I think the thing the GOG team is trying to imply is that Galaxy is the new Downloader. Take of that, as you wish.

You have a use for it if you want an official downloader for the offline installers, that's the point. I don't know what "it registers your installer games with Galaxy" means really. If it means "Galaxy knows they're installed" then... so what? You still don't need to run Galaxy whatsoever, you can still backup the installers. I think you're creating problems to be mad about, no offense.

The issue some have with using Galaxy as a downloader that makes sense to me is it being slow and annoying on an old laptop that could otherwise play old games just fine. I don't have an old laptop, but people have told me that's a thing. In that situation it would be nice if there was a "light" mode that used less resources.

Personally no, especially for that aspect alone. GOG dropped support for a tool specifically designed to download and integrated that feature into Galaxy instead. Choice in this instance would have been nice, yet they decided to focus exclusively on the client. It's here where the community had to step in and provide alternatives. That is a good thing, at least in my book. Not everybody is willing to use Galaxy just to backup the offline installers. That can easily be done through a browser or a downloader tool.
There is also the continuous push for Galaxy, to the point that even the offline installers are riddled with redundant files. But that's another discussion altogether.

Don't forget that Galaxy is still as of yet unexisting for Linux.

Quite right. I just don't want anything extra unless the game is really old and needs support for modern machines to run like an emulator, port engine or the like. It could also be that since I'm on Linux the downloads don't bother me since the game are always just 1 file and not broken up into pieces like their Windows counterparts.

I think a push against Galaxy needs a reason, not just a generic "clients are bad because I say so." You can use Galaxy strictly as a downloader with no other function, loaded up only to download offline files. You need a reason why that's some horrible thing to do.

Having a $300 laptop from 2015 that can't run a basic app that well is a reason. Not using Windows is a reason. Usually though what I read is just blind "client bad" thinking.

Sounds good. Would it resume a partial download in different sessions? I mean, you turn off the computer, then another day the download continues seamlessly?

I guess that if you give the program at least the functionality that the GOG downloader had (or equivalent, if you come with some ingenious idea), then it will be tried by people for sure. If you add more on top of that, it would be interesting to check as well.

Now, here goes an idea for you, in case you accept suggestions: Since you mention that it is possible to see the user's library in tiles... What about allowing the user to assign tags easily and massively? Also, what about improving the ways for searching in one's library? LIke, games bought on the last year that are strategy and have this tag but excluding that tag... Just a thought if you think that working on that might be interesting for you. In that case, you might offer more than what the actual GOG web interface does.

I haven't tried that specific scenario yet, but in any case it should be doable (anyone familiar with the case please feel free to shed some light here!). One thing that is unclear to me currently is this: when I get a secure download link through the Galaxy api I do not know for how long it remains valid. Still, I think it can be done in one way or another.

Suggestions are always welcome! Some nice ideas you've got there. Now my high priority is to make sure the download functionality works as intended (it is the main reason for this app after all). When this is done, I will then try to implement some QOL features. For example, I want to have a page where I can view stats of my purchases, e.g. view spent money per month, which year I bought most games, etc.

Sounds awesome. Keep us posted!

Just finished some refactoring to support resuming downloads independently of session. Fingers crossed, tomorrow I will check for results :)

edit: Well, I actually simulated that scenario by just closing the browser, stopping the server and manually deleting the GOG token stored by the app. Next, I started the app again, it forced me to login again, got a new token, and... managed to resume the downloads!

1. You do most things on Linux

2. You do serious things on your computer, you like to keep it stable and you've come to appreciate things that are lightweight and that you don't need to "install" (no extra libraries, no interpreter, no doing non-scoped things on the filesystem, no playing around with my bash settings, no installing yourself as a background deamon process to run whenever I boot, etc)... as close as you can possibly get on a desktop to the non-invasiveness of a website experience: you just take a binary, you stick it somewhere in your path, when you need to use it, you explicitly start it (and it doesn't do weird sh*t on your machine), when you don't need it, its not running

That is great news!

Okay, now I get what you mean by audit ... it's a trust thing.

The fact I also provide my source should give a high degree of trust, especially if you know what you are doing, and compile your own EXE using my source.

But frankly, it is a mug's game to worry about such things. Most people don't have the ability to audit code, and have to go on trust alone. They have to rely on their AV etc. They also need to use logic, and look at who the source is.

There is more than one way to gain trust.

Look at how many games I have. If programs I provide to others here are proved to be malicious, then I'd be pretty foolish as I imagine GOG would give me short shrift.

That said, I have downloaded thousands of programs from the web over the years, and some of them have been very wonderful. If I needed to audit each one, that would never have happened. Life is about reasonable risk.

Sounds excellent.