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While I love Linux, I think this is a totally fair "state of the union". At the end of the day, gaming or kickstarters or similar... are a business. You need to

While I love Linux, I think this is a totally fair "state of the union". At the end of the day, gaming or kickstarters or similar... are a business. You need to figure out your ROI (Return On Investment). It doesn't many any logical sense to spend a huge amount of time on a platform that nets you tiny amounts of sales (and gains you a huge amount of support costs). This is why gaming on the Mac is only now starting to be a real thing. Not a decade or so ago, there were still relatively small numbers of people using a Mac. It cost a lot to develop for a new platform and didn't make much money. Now it makes more sense. Of course Linux fragmentation will probably hold it back for significantly longer.

rusk 8y ago
> This is why gaming on the Mac is only now starting to be a real thing. Is it? I mean, there's a good amount of support for gaming on the Mac, but I think it's always been so ... I wouldn't call it "a thing" though ... not in comparison to PC or Console ...
- antris 8y ago
  I remember when major games being launched on Mac was worth a mention, or even a full feature in an Apple Keynote. Nowadays games are being released on the Mac constantly and nobody bats an eye. It's a better time to be a Mac gamer than ever before.
  - bluedino 8y ago
    It would be even better if they had decent GPU's available without spending $1000+ on an external setup.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      Or if they went with Vulkan instead of rolling yet another half-baked graphics API while also deprecating OpenGL because reasons.
  - jeffbax 8y ago
    Agreed, have been a Mac user since 2004… and got the first Intel iMac specifically for the ability to boot Windows for gaming too. I think the only native Mac OSX games I had when I got that first 12" PowerBook were Q3, UT2004, Starcraft / WC3 / Diablo 2… and maybe Tux racer ;) Have long given up on dual booting. Granted much of my gaming is also done on consoles, Mac gaming support is better than ever outside of still generally anemic GPUs (and who knows what will happen when they move to ARM… a great many games will be orphaned in x86 forever -- e.g. will Starcraft HD get ported to ARM?) Thank you, to all the indies (and open source engine porters) who have supported Mac over the past 14 years!
- ido 8y ago
  This was definitely not the case 10-15 years ago.
  - rusk 8y ago
    I had the iMac G4 about 10-15 years ago and I had a slew of good games for it. Nowhere near the amount available on other platforms but I was kept busy. These days when I look on Steam for instance yeah there's perhaps a larger proportion but still most games are Windows only ... The Mac never was nor will it ever be a serious gaming platform.
    - taeric 8y ago
      The same claim can be made for Linux today. I have a large number of games I can play. I would still say it is a smaller market.
      - rusk 8y ago
        Not disagreeing ... it makes little sense to develop commercially for Linux and never has. That doesn't mean that Mac isn't still a niche platform though, and banging on about number of tickets raised isn't really an appropriate way to quantify the value of a particular segment, or not.
zanny 8y ago
Is it really fragmented? You support Ubuntu (in either its flatpak runtime or the Steam runtime) and you let everyone else figure it out on their own. Distros like Arch have been very good about providing the Steam Native Runtime and Ubuntu flatpak runtime in its own package system for just that reason. The support burden for developers is proportional to the operating systems you officially say you support. If you support "Linux" you are supporting thousands of completely dissimilar execution environments. If you support Ubuntu, or Steam, or a Flatpak target you are only supporting that one operating system. And thats fine. Thats all Linux users really want anyway. If it breaks on your distro its your responsibility to fix it so long as it works on its officially supported target OS.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  > You support Ubuntu (in either its flatpak runtime or the Steam runtime) and you let everyone else figure it out on their own. And isn't that already how it is? Pretty sure Steam only supports Ubuntu LTS, steam on every other OS else is an unsupported hack.
  - tokai 8y ago
    I think what is what zanny is saying. The fragmentation argument is fud.
  - pas 8y ago
    They don't support every LTS as far as I know. Also, they don't really make any effort to keep up with getting ready for the next LTS release.
icebraining 8y ago
They said the problem wasn't fragmentation of distros, but the versions of graphic drivers, and it's not like Windows machines are all on the same version of the same driver.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Windows generally has less of an issue of heterogeneous graphics driver ecosystem, mostly for market reasons---Windows laptops and desktops are bought more often for the purpose of playing games than Linux machines, so a Windows machine hitting the market with a graphics driver that's too outside the norm tends to perform poorly in sales, and the market encourages driver homogeneity in basic functionality. I've seen some stinkers trying to write my own game engine (THANKS FOR LYING ABOUT THE OPENGL CAPABILITIES BY IMPLEMENTING IT IN SOFTWARE AT SECONDS-PER-FRAME PERFORMANCE, INTEL, YOU ARE A PEACH), but not as many as in Linux. (in short, "What machine should I buy to play games" is a question that's easy to answer for Windows; there's reams of magazines dedicated to the question. It's a harder question to answer for Linux, which makes it a harder question to answer for developers trying to write games against a Linux-based OS).

