GamingOnLinux (the website) officially turns 10 years old, this is madness and here’s some thoughts and history on it all.
July is a bit of a special double-event for me, as not only does July 5th mark the birth of GamingOnLinux, July 30th is also my birthday!
What started as a curiosity after my first proper computer came with Linux instead of Windows, has blossomed into a love of all things Linux. I still remember booting it up for the first time, having no idea what was about to happen. Good old Mandrake 9.2, you were my first taste of what was to come. In the years following, I remember trying out all sorts of different Linux distributions from Fedora Core (as it was called back then) to SUSE and eventually Ubuntu came along which really did help me stick with Linux.
I started following what Linux gaming sites were around at the time (R.I.P LinuxGames.com, R.I.P The Linux Game Tome and many more that vanished) and eventually thought I could do better. We started off on a simple .info domain and some sort of phpBB forum, eventually moving onto XenForo with a "Portal" addon stuck on to make it more like a news site and then I eventually did the really dumb thing of writing the entire website from scratch (with help along the way, hello Levi!).
There’s been so many insane ups and downs over the years, we’ve seen a lot of things come and go too. I still remember being excited about Desura, the indie store that was previously owned by the Indie DB/Mod DB people, especially as they had an open source client too although itch.io has pretty much taken up all their slack since Desura died off.
Over the time we’ve been here, we’ve been through the first Humble Indie Bundle back when they actually ported games to Linux (I did some QA for them too), Steam arrived with a bunch of games, GOG added Linux games, Steam Machines appeared and sadly died off, the Vulkan API became a thing, Wine advanced a ridiculous amount to run Windows games on Linux and DXVK came along to push it even further. Then Steam Play pulled up and was like "I hear you want more AAA games?" ensuring things stay interesting (and slightly complicated) for the foreseeable future. We also have the rise of game streaming with services like Google Stadia and Virtual Reality to come too. One thing is for certain, Linux certainly isn’t boring!
In terms of how we’re doing, growth—lots of it!
- Twitter - Over 12.2K followers
- Steam Curator - 12.1K followers
- Youtube - Over 4K followers (impressive since we don’t do much with it!)
- Twitch - Super close to 4K followers
- Facebook - Over 3.6K followers.
- Steam Group - 3.2K followers.
- Mastodon - Almost 3K followers
- Discord - Close to 2.5K chatters
- Telegram News - Around 1K followers
- Telegram Chat - Over 500 users
- IRC - Regularly around 400 lurking
Very happy with how quickly everything is growing. Great to see so many new faces appearing constantly. It can be hard to keep track of so many places but it’s worth it to let people follow us where they want.
I’ve also spent some time recently improving our Crowdfunded Linux Games page, it will now list the developer and mention if Linux was a stretch-goal. On top of that, the code was overhauled to use something SteamDB also uses, so you can now sort the rows by clicking the headers, instantly search and so on. On top of that, it’s also now listing games in-development, that haven’t yet released which promised a Linux version making it even easier to keep track. Feedback welcome in this forum topic.
Additional website updates:
- The Trends Charts on our user statistics page will now show the total number of users who picked that option out of how many answered the question in total, in the tooltip that appears when you hover over a point.
- If someone quotes you on the forum, this is now hooked up to our notification system (reply notifications are in progress).
- If you're directly linked to a comment or forum post, it's now highlighted to show you.
- Searching articles has been made easier, as it now has pagination and is not limited to the first 100 results.
I wanted to also thank you, all of you. Everyone who reads GamingOnLinux, all those who comment and laugh about my terrible grammar and spelling often (who can forget the hilarious and embarrassing misspelling that was Fistful of Fags - it’s "Frags" Liam, you colossal idiot).
Who can forget all of the wonderful contributors? Many came and went over the years to help out for fun, thanks to all and especially those of you who’ve stuck around.
Naturally, I wanted to give a shout-out to everyone who has helped fund the adventure both past and present, without you nothing is possible! If you wish to support GamingOnLinux, you can do so using these links:
- Patreon
- Paypal
- Liberapay
- Flattr
- Twitch - If you have Amazon Prime, you gain a free Twitch sub (costs you no extra!) but you need to re-do it each month as we understand it.
- Ko-fi
You can also buy games using our affiliate/partner links, which is incredibly helpful!:
All those links are available any time on the Support Us page, found under the Sections drop-down in the top navbar.
I plan to still be here in another 10 years, it will be fun to see how different things are. There’s so much to be excited about, plenty I can't talk about as well the next few years are going to be very interesting. As always, my inbox is always open to suggestions and feedback, email here any time.
Finally, come along to our Twitch Channel around 4PM UTC! Come say hi and help us celebrate.
Cool video. Although I feel for that girl who almost died to the nasty unexpected sofa attack :D
Imagine all the cool and inventive puns we'll get in the next decade :D <3
Quoting: HamishInterestingly it is also the tenth anniversary of LGR starting today as well:For their 15 years of operation they get together and spend a week trying to instal Linux on a 486 from source using a stage 1 gentoo :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRb6heH4LOI
Funny how things work.
Come on that would be a fun video .
Quoting: ZeloxCongrats looking forward to the next 10 years to come. I also got to say, I miss gol Friday streams with samsai. New Linux releases streamad and doom 4 :P. If you read this samsai, come back :P
Samsai still streams on Friday but not on the main GOL Twitch channel.
I think they went their own seperate way as Samsai and Liam/Sin wanted to do different things on Friday.
Quoting: TheSyldatFor their 15 years of operation they get together and spend a week trying to instal Linux on a 486 from source using a stage 1 gentoo :P
That would be a video for AkBKuKu, though. So far LGR has shown absolutely no interest in (or knowledge of) the unix & free software side of things.
Quoting: wvstolzingQuoting: TheSyldatFor their 15 years of operation they get together and spend a week trying to instal Linux on a 486 from source using a stage 1 gentoo :P
That would be a video for AkBKuKu, though. So far LGR has shown absolutely no interest in (or knowledge of) the unix & free software side of things.
cool retro youtube channel
I knew LGR and 8-bit-guy but that one escaped me.
Thanks for bringing it up :P
Quoting: wvstolzingSo far LGR has shown absolutely no interest in (or knowledge of) the unix & free software side of things.He is not a big Linux guy, but it has come up in some of his videos in the past (he has even recommended WINE as a solution for playing old Windows games) and I know for a fact he has a few Loki Software boxes in his collection. Being more of a retro gaming and tech channel, it is not going to come up as much.
It is more the serendipity of the timing I found amusing.
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