Quoting: HamishNot to be rude, but will you people shut up? I am getting a little sick of being inundated with email notifications. Plus you do not seem to be going anywhere in your arguments, as each comes from a different perspective with each not really being right or really being wrong.

Plus, after all the resentment shown against gog over this by some people, you think they would have stopped talking about them by now. 

Easily fixed, Hamish - just click on your "User CP", on the right hand side click "Article Subscriptions", then unsubscribe from the ones causing you spam. There's also an unsubscribe quick link in every email you're sent.
I've enjoyed this discussion, although it's drifted off topic a fair bit.

Quoting: ShmerlOn related note, an answer from CDPR about their view on porting their games to Linux (you might need to translate that - see reply from Karolina_Gnaś_IR, 25.06.2013 / 13:48). That's for sure sounds like a brush-off answer to me, and not a serious position on this matter.

Same reason as GoG then : "Unfortunately, due to the number of versions of Linux, we are not able to support any of them as far as we wanted to"
Surprising that a myth like that is prevalent. Do they really care about the number of distros, or does it come back to packaging?

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Quoting: berarmaI've read them and that's why I say the idea is flawed. This project can't/shouldn't be forced on distros. It doesn't matter how much user communities want it, it has to be done out of the distro for obvious reasons. It doesn't solve a problem distros have but it would create a lot, don't you see why distro developers don't like the idea?

Bundling your libraries with your game isn't hard, it's a lot easier than anything you've proposed, no need for a new packaging system, no need for a new executable file format. All games distributed for any system already do that to a certain extent, so what's the problem? None, now bundle your games with the libraries they need.

They don't do it because they don't care, it's not because it's hard or impossible. It's the easiest, most feasible and standard solution.

Forced on distros? No-one was forcing the distros to do anything. It was the distros communities that killed this project, it was the communities that refused to use it. Uptake was nil.
It doesn't solve problems that distros have?? It solved two crucial problems that all distros have :
1. Packaging later versions of something outside of your distros landscape. PPAs fix that to a certain extent in Ubuntu, but it's a pain if you have too many and there are some things you actually don't want constant updates on. Autopackage offered this. It offered back in 2006 when Ubuntu was tethered to Firefox because of Gecko dependencies in multiple other packages, which meant that you couldn't update Firefox without updating your whole distro. Even in LTS!
2. Crap uptake from resellers because they have to support at least three methods of packaging - apt, rpm and tarball for the rest. And tarballs are shit - you have to extract them after download, make stuff executable, create system shortcuts, different people put them in different places making support a nightmare. Debs and rpms solve some of that but they're two separate systems, so again, not a solution. Autopackage was that solution. One of a few actually, but the one that seemed to have the most (ha!) momentum.
So basically: backlash. No one touches it. Project dies.
I started this thread resenting GoG for not trying hard enough. Now, thanks to all this dredging up past pain and seeing the same attitudes prevalent today as 7 years ago, I actually understand why they want to stay clear of linux. Unless you're launching on Desura or Steam, getting your game to the masses is a hot mess.

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Not sure I'd never heard of this game before (I played a LOT of FPS tactical games like BF2 and PlanetSide2 on windows, and now Natural Selection on linux).

This looks superb and if they're launching on linux, I'm in.

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Quoting: Quote from berarma

Quoting: Quote from helsinki_harbourBundeling was the approach of Autopackage, worked not robust enough (you can't bundle everything) as nobody was cooperating with autopackage and therefore this crap wasn't fixed (and is still not). As the distros refused to support this idea (because of conservatism and elitism) the project died. Other technologies who aimed also on making binary software deployment easier like FatELF by Ryan Gordon faced the same fate.

It's a lot more easier than that, the solutions you propose are flawed IMHO. You can't force distributions to participate in solving a problem they don't have. Distributions don't have to support nor develop this solution, that idea is utterly wrong, it's commercial developers because it's their problem, and one that can be solved as easily as creating a pool of libraries they can ship with their software.

Maybe it's a problem that should be solved by the development tools, in any case, it's not distributions nor users that have to come up with the solution.

If some day there's big profits to make in the GNU/Linux market it won't matter there's 1000 distributions to support, they will come up with a solution, hopefully the one I'm advocating for or something even better. They don't see enough benefit compared to other markets, so they make up an excuse and say it's our fault.

Steam won't do it because they're just trying to pressure Microsoft and maybe use us as beta users for some upcoming gaming console.

