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

[DanielG]

Don't really agree with that one.
But I think that the reason Android has taken off is that people were very unhappy with the iOS walled garden and a constant stream of weird decisions about things like privacy, etc and for quite a while rather expensive hardware. They probably would have gone to windows phone if it had been viable, in terms of cost, function, and availability, but it certainly wasn't

It took off because google gave it away for free to phone vendors (=> they didn't have to write their own OS like they did before or license windows phone) and they created cheap (-er than apple) smartphones with it.

I really think that's all and it's that simple.

[yakman2020]

I'm a game developer working on my crossplatform engine, and I support desktop Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. I use OpenGL (and OpenGL ES) and OpenCL mostly.

Linux is my main development platform. I'm very familiar with it and everything works great for me. I love APT and how easy it is to create development and deployment environments. It's also very easy for me to cross develop on Linux: I build my Windows and Android binaries right in Linux.




The complaint he makes about installing Linux, though, is very unfair: you should develop for supported hardware and platforms. Of course you would have similar problems if you tried to install Windows on poorly supported hardware. (Try to install OS X on unsupported hardware--"Hackintosh"--and you will know true pain.) In any case, this would be a problem only for the developer, and one that once he solves is solved: he does not have to work to solve OS installations issues for his users. This just seems like such an odd complaint for a developer to make, it's just not his business at all to install OSes!



He may be a good programmer, but he's really bad at understanding the stakes of software freedom, and his responsibility to support it. I'm sure he uses a lot of free software in his development work. What about giving back to the community?

Amen to all of the post.

One addition. I have tried running a Windows home theater pc for about 10 years or so.
Linux certainly does not have a monopoly on driver support issues. I have spent many a long few days dealing with serious (BSOD, *bad* voice sync, noise, tearing, speckles, and all kinds of other issues) problems coming from the vendor software, or the OS itself. This not to mention the update burden which makes it impossible to run the thing for more than a few months without having to go through the same thing over again. More than once these problems resulted in the purchase of new hardware, as the particular grass was greener on the other side of the AMD/nVidia hill that week, which only solved the problem temporarily (maybe a year), then rinse and repeat.

In linux land (the HTPC is now a linux machine streaming dlna via XBMC and PLEX) there have been no issues at all after getting the machine to initial stability. It has stayed stable and seems to have far fewer problems, most of which can be addressed by, if needs be, taking the mesa and xorg source and building them myself. I have been able to fix drivers, libraries and APIs locally, or replace them with fixed versions. Not possible in windows.

In addition, in the area that linux shines compared to windows(being a server), I have been able to do things that I know for a fact will very likely never be doable on windows, with only a couple of days learning.

I certainly wish there was an absolutely fool proof out of the box linux distro, but to describe it as broken seems rather exaggerated.

[jagoly]

I'm a game developer working on my crossplatform engine, and I support desktop Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. I use OpenGL (and OpenGL ES) and OpenCL mostly.

Linux is my main development platform. I'm very familiar with it and everything works great for me. I love APT and how easy it is to create development and deployment environments. It's also very easy for me to cross develop on Linux: I build my Windows and Android binaries right in Linux.

OS X is my least favorite platform: the only development option is Xcode, which is quirky and weird and painful. Deploying DLLs on OS X is an exercise in frustration (I finally solved it after using several poorly documented OSX-specific tools). And of course it's tremendously expensive for me because I need to buy a Mac just for OS X development (cannot crossbuild from Linux).

Still, I do think some of his complaints have merit, especially for someone who is not familiar with the Linux platform. It really is a Frankenstein's monster [People! Get this right! "Frankenstein" is the name of the doctor who made the monster, not the name of the monster itself). But, terrific efforts of distro makers and upstream projects have resulted in these disparate pieces working quite well together. Things have improved tremendously over the years. Say what you will about specific usability issues in Ubuntu, it provides a very complete and working experience (on supported hardware!), with easy to maintain and upgrade systems. Having had too much experience helping friends with their Mac problems, I can honestly say, with no bias, that Ubuntu 14.04 is easier to use and maintain than OS X Yosemite. (Of course there might be specific software packages you need that don't exist on Linux, but that's not a problem with the OS itself.)

