Another blog post from Josh about the teams effort to bring the Leadwerks game creation kit to Linux.
QuoteThings have gone so remarkably smoothly so far in the process of building Leadwerks Linux
It's really great to see him start off the post so positively.
They went with GTK for the UI of the editor, when asked about why they didn't go with QT the reply was simple:
@cyannick @gamingonlinux Because QT forces us to rewrite our program to fit their structure, instead of just easily plugging into our code.
— Leadwerks (@Leadwerks) November 4, 2013
This means as well that the application itself will look right at home on our installs:
QuoteI greatly prefer the native look and feel GTK gives us, rather than using our own "home made" GUI. Leadwerks for Linux looks like a Linux application, so you know how to use it right away.
Read the rest here, it's a nice read.
Josh does again point out how annoying graphical driver installs can be when changing graphics card vendors which to be fair I had this problem a few times in Windows, but that was some years back.
I also share this:
QuoteTo put it simply, installing a dual-boot system is not a solved problem. I recently had one user who wanted to try out Ubuntu, so he made a dual-boot install and it made his Windows driver unbootable.
By driver he means partition of course, this happens to me especially since my PC is UEFI, each time I install Ubuntu I need to then run Boot Recovery as GRUB just fails miserably and that magically fixes it, although it never picks up my tiny Windows 7 emergency partition.
Josh does end it on a highnote though which is great to start and end positively:
QuoteIn conclusion, we've been through the difficult parts of porting a complex application to Linux. Although some annoyances and limitations have been discovered, overall I have found Linux to be a completely viable platform for application development.
I wish more developers shared so much about their porting process to Linux to help others.
Leadwerks is the creation tool that Kickstarted itself to be ported to Linux and got over double it's goal.
To put it simply, installing a dual-boot system is not a solved problem. I recently had one user who wanted to try out Ubuntu, so he made a dual-boot install and it made his Windows driver unbootable.GRUB installation target selection may be slightly hidden in the Ubuntu Live ISO but it's certainly there. And AFAIK it works just fine by default. It's no wonder the system broke if the aforementioned user selected to install GRUB into a Windows partition.
If we're on that subject I can say I've also had Windows Update 'break' GRUB numerous times. Apparently changing the UUID of a partition that's not supposed to be even visible to Windows is not beneath them. Luckily it wasn't even my main system as I keep it Windows-free for 5 years now.
For example, Unity uses C#, Javascript or Boo. Does Leadwerks use Lua exclusively, or are there are usable languages?
It also sheds light on why some people might find Linux a bit daunting to develop on. I've always found Linux better to develop on personally, but it's all just what you're used to I suppose.
It's not just what you're used to, but partly your personality. Some of us are allergic to trying to troubleshoot anything involving black box components (proprietary, no source, so frustrating if things don't "just work), and would not be in the software development industry at all if it weren't for open platforms like Linux. That's not to say I've been able to avoid black-box components and tools altogether as a Linux developer, but it's not prevalent enough that I've stopped having fun with all the good parts of my job.
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