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General discussionLinux support on GOG(1808 posts)(1808 posts)
(1808 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted November 23, 2012
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Snickersnack: I'm lazy today. How much have Linux contributions been worth since Humble Bundle 1?
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Fenixp: Why would you think I'm not lazy? Suffice to say that in every bundle, Linux users paid double of what Windows users did, and except for a few instances, there were as many / more Linux buyers than Mac ones. It's definitely not 5% or whatever, more like between 15 - 20%, and that's not counting android bundles (for obvious reasons.)
*wipes sweat off brow*
Err... because AIs never sleep? Anyways you brought them up so I was hoping you'd know. ;)

Okay, so Humble Bundles have brought in about 22 million since Humble 1 (just the gaming bundles). Lets take away half of that for charity leaving 11 million. 20 percent of 11 is 2.2 million. Linux gamers pay twice as much as Windows users so 4.5 million. Humble bundles started in may 2010 giving us 2.5 years.

It looks like Linux Humble Bundle purchases bring in about 2 million a year.
Posted November 23, 2012
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Snickersnack: It looks like Linux Humble Bundle purchases bring in about 2 million a year.
Yep, which - by our rough calculations - would be either more or comparable to the amount Mac users brought it. So yeah, if GOG is supporting Mac, supporting Linux would be just as viable.
Posted November 28, 2012
From another thread:

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cogadh: Giving you a broken game--even as a bonus goody--is not the experience that we provide.
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cogadh: Perhaps not for every release but it happens! PROOF

:P
So they can add tech demos from uncompleted games as a (obviously unsupported) free bonus but NO, it is important they do NOT support Linux in the same way. GoG prides itself of not supporting Linux in any way, shape or form directly or indirectly.

Earlier in this thread TheEnigmaticT posted the following:

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Future_Suture: The subject of not enough resources and wanting to provide a quality service at all times actually came up starting from here. Needless to say, apparently it's not as much effort as GOG likes to make it seem.
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TheEnigmaticT: Making packages and distributing them? Yes, that's trivial. But what your poster in that thread doesn't account for is that we do a lot more than that with classic games. I'm not the guy in charge of testing, mastering, and building games, but let's just look at what *I* can think of that makes Linux release a very difficult proposition:

1: Testing. What distros do we support? There are 10 "fairly common" ones (Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse, Fedora, CentOS, ArchLinux, Debian, Slackware, FreeBSD and, um, I've forgotten a couple). Hardware? What level of updates? Only FOSS drivers, or can we take some closed source stuff? Once we've decided on a test bed, we still have to check the games. Do they boot? What about oddball games like, say, Theme Hopsital? There's a version-specific DOSBox-related fix there. Does it in work in any distro? In all of 'em? Managing testing across the 3 OSes we support is tough and requires a lot of time, effort, and money. How much more complex will 10 more OSes make it?
The bit I bolded is completely wrong. FreeBSD is NOT a Linux distro, it is a completely different OS. Of course all of this is premised on official, tested support being the only possibility and the notion that GOG HAS to have an inferior version in cases where developers and/or publishers have official Linux clients.
Posted December 14, 2012
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SLP2000: The problem with adding games that have a native Linux support already is not that easy, as it looks like from our side of the screen.

It's about consistency - they can't say "ok, so we are not supporting Linux, but we offer you some files provided by the devs. You can download and see if they work".

It's not how you do bussiness, it's not how you should do bussiness, it's not how GOG say they want do their bussiness. They try to take some responsibility for their games - and they are pretty successful with it so far. They shouldn't change it just to please Linux users.

