-related technologies, or scientific research. It's short-sighted to ignore that, even though small, group.
