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

[Xaero_Vincent]

No distro vendor will be able to create packages for all software.
No software will be able to create packages for all distro.
And compiling yourself from the sources is not an option as it requires headers, compiler, make, ... to be present on your computer (which normal user tend to not have) and also this can take some time (depending on the size of the software).
So in the end I do believe there is still a problem here.
Note that the LSB specifications were meant to solve those kind of problems. But AFAICS this goal isn't achieved.

This is true and also why community supported 3rd party repositories exist...to support packages that many people want but distro maintainers choose not to support.

The biggest example of this is AUR, which currently has 53,775 package scripts. But you can also look at all the 3rd party Ubuntu PPA's and other distro repositories.

Sure there are situtations where some distributions might not have a specific program but thats mostly due to lack of desire from their user-base.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Looks like Eric managed to get Ubuntu 14.04 installed with a proper dual-boot method and his C4 engine is running on it.

https://twitter.com/EricLengyel/stat...63206520659968

I suspect that Eric will re-introduce Linux support for the C4 Engine.

[bountykiller]

This is perfectly fine for FOSS software. Leave it up to the community to build it on their distro. I often will go to FOSS project pages and the links to "download for Linux" are nothing more than a source tarball and instructions on how to obtain it from your distro's package manager.

No distro vendor will be able to create packages for all software.
No software will be able to create packages for all distro.
And compiling yourself from the sources is not an option as it requires headers, compiler, make, ... to be present on your computer (which normal user tend to not have) and also this can take some time (depending on the size of the software).
So in the end I do believe there is still a problem here.
Note that the LSB specifications were meant to solve those kind of problems. But AFAICS this goal isn't achieved.

• ISVs only "officially support" a couple distributions--generally Ubuntu and RedHat and only the last few releases of them and that's about it.
  
• A generic RPM and/or DEB package is built--pretty much any other package format is shunned and ignored and that's fine.
  
• The software is compiled against a sufficiently old enough glibc to target distros from the last few years. This is a pain but development can be done either in a chroot or in a simple virtual machine running an old distro guest and project files can compiled and shared across via a virtual network share between VM and host.

If a commercial ISV is looking to "unofficially" support other distributions, they may choose to permit their software to be re-distributed and hosted in distribution repositories and allowed to be re-packaged in the native distro package manager format. To prevent/mitigate piracy, they can either deploy a simple serial key or a sophisticated server-based software activation system.

*OR*

A ".run" universal installer script is written that checks if the required dependencies are installed then installs the app into /opt

*OR*

They can use a self-contained portable package format that will work on almost all distributions because all the necessary libs are bundled and self-contained in a portable executable.

http://portablelinuxapps.org/

Yes this is what tends to happens.

[chimpy]

There's still the mystery of what was the problem he was having. One of the post says he was trying to use Wubi (last time I used it was on Ubuntu 10.04 and was pretty cool back then), but that has'nt been supported for almost 3 years.

[Shoost]

I wonder how many of you are developers who worked in real projects under Linux? I've been developing under Linux for almost 13 years now and I still face issues, even with new OS installation and graphics lockups. IMO, what we are missing in a universal package format for all distros not the clusterfuck that it is now. I only produce binaries for Ubuntu (and only recent versions) and tell other users to compile on their own for anything else!

To be fair and give credit to Linux where it's due he did not have any big hardware issues. C4 runs very solidly on Linux, he doesn't use any third party libraries except OpenGL so sound works perfectly as well. He just had constant trouble with installing Ubuntu. Eric seems a bit anal so he probably felt he had to have everything fully updated and just right to make a build against it for every single release, where in reality it would probably have been better to make the project files and compile it against an older, stable version of linux and let users move that to whatever version they like. There's different levels of support, and literally supporting all Linux possibilities would probably be impossible even for a big company like Valve.

It seems like a dumb reason to toss out Linux compatability on the surface but it always takes me about a day to set up a whole dev environment on windoze or on *nix so if you are doing this on a regular basis it is a big time waster. If you are doing it on a regular basis AND it doesn't work properly or you don't have enough experience to do it quickly, then it's an even bigger time waster.

