Well..

I'm not saying they shouldn't have moral or ethical principles. That would be like being ok with them exploiting employees and avoiding taxes... or worse. And the PEOPLE inside that company can certainly have opinions on everything they want. But the company as a company has no place talking about something outside of their spectrum. If (and this is an example) a white straight male can't talk about abortion, why is a shoe company allow to freely express itself about sexual orientation (which by the way is something that shouldn't matter to anyone since what you do in your bed is your business). Why is a VIDEO GAME STORE expressing an opinion on a war between two different states and punishing CIVILIANS of said war who can't even protest on their streets because they live in a totalitarian country? Super useful and completely round strategy... sure...

I'm against war. ANY WAR. Wether the US is "saving some middle east country" or Russia (and I mean the government, not the citizens) wants to become the URSS again. War only punishes the innocents. And GOG is doing the same thing. I can understand blocking Russian economy from other countries because that money COULD go into financing the war. But selling video games? You're punishing the innocent unless you believe they're buying ARMA games to train soldiers. Even the Russian soldiers are mostly against the war...

^^^This^^^

There's no excuse that can justify such xenophobic discrimination.
If some local store I used to buy in refused to sell to certain people, based solely on their country of origin or residence, I wouldn't put a foot in there ever again.
So, even if GOG retracts from that stupid decision and apologizes for it, I will still consider buying any game here any longer. And it has been my favourite store for a very long time...

At least, the community is still a nice place to visit.

Another topic victim of downvoter bots. Typical.

...

If they don't hold everyone to the same principles, it's called hypocrisy.

That's an interesting perspective. I assumed the proximity to Ukraine impacted the decision, but you may very well be right that between the Russian currency being in free-fall and the increasing difficulty Russians will have to access payment methods, it may be an empty PR gesture.

Maybe I let my emotional reaction to the unfolding situation get in the way of making an accurate appraisal of the decision-making process here.

If that is indeed the case, we're debating over very little though. Just businesses doing what businesses do (ie, posturing themselves for PR).

What's so difficult about clicking "System" at the top of the screen and then "Linux"?

1. Not GoG builds Linux Version of games but devs do.
2. You might know this.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
This is very close to gaming PCs in general. Gaming PCs, not PCs in general and for sure it does exclude Retro PCs. Now they will play a big role...

Now open up the OS Tab please...

While it might worth the money to maintain Unix related versions for 1% of the steam userbase.
It does for sure not pay out for something as small as the GoG userbase...


I will never understand why unix users see themself as such a big and influential group, anybody has to notice and take care about.
You are smaller than mac. You are not even 50% of Mac.
You are literally the 1%. But not the one with influence and money but the 1% that want to use a small platform and being treated like everyone who is bigger.

And no, Linux will not be the upcomming star for user systems in the next few years, because MS is doing MS things.
MS is doing MS things for roughly 40 years now and for at last 25 years I hear "Linux will have it brake through in the next few years".
To be fair, the private PC user base might have doublet in that time or even trippelnd.

But please, just one time.
Stay realistic...

Linux is influential because what it represents: A full-fledged free OS (as in beer and speech) that you can use without asking for anyone's permission and adapt to your needs (again, without asking for anyone's persmission).

It's also well-maintained (for server and embedded device use-cases anyways) by a vibrant community.

You don't have that with Windows and you don't have that with MacOS.

Yes, if Microsoft keeps maintaining Windows and desktop support for Linux keeps being worked on only by its current community, things are unlikely to change.

The main thing Linux brings to the table here is that any new entrant who wishes to carve a niche in that ecosystem can pick it up and try adapt it to make it the next big desktop OS.

This is exactly what Google did with Android on phones.

This neither makes numbers nor money...

Linux is a server OS for the most part.
And what is more important, Linux is not "the linux".
If it runs on a Apple OS version, it will run on all versions above most of the time.
If it runs on a Windows version, it will run on all versions above most of the time.

If it runs on one Linux variant - it is not sure if it will run on any other...
And every effort to fight this has been sabotaged by the Linux com, because everyone wants to do his own "next big desktop OS".

If a dev has to bother with a wider eco system just for Linux, than they would have to for bringing their game to Windows XP to Windows 11, why should they bother.


Btw, even Android was a clusterfuck for a very long time with everyone doing his own thing based on android.
And just now, with Android 12 (and 11) Google tries to bring it back to one foundation.
Yes, you can use the android apps on every system the android store is used on. Because that part is pushed to everything.
But when Google does their patchday each month just a small margin of all Android devices will see any update at all.
Many devices won't even see any update after being sold for their whole life. And this is not because the user is blocking it.

Is THAT your good example of how to push Unix to the next level?
The biggest clusterruck of unsecure devices we have ever seen.

It is also pretty popular with embedded systems.

The kernel is. You can fork it, but most distros (I'm assuming this is what you are talking about here) stay with the mainline.

Not in my experience. Maybe the next version or 2. Good luck running most Windows Vista apps that have not been actively maintained on a Windows 10.

Depends what you are running. Gui apps with a nice installer tend to be a bit of a mess if you want it to be cross-distro across most major variants. Containers and virtual machines will run reliably across distros. A lot of the tooling is also the same. I'd argue most of it is actually (if its not there natively, you can install what you need).

However, when you get down to it, there actually aren't THAT many wildly different distros. I don't fiddle a lot Red Hat distros or Suse, but on Debian's end, many many distros are just Debian variants and of those, many are Ubuntu variants.

I think its more than that. Several distros are competing for mindshares in the server space too. For companies-maintained distros, that is where most of the money is actually.

I don't know of Android's history. I don't really like smartphones that much (Android or Apple, it doesn't matter, I grew up with desktops and am used to a lot of screen real estate, a large keyboard and a mouse). All I know is that they got more than twice Apple's market share for smart phones so they must be doing something right.

I have an Android. I don't use it much (phone, music, the occasional app my work or the government requires of me, Google maps for driving, a web browser to do the occasional search on the go... I think that sums it up), but its alright. It does what I want it to do.

I permanently disabled all Windows 10 Pro updates. I control the horizontal and the vertical.

Since Microsoft decided to stop selling to Russia I can already predict what the #1 OS in Russia will be very soon.

A big win for Ubuntu, Mint, FreeBSD, Arch, Mandrake, Kali and all the other flavors.

Gog is still the best platform out there. It is not drm, with gog galaxy and a significant user base.

But it is true that there are things that can be criticized, the lack of support for Linux, the failure to adapt Galaxy to Steamdeck, the unfair ban on Russian users...