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C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

terathon.com

21–30 of 88 posts

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#21
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spend weeks at a time just trying to install Linux, get it to boot, and get a development environment working I think we found the problem. It's between chair and keyboard.

You've described the problem that a lot of developers I know have. Linux just isn't easy to understand, even for programmers, if they don't have a *NIX background to start with.

If a programmer cannot understand Linux then the programmer is a fraudster.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#22
post #4
post #2

While Linux development, especially for game development, does has it's fare share of pain points. I don't think this should be interpreted as any more than it is, a single developer deciding he wants to stop supporting, one specific platform. Eric is indeed a very skilled programmer, but this engine is very much developed to meet his whims. He hasn't yet released any games on it, and the vast majority of his engine…

I still haven't see any of the Steam machines on the wild. Frankly I doubt I will ever see them.

With Microsoft and Windows 10 having an App Store will certainly cause Steam OS to continue to Develop. The longer it is being baked the better it will be in the end.

Certainly people still need the need for Linux as an alternative to Windows and I have so little hope that OS X users would also see the need. Looking at you HTF+.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#23
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a pity they've decided to take a political position rather than a technological one . Not sure if that really is the case - to me it reads like "I spent so much time getting this thing to work and it still doesn't work properly now, so I just give up" Yeah sure, the underlying reason for this might be that he doesn't know how to properly do it (and the reason for that in turn might be that it is hard), but how i…

> spend weeks at a time just trying to install Linux, get it to boot, and get a development environment working I think we found the problem. It's between chair and keyboard.

Well all of the 50+ people I know using linux everyday including myself, most of them as their major OS, have encountered these type of issues where you lose huge amounts of time trying to get something rather trivial to work. While your claim "It's between chair and keyboard" aka "yeah that's because they don't know how to do it" is of course perfectly valid, the reason the problem exists in the first place is usually elsewhere.

That being said, my last Debian install was pretty much effortless. But I seem to have a machine with which most Linux distors are quite happy :]

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#24
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spend weeks at a time just trying to install Linux, get it to boot, and get a development environment working I think we found the problem. It's between chair and keyboard.

Oddly enough, I had a lot of trouble getting my new laptop to boot, work and sleep properly. Not for lack of experience: I first installed linux in the summer of 1992 using hlu's floppies and have used linux for daily work for about 20 of the 22½ years since then. I can easily believe that someone used to windows with its mishmash of installers might have an unpleasant experience. Apt-get works wonderfully on a prist…

apt-get also only works extremely well for FOSS releases. If something is closed source (reality check) the developer will need to maintain the a build for each distro+release. The user will also need to add that apt repo and click through Linux's warnings about that.

> What a pity they've decided to take a political position rather than a technological one.

Ironically, it's the political (rather: religious) position of Linux that is getting in the way here. If you're not looking through the rosey colored RMS glasses it's very clear that the dev has taken the practical position.

Don't get me wrong, I wish it was different. Linux has amazing potential, but it unrealistically hostile toward these guys. Maybe SteamOS will bring some uniformity to the situation.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#25
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spend weeks at a time just trying to install Linux, get it to boot, and get a development environment working I think we found the problem. It's between chair and keyboard.

Oddly enough, I had a lot of trouble getting my new laptop to boot, work and sleep properly. Not for lack of experience: I first installed linux in the summer of 1992 using hlu's floppies and have used linux for daily work for about 20 of the 22½ years since then. I can easily believe that someone used to windows with its mishmash of installers might have an unpleasant experience. Apt-get works wonderfully on a prist…

I'm with you - been running Linux since those days too, and I also think that the problem is entirely political in this case - he's already admitted that its not for any problem with the Linux host for C4 in particular, just that he's a frustrated Linux desktop user and wants nothing to do with Linux. But the Linux support is there and the C4 engine works on it .. so this is more of a political rant than anything else.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#26
The answer to this developer's install problems are a VMWare virtual machine running on his usual Windows setup. By his own account his actual Linux code works just fine - the only thing that was in his way was his inability to install the OS in the first place. It seems a shame to throw out all that working code over such a trivial & easily solvable problem.

Wrestling with weird stability problems (which might be a hardware fault, might be buggy display drivers, who knows?) for weeks on end before flouncing out stage right promising never to return is the mark of someone who hasn't really thought things through.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#27
post #4
post #2

While Linux development, especially for game development, does has it's fare share of pain points. I don't think this should be interpreted as any more than it is, a single developer deciding he wants to stop supporting, one specific platform. Eric is indeed a very skilled programmer, but this engine is very much developed to meet his whims. He hasn't yet released any games on it, and the vast majority of his engine…

I still haven't see any of the Steam machines on the wild. Frankly I doubt I will ever see them.

Doesn't surprise me, since none been officially released yet.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spend weeks at a time just trying to install Linux, get it to boot, and get a development environment working I think we found the problem. It's between chair and keyboard.

Well all of the 50+ people I know using linux everyday including myself, most of them as their major OS, have encountered these type of issues where you lose huge amounts of time trying to get something rather trivial to work. While your claim "It's between chair and keyboard" aka "yeah that's because they don't know how to do it" is of course perfectly valid, the reason the problem exists in the first place is usual…

While there can be some trivialities that waste huge amount of time on every OS, however, installing Linux and setting up dev environment is not one of them.

Certainly not compared to Windows, where you must consider VS/msvcrt version, if you are using third party SDKs. It gets into "really not funny" territory when they have conflicting requirements.

Compared to that, Linux development environment is a piece of cake.

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#29
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sooo, how about taking up the flag?

The engine is proprietary, stefantalpalaru couldn't "take up the flag" even if (s)he wanted.

I understand that.

But, say I propose to stefantalpalaru to write an engine supporting Linux from scratch. And if that's too hard, wouldn't it be fair to say, that it is also a problem between the chair and the keyboard?

Re: C4 game engine drops Linux support citing frustrations with desktop Linux

#30
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still haven't see any of the Steam machines on the wild. Frankly I doubt I will ever see them.

I was running Steam in Big Picture mode on my Linux laptop only minutes before reading your comment. It's not a true Steam Machine, but neither is it that far off. :)

What is the specific difference between a true Steam Machine and a PC with Steam installed?
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