There's Now More Than 1,100 Games On Steam For Linux

[nightmarex]

Ahh, I see. I didn't imagine any distros would be using it yet, since they only released GCC 2 days ago.

That's pretty bad, then.

Thanks to Arch many bugs have been fixed and addressed before it becomes a widespread problem. For instance there was a terrible Cinnamon bug with the new version of Gnome that thanks to dozens of Arch users unable to launch their desktop environment got sorted out before it became a problem for others... who may user ci... well it got that problem sorted.

Being cutting edge cuts both ways...

EDIT: There is a testing repo which these things should be sorted out in but eh.... shit happens.

[DMJC]

Tipping point?

What I want to know is, what happens when Linux has more commercial games than OSX? Right now Apple has a psychological lead in mindshare mainly because it has more software. How much more seriously will Linux be taken when it has more games available than Apple does?

[birdie]

By the way, the problem of incompatible library versions has plagued Steam games on Windows, too. That's the main reason why many Steam games install their own versions of the Visual C++ runtime, DirectX, etc. Packaging for Linux should follow suit.

This is simply false.

1) Steam games which install DirectX simply update it because Microsoft hasn't created a simple way of figuring out if DirectX is updated to to a certain point (so most games simply reinstall over and over June 2010 DirectX redistributable systemwide).
2) No games, that I know of, bundle their own MSVC components. Again, they (re)install 2005/2008/2010 MSVC++ runtimes systemwide.

Microsoft resolved the compatibility problem years ago by introducing WinSxS. Linux developers are still hellbent on recompiling the whole world (in terms of FreeBSD, i.e. all the sources) whenever core components (like libstdc++, glibc, glib, gtk+, qt, etc) get updated.

[birdie]

Do you have proof about this, or are you just wildly accusing people of crap you don't understand here?

libstdc++ is VERSIONED, which means that unless they are doing something stupid (and i haven't looked into it, so tell me if they are) all old binary applications should still work perfectly fine. Because they'll link to the old version (.so.1) while new apps compiled with the new libs will link to the new version (.so.2)

Yeah, versioned, in theory. In practice libstdc++ in GCC 5.1 has the same soname as libstdc++ in GCC 4.0.

[pal666]

It will always be like this unless someone decides to fix the mess which is Linux right now.

no amount of spamming this bullshit will make you right

Right now, most distros are in the process of f*cking up libstdc++ backwards compatibility. You know, because GCC developers couldn't find a better way to introduce the new features of GCC 5.1. Isn't it amazing when the developers of core Linux userspace components (glibc and libstdc++) don't give a damn about compatibility.

what can you tell us about non-existent compatibility between msvc releases, imbecile?

[pal666]

Love to see the Bohemia Interactive Studios (ARMA*/DayZ) games on Linux but lets be completely honest here, these guys have a hard enough time with one platform.

most of the game development resources are spent not on (software)developers, but on artists etc. and most of (software)developers resources are spent on not-platform-specific parts. maybe 1% of whole game is platform-specific. and after porting to mac, porting to linux comes almost for free

[pal666]

So how many games will stop working on distros shipping GCC 5.1 with the new liibstdc++ ABI enabled and all core components linking to this compiled with the new ABI?

zero because one lib provides both apis

[pal666]

I bought all Bohemia Interactive Studio game Titles even trough I only use Linux 100%.

never do that. porters get paid only for games bought and played on linux. so if bohemia will hire porters to port games in future, you will get linux games, but porters will not get your money. buy only after linux port release

[pal666]

The Steam Runtime has those libraries but the problem is that they conflict.

no, the problem is that they are older than you system libs and they are loaded first, so your mesa driver will get these old libs when it was compiled with newer ones and obviously old libs will miss some new symbols. it has nothing to do with backwards compat and valve is aware and will fix it eventually

[pal666]

@smitty3268

They are not changing the soname with GCC 5 libstdc++.

elf symbol versioning does not need soname change. but in case of c++ new abi lives in new namespace and just mangled to different names