rusk 8y ago

> This is why gaming on the Mac is only now starting to be a real thing. Is it? I mean, there's a good amount of support for gaming on the Mac, but I think it's always been so ... I wouldn't call it "a thing" though ... not in comparison to PC or Console ...

antris 8y ago
I remember when major games being launched on Mac was worth a mention, or even a full feature in an Apple Keynote. Nowadays games are being released on the Mac constantly and nobody bats an eye. It's a better time to be a Mac gamer than ever before.
- bluedino 8y ago
  It would be even better if they had decent GPU's available without spending $1000+ on an external setup.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    Or if they went with Vulkan instead of rolling yet another half-baked graphics API while also deprecating OpenGL because reasons.
- jeffbax 8y ago
  Agreed, have been a Mac user since 2004… and got the first Intel iMac specifically for the ability to boot Windows for gaming too. I think the only native Mac OSX games I had when I got that first 12" PowerBook were Q3, UT2004, Starcraft / WC3 / Diablo 2… and maybe Tux racer ;) Have long given up on dual booting. Granted much of my gaming is also done on consoles, Mac gaming support is better than ever outside of still generally anemic GPUs (and who knows what will happen when they move to ARM… a great many games will be orphaned in x86 forever -- e.g. will Starcraft HD get ported to ARM?) Thank you, to all the indies (and open source engine porters) who have supported Mac over the past 14 years!
ido 8y ago
This was definitely not the case 10-15 years ago.
- rusk 8y ago
  I had the iMac G4 about 10-15 years ago and I had a slew of good games for it. Nowhere near the amount available on other platforms but I was kept busy. These days when I look on Steam for instance yeah there's perhaps a larger proportion but still most games are Windows only ... The Mac never was nor will it ever be a serious gaming platform.
  - taeric 8y ago
    The same claim can be made for Linux today. I have a large number of games I can play. I would still say it is a smaller market.
    - rusk 8y ago
      Not disagreeing ... it makes little sense to develop commercially for Linux and never has. That doesn't mean that Mac isn't still a niche platform though, and banging on about number of tickets raised isn't really an appropriate way to quantify the value of a particular segment, or not.

zanny 8y ago

Is it really fragmented? You support Ubuntu (in either its flatpak runtime or the Steam runtime) and you let everyone else figure it out on their own. Distros like Arch have been very good about providing the Steam Native Runtime and Ubuntu flatpak runtime in its own package system for just that reason. The support burden for developers is proportional to the operating systems you officially say you support. If you support "Linux" you are supporting thousands of completely dissimilar execution environments. If you support Ubuntu, or Steam, or a Flatpak target you are only supporting that one operating system. And thats fine. Thats all Linux users really want anyway. If it breaks on your distro its your responsibility to fix it so long as it works on its officially supported target OS.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hannasanarion 8y ago
> You support Ubuntu (in either its flatpak runtime or the Steam runtime) and you let everyone else figure it out on their own. And isn't that already how it is? Pretty sure Steam only supports Ubuntu LTS, steam on every other OS else is an unsupported hack.
- tokai 8y ago
  I think what is what zanny is saying. The fragmentation argument is fud.
- pas 8y ago
  They don't support every LTS as far as I know. Also, they don't really make any effort to keep up with getting ready for the next LTS release.

icebraining 8y ago

They said the problem wasn't fragmentation of distros, but the versions of graphic drivers, and it's not like Windows machines are all on the same version of the same driver.

fixermark 8y ago
Windows generally has less of an issue of heterogeneous graphics driver ecosystem, mostly for market reasons---Windows laptops and desktops are bought more often for the purpose of playing games than Linux machines, so a Windows machine hitting the market with a graphics driver that's too outside the norm tends to perform poorly in sales, and the market encourages driver homogeneity in basic functionality. I've seen some stinkers trying to write my own game engine (THANKS FOR LYING ABOUT THE OPENGL CAPABILITIES BY IMPLEMENTING IT IN SOFTWARE AT SECONDS-PER-FRAME PERFORMANCE, INTEL, YOU ARE A PEACH), but not as many as in Linux. (in short, "What machine should I buy to play games" is a question that's easy to answer for Windows; there's reams of magazines dedicated to the question. It's a harder question to answer for Linux, which makes it a harder question to answer for developers trying to write games against a Linux-based OS).