[JGJones]

In fairness, installing Ubuntu 14.04 on machines with Maxwell cards is a complete disaster since Canonical insists on shipping drivers released back in 1982.

There really is no good way to do it. The easiest is to buy a non-Maxwell card and install the latest nvidia drivers and then put the Maxwell card back into the machine.

Let's not sugar coat it... Canonical has totally checked out on its desktop distro and there's nobody else carrying the Linux desktop banner (except Mint, which uses even older drivers than Ubuntu). I can understand the guy's frustration.

I bought a new desktop in November 2014 - which included a GFX970 card. I had no idea of any issues with Maxwell, however I was able to successfully install Ubuntu 14.04 on my machine, and have a desktop. I then found out I could not install the nvidia drivers because it doesn't work with my Maxwell card, but at all times I did have a working desktop and was able to use my computer.

I ended up finding out about the xorg-edgers PPA and used that to install the most recent nvidia driver with Maxwell support.

Driver issues - I'll agree there, Canonical need to upgrade but then when I bought the GFX970, it had only just came out in UK. No idea if they have updated today?

[prodigy_]

Well, even if he is a busy man, if Linux was easy and fast enough to install it, he wouldn't need anyone else to do it for him. Just run the installer from the live distro, leave it there doing its job, do something else for half an hour or so (which could include updates and stuff) and come back to use your new system.

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.

[gamerk2]

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.

The problem I've seen, is even when people point out Linux's flaws, the initial response is to deny anything is wrong.

I wonder how many of you are developers who worked in real projects under Linux? I've been developing under Linux for almost 13 years now and I still face issues, even with new OS installation and graphics lockups. IMO, what we are missing in a universal package format for all distros not the clusterfuck that it is now. I only produce binaries for Ubuntu (and only recent versions) and tell other users to compile on their own for anything else!

That's what we're doing where I work; We target Ubuntu, not Linux. And yes, there's a difference.

[asdfblah]

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.

So, he's blaming "Linux" (whatever that means for him) for problems with windows application? Also, 12.04 was well known for having stupid problems with dependencies (the whole lib32 thing)... He shouldn't be touching 12.04, at all.
BTW, what's your source?

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

Well, even if he is a busy man, if Linux was easy and fast enough to install it, he wouldn't need anyone else to do it for him. Just run the installer from the live distro, leave it there doing its job, do something else for half an hour or so (which could include updates and stuff) and come back to use your new system.

[Xaero_Vincent]

I wonder how many of you are developers who worked in real projects under Linux? I've been developing under Linux for almost 13 years now and I still face issues, even with new OS installation and graphics lockups. IMO, what we are missing in a universal package format for all distros not the clusterfuck that it is now. I only produce binaries for Ubuntu (and only recent versions) and tell other users to compile on their own for anything else!

This is perfectly fine for FOSS software. Leave it up to the community to build it on their distro. I often will go to FOSS project pages and the links to "download for Linux" are nothing more than a source tarball and instructions on how to obtain it from your distro's package manager.

None of this is a problem except for closed-source proprietary development. For proprietary closed-source development, this is what tends to happen:

• ISVs only "officially support" a couple distributions--generally Ubuntu and RedHat and only the last few releases of them and that's about it.
  
• A generic RPM and/or DEB package is built--pretty much any other package format is shunned and ignored and that's fine.
  
• The software is compiled against a sufficiently old enough glibc to target distros from the last few years. This is a pain but development can be done either in a chroot or in a simple virtual machine running an old distro guest and project files can compiled and shared across via a virtual network share between VM and host.

If a commercial ISV is looking to "unofficially" support other distributions, they may choose to permit their software to be re-distributed and hosted in distribution repositories and allowed to be re-packaged in the native distro package manager format. To prevent/mitigate piracy, they can either deploy a simple serial key or a sophisticated server-based software activation system.

*OR*

A ".run" universal installer script is written that checks if the required dependencies are installed then installs the app into /opt

*OR*

They can use a self-contained portable package format that will work on almost all distributions because all the necessary libs are bundled and self-contained in a portable executable.

http://portablelinuxapps.org/