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Sometime in the late 1990's, I saw Red Hat 5.2 for sale in a store. It was described as a complete operating system and was cheap, so I bought it. It was fun to play with and try to get some programs to work, but many of the programs and hardware that I used didn't work with it (or I couldn't find an alternative), so I kept the OS as a toy that I played with from time to time. Windows was still my primary OS. Over the years, I installed several different distros and played with them for a while, but they didn't do everything I wanted, so Windows was still my primary OS. Around 2006, my son, who knew about my history with Linux, introduced me to Ubuntu (Dapper). What a difference a few years had made! It had become much more user friendly. Linux then became my primary OS, but I kept a Windows partition for some of my programs (and games) that still didn't work with Linux. Now, I'm using Arch and have gotten all my programs, games and hardware (including my Lexmark scanner) to work with Linux. With XP reaching its end of life, it's time for me to finally say good-bye to Windows!
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XP EOL is going to result in similar situations for a lot of people. -
but XP is best .Comment
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PC gaming is the only reason Windows will keep dominating home desktops. Unfortunately linux is just too fragmented for any developer to even consider commercially.Comment
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If we're lucky and these SteamBox things take off (not that I particularly like them of themselves) the major developers will have a single high-volume Linux distro with a high demand for games. And since SteamOS is very close to stock Debian, any games ported to it should work fine on Debian-based and probably all distros.Originally posted by ACiD View PostComment
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Awesome! Worst stupidity I ever read. Go visit local PC store and count machines which ship preinstalled with notebooks/PCs with windows and linux. My personal ratio for 2013 was 90/9/1, 90-windumbs, 9-without os, 1-linux. Lolfragmented - its about marketshare and OEM agreements - NOTHING ELSE.Originally posted by ACiD View Post
You sir really know the art of perversion!Originally posted by juliet1 View PostComment
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Sir, yesterday one of my machines with XP hard-locked while downloading a torrent of a fully legal gaming mod. After getting it, I had to defragment the drive, as the download process of a 1 GiB file alone has produced over 1200 file fragments.Originally posted by juliet1 View Post
Sir, get any linux with wine+CSMT patch and dump your windows, sir.Comment
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That's a bunch of nonsense. You're confusing two separate issues. One is the willingness of commercial software developers to develop and sell for Linux, and the other separate issue is OS bundling at the OEM level. Don't confuse them.Originally posted by brosis View Post
Have you considered that one *reason* the OEM's don't bundle Linux is because there's a lack of commercial software and tier-1 games as compared to Windows? If you build it, they will come. But first you've got to convince developers to build it. Developing and supporting commercial software for Linux is a pain in the ass. I know.
Let me break it down for you:
1. Different packaging methods across distros. .deb vs. .rpm vs. others. Supporting multiple packaging methods is additional work above and beyond what's required for OSX or Windows.
2. Different shared library versions. A .rpm that's made for Fedora will frequently not work on RHEL or CentOS. A .deb that's for Ubuntu will frequently not work on Debian. So you've either got to compile against different libraries to create distro-specific packages, or you've got to constantly evaluate the libraries across all current distros and try and work out the lowest common denominator. This is a lot more work than what's required for OSX or Windows.
3. You've got different GUI environments, Gnome 2.x, Gnome 3.x, KDE, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, Xfce, etc. You've got to make sure your package will work across all these different desktop environments. Either that or create distro-specific builds that target the default desktop. Yet again, this is lots more work than developing for OSX or Windows.
4. Open vs. Closed source drivers. While the AMD driver has made huge strides recently due to cooperation from AMD, the open source drivers for all popular mid and high end gaming graphics cards do not perform nearly as well as their closed source counterparts. Many distros do not include the closed source drivers by default. The user has to fetch and install them on his own. This is a tech support nightmare when you've got people calling in, or leaving negative product reviews online because "the game plays like crap on Linux but works fine on Windows". Are you really going to train your tech support people on how to install proprietary graphics drivers on all the popular Linux distros? Once again, a bit pain in the ass as compared to developing for OSX or Windows.
5. You'll soon have the issue of different GUI compositors, X.org vs. Wayland vs. Mir. Who knows what untold development and support nightmares will come from trying to support three different compositors?
6. Lastly you have the life span of a Linux distro. Most Microsoft and Apple operating systems have many years of vendor support. XP was supported for what, 12 years? Most Linux distros are only supported for 1 year or so. That means the game you developed for one distro will likely not work a year from now, when the next version of that distro gets released. Do you really expect developers to recompile and redistribute their games every year, for all the distro version upgrades? That's insanity. No developer would agree to that. The only exceptions to this are RHEL, SuSE, and Ubuntu LTR. Those are supported for many years, just as commercial operating systems from Microsoft and Apple are. But that's not what most Linux users are running, so game developers don't target those OS's. For example, I'm a RHEL user, and I cannot use Valve Steam. It flat out will not run on RHEL6, period.
I'm sure there are more, this is all I can think of off the top of my head. I don't blame commercial developers one bit for avoiding Linux like the plague. The fragmentation of our ecosystem is the #1 reason preventing its widespread adoption on the desktop.Comment
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You have some valid points for sure, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be.
If you are going to develop proprietary software for linux then the only good option you have is to compile static libraries for it. Steam does in fact run on RHEL Ajust fine, you just have to use the Steam Runtime, which is all the libraries steam needs compiled into a static environment. There is nothing wrong with foing this if it is whats required to make your application function across distro's.
Of course this is more work then what is required for windows, but that is beside the point. Linux isnt windows. If you want to support your application across distro's then you either need to implement a development environment internally that is similar to existing OSS environments, or you need to compile static libraries to ship with your application. That's all there is to it whether you like it or not. OSS distro's will never implement static userspace environments. It isn't going to happen ever.Comment
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