A Radical Idea For More Linux Game Ports

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Radical Idea For More Linux Game Ports

How could Linux get more game ports and users? An Ubuntu developer is suggesting that Canonical and Red Hat finance the ports...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RedHat-Canonical-Game-Ports

[alexThunder]

Nice plan! Send this guy some cookies

[xeekei]

That is a good idea. Shame that even in the unlikely event it does happen, it will only cover future games. I have a few old titles I'd still like ported.

[blackiwid]

haha a Canonical Guy has the idea, but if you look on the money situation, 99% of the bill would be paid by redhat and only 1% from canonical.

[birdie]

Porting is one thing, maintaining forever (since API/ABI compatibility in Linux is a joke, whereas in Windows you compile once and then run for years, or even decades) is another.

No, RedHat and Ubuntu don't have resources for that.

Basically the guy is asking game studios to open source their games for selected RH/Ubuntu developers - nah, it's not gonna happen.

[stevenc]

What for-profit software company would pay to bring people to software freedom? Why would these companies pay to make their GNU/Linux distro more attractive to users, unless they plan to capitalise (screw them over) later?

Make your game engine free, open-source software, and if it's any good people port and maintain it for you, for free.

[Filiprino]

Porting is one thing, maintaining forever (since API/ABI compatibility in Linux is a joke, whereas in Windows you compile once and then run for years, or even decades) is another.

No, RedHat and Ubuntu don't have resources for that.

Basically the guy is asking game studios to open source their games for selected RH/Ubuntu developers - nah, it's not gonna happen.

That article has some misconceptions, beginning with the stable API/ABI which is something great in Linux and something which is not relevant to user space applications but only for kernel modules and other pieces of software actually using the kernel API. I have some games which still play perfectly on GNU/Linux after 9 years. The ELF format has not changed and if you package your software with its own copy of the shared libraries then you have no problems, exactly the same as in Windows. Claiming that Windows 8 can still run Windows 95 applications is kind of ridiculous when that is not always true and you have to resort to the windows compatibility mode (with old copies of libraries and paths set) and even then not always works. And for instance, Windows 64 bit can not run Win16 applications.

Glibc by design "leaks" memory. Firefox for Linux now uses its own memory allocator. KDE Konsole application uses its own memory allocation routines.

Well, that is false. Glibc has memory pools in order to minimize heap overheads. That applications implement their own memory allocator is not new. There are more efficient allocators and if you want to have consistent performance across platforms then it might be a good idea to manage the heap pool on your own instead of relying on different implementations on different OSes.

[Svartalf]

Phoronix: A Radical Idea For More Linux Game Ports

How could Linux get more game ports and users? An Ubuntu developer is suggesting that Canonical and Red Hat finance the ports...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...cal-Game-Ports

Red Hat started down that path at one point, but backed away from it. I'd certainly be up for that (as it would translate into my day job being that effort for at least a couple of years...) if someone WOULD do that. I might see Canonical stepping up to the plate because it dovetails NICELY with their mobile/tablet plays they're working on. I don't see RedHat, currently, going there. They're servers first and foremost these days. Not desktop. Not mobile.

The biggest impediment for many of these titles being on Linux is the notion that someone needs to pay royalties for this stuff before anyone gets to work on it- you have to cough up $10-250k just for the honor and privilege of SEEING the code to port it. If you had access to the title under NDA and did the work with the understanding that you don't ship without publisher permission and getting a sign off on a publisher if it's not the studio's one doing the release, then this works out MUCH better. Someone needs to re-think what they're doing there. I see this happening as Valve and HumbleBundle got the ball rolling on that concept.

[J?rnS]

Porting is one thing, maintaining forever (since API/ABI compatibility in Linux is a joke, whereas in Windows you compile once and then run for years, or even decades) is another.

No, RedHat and Ubuntu don't have resources for that.

Basically the guy is asking game studios to open source their games for selected RH/Ubuntu developers - nah, it's not gonna happen.

Even on Windows old games often don't work. Try Sim2 on Windows8 for example. For backwards compatibility, we need performant VMs for old operating systems.

But the idea of that guy is really awesome!

[rabcor]

I don't see this happening, but it's actually a really good idea. But I think Valve would be the ones most likely to follow through with something like this around or after the release of their steam machines. To loan devs for SteamOS ports.