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Middleware company is right. Supporting the platform is not worth the trouble. Data shows again and again that Linux gamers will be a fraction of a percent of y

Middleware company is right. Supporting the platform is not worth the trouble. Data shows again and again that Linux gamers will be a fraction of a percent of your customers but generate an outsized amount of support tickets. Most of these support tickets will require holding their hand through basic Linux box administration.

johnchristopher 7y ago
> Most of these support tickets will require holding their hand through basic Linux box administration. Yeah, customers can be so dumb. https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* Now, don't get me wrong. I have a dedicated win10 partition for gaming. I gave up that fight a long time ago.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  I game mainly on Linux (since most games interesting to me happen to be on Linux). Valve has been and is doing a lot of work to expand Linux support. I wonder where Linux gaming would be today without them.
  - jtms 7y ago
    I thought for sure SteamOS and the various Steam Machine “consoles” would create a critical mass, but it seems to just be going considerably slower than I would have predicted. I’m hopeful, but I don’t see the economics adding up right now
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      Critical mass starts with you. If you want to play video games on Linux, support developers and games that you can plan on Linux.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ben509 7y ago
  You're not helping your case by pointing out the platform's standard practice for installers is to use a language from the '70s that makes it trivial to write "rm -rf /", and (as that ticket indicates) the command will carefully work its way through all connected devices, including external drives.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    You are not helping your case either by pointing out a dev's inability to handle a well documented language with known pitfalls that has been in use since the 70's. If they can't write bash scripts there are a lot of options to install, update and remove software with built-in fail-safes.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    That language also makes it trivial to make a safe wrapper function for "rm" which validates the arguments and prevents accidents.
barbecue_sauce 7y ago
I've always felt that choosing Linux implies some sort of technical proficiency, or at least willingness to learn. Are those days over?
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  Linux implies a level of user arrogance and heavily implied it's the developer's fault and inability to understand how things the way they are. We can only test on so many configurations, and users will complain when their distro, or sound server, or preferred desktop environment isn't supported. If you don't think that last one matters, what happens when a certain obscure floating WM doesn't focus the window in an ICCCM-compliant way (WM_TAKE_FOCUS) and as a result, no keystrokes are delivered to the window. I had to fix that, for one user who was very loud on Twitter about how we clearly don't care about Linux. The total number of Linux sales was less than 0.1%, but cost us way too many support tickets and weeks of developer time.
  - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
    That's pretty silly. If you have enough technical knowledge to use a non-default window manager, I feel like you should have enough self-awareness to know that you shouldn't necessarily be catered to by devs. I primarily use Linux on servers, though. Maybe I don't get the mentality of a Linux Desktop user.
    - eitland 7y ago
      Sounds silly, yes. OTOH I've never met one of those users, so unless more devs chime in to tell me this is fact ir someone can point to a number of mailing list post, issues or other verifiable artifacts I'll be tempted to assume it is a strawman.
      - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
        Sounds more like an anecdote than a strawman.
- 7y ago
shmerl 7y ago
Developers should be quite right then ditching that middleware company and finding something professional instead, that works on Linux. Most common closed gaming middleware works on Linux today (Wwise, Umbra3D and so on). And that's besides open source options of course. So the above is very unprofessional view.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  Wwise only works on ALSA, it doesn't work on OSS or JACK or ESD or whatever some user's preferred sound daemon is. Or at least didn't when we had users complain about it. Fragmentation is a serious issue, and Linux users demand that developers implement one solution because they believe it to be technically superior.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Doesn't it work with PulseAudio? Using raw ALSA doesn't sound common. And there are plugins for such cases. Linux as a whole is moving towards Pipewire anyway: https://pipewire.org https://pipewire.org That will take time still.
    - azinman2 7y ago
      Now yet ANOTHER way to do audio on Linux? Oi vey... https://www.xkcd.com/927/ https://www.xkcd.com/927/
      - shmerl 7y ago
        It's a good evolution over Pulse and Jack. Partially driven by Wayland security model too. So I see no problem in doing the right thing here. And I don't like that xkcd in general because it's missing the point. Its basic idea boils down to "don't improve anything because it's another new thing" which is outright wrong. Not every design can be improved incrementally.
        tracker1 7y ago