The complaint he makes about installing Linux, though, is very unfair: you should develop for supported hardware and platforms. Of course you would have similar problems if you tried to install Windows on poorly supported hardware. (Try to install OS X on unsupported hardware--"Hackintosh"--and you will know true pain.) In any case, this would be a problem only for the developer, and one that once he solves is solved: he does not have to work to solve OS installations issues for his users. This just seems like such an odd complaint for a developer to make, it's just not his business at all to install OSes!

But my real problem is his attitude: the Linux OS isn't in good shape, which is why he doesn't want to support it. Dude, the only way for the OS to improve is by supporting it. The point of Linux is not that it's "better," it's that it's free software, with the potential to be as good or even better than other options. The point is that it frees consumers from the control of corporations. If we want it to catch up in terms of quality with the big corporate OSes, we all need to work together. As a great example, Valve's work on Linux has done a lot of good across the board for Linux. He's in a position to do the same.

I would respect his opinion more if he were ditching Linux and instead focusing on a different free OS (a BSD?). But instead he's dropping all support for free platforms, and even phrasing it in "moral" terms.

And, you know, it's OK if he doesn't want to support Linux due to it not being worth the effort. That's totally valid. But he's also implying that nobody should support Linux, even if they did have the time to do so, because it's fundamentally broken.

He may be a good programmer, but he's really bad at understanding the stakes of software freedom, and his responsibility to support it. I'm sure he uses a lot of free software in his development work. What about giving back to the community?

So much this. We are the same person I swear.

[AndyChow]

Wow, this thread exploded. I now realize how much Linux users are similar to Muslim fanatics. Those that think the attack in French was a CIA/Jewish sponsered propaganda machine.

This developer didn't enjoy his linux experience. Can't we believe that? No, he has to have been payed off, or he's stupid, doesn't know anything, even though, well, he has a PhD and 20+ years experience designing game engines.

That makes sense. That's logical.

Yes, I still get browser screen tearing. With Ubuntu, mint, debian, fedora, slackware, arch, puppy, crunchbang. Using gnome, kde, lxde, cinnamon, xmonad, awesome, openbox. I also have that problem using my nexus 5 with android 4.?, 5. My main computer has 8 cores, 32 Gb of ram, runs on a SSD (mostly), and a not so recent Radeon HD6850. So it's not like my hardware can't handle what is going on. It just prioritizes whatever it wants, rather than what I want. I also have a smaller rig with a nvidia chip. Same problems. And I used to have a laptop with an intel graphic card, I can't remember if there was screen tearing, but I wouldn't be surprised. Something is wrong with the scheduler. Or not wrong. Just tuned to a machine, not a user with sensibility toinput/output interactions.

You actually hearing sound coming out of your computer does not mean all is well in the world of audio in linux. I can definitely hear a difference in my speakers between linux and windows on the same hardware. Even from a cr*ppy mp3.

It's so sad to see so many people act like crazy fanatics when someone sees a problem that doesn't seem worthwhile with their favorite system. There are many problems with linux. So many. OSx might seem like a joke. Then you read the 150-250 page documentation to whatever framework you're working on. A recent example for me is "Core Data Programming Guide". Well, after that document, I felt like I knew everything. And that was less than 2 weeks in. Linux, I'm 15 years in and I still feel like so much is hidden. And yeah, I don't have time to read and understand millions of lines of code to understand what GCC is doing (I wish I did, if I was immortal that's probably what I would be doing right now). Windows sounds like a joke. Don't even get me started. You don't know where your data is or what it is doing. But I can make an app in an afternoon that fetches data over the web and processes it locally in an afternoon with Visual Basic. It might do things that violate every programming bone in body, but it works.

I support Gnu/Linux. Every year I give to the FSF, because I believe in freedom. But don't accuse this guy of being payed off or an idiot just because he doesn't see the value of supporting linux. Don't berate him. He is a free man. He can do what he wants. That is what we are fighting for, after all. Freedom.

[Cyber Killer]

We shouldn't need to make a custom distro for every need.

And we don't. The most popular distros are the general use ones, usable for everyday desktop tasks, servers, development etc... All the very very custom distros made for 1 specific area (of differentiating from the main one by changing the wallpaper) rarely gather more than a handful of users, confirming that they are very specific and with limited application.

