HGiles: Hm. Well, at least this discussion has moved on from the hypocritical 'We just wnat GOG to provide the files!' argument.
And had they done it at the time it came out, I'm sure folks would have been fine with that. But at this point, Valve has Steam running on Linux natively.
HGiles: My problem with Linux support is:
1) It will take even more time away from testing and releasing new games. People on this forum whined *so hard* when GOG started releasing indie games because it would take time away from fixing up older games. Linux support will take even more resources, which I don't see a lot of people bringing up.
2) Linux is hard to use, and very hard to game on. I love the idea of it, and can't stand it as a day-to-day computer because it gets in my way so much more than Windows (or Apple, but I dislike Apple computers for other reasons). Even supporting one version of Linux on a specific hardware set will take a lot of work.
3) And then the forums will whine for more. There will be people asking for support on ARM, on Pis, on all kinds of crazy things, because people always keep asking for more. It's part of how people come.
TL;DR I'd rather have more releases. Linux releases would be cool and all, but how hard is it to play GOG games on Linux? We already have scripts, etc.
1) Testing DOSBox games is pretty much a non-issue, if they run on DOSBox in Windows or OSX, then they'll run just fine on Linux. What's more, it's not like they've released all Windows games on OSX anyways. What's more, there's just no excuse for them not releasing new games that already have a native Linux version.
2) No it's not. Maybe a decade ago it was, but Linux isn't any harder to use than Windows or OSX. In fact in many ways it's easier to use than Windows is.
3) I'm sorry, but this is just complete horseshit. Running software on ARM or Pi would require access to the source code and is far more likely to run into problems than using a different chipset would. OSX, Linux and Windows all use the same types of chips, or very similar ones with very similar instruction sets.
These kinds of posts are why I've grown to hate Windows fanboys, they're full of BS and just there to justify shutting the rest of us out.
adamhm: As someone who has used DOS/Windows exclusively for most of his life and had basically 0 experience with any other OS until very recently, I can tell you that this is false (depending on distro of course - I'm referring to Linux Mint). I switched to Linux Mint as my main OS ~4 months ago and I've been using it daily ever since, only using Windows to play any games that I am unable to get running in CrossOver. This is working out well enough that I have no intention to ever switch back to Windows.
Yes, it's different and it may seem daunting at first, but ultimately the experience I've had switching from Windows to Linux Mint is comparable to when I switched from Windows XP to Windows 7.
That's because you're not an idiot. Even my barely computer literate mother was easy enough to switch over. Well, until she needed a program that would not run under Linux and had to go back to Windows.
But, difficult had nothing to do with it. As long as you choose a distro that uses a similar paradigm, then it's not too tough.