361–370 of 415 posts
> We started working on the game in 2012 > Issues specific to Linux were almost entirely graphics driver related, and unique to the platform. So this is essentially a rant about linux graphics drivers circa 2012?
Are they any better in 2019? Last I checked the anything beyond desktop compositing features is still a tyre fire of lying capabilities, broken functionality and wishful thinking. nVidia being by far the most stable while lacking integration with modern Linux APIs.
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Sure, my point is though that it's only in the past few months when Proton was released that the compatibility was good enough it actually mattered to game developers and players. By making Linux compatible with Windows games it gets rid of that objection "I'd move to Linux if it weren't for my games" which was the remaining objection for a LOT of people. Because Steam tracks WINE that's a very good thing, so they ca…
I'm not sure that this does encourage native Linux game development. Why bother putting in the porting work for 0.1% of potential users when someone else might do the work for me via Wine/Proton.
So, yeah... maybe that means most devs will just say "my Linux support is just it runs on Proton probably, good luck!" but the thing is... there are games on Linux now. Lots of them. Lots of good ones. I was playing The Witness last night by just pushing play on Steam. No winecfg or winetools or separate DriveC Steam installation. No messing with drivers. I pressed play, the game loaded, I played it. I've repeated this loop in the last few months with most of the games in my library. Endless Legend is back in my rotation again. All of the dumb anime Japanese games where they don't even know Linux is a thing that exists suddenly work. It's glorious.
Wine/Proton may be the lazy way to develop for Linux and might not give people the coveted title of Linux exclusive gamer, but it's working really well if all you care about is playing games and not installing Windows.
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Nearly every Humble Bundle release of games shows that Linux users spent more than Windows or Mac.
In terms of numbers of users, I thought it was interesting that the first Humble Indie Bundle had about 16% of downloads being Linux downloads, whereas the newer releases are like All these numbers are way higher than 0.1 % though. I admit I just don't believe the OP that Linux sales were 0.1 %. I would believe 1%. Also my first interpretation of the headline was "Linux users provide valuable feedback!", which matche…
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Last time I checked, both AMD and Nvidia expect you to download manufacturer drivers for Windows. I'm willing to jump through similar hoops for Linux. (Incidentally, when someone complains about how hard it is to install Linux, that person has usually never tried installing Windows without using the OEM disc from the manufacturer. Take that away, and Windows becomes a lot harder.) Linux support for Optimus and friend…
Recently I tried to install Windows on some HP Elitebook, a few weeks back. It didn't have drivers for the graphics card, nor both network interfaces (and several other internal devices). How am I supposed to download the network drivers without a working NIC?? (same machine, like many others, have no troubles with Ubuntu, out-the-box) It was only so my wife (honest) could play The Sims 4. Fortunately, thanks to the…
Linux is the perpetual scapegoat. They selected a middleware, Coherent UI, that didn't work properly on anything but Windows. They also didn't make proper use of the Steam runtime, a mistake that continues to cause issues. Most games don't make these mistakes, so this isn't really representative of the larger state of Linux gaming. It's worth pointing out that the devs did make a legitimately good attempt at making L…
He points out that a very large percentage of the crashes were graphics driver related, not dependency issues that would be solved by the Steam runtime.
> He points out that a very large percentage of the crashes were graphics driver related
This was still largely related to the Coherent UI middleware and the strange way it was being used, as other posts have noted.
Linux is the perpetual scapegoat. They selected a middleware, Coherent UI, that didn't work properly on anything but Windows. They also didn't make proper use of the Steam runtime, a mistake that continues to cause issues. Most games don't make these mistakes, so this isn't really representative of the larger state of Linux gaming. It's worth pointing out that the devs did make a legitimately good attempt at making L…
I think you're in denial. If developers need to get this, that and the other thing right specifically for Linux , but it's still only 0.1% of sales, then it's just not worth doing - even if there aren't any bugs.
It normally isn't just 0.1% of sales when developers do get everything right, although whether or not the usual 1-5% of sales is worth it depends on the particular game, budget, and sales numbers. Linux support clearly wasn't worth it for Planetary Annihilation due to its low sales numbers, but a game with (1) high sales and (2) easy porting process would be leaving money on the table not to support Linux.
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People who own a Linux workstation at home and just want to play a few games is vastly outnumbered by people who own a Windows desktop at hone and just want to play a few games. Probably at least 100 to 1. And the former group, with the “almost works” compatibility, will be a much bigger maintenance burden per customer. Heck, I’d bet money that the Linux casual gaming crowd you described is also heavily outnumbered b…
You're neglecting the crowd that have Windows at home and want to stop using it also. If gamers can have the exact same UX on Linux then that's one of the biggest obstacles to switching solved.
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> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…
I have seen this claim many times, but wonder about it's validity. It's easy to think that a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would make a lot of stir. But I used to play Heroes of Newerth years ago when Linux support were way worse than today. I also read HN then. I never saw any special treatment for that even tho I loved the game and it worked really, really good on linux. Searchin…
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I have seen this claim many times, but wonder about it's validity. It's easy to think that a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would make a lot of stir. But I used to play Heroes of Newerth years ago when Linux support were way worse than today. I also read HN then. I never saw any special treatment for that even tho I loved the game and it worked really, really good on linux. Searchin…
>daily struggle that is desktop Linux lol what year is this? 1999? but I agree with the rest of your points
Maybe that's yet another reason people don't switch to Linux: the evangelists are annoying and untrustworthy.
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There's no other option, though. If you aren't integrated into the distros' builds, then you have no way of getting your binary updated when a dependency makes an ABI-incompatible change -- much less shipping a single binary that works across all distros. The only reasonable option is to determine a subset of your dependencies which offer long-term stable ABIs, dynamically link those, statically link the rest, and ho…
But there is another option, it was mentioned in the original complaint :) > So it means for every product, have a build for every distro / version combination you want to support. Of course it's a total pain in the ass, but it's still vastly preferable to unfixable bugs sometime in the distant future