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

[birdie]

Some of the complaints in that list (e.g. "No reliable sound system" under Audio Subsystem) are 5-6 years old! Surely people don't have the same complaints about audio now that they had in 2009?

And complaints like this: "Linux developers don't care about backward compatibility - OSS is mostly unsupported nowadays, OSSv4 is no longer being developed." are just plain ridiculous. Try opening a an MS Word document from < 2000 in MS Office 2013, for example "This document is too old to be loaded in this version of office" is what happens. Maintaining backwards compatibility is the performance kiss of death, not to mention a maintenance nightmare.

1. Audio in Linux is still largely broken.
2. MS Word 2013 will open Word 2000 documents without any problems.
3. Maintaining backwards compatibility is the key to success, as seen by Windows, Android and MacOS X.

But perhaps Linux users and developers just don't give a f*ck. I don't know. At least you seem not to give a f*ck.

[birdie]

Yup, ALSA has been with us since 1999 (that's 16 years now - boy, I feel old) and OSS still works in the very latest kernel version exactly the way it did back then. What better backward compatibility could one ask for?
Not to mention the fact that at the same time the author complains about excessive layers of compatibility, when he deliberately chooses a backward compatibility scenario in order to illustrate that Linux has "six layers of audio redirection", by counting every DLL involved in the working set of a legacy application running on a setup with both PulseAudio's compatibility plugin and Alsa Dmix.

Where's reliable software mixing of input and output? Where? Why even in 2015 I've got a situation when applications block all other applications from using my sound card?

Windows has this problem solved in 1999. Linux fans will keep inventing BS excuses for broken audio, saying it just works when in fact it's barely usable.

[DanielG]

3. Maintaining backwards compatibility is the key to success, as seen by Windows, Android and MacOS X.

Ok, this is bullshit.
MacOS X is well known for breaking backwards compatibility, both with older hardware and older software.
Their approach for "backwards-compatibility" is "build your software with the newest xcode in compatibility mode for older OS X version".
So old software doesn't just work.

[GraysonPeddie]

Other than C4 Engine, what could you suggest to write games using other game engines listed in here?

Let's say I'm into 3D Japanese RPG game development. And yes, JRPG is one of my favorite genre of all time, ranging from Chrono Trigger to Ni No Kuni and Breath of Fire IV. I'm thinking a small JRPG game, though. And a language to program something as easy as C#. And something with a level editor, if any.

[somini]

1. Audio in Linux is still largely broken.
2. MS Word 2013 will open Word 2000 documents without any problems.
3. Maintaining backwards compatibility is the key to success, as seen by Windows, Android and MacOS X.

But perhaps Linux users and developers just don't give a f*ck. I don't know. At least you seem not to give a f*ck.

Word 2013 won't open documents from 2010, at least when they reach non-trivial levels of complexity.

What is C4 engine anyway?

You've seen through his ruse.

[johnc]

Other than C4 Engine, what could you suggest to write games using other game engines listed in here?

Let's say I'm into 3D Japanese RPG game development. And yes, JRPG is one of my favorite genre of all time, ranging from Chrono Trigger to Ni No Kuni and Breath of Fire IV. I'm thinking a small JRPG game, though. And a language to program something as easy as C#. And something with a level editor, if any.

I would think UE4 or Unity, but I haven't done any game development so I'm probably a bad source. They just seem to be the go-to engines these days.

[Emmanuel Deloget]

I'd like sound to evolve too but...

Where's reliable software mixing of input and output? Where? Why even in 2015 I've got a situation when applications block all other applications from using my sound card?

Windows has this problem solved in 1999. Linux fans will keep inventing BS excuses for broken audio, saying it just works when in fact it's barely usable.

I would love to see that change too. Any idea on how to proceed ?

Surely, it starts by writing yet another kernel-level sound system, and porting all the sound card drivers to this new system.. Not to mention that soon after that, you'll have to deprecate all the existing sound interfaces - because you want the system to run. That means you'll have to fix tons of programs and port them to the new sound infrastructure ; in the same time, you'll still need to support applications that you cannot change (for different reasons), new people who stick to The Great Old Broken Sound System because they think your infrastructure s*cks and so on.

I'm not saying that the problem should not be solved. I'm saying that it's harder to solve that just wanting it to be solved. Carefull communication and gigantormous coding will be required before the shiny "Sounds Work As Intended" day comes.

[dega704]

When I first saw the title of this article, I got somewhat depressed as I had assumed that they had run into legitimate issues such as the current mess with OpenGL and the various drivers. Instead I see that the lead developer essentially rage quit; not over actual development issues but over his own personal experience with Ubuntu? With apt-get of all things? I guess that at least partly explains why I hadn't heard of C4 engine until about ten minutes ago. One immature developer of some fart-in-the-wind game engine throwing a tantrum has zero bearing on Linux as a gaming OS. Nothing to see here. Moving on.

[blackout23]

Even having basic day 1 support for all new NVIDIA cards in nouveau wouldn't help since Ubuntu ships outdated kernels (especially on the installation medium).

[DanielG]

For the Maxwell problem it should suffice, if nouveau were only used on cards it's known to support in a stable way.
Everything else should fall back to the standard VESA - it's slow, but at least stable and enough to get you through the installation and the binary driver installation tool.