It's not Linux, but I thought I'd throw this out there:

Haiku is also an open-source, free operating system, which respects your freedoms as much as Linux, but geared more to personal computing, particularly multimedia, albeit without as many "shaken, not stirred" options as Linux as of yet, however, this is likely to work in it's favour.

As it is a singular operating system, in a similar fashion to Windows and OS X, not only does everything fit together better, but it would be easier for companies like GOG to offer support for as everything is more uniform (and there are already native ports of DOSBox and ScummVM!)

Although it is still in Alpha3 release, I have no doubt that when it is finished it will be excellent for purposes such as games.

You can vote for GOG to support it as a platform here:
http://www.gog.com/en/wishlist/site/add_haiku_versions_of_games

Edit: I can't form my html today.

I think that if you actually want to help your OS of choice, making a new topic on boards advertising it is the way to go. GOG won't add games for Haiku, no matter how good the OS is, until sufficient ammount of users is using it. At this point I believe that reasonable decision would be to create ports for Linux now, much because of wide user base. When user base of Haiku gets bigger than that, well, you'll see companies jumping on it.

First of all, I'm sorry if I came across as preachy, it was not my intention to advertise anything (though looking back, that's exactly what it looks like :/), I just thought that those interested in free operating systems might appreciate knowing about an extra alternative.

Though you make a very good point, I might make a thread about it at some point, as I do believe it has the potential to become the best on the market!

P.S. I do, in fact, use Linux, and like it very much, my only gripe is that hardware manufacturers like AMD and Nvidia need to give better support - my card is no longer supported by the proprietary driver and so it is still not my OS of choice for games; even those with native versions, until I get a new card.

Hi.

About "porting" GoG's games to Linux there's something you're forgetting: some of them have native versions (i.e. Alpha Centaury, Duke Nukem 3D, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Kingpin: Life of Crime, Serious Sam: The 1st Encounter, Warsow, Tyrian 2000, NWN, ...). I'm not saying it's common but those could be sold too in Linux version.

About making packages for the games, I'm pretty sure they don't even need to make them. They already exist in most cases because those that use DosBox can use Linux's version with the same installer and the same happens with ScummVM.

My comment here is not related to porting games but to native version of Linux offerings. Desura has a moderate offerings of Linux native games, Steam of course has more but it is pure drm (Desura you can avoid drm on drm-free games by using their client downloader on a virtual machine). We have a number of big name offerings coming to Linux native edition thanks to the new Unity engine Linux support. Among these:

Project: Eternity (already confirmed deals with Steam and Gog.com)
The Longest Journey: Dreamfall Chapters
Torment: Numenera
Asylum
The Banner Saga
Morbius
Consortium
Death, Inc
Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse
Legends of Aethereus
Shadowrun Returns
Arakion
ScrumbleShip

There are others coming including a new version of Jagged Edge.

Point is there are offerings which Desura has had for awhile and seemed to be ignored by gog.com
At this point I'll only be buying Linux games. The MS Windows platform with its own internal DRM and plans to push (if not force feed entirely) the Windows App store, and its "dial home" behavior has finally teed me off. I stick with XP (I've disabled the WGA nonsense) but many new games will probably not run on XP soon (if not already). Gog wants to add new games which is understandable. The wait while Steam and Desura move forward with increased Linux offerings baffles me. Depending on whether gog.com moves forward or not, I may have to look to Desura or direct from software developers as MS windows is not a platform I can use for newer games in the future with invasive "services" in the rise. And why go to MacOS when I have Linux which for me does much more. (and less expensive...but I do donate) So, Gog guys, when are you going to have Linux offerings native to Linux seeing as you already have a deal for at least one game/developer with a Linux native version to be available (via Unity)?

I'm getting bored to have to emulate the games for linux from gog, (play on linux and wine)

Ive bought the real texas times ago and I still cant play it while the game is available for linux on the developer website.

happened again for FTL

and now just deleted defender's quest from my basket because of non availability of the existing linux version.

Even if you don't provide support for linux games, you can still let us have access to files of the desired version...

This would be a good start IMO, while the GOG crew figure out how Linux can be "officially" supported.

Because of fragmentation they could focus on Debian based distributions like steam did at first and move on from there. It shouldn't be hard to repackage the games in an extractable package (or even a .deb for what I care). Most dosbox, scummVM games would work easily, games which have native ports (like NWN) can be added instantly.

You are not emulating anything. Think of wine as the canadian tourist helping the american non-french speaking tourist in France. All it does is translate stuff. For most things the overhead is negligible.

For Defender's Quest in particular, running it with wine is actually preferable since the linux version of Adobe Air is old, unmaintained, unpatched and insecure.

Wine actually IS an emulator... just not a hardware emulator, but an emulator anyway, as it emulates the windows api, and I bet my ass that the real origin of the name wine was actually WINdows Emulator, and no Wine Is Not an Emulator. There probably is some illegal crap with the word "emulator" and that's why they try to convince everyone that's not.

Why is this discussion still going? The Enigmatic T confirmed in two recent interviews that Linux support is not coming to GOG. GOG has made it abundantly clear by both their actions and words(Having to support the Raspberry Pi if they choose to support Linux at all, that is a mind numblingly stupid position to take, but they have taken it!) that they will never come to Linux. You will see MS Office AND Visual Studio for Linux AND a FLOSS Windows version with a Linux kernel in a frozen hell with flying pigs Googleplex to the Googleplexed power millenia before you will see GOG support Linux.

Business decisions can be changed. See DarkSouls. They never intended for it to ever come to PC and eventually it was ported (even if the port was done with minimal interest and resources). People showed there was a demand for the game and now DarkSouls 2 is coming for PCs running Windows and consoles.

Well plenty of threads like this with lots and lots of suggestion to how GOG can address various technical issues both imagined and real have done zero to change their minds the tiniest bit.

So, if people have not managed to change their minds yet, they should just stop voicing their wishes. Ok...