C4 Engine Drops Linux Support, Calls It "Frankenstein OS"

[asdfblah]

What if you don't have half an hour to waste on such trivialities?
Seriously, mate, RMS wrote the first version of GCC. He doesn't need to prove to anyone including himself that he can install Linux.

Why the visceral response? You don't seem to have understood my reply. I know well what RMS (and Linus) have done, I'm not saying they are incompetent. Quite the contrary, I'm saying that installing linux can be a PITA and a waste of time. Go read my replies and think again, "mate".

[bitman]

Best thing to do is pick up a small used SSD on eBay and just install Ubuntu plain to that. Put GRUB on there, and leave the Windows drive completely untouched. Worst case if GRUB shits the bed, you can just boot to the Windows drive using the BIOS hot key.

If it is the solution then clearly something is wrong. Thats now how modern systems should be worked around. Seriously...

[blackiwid]

Why the visceral response? You don't seem to have understood my reply. I know well what RMS (and Linus) have done, I'm not saying they are incompetent. Quite the contrary, I'm saying that installing linux can be a PITA and a waste of time. Go read my replies and think again, "mate".

yes like every other os too... except linux is less pain then installing windows. so what do we need to do offer absolutly no pain vs heavy pain installing windows to be good enough?

When a nvidia blob installer would make the ui not start up or just windows not start up after using it, would you blaim microsoft for it.

Nobody hinders Nvidia on making a install-blob.bin thing that 100% of the times works and all features are there... how is that linux problem, nvidia dont need included packages to the distro or do they have the newest drivers included in windows all the time? NO.

Just dont compare always linux to a perfect world and windows is just autojmaticly good enough, cant hear that anymore.

[AnonymousCoward]

I am a cross-platform developer for a proprietary program which runs on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.

It sure isn't easy to write cross-platform software, especially when it isn't just a simple GUI application, but it's not impossible. GNU/Linux is a great platform in my opinion, but it does have its flaws.

The only real problem I encounter as a proprietary software developer is library dependency issues... which isn't exactly easy to solve compared to Windows.

To compare:

On Windows, I compile my program and all my dependencies, pack my exe and dlls into an installer (or zip file) and I'm done. This compiled program + dependencies will work on Windows XP up until Windows 8 (and possibly 9 and 10 in the future).

On GNU/Linux I use the package manager to install all (or most) dependencies, compile my program and then the dependencies, tarball it, then I'm done(*).

*There are a few catches, though:
1. The user will have to use the same distribution that I compile my program on. Otherwise there may be GLIBC issues (too old version), or the libraries are named differently and the user will have to symlink...
2. The user will have to manually install the dependencies using his package manager.
3. If a library is not available in the repository, the user will have to compile and install it.
It's a lot more work for the user to get our program up and running in comparison to Windows.

We're a small development team so we can not compile, package, and test on all major distributions (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, RHEL, CENTOS, etc.). It would simply be too time consuming.

It would be great if supporting many distributions would be as easy as supporting different versions of Windows, i.e compile once and ship all the library dependencies with your proprietary program.

I can't disclose any information about our proprietary program, in case someone was wondering.

[Cyber Killer]

On Windows, I compile my program and all my dependencies, pack my exe and dlls into an installer (or zip file) and I'm done. This compiled program + dependencies will work on Windows XP up until Windows 8 (and possibly 9 and 10 in the future).

On GNU/Linux I use the package manager to install all (or most) dependencies, compile my program and then the dependencies, tarball it, then I'm done(*).

*There are a few catches, though...)

Fixed that for you:
Compile your program (on a sufficiently old distro version), pack the binary + the dependent libs into a zip or whatever. Include a simple script to run the program:

#!/bin/bash

cd "`dirname $0`"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:./lib ./binary

(assuming you put the dependent libs inside 'lib' subdir in the programs directory)

Then when the user unpacks this, assuming he has a newer glibc and the architecture is ok (64bit/32bit), then the program will run and use system libs first or if they're not installed then the libs that you provided (just be sure to provide the dependencies of your dependencies too - it's generally a good idea to not use too many libs, better stick with 1 fairly complete framework). The only thing this differs from your windows example is the script to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH for the binary.

