GOG has to agree on the mere basis that an increasing amount of storefronts is offering Linux versions of games and GOG doesn't. At this point I just don't care about excuses - if others can pull it off, GOG can too. If they can't, I'll be taking my business elsewhere - I already am buying games with a Linux version at other places, so right now, GOG remains the place for old games and is utterly failing in the indie department.

You are right, the economical reality is shifting... gog really needs to take this movement serious. Hope they wait not too long and catch the right train.

You dismiss pre-installation and the promiscuous relationship that companies like MS have with governments (and other companies) as a cause for their omnipresence in some market or another. You dismiss a company's shady, borderline illegal practices that allowed it to reach a monopolistic position and want us to believe that it's all just their technological superiority.

You need a few history refresher courses:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#Competition_from_Microsoft The WordPerfect saga:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121123221716522

Apparently the judge did not think that this type of behaviour is illegal: No Shaddim, this does not explain why Linux sits at 2% market share, just why Microsoft got to own over 90% of the market. Clear technological advantage right there. All hail the technology overlords.

GoG does not have to agree with anything. They either see a market and an opportunity to make money or they don't. They already gave their reasons pages ago on why they do not "support linux". The most hilarious of all being the bullet point regarding the Raspberry Pi.

People did not get angry because they said "No" but because of how they said it which proved that did not their research properly and they got called on it.

Why you feel the need to keep yammering about more technical stuff on this forum is beyond me. If you're trying to convince people that actually have the power to change things the way *you* want them to be changed then this forum is the totally wrong place to do it. You want something done in the linux kernel, go to lkml and present your case. You want changes to SDL? Please send your suggestions and patches to those guys... etc.

Do you now get it Mr. Revolutionary? Mr. Visionary. You're in the wrong fucking place and preaching to the wrong choir. If you want any of the changes you speak of to happen, provided that you can prove that they are needed, it's not us that you need to convince.

Microsoft has done so much illegal and immoral shit that it completely overshadows anything else they may happen to do.

No, people got angry because gog truthfully told, that their analysis showed that the linux ecosystem is a unsupportable mess. Which has additionally only a insignificant marketshare. Which was taken by the proud linux egos not lightly.

People, please, get over this outdated MS bashing thing from the 90s..... in comparison to the Apple locking practices now, MS was always a good guy (with their completely open windows platform, open for software AND hardware).

They seem to dwindle faster and faster into technological irrelevance, it seems every step (in the OS market) is received mainly negative. Also, they tried to do a charm offensive when they introduced the shared source initiative, which was rejected for the wrong reasons by the open source community. Therefore they responded with: "well, then try it the apple way...", understandable.

PLEASE, MS is not that all overshadowing arch-evil anymore, focus on the real shit ... the problems are somewhere else.

Other online shops prove them wrong. Maybe they need better "analysts". "Linux egos" have nothing to do with this. It's just tech and code and the opportunity to get established in a new market.

Apple does not have a monopoly on desktop computing nor are they a convicted monopolist. Microsoft has a monopoly and has been convicted for abusing it. Bashing them for being an abusive monopolist won't be outdated until they cease being abusive or a monopoly.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Take your propaganda somewhere else.

All of this still does not explain, why GoG does not offer the Linux ports that are already available and include no real work for them. This cloudy explanation "we want proper support" is just awkward, because it could be sold as bonus content, as said pages ago.

shaddim, wieso trollst du so viel? Ist doch schon peinlich. Bitte höre auf mit diesem Unfug. Jeder haut dir Fakten ins Gesicht.

Shaddims argument: Ryan Gordon 2009
http://lwn.net/Articles/392862/
Opposition argument: Ryan Gordon 2014
http://icculus.org/SteamDevDays/SteamDevDays2014-LinuxPorting.pdf

As someone in another forum said:

To put it mildly, this is ... geek shit, not reasonable software engineering. Software porting is not about if it is doable at all (it's always!), e.g. by being a experienced porting genius and experienced linux hacker (like gordon) or by investing an enormous effort, it is about if a platform allows to port with reasonable and calculable effort.

Again, Ryan Gordon knows his shit, he is experienced. He is one of the best, I guess he is THE best. He knows how to develop software in a portable way and to port, which libraries and middleware to use and which better not. A normal game developer, who just wants to develop a game, like Dave Burke and don't want to do a half year of research & testing in what libs to use and what techniques not will step into traps and end in pain and problems. That's the very reason why most of the humble bundle ports were done by few specialists (3?), it is hard and requires special, arcane knowledge to do.

But doesn't matter, at least for today, I step out to let the discussion cool down ;P

I wouldn't call it a "take-over of Linux". To me it represents a shot in the arm to an OS that needs it. It also presents an avenue to take for those that don't like the direction that MS is taking Windows.

I'm thinking that if Linux can pick up a few more % in market share, then we could see more involvement from 3rd party developers and hardware vendors. From my experience with it, I would say that it needs that attention.
For games too. That's a decent gain if overall Linux share on Steam is at 5+%.

You really don't need to do a lot of research to find out that peppering your code with dependencies on MS only libraries isn't going to make cross platform goals easily attainable. And if someone thinks it's takes magic, super powers to accomplish, then maybe people need a demystification message and not one about how only ubber geeks can understand it - not lowly game developers (which require significant skills anyhow.) The big three things you have to do to not screw yourself over are:
Don't Use DirectX
Know about various path separators
Know the file system is case sensitive.

These are not wildly difficult concepts for someone to grasp if they are serious enough coders to be making a game. If they aren't baking all their biscuits from scratch and decide the options they like are windows only, then it's going to be tougher. At that point it should be about having made a decision, and not about "oh I just didn't know DX was hard to port." There are people that might think it's a good idea long after they start, and find out its not worth the back porting effort, and that's fine, but that's more about ignorance than technical mountain climbing.

One of the biggest mistakes someone can make is doing something in Windows and thinking they will just try to figure it out after the fact. After the fact often has one making lots of little mistakes out of ignorance that are hard to undo. Oddly one can develop for Linux first and it will generally work for Windows with less fuss than if one starts from Windows.

I wouldn't call myself a good programmer or one well versed in "Geek Shit," but I have managed to get OpenGL programs running across the Windows Linux divide. The magic usually comes down to every time I reach for someone else's box of code I have to ask "Is this inherently cross platform?" The answer is never hard to find, and If the answer is no, then it's time to look to other options. And between Mono, Codeblocks, Oger3D, SDL, OpenGL, Unity, OpenTK, and FreeImage there are options to get passed Windows dependencies.

I suppose GOG has been lucky in my case in that a lot of these games with Linux versions offered elsewhere haven't really interested me that much, yet.
They have their policies and procedures and their way of doing things. I can respect that.

At the end of the day though, all of that shit goes out the window if it affects your bottom line very much. :D

I agree, it just doesn't make sense.

They could at least add them in the form of extras (with the rest of bonus content, in the same way that some games have another game version included in the bonus section).

edit
Haha, I've only read the first half of your post, missed the 2nd one (even though the post itself isnt too long xd) but came to the same conclusions.

Anyway, it might seem like a little bit shady tactic, but I dont think Linux users would mind, especially considering the fact that most of them are propably more tech savvy than the average Windows / Mac user.

Just wonder which places and how many games approximately that would be..