It makes me sick this non-issue is talked about so much, let's kick the developers butt for giving stupid excuses. No system has zero porting cost and zero support cost, GNU/Linux is easy in that aspect. There's indie developers doing it, GoG might be small but no smaller than does indies, sometimes one-man teams. How are they not ashamed for making excuses up?

Read the slides there on AutoPackage - by far the biggest problem was that distros didn't care. In fact, I remember Autopackage when it was being touted in 2005/2006 - it wasn't that distros didn't care. In fact, the distros (or at least the communities around the distros) actively lambasted the Autopackage idea. Loudly resisted getting the equivalent of InstallShield for their platform. This wasn't apathy, it was outright denial and bluntly worded hatred of the idea.

So there's absolutely nothing "easy" about packaging.

Now I don't know if you guys have tried installing your Humble games through the Ubuntu Software Centre, but after you've added enough, having it trying to update 20+ PPAs is a pain, and meanwhile full updates for patches is also hellish. Not to mention the timeout issues during download over WIFI which seem to plague my laptop (but not Steam).

So what are GoG's options then? Plenty, I'm sure, but instead of a standardised installer for all linux distros, they have to spend days/weeks with experienced linux sysadmins to investigate the possibility of how they achieve this.

So call bullshit all you want, but it SHOULDN'T BE THIS HARD. But as helsinki points out, elitism is rampant and here we are.

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Quoting: Silviu

Quoting: Quote from helsinki_harbour

Quoting: Quote from Quote from KristianSteam does bundling just fine.

If you call nearly 1000 open issues "fine" for just the support of only "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or 12.10 with the Unity", yeah, it is doing bundling fine.

Have you bothered to see what those issues are? Only 2 are marked as runtime. Most are issues with the Steam client itself (over 300). Check all the labels on the left side. So yes, the bundling of runtimes aka libs is just fine.

And a huge number of those open issues are incredibly esoteric - ZFS for example. Or PuppyLinux, or whatever. They only "officially" support Ubuntu, but the GitHub is flooded with distro-specific issues.

Which is great. They could just have shut that door forever, but it's good to see an open attitude to expanding beyond their original promise. I just wish they would close/filter the numerous "Please bring Game X to Steam". Must have been hundreds of +1s for DOTA, and now it's started for other games too.

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I hate to say it, but perhaps you (GoL) could have put the update in a new post, as we now have a hellish mix of comments from the first "we won't support linux" post and now the "we might in future support linux" update.

Not a great PR response though. It seems that they won't support linux because our impossibly high standards mean it's too much work and compromise is not an option? It would be absurdly simply for them to narrow the scope of this to say "We support Ubuntu LTS releases only" and an absolute flood of sales would come their way for minimal effort. And I suspect that the bulk of non-Ubuntu users wouldn't really care either, because they'll know that if it works on Ubuntu LTS, it's really likely to work on their distro too. Everyone's a winner (eventually)

But no, as Caldazar notes, they appear to treat linux as all or nothing. It's a goddam miracle they're not counting Android as one of their three "distros". Does anyone bar GoG consider ChromeOS to be a "distro"?

Bizarre stuff. But no need for the disrespectful responses people. It's their business and they'll run it however they want. Some of the chat on here sounds like petulant teenagers arguing about whose ball it is!

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I do mean Constant C yes. You've made me pledge to so many Kickstarters/IndieGogos that I've pretty much lost track of them all. I pledged to C-wars too. I think...

[Edit : Yes. Yes I did. <sigh>]

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Didn't know about this - very hyped. I loved the BG series and it's been so long since I played a really good RPG and I love the D&D back end. Speaking of which, is this still based on 2nd Edition? Or have they updated it - I think Neverwinter used 3rd Edition and didn't NW2 use 4th? I'm not sure, but I liked the 3rd ruleset - it was much simpler to understand.

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Another two backed here. Munt, you're costing me a fortune dude! C-Wars, despite it's flexible funding because it looks nearly complete, and I backed Enhanced Wars too because I played Advance Wars and AW-Dual on my DS back in the day... for about 60+ hours. Really looking forward to that one!

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Sweet! PixelJunk are porting ALL their back catalogue to linux. I CAN'T WAIT for Shooter 1 and 2. Unlike Monsters where I need to be convinced to buy it again... I'll be shelling full price for those two. And maybe Eden as well if they're porting the lot. Great news!

http://steamcommunity.com/app/243780/discussions/0/864977479756438359/?tscn=1378202700

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