No need to thank me ;-).

[bitman]

We're a small development team so we can not compile, package, and test on all major distributions (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, RHEL, CENTOS, etc.). It would simply be too time consuming.

As if it would be enough. Dont forget compiling/testing/providing packages for different versions of same distro too!

yes like every other os too... except linux is less pain then installing windows. so what do we need to do offer absolutly no pain vs heavy pain installing windows to be good enough?

Are you nuts? How about installing arch? Ok its edge case. How about installing mint when installer accidentlally crashes? Whats so easy about it then? Ofc most of the time it does not happen. But when it did happen i had to learn and manually set up lvm + luks. Valuable experience for me but not for most people. On the contrary installing windows never gave me trouble so please dont preach crap sir.

When a nvidia blob installer would make the ui not start up or just windows not start up after using it, would you blaim microsoft for it.

Nobody hinders Nvidia on making a install-blob.bin thing that 100% of the times works and all features are there... how is that linux problem, nvidia dont need included packages to the distro or do they have the newest drivers included in windows all the time? NO.

Actually even the fact that we have to stop X to install video driver is retarded. And its not nvidia to blame. And you know what happens when shit hits the fan with video drivers on windows? You get to enjoy low res low color desktop shell. Thats right - you still get to fix shit in shell. Although now at least cinnamon has decency to show ugly shell too so things indeed are getting better. But its still long way to go. Esp in making it trivial for users installing proprietary vga drivers.

And yes, you can say windows has latest drivers included. It is done via windows update. Usually you do not need to download driver to get max resolution supported by your gpu. Package managers on linux do good job there also though.

Just dont compare always linux to a perfect world and windows is just autojmaticly good enough, cant hear that anymore.

So people should pretend all is cool and dandy? Would it not be better if those last good threads windows are hanging on be cut off by linux distros providing a better alternative at those lacking points? I sure would prefer that. Plugging ones years and shouting "lalala-everything-is-cool-lalala" aint a solution.

[Kano]

You don't need to do a full install of another distro, you can use 32/64 bit chroot as well if you only want to compile it.

[bitman]

You don't need to do a full install of another distro, you can use 32/64 bit chroot as well if you only want to compile it.

Fixed that for you:
Compile your program (on a sufficiently old distro version)

And how is it a fix? Its ugly workaround for problem that should not exist. For some reason we have no problems building stuff on windows7 for xp. Also as if it was simple to build on old distro. How about i want 10 years old distro support? How about compiler being too old? How about libs too old? How about repos down? Its a joke, not a solution. Same problems stand for chroot.

[Cyber Killer]

And how is it a fix? Its ugly workaround for problem that should not exist. For some reason we have no problems building stuff on windows7 for xp. Also as if it was simple to build on old distro. How about i want 10 years old distro support? How about compiler being too old? How about libs too old? How about repos down? Its a joke, not a solution. Same problems stand for chroot.

If a distro is so old that it's repos aren't available any more then nobody sane is using it anyway. As for lib versions - that is a project planning problem - you should stick to the lib features that are provided by library versions which are available on the oldest system that you are supporting. No, you don't get to pull that developer stunt of using the new and shiny features which have been just released in the new library version.

This is the way GNU/Linux is designed, live with it or recompile everything by hand.

[bitman]

If a distro is so old that it's repos aren't available any more then nobody sane is using it anyway. As for lib versions - that is a project planning problem - you should stick to the lib features that are provided by library versions which are available on the oldest system that you are supporting. No, you don't get to pull that developer stunt of using the new and shiny features which have been just released in the new library version.

This is the way GNU/Linux is designed, live with it or recompile everything by hand.

You are very rigth. And fact that it is designed this way causes people lots of pain. And people run away from pain. And it does no good. Thats all..