All I see is a .deb. I thought GOG was going to provide tarballs for all of their Linux games. Well?

EDIT: Ah, geez, there it is... in the fine print.

Still, didn't GOG say in their big official announcement of Linux support that they would always provide tarballs along with their debs? I was never informed that this particular part of the promise was retracted, so I never thought to look for such a disclaimer. I kind of feel cheated now. I hope they'll let me return this game. I guess I'm going to have to be very careful about what I buy from now on.

I know Ubuntu and Mint are popular, but bloody hell, if you're going to support Linux, support LINUX, not a commercial offshoot that barely contributes upstream and is headed in a direction closer to Android than any other attempt at a decent distribution. As time goes on, Ubuntu packages are going to become less and less compatible with other distros, and you'll be selling to a much narrower user-base than you are today by cutting the rest of us out.

I would like someone from GOG to respond to this. We were promised that we would always get a tarball, and that we wouldn't be left behind if we're not Ubuntu or Mint users. I gave you my money assuming you would keep this promise. I am aware of your return policies and that this *technically* doesn't fall under its terms, but I want an exception made for this case. I want my money back, or I want a tarball uploaded. One or the other. Please.

There's a warning in the store page: "This game comes with a .deb installer only."

I came to the forum to see if there was any kind of explanation to that... It's a really bad idea to not provide the tarball, and this also applies to Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I won't buy linux games without a tarball.

Yeah, I just noticed that disclaimer too. Edited my post above to reflect my feelings on it, too.

It's a sneaky move, and I don't like it, or where it could end up leading to. I trusted GOG to keep true to their promise. I didn't think they'd go as low as to use a single, small line of text to attempt to absolve themselves of that responsibility. I would expect bigger companies to do that sort of thing, but... dude, it's GOG! This shouldn't be happening! :(

I'm really hoping this was just one big mistake. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they do right by me and the rest of us on this one.

Really though, for games that only have .debs, they shouldn't even be listed as "Linux" games at all. That's incorrect at best, and deceptive at worst. They should be listed as "Ubuntu/Mint" games, in their own O/S filter, with games that have tarballs available be under a "Linux" O/S filter. There should be FOUR options for O/S filter: Windows, Mac, Linux and Ubuntu/Mint.

Ubuntu and Mint should not be subcategories of Linux, as they are now, they should be in their own separate O/S filter. All you'd have to do is shuffle the database around a little, add a fourth icon to represent Ubuntu/Mint, and there you go. Hell, the extra icon would be incredibly marketable: "Look at us, we support FOUR separate platforms now!" The point is, you guys can make this work without pissing any of us off, just do it right, and be more clear with your information, please!

GOG knows better than to list Mac OS X as a subcategory of a larger "BSD" category, despite its BSD roots, because OS X so vastly different that it pretty much became its own operating system. The same should apply for the distinction between Ubuntu/Mint and the rest of Linux. For what similarities they still have, the gap keeps widening as Canonical keeps systematically replacing one application at a time with their own in-house packages. Just look at how different Unity and Gnome are from each other now compared to how alike they used to be, if you want just one example of this.

In case it isn't obvious enough already: For those of us outside the Ubuntu/Mint scene, it really gets under our skin when software is listed as "for Linux" and all we get is a .deb package. Worst of all, some of the .debs out there today don't even work on pure Debian, which is where the file extension comes from. It's an insult and it shows a lack of understanding on the part of those promoting this software.

One thing that's really important to us Linux users is to feel like those supporting us truly, truly "get" us, and our needs. I think we're being clear and vocal enough about them, now please step up and support Linux properly, regardless of what distribution we run. I'm not the only one who hates how Ubuntu just swept into the Linux scene and turned those of us not using their distribution and their packages into an afterthought. When you do things like providing .debs with no tarballs and referring to it generally as "Linux", with only a very small and easy to miss disclaimer after the fact, it's hard not to see you as more "part of the problem" than "part of the solution".

It does seem pretty sudden, considering:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/general_linux_faq_and_troubleshooting/post79

"All Linux games have tarballs."

It didn't sound like there would be any exceptions to that, so I'm scratching my head and wondering what's going on. Supporting Linux, and not just Mint/Ubuntu, does involve providing tarballs.

GOG has said that it "Supports Linux", regardless of the fine print.

Indeed. That pretty much sums up what I'm saying here. I'd rather them just not beat around the bush and call these titles "Ubuntu/Mint" games, that would save us the trouble of having to scroll and squint to determine if we've been lead down a path of false hope. Or worse, as in my case, find out after you've bought the game and go to download it.

I was under the impression I was paying for a Linux game, not an Ubuntu game! I refuse to accept that it was my fault for not seeing the little bit of fine print of the system requirements (which I assumed to be hardware requirements, so I didn't bother looking there at first since this game is very old and my system is nearly brand new.) I bought a game that had a Linux-compatibility logo. To put a tiny disclaimer located under an irrelevant section header that basically amounts to saying "You know how we said it's for Linux? Well, no, actually, it's not." is still a deception, not an ethical means of disclosure.