Also, you forget that one of their rule is that they care about the support, so the devs (or IP holders) don't have to worry about that. Again, they would have to sign a game and say "ok, so we take care about PC and Mac compatibility, but if our customer can't run the game on Linux, you will have to provide a solution". That's impossible, and even if it was, then there's the problem if the dev says "I can't fix it, sorry".
They shouldn't just change to suit Linux users? Well there is clearly a considerable number of their customers that are Linux users around 7000+ already signed up and using GOG. Why shouldn't they we are customers? If we are not not happy we don't buy from them? So I completely disagree with you. They should.
Posted January 16, 2013
In order to support the DOS games on Linux or any other OS all they need to do is create a launcher and then package the vanilla game with the custom launcher and dosbox config file using that OS's package format. That should already cover a fair number of games on this site. As to which distros they should support, obviously it's Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, and Slackware. Pretty much every other distro I ever heard of is based on one of these, although Mandriva and OpenSUSE were originally based on Red Hat (now Fedora). That's 7 small fast-moving targets, which is probably why they still don't support Linux, as Mac and Windows each present only one big slow-moving target. Still, as I said, supporting only the DOS games on Linux should be easy. They can probably do it with an automated script. Then in the next stage add support for games that already have native Linux support, and in the final stage package games that work perfectly with WINE. You can take as much time as you want between stages, but there is really no reason why you can accomplish stage 1 right now.
Posted January 29, 2013
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Lestibournes: In order to support the DOS games on Linux or any other OS all they need to do is create a launcher and then package the vanilla game with the custom launcher and dosbox config file using that OS's package format. That should already cover a fair number of games on this site. As to which distros they should support, obviously it's Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, and Slackware. Pretty much every other distro I ever heard of is based on one of these, although Mandriva and OpenSUSE were originally based on Red Hat (now Fedora). That's 7 small fast-moving targets, which is probably why they still don't support Linux, as Mac and Windows each present only one big slow-moving target. Still, as I said, supporting only the DOS games on Linux should be easy. They can probably do it with an automated script. Then in the next stage add support for games that already have native Linux support, and in the final stage package games that work perfectly with WINE. You can take as much time as you want between stages, but there is really no reason why you can accomplish stage 1 right now.
I disagree. I'd just like the have the binaries the studio provided for the game (if any) - a simple archive file (2, zip etc.) or original .sh script would be enough for me. I don't expect GOG to start packaging Linux binaries into customized installers with various workaround scripts.

I would also not expect them to offer support for Linux binaries, since I know how hard it can be. That's something we Linux users should take into account, considering the platform diversification - I rely on community help and reporting bugs on the developers` website in case of problems.

I bought The Book of Unwritten Tales from GOG, and now I plan to play the second part of the story (BoUT - The Critter Chronicles). I'm not a huge fan of Steam, and I'd very much prefer to have a standalone version of the game. But I'd also prefer to have the Linux native version of it. Which basically means that in the end I'll probably choose Steam, since it's also a clear message to the developers that I appreciate their effort put into building the port.
Posted January 29, 2013
More and more stuff appears on Steam for Linux. But many people are annoyed by Steam DRM and avoid their service altogether. GOG needs to seize the opportunity and offer DRM free Linux distribution channel! There is no point to wait any longer
Post edited January 29, 2013 by shmerl
Posted January 29, 2013
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shmerl: More and more stuff appears on Steam for Linux. But many people are annoyed by Steam DRM and avoid their service altogether. GOG needs to seize the opportunity and offer DRM free Linux distribution channel! There is no point to wait any longer
It has a good ring to it.
Posted January 29, 2013
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shmerl: More and more stuff appears on Steam for Linux. But many people are annoyed by Steam DRM and avoid their service altogether. GOG needs to seize the opportunity and offer DRM free Linux distribution channel! There is no point to wait any longer
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gameon: It has a good ring to it.
Indeed it does. I am a Windows user, but if I ever did decide to switch it would be nice to have a good portion of my GOG library ready to go. Switching from a closed source OS to an open source one, then in turn having most of your games go the opposite direction and have DRM seems one step forward two steps back.

Maybe they will surprise us with the Feb 5th event and announce Linux support starting with The Witcher 2.
Posted January 29, 2013
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gameon: It has a good ring to it.
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Fictionvision: Indeed it does. I am a Windows user, but if I ever did decide to switch it would be nice to have a good portion of my GOG library ready to go. Switching from a closed source OS to an open source one, then in turn having most of your games go the opposite direction and have DRM seems one step forward two steps back.