And the command line needs to become the secondary way of configuration. There is no reason not to have a configuration ui that can pull in the labels and organization from documentation. If some Dev whines too bad you are going to have to let go of your documentation format created in the 90s.

No. On the other hand the gui can become equal to it, which is mostly done on many distros already (try OpenSUSE with KDE and be amazed at the amount of options exposed in the GUI). As for the docs, most commonly used dev tools and languages have html documentation on the net, so that's done too. I don't recall if I ever used manpages to help myself with my C++ code.

This developer didn't enjoy his linux experience. Can't we believe that? No, he has to have been payed off, or he's stupid, doesn't know anything, even though, well, he has a PhD and 20+ years experience designing game engines.

Being a very capable developer doesn't contradict being dumb in other areas. I work with software developers on a daily basis, you can trust me when I say many of them couldn't install their own OS (whatever would it be) properly even if their lives depended on it. They are generally corporate code monkeys - they only write code, and if anything breaks with their OS, they send a ticket to IT support and go grab a coffee. And I think that is what happened here - this engine developer should have chipped some money on a commercially supported distro, e.g. SLED with phone support etc, then he could have his problems solved for him and get back to coding. (SLED is not that costly to be honest, even for a home user - 120$ for a standard 1year support plan with phone, chat and email is a really good deal, you can't get anything like that for windows)

[prodigy_]

AFAIK, RMS also doesn't install his own systems, he asks someone else to do it for him. What does that say about Linux as a whole?

Nothing. RMS is apparently a busy man (which doesn't surprise me at all) but why should this fact say anything about Linux?

[prodigy_]

Because downloading one self-contained SDK to develop for Windows, Mac, PS4, or XBox One is a horrific experience that no one should go through.

Oh, if you think that development for Windows and Mac is heaven on Earth, by all means continue living in your dream world and leave Linux alone.

[FuturePilot]

contrary to what Eric believes, just because he is an accomplished game dev with a phd doesn't make him an expert in system administration and tech support. i've long since lost count of how many (mostly) intelligent devs and academics i've met, including game and compiler devs, who were just completely incompetent in this area, and just like Eric many were oblivious of their level of "expertise". however this really shouldn't come as a surprise, what's the famous quote? "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes" or something to that effect.

this reminds me of something Linus once said in a Q&A session when asked about his past experience in trying to, and ultimately failing at, installing and setting up debian:

"To me a distribution is ... not very interesting, I want it to be easy to install so I can just get on with my life, which is mostly the kernel ... One of the problems I have is, I am not an MIS person. I may do kernels and people think that that means that I'm technical, but when it comes to actually maintaining machines I am a complete disaster." - Linus Torvalds

be a man Eric, just admit you're not as smart as you think you are in this one area of computers.

This makes a lot of sense. I've seen this first hand. Typically developers are poor at system administration tasks and system admins are poor at developing. Programmers and admins have completely different ways of thinking. So although this guy has a PhD it shouldn't say anything about his knowledge outside of programming. That would be like asking a doctor to fix your car.

[Xaero_Vincent]

After reading some of Eric's comments on his forum, it appears he was trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 on Windows 8 via Wubi and it failed. AFAIK, Wubi no longer officially supports Ubuntu after version 12.10 nor does it support Windows 8. Some people claim that that it might be somewhat possible to make it work but it isn't supported and you are likely to run into problems like Eric did. He said he didn't want to attempt to upgrade to 14.04 but felt he had to because he was getting "package dependency" issues with 12.04.

He needs to just do a proper dual-boot. However, I wonder if he's aware (my guess is yes) that if he upgrades to Ubuntu 14.04 or 14.10 that his resulting builds will require a newer glibc and therefore C4 would require a minimum 2014-era distribution. He'll need to setup a chroot or a VM with an older distro as the development/compiling platform. Frankly, he's probably better off just to install Debian 7 Wheezy and enable the backports repository (to upgrade his kernel to better support newer hardware) then install the proprietary graphics drivers.

[dungeon]

After reading some of Eric's comments on his forum...

I can't see that anymore

Fuck him, Fuck Windows and OS_X... simply fuck everything he supports - that is the right thing to do with his marketing shit