johnchristopher 7y ago

> Most of these support tickets will require holding their hand through basic Linux box administration. Yeah, customers can be so dumb. https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* Now, don't get me wrong. I have a dedicated win10 partition for gaming. I gave up that fight a long time ago.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
I game mainly on Linux (since most games interesting to me happen to be on Linux). Valve has been and is doing a lot of work to expand Linux support. I wonder where Linux gaming would be today without them.
- jtms 7y ago
  I thought for sure SteamOS and the various Steam Machine “consoles” would create a critical mass, but it seems to just be going considerably slower than I would have predicted. I’m hopeful, but I don’t see the economics adding up right now
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    Critical mass starts with you. If you want to play video games on Linux, support developers and games that you can plan on Linux.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ben509 7y ago
You're not helping your case by pointing out the platform's standard practice for installers is to use a language from the '70s that makes it trivial to write "rm -rf /", and (as that ticket indicates) the command will carefully work its way through all connected devices, including external drives.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  You are not helping your case either by pointing out a dev's inability to handle a well documented language with known pitfalls that has been in use since the 70's. If they can't write bash scripts there are a lot of options to install, update and remove software with built-in fail-safes.
- kazinator 7y ago
  That language also makes it trivial to make a safe wrapper function for "rm" which validates the arguments and prevents accidents.

barbecue_sauce 7y ago

I've always felt that choosing Linux implies some sort of technical proficiency, or at least willingness to learn. Are those days over?

Jasper_ 7y ago
Linux implies a level of user arrogance and heavily implied it's the developer's fault and inability to understand how things the way they are. We can only test on so many configurations, and users will complain when their distro, or sound server, or preferred desktop environment isn't supported. If you don't think that last one matters, what happens when a certain obscure floating WM doesn't focus the window in an ICCCM-compliant way (WM_TAKE_FOCUS) and as a result, no keystrokes are delivered to the window. I had to fix that, for one user who was very loud on Twitter about how we clearly don't care about Linux. The total number of Linux sales was less than 0.1%, but cost us way too many support tickets and weeks of developer time.
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  That's pretty silly. If you have enough technical knowledge to use a non-default window manager, I feel like you should have enough self-awareness to know that you shouldn't necessarily be catered to by devs. I primarily use Linux on servers, though. Maybe I don't get the mentality of a Linux Desktop user.
  - eitland 7y ago
    Sounds silly, yes. OTOH I've never met one of those users, so unless more devs chime in to tell me this is fact ir someone can point to a number of mailing list post, issues or other verifiable artifacts I'll be tempted to assume it is a strawman.
    - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
      Sounds more like an anecdote than a strawman.
7y ago

shmerl 7y ago

Developers should be quite right then ditching that middleware company and finding something professional instead, that works on Linux. Most common closed gaming middleware works on Linux today (Wwise, Umbra3D and so on). And that's besides open source options of course. So the above is very unprofessional view.

Jasper_ 7y ago
Wwise only works on ALSA, it doesn't work on OSS or JACK or ESD or whatever some user's preferred sound daemon is. Or at least didn't when we had users complain about it. Fragmentation is a serious issue, and Linux users demand that developers implement one solution because they believe it to be technically superior.
- shmerl 7y ago
  Doesn't it work with PulseAudio? Using raw ALSA doesn't sound common. And there are plugins for such cases. Linux as a whole is moving towards Pipewire anyway: https://pipewire.org https://pipewire.org That will take time still.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    Now yet ANOTHER way to do audio on Linux? Oi vey... https://www.xkcd.com/927/ https://www.xkcd.com/927/
    - shmerl 7y ago
      It's a good evolution over Pulse and Jack. Partially driven by Wayland security model too. So I see no problem in doing the right thing here. And I don't like that xkcd in general because it's missing the point. Its basic idea boils down to "don't improve anything because it's another new thing" which is outright wrong. Not every design can be improved incrementally.
      - tracker1 7y ago