The Desura Linux Game Client Is Soon To Be Ready

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Desura Linux Game Client Is Soon To Be Ready

It looks like we could just be weeks away from seeing the official release of the Desura Linux game client, a game distribution client similar to Valve's Steam. Posted to the Desura blog is a rather lengthy update about the current status of the native Linux client...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTcxOQ

[liamdawe]

Interview done with Keith:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

[Tgui]

Isn't 64bit more popular than 32bit these days?

[devius]

Isn't 64bit more popular than 32bit these days?

I remember seeing some numbers a few months ago relating to Ubuntu and 32-bit was still the more popular with about 60%. Maybe this can be attributed to the default download option being that, and the 64-bit version only being used by those that know the actual difference and implications (not that there are many though...). Most hardware sold in the last 7 years supports 64-bit so it's about time software developers realize that when it comes to linux 64-bit isn't all that rare or complicated.

[allquixotic]

I remember seeing some numbers a few months ago relating to Ubuntu and 32-bit was still the more popular with about 60%. Maybe this can be attributed to the default download option being that, and the 64-bit version only being used by those that know the actual difference and implications (not that there are many though...). Most hardware sold in the last 7 years supports 64-bit so it's about time software developers realize that when it comes to linux 64-bit isn't all that rare or complicated.

Agreed. Aside from that, there's also the fact that supporting 64-bit users running a 32-bit app usually means that you'll have even more support requests from 64-bit users who can't run your software correctly (or at all). For example, for years Ubuntu didn't ship any GTK engines for 32-bit, so if you launched a 32-bit GTK application on a 64-bit installation, you were greeted with a lovely Windows 95-esque UI. Same with Qt. And then there's all kinds of fun stuff like pulseaudio libraries for 32-bit, 32-bit ALSA PCM plugin for Pulse, native compiled Python bindings helpers for various stuff, and so on and so forth. Most distros almost seem to go out of their way to make the 32-bit application experience on a 64-bit distro as horrible as possible. In reality they're just trying to save disk space, because most distros are limited to 700MB CD images (by choice).