John Carmack Pushes Wine For Linux Gaming

[bvanevery]

He didn't say Linux is a PITA (though it is), he just said that there's no business case that can be made for porting and supporting a game on Linux.

You say tomato I say tomato. What's the difference? Programming gruntwork that you have to pay someone to do is a PITA.

And I think for most games this is probably true.

Why should Linux consumers care? The market will solve this.

For Linux gaming to receive equal respect it would require this Steam Box to be very successful.

Not really. Minecraft turned into $80 million without any portals initially. I haven't checked on whether they bother with them now, as I didn't think Minecraft Alpha was much of a game. People respect money. Indies will keep trying to crack the money problem. When one of them inevitably succeeds, all the sluggards of the world will try to jump on the bandwagon. Screw them, I don't care what they do or what they want. Bunch of whining about wanting the world to be Windows so they can do less work.

Linux gaming will happen with or without Steam. Steam is a good boost for the ecology and may catalyze things, but it is not essential. I don't know if you've noticed but computers aren't really doing anything "new" anymore. That's why Linux has a strategic chance now and it's why Microsoft is slipping.

[johnc]

I've read it. Nothing about that book changes anything I just said. He can make his own business decisions, but I see no reason to agree with, praise, or reward him for saying Linux is a PITA. I'm of the mind that the world doesn't need Windows anymore. It's time. Not that Windows will go away soon, but it's time for game developers to chart their own destiny and not worry about what Microsoft or anyone in their sphere of influence thinks.

He didn't say Linux is a PITA (though it is), he just said that there's no business case that can be made for porting and supporting a game on Linux. And I think for most games this is probably true.

For Linux gaming to receive equal respect it would require this Steam Box to be very successful.

[bvanevery]

Still, as a side note, has anyone else here read David Kushner's excellent book Masters of Doom? I think that should be required reading for anyone before they attempt to make a character assassination of either Carmack or Romero.

I've read it. Nothing about that book changes anything I just said. He can make his own business decisions, but I see no reason to agree with, praise, or reward him for saying Linux is a PITA. I'm of the mind that the world doesn't need Windows anymore. It's time. Not that Windows will go away soon, but it's time for game developers to chart their own destiny and not worry about what Microsoft or anyone in their sphere of influence thinks.

[Hamish Wilson]

At your suggestion, I started to. I could not make it past the 1st sentence. "I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!);" Screw this. If Linux is not a priority for his business model, that's fine, it's his business and his choice. But indie Linux developers will pick up the slack from big game companies that don't want to be bothered. Their loss, our gain. I don't want to be bothered with Windows *anything* anymore, it has taken me something like 15 years to finally dump Microsoft for good. I believe in control of one's destiny, and that doesn't happen when one is small and dancing to Microsoft's tune. Carmack is big and established so he doesn't have to care, he's already got money to do whatever he likes.

And I do not disagree with you, for the most part. I just think some of the language and allegations being thrown about in this thread are unfair.

Still, as a side note, has anyone else here read David Kushner's excellent book Masters of Doom? I think that should be required reading for anyone before they attempt to make a character assassination of either Carmack or Romero.

[bvanevery]

I think people need to tone down some of the hate. He is not being as unreasonable as some people here are making out. Read his reddit post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/commen...enough/c89sfto

At your suggestion, I started to. I could not make it past the 1st sentence. "I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!);" Screw this. If Linux is not a priority for his business model, that's fine, it's his business and his choice. But indie Linux developers will pick up the slack from big game companies that don't want to be bothered. Their loss, our gain. I don't want to be bothered with Windows *anything* anymore, it has taken me something like 15 years to finally dump Microsoft for good. I believe in control of one's destiny, and that doesn't happen when one is small and dancing to Microsoft's tune. Carmack is big and established so he doesn't have to care, he's already got money to do whatever he likes.

[Hamish Wilson]

This open GPU obsession makes my head spin. Having something that's capable of at least bringing up a display is nice, but otherwise 99.99% of all computer users use closed-sourced video drivers and it's worked for decades and frankly people just don't care.

I suggest you re-read your statement as it is internally inconsistent, or are you saying we are not people now?

[Hamish Wilson]

I think people need to tone down some of the hate. He is not being as unreasonable as some people here are making out. Read his reddit post:

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_asks_why_wine_isnt_good_enough/c89sfto

That is not to say that I agree with his WINE comments, but I think some of the bile here is uncalled for. Especially with this comment here:

However, I don?t think that a good business case can be made for officially supporting Linux for mainstream games today, and Zenimax doesn?t have any policy of ?unofficial binaries? like Id used to have. I have argued for their value (mostly in the context of experimental Windows features, but Linux would also benefit), but my forceful internal pushes have been for the continuation of Id Software?s open source code releases, which I feel have broader benefits than unsupported Linux binaries.

And he is actually exactly right about the fact that the source code releases are more important - I would rather have access to a games source code be made available than a single port to a single platform any day. Especially since in doing so it decouples the games from Steamworks or any other potential forms of DRM. I am still waiting for the day I can play Rage natively on my machine without the Steamworks requirement, like what is possible with Doom3: BFG already. This idea I support fully

I do not support the idea of WINE as a primarily means for gaming however. I do use it and recognize it's value, but I am also well aware it's shortfalls. The sound is not working for me at the moment, and for the longest time doing anything with it (like launching FirstClass so I could send off my school assignments) would bork my sound server (it has now thankfully settled down somewhat and simply does not work without borking anything else). And there are so many other technical and practical reasons why his proposal is a bad idea, from increased overheard, worse support, and of course the message it sends out.

But just because we disagree with him does not mean he should be singled out for the abuse shown in this thread. Please, comment responsibly.

[johnc]

Intel is ok. AMD gives only half the thing wile Nvidia let as guess from some PDFs. The thing with AMD is that we can't target their hardware efficiently, correctly, and we are missing capabilities (buffer management, instructions and others). With AMD its like they give you an AVX CPU and a GCC patch with SSSE3 target and optimization libraries.

It's all that proprietary IP that makes it difficult to just give out the code.

Ok Intel is fully open source (on Linux) but I haven't heard even half-decent things about Intel GPU drivers, even on Windows. And the non-proprietary versions on Linux don't even match Windows performance if I recall Michael's benchmarks.

This open GPU obsession makes my head spin. Having something that's capable of at least bringing up a display is nice, but otherwise 99.99% of all computer users use closed-sourced video drivers and it's worked for decades and frankly people just don't care. Functionality, performance and making things work as smooth as possible is going to win over the most consumers. Just an FYI for businesses interested in making money.

[bridgman]

AMD gives only half the thing wile Nvidia let as guess from some PDFs. The thing with AMD is that we can't target their hardware efficiently, correctly, and we are missing capabilities (buffer management, instructions and others). With AMD its like they give you an AVX CPU and a GCC patch with SSSE3 target and optimization libraries.

I don't really understand what you are saying here. What do you mean by buffer management, and what instructions are you talking about ? The instructions covered by the ISA docs (Instruction Set Architecture) are the same as we use internally.

[artivision]

Sounds really dramatic, but it's not actually *true* or anything, at least not for Intel or AMD.

Intel is ok. AMD gives only half the thing wile Nvidia let as guess from some PDFs. The thing with AMD is that we can't target their hardware efficiently, correctly, and we are missing capabilities (buffer management, instructions and others). With AMD its like they give you an AVX CPU and a GCC patch with SSSE3 target and optimization libraries.