Maybe they will surprise us with the Feb 5th event and announce Linux support starting with The Witcher 2.
I remember the days of Tux Racer being pretty much the only game playable on Linux. The more games playable on Linux, the less need there would be for Windows.

Very very interesting :)
Posted February 08, 2013
CDPR announced the Witcher 3 on all high end platforms: http://en.thewitcher.com/community/entry/329
The game will be released in 2014 simultaneously on all high-end platforms.
Does it mean they'll start selling the Linux version? What about GOG then?
Post edited February 08, 2013 by shmerl
Posted February 08, 2013
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shmerl: CDPR announced the Witcher 3 on all high end platforms:
I think it means PlayStation: New Geration Ultra HD 5 and Xbox: Five Different Lights to Show How Console Died 31205
Posted February 08, 2013
Well, I think Linux IS a difficult topic, because of the various distributions users can use.
That being said Valve does the right thing: they officially support Ubuntu (which is one distro with a planned schedule, so very similar to Windows and MacOS in that regard) but don't hold you back from using Steam on other distributions, too.
GoG could utilize the same approach: pack it as a .deb file that can easily be used on Ubuntu (and Debian, for that matter). Or make it even more simple: ship it as a .tar.gz as Dosbox is running perfectly fine on Linux.
People with other distributions could still play those games but would not receive official support (however, in 99% of cases it would run perfectly fine anyways, just read below).

About different Linux versions: issues arise from different lib versions, etc... which is not a problem in this case as
a) you know exactly which versions ship with Ubuntu
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b) Dosbox could very well be installed as a dependency to your .deb file, as such it would be maintained by the maintainers of the distribution's package, effectively nullyfing the work you have to do in that regard. All you would need to provide in that case would be the *iso of the game and the usual config (you should be able to use the exact same config from MacOS or Windows).

About native Windows games: I don't see how Gog could provide them for Linux users as that would require MUCH work from the initial developers involved. But then again, for those games we can easily just use Wine which is working quite fine for older games, in some cases even better than a modern Windows installation.
Post edited February 08, 2013 by Freakgs
Posted February 08, 2013
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shmerl: CDPR announced the Witcher 3 on all high end platforms:
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Fenixp: I think it means PlayStation: New Geration Ultra HD 5 and Xbox: Five Different Lights to Show How Console Died 31205
Xbox and PlayStation - high end platforms? You made me laugh :)
Post edited February 08, 2013 by shmerl
Posted February 08, 2013
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Lestibournes: In order to support the DOS games on Linux or any other OS all they need to do is create a launcher and then package the vanilla game with the custom launcher and dosbox config file using that OS's package format. That should already cover a fair number of games on this site. As to which distros they should support, obviously it's Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, and Slackware. Pretty much every other distro I ever heard of is based on one of these, although Mandriva and OpenSUSE were originally based on Red Hat (now Fedora). That's 7 small fast-moving targets, which is probably why they still don't support Linux, as Mac and Windows each present only one big slow-moving target. Still, as I said, supporting only the DOS games on Linux should be easy. They can probably do it with an automated script. Then in the next stage add support for games that already have native Linux support, and in the final stage package games that work perfectly with WINE. You can take as much time as you want between stages, but there is really no reason why you can accomplish stage 1 right now.
Oh really ? Why package it as a deb or rpm file? "System-wide" deployment? How many user accounts do most home PCs have anyway? Of those how many are accounts of people that actually game? Put everything in a tarball and roll it out plus a script that checks for DOSbox/ScummVM and launches the game. Problem solved. Most PCs have only 1 (ONE) user, even if the OS is multi-user capable.
Post edited February 08, 2013 by silviucc
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General discussionLinux support on GOG(1808 posts)(1808 posts)
(1808 posts)