This is a slippery slope. They really ought to correct this error in clarity and disclosure, before it becomes accepted business practice. Separating Linux from Ubuntu/Mint would put this entire debate to rest, satisfy everybody and deceive nobody. Please, just do it, GOG.

To be clear, I'm much more upset about the lack of disclosure than I am about the lack of support for other distributions. I understand that -- as hard as it is to accept -- some things will end up only being available on Ubuntu and its close derivatives. What I can't accept is the practice of continuing to call them "Linux" packages. Call them for what they are, packages for Ubuntu and Mint.

GOG is good in being transparent enough to mention that these packages will only work on the numbered Mint editions, so as to not get LMDE users' hopes up, and they make sure to list all the Windows editions that Windows games will work with. They do know how to do it right. I'm hoping this means they will extend that same practice of transparency and clarity to more accurately reflect whether or not these are Ubuntu/Mint packages, Linux packages, or (as is most cases) both.

I understand that we've all been witness to the "growing pains" of supporting Linux on GOG, but this is a huge bump in the road that could easily be smoothed out.

This was pretty weird, considering that on Gaming On Linux, people were implying that Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Sam & Max Hit the Road were playable in Linux already with ScummVM. I briefly checked the ScummVM FAQ: http://scummvm.org/faq/#1_3

GPL licenses say that you are free to make money with their software, only that you keep the source freely available and visible to everyone.

There is no reason why GOG couldn't put these games into a ScummVM wrapper, and then in a tarball, right? The compatibility of those two games in the most recent version of ScummVM is "Excellent" (the highest rating), as well:

http://scummvm.org/compatibility/

That simple, huh? Damn, I would totally accept a ScummVM-wrapped release if they made one. I have several Wine-wrapped GOG tarballs and they work perfectly, I'm quite happy with them, I'm sure GOG would be great at preconfiguring ScummVM wrappers to get the most out of each of their games that support it. Wouldn't it be awesome if they went the extra mile and included MIDI soundbanks (even commercial ones, after all we are paying for these) to most accurately replicate the soundtracks of some of these older games? There's so much potential in this, I do hope they explore it.

I'm disappointed by this as well - even though I use Mint I prefer to use the tarballs. Not sure why they've gone .deb only with today's releases, there doesn't seem to be any technical reason for it anyway. Anyone from GOG able to explain?

BTW you can simply extract the game from the .deb more or less as you would a normal tarball and it works just fine that way.

I unpacked the deb file on my Arch Box for Sam & Max and it works fine under Arch. So I can't see what is the problem providing a tar.gz package.

Most likely this is the reason: "ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS OF USE REQUIRED TO PLAY".
A deb can be used to let you accept the Disney license terms.

On openSUSE I can use the following commands to extract and play the game:
mkdir gamefolder
dpkg -x package.deb gamefolder/
So not much difference to a tar ball.

Funny, its ScummVM in a Dosbox :)
Cheers
Marvin

I did think about that possibility, but a better solution would've been to have the start script do that on first run IMO.

I agree that having a script display the agreement on first run is a better solution if this is in fact due to the license agreement. Partly because I can just open the .deb with my archive utility and the drag the folder labelled 'opt' to my desktop, and the game works fine this way. Making the .deb functionally similar to a tarball and completely bypasses any agreement.

The lack of a tarball bugs me too, but for a different reason. I avoid installing software (particularly games) to my boot drive due to limited space. Tarballs allow me to easily install to the location I want. There are work arounds, as I illustrated above, but I'm sure that solution wont work for all games, especially if the data isn't in a neat self contained folder.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the tarballs were simply being delayed so they could focus on more games.

I just downloaded it and it's running directly in ScummVM, no Dosbox at all. Not calling you a liar, it might of at one point for all I know, but at this point in time it's definitely just running on ScummVM.

A-ha so that's the reason..
Extract .deb, tar it myself and archive. Easy and no license agreement shown, doesn't really work as intended for GOG/Disney :D

You are right, the game is running inside a scummvm process.
Sorry for the wrong information, seems I was mislead by the start message and then seeing the scummvm window ;)

Running Sam And Max Hit The Road
Starting DOSBox
Using configuration file: samnmax.ini
...

Thank you fettouhi for confirming it'll work in Arch by just unpacking it. That's what I'm using, I guess I could give that a try. Still feels a bit strange, though, using a deb on here. Well, if it works, it works. I hope you didn't have to install it, though... I assume you were able to just run it out of the directory you unpacked it to, right?

Can we please have a friggin' tarball now that everyone has clearly demonstrated how useless the .deb is for accomplishing its intended purpose? What, did Disney think everyone using .deb-based package managers are too dumb to figure this shit out? Puh-lease.

I'm a little concerned by this, though. If Disney is banking on us being ignorant, I really hope they didn't sneak any DRM rootkits or other such garbage into the package, expecting people to be authenticating superuser privileges to put the contents of the .deb on their system.

I think I'll grab a packet sniffer and some other tools to run on this game's binaries, perhaps even set up a chroot just for the purposes of testing them out to be extra careful. Never can be too sure when it comes to dealing with Mr. Mouse. If they managed to sneak anything bad into this .deb, trust me, Disney will be the one I blame, not GOG. I'll be certain to inform everyone if I find anything untoward.