The sample is random as far as the client asking you to participate. You can also force the survey to run (no data is provided on how many do that, but its common enough).

https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

GOG gave them an affiliate code and everything. It's all but endorsed openly by GOG. It does everything except achievements and MP (though it has an issue w/ dosbox atm). And if you need multiplayer, you CAN install Galaxy via WINE or Lutris.

OK but is a launcher what the OP was talking about or Proton? Because there are a bunch of launchers.

The post is actually kind of vague. He should probably say what type of support he's looking for.

It doesn't matter, you can use proton with it. And steam runtime too for games like Stardew Valley that require old packages. This is all steam does for most games as well. Steam of course still has advantages such as workshop, user-submitted controller schemes etc, but these are not "linux support" per se.

I'd argue that whatever the OP was looking for, he's looking for it to come from GOG and not other sources. So the fact that you could use Lutris, or WINE by itself, or Steam, or Heroic, etc, is all kind of besides the point.

And at the end of the day, it still doesn't support Dosbox (nor ScummVM) and it still the Unity of webapps, Electron.

Lutris might look ugly as sin due to GTK4, but hey it at least does what I want without getting in my way.

Apparently dosbox stuff is fixed next release. Not sure on scummvm

I do like Lutris better overall as well, but I have had issues with it in the past so it's not my first recommendation for a new user. In fact I forgot I had put crap in a conf as a workaround to "connect to ipv6 address or hang" until just now. I also have a steam deck, and there is no cloud sync in Lutris outside of using it to install Galaxy. Galaxy feels even more unresponsive in WINE so I'd rather avoid using it for features if I don't have to.

It may be slightly changing, but nowhere near enough to have any significant impact on anyone. Everything that Valve does simply ensures that Windows games run on Linux, rather than increasing more Linux native games. If anything Valve's efforts may end up discouraging native Linux game development.

Proton can be applied to GOG games, so I see no reason to abandon GOG. What's the point of getting a DRM-Free OS if you'll embrace DRMd games? You can also use the Heroic Launcher.

While I get the frustration regarding the lack of proper support for native Linux games on GOG, it's also a bit more complicated than telling developers to provide Linux builds. Native Linux builds are likely to break over time because backwards-compatibility on Linux is really bad, so Proton might actually provide a better experience for you.

https://www.howtogeek.com/749102/why-you-should-use-proton-instead-of-the-steam-linux-runtime/

I don't think GOG is currently in a position to really do anything about this at the moment, but it would be great if Galaxy does get a Linux version with in-built support for Proton. There is also some ongoing work by GloriousEggroll to get the Steam Runtime to work outside of Steam, so hopefully this situation improves.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/01/unified-linux-wine-game-launcher-aims-to-improve-windows-games-on-linux-steam-deck/

EDIT: Linux just reached about 4% marketshare (according to Statcounter), so it's definitely starting to make a dent. I also remember hearing about some work to implement functionality like achievements and multiplayer outside of Galaxy (in Heroic and/or Lutris).

I play games also on Linux (at the moment mostly on Windows though), and I am fine trying to get GOG Windows installers work on Linux. E.g. Planescape: Torment EE (Windows version) runs great on my Linux laptop.

At the same time though, I applaud Valve for promoting Linux even if only a tiny fraction of their customers actively use Linux for gaming... but then they do it for their own reasons, like Valve is fearing if Microsoft at some point tried to lock down Windows (as in Windows RT, 10 X, 10 S...) and squeeze out competitors like Steam, so supporting and promoting Linux is the plan B for Valve, in case the shit really hits the fan and the shit is propelled from the fan to PC gamers faces and mouths... yuck!!!

Valve is most probably just losing money at the moment with their Linux support and promotion, but they can afford such just in case, as the plan B. Because their life might depend on it in the future, to have any kind of business at all. That's certainly interesting! How come Arch Linux, which is considered quite hardcore Linux, and is not officially supported by Steam, is that much more popular than either Ubuntu or Linux Mint (the latter is based on Ubuntu, so pretty much everything that works on Ubuntu, works also on Mint)?

And where is Fedora? I kinda expected it to be much more popular among Linux gamers, as it gets all the latest stuff (including drivers or Wine versions or whatever) the fastest? So what do they expect?

Seems like Linux marketshare is larger than MacOS, so I don't understand why GOG is ignoring that.

I feel like at least part of this issue is down to developers, perhaps lack of familiarity or experience with Linux. The reason for the 'breakage' over time that you reference is because of applications being tied to specific versions of libraries, and relying on those specific versions of libraries being present on a users system.

Imo, a good way to avoid that would be for developers to make better use of static compilation, rather than dynamic. I.e. directly compiling in the functions that are needed into the executable, so they are more stand-alone and don't rely on system libraries. That would also be more flexible and potentially less tied to a specific Linux distribution. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Another general comment about Linux (from a 100% Linux user) is that distros really should make it much easier to have multiple versions of a library installed on a system. That would also help to resolve a lot of these stupid version compatibility issues.

Yes. There seems to be little justification these days to support Mac but not Linux.

A lot more people to migrate.

Agreed, but the unfortunate reality is that gog can't even fix or update their forums nor add much requested features to their storefront. Considering this, I'd wager that at this point in time and most certainly for the foreseeable future too, the possibility of supporting Linux like Valve does, remains quite a 'galaxy' away from them.

Heresy!