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Moral of the story... don’t ship games on Linux?

doctorpangloss 7y ago
The irony is that because of Android, another platform Google owns besides Stadia, Linux is already the world’s biggest gaming platform.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  How much Linux is android though? Does Android feedback into Linux? This argument about Linux being the most popular consumer OS or Gaming platform thanks to Android sounds like Syria taking credit for the iPhone because of Steve Jobs being a Syrian by bloodline. "You know, although we are consumed by sectarian fights and iron-fisted leaders that will crush anyone having opinions, It is important to note that worlds one of the worlds most successful contemporary technology companies is actually Syrian".
  - hrydgard 7y ago
    From a game's perspective, Android is very much like Linux, actually.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  iOS is the biggest gaming platform, on $$$ per user, including some exclusive hits, with several frameworks and tooling tailored to writing games. Android is such a pain to develop games for, that Google has started a Android Games initiative only in 2019, to appease the growing complaints from game studios. An NDK that feels like a 20% project, many game related APIs (e.g. image codecs, networking, files, permissions) are Java only and require JNI even if implemented in C++, frame rate setup, build infrastructure regarding NDK libraries, C only API for what are actually C++ classes forcing wrapping code for RAII and such, Vulkan feels like a code dump that everyone has to manually integrate into the project vs Metal tooling, graphics debugging and real time audio are outsourced to a GitHub projects not directly supported on the official Android site, network debugging is only supported for Java layer,.... Finally, the only Linux that Android has is the kernel, which Google could replace tomorrow and user space wouldn't even notice. Linux fans keep failing to realise how little Linux Android actually exposes.
  - th3h4mm3r 7y ago
    Oh no! An Apple fanboy!
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Rather someone that actually understands how meaningless is Android making use of the Linux kernel, beyond saving money paying for licenses.
      - thenewnewguy 7y ago
        Paying to license what? I'm not aware of any other kernel suitable for mobile phone use you could buy with a license (i.e. iOS doesn't count as there's no way you're getting Apple to sell you even a license)
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Windows and plenty of embedded ones to chose from. After all, it was Series 30, Bada, Symbian, Blackberry, Psion and Windows CE that started mobile phones.
  - michaelcampbell 7y ago
    > iOS is the biggest gaming platform, on $$$ per user, including some exclusive hits, with several frameworks and tooling tailored to writing games. Other than "Apple Revenue", in no other world is this a metric of "biggest" in the context of even the most "squint hard enough" contexts of this thread.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Then by that measure, the Web is the biggest gaming platform, where the Linux kernel doesn't have any role at all regarding Web browsers.
      - scotty79 7y ago
imtringued 7y ago
Don't use userspace spinlocks on Linux.
soraminazuki 7y ago
No, the moral of the story is don't use spinlocks in userspace and use established locking libraries that suite your needs. You can't expect any operating system to optimize for poorly written applications when you have thousands of them screwing up in all different ways.

The irony is that because of Android, another platform Google owns besides Stadia, Linux is already the world’s biggest gaming platform.

mrtksn 7y ago
How much Linux is android though? Does Android feedback into Linux? This argument about Linux being the most popular consumer OS or Gaming platform thanks to Android sounds like Syria taking credit for the iPhone because of Steve Jobs being a Syrian by bloodline. "You know, although we are consumed by sectarian fights and iron-fisted leaders that will crush anyone having opinions, It is important to note that worlds one of the worlds most successful contemporary technology companies is actually Syrian".
- hrydgard 7y ago
  From a game's perspective, Android is very much like Linux, actually.
pjmlp 7y ago
iOS is the biggest gaming platform, on $$$ per user, including some exclusive hits, with several frameworks and tooling tailored to writing games. Android is such a pain to develop games for, that Google has started a Android Games initiative only in 2019, to appease the growing complaints from game studios. An NDK that feels like a 20% project, many game related APIs (e.g. image codecs, networking, files, permissions) are Java only and require JNI even if implemented in C++, frame rate setup, build infrastructure regarding NDK libraries, C only API for what are actually C++ classes forcing wrapping code for RAII and such, Vulkan feels like a code dump that everyone has to manually integrate into the project vs Metal tooling, graphics debugging and real time audio are outsourced to a GitHub projects not directly supported on the official Android site, network debugging is only supported for Java layer,.... Finally, the only Linux that Android has is the kernel, which Google could replace tomorrow and user space wouldn't even notice. Linux fans keep failing to realise how little Linux Android actually exposes.
- th3h4mm3r 7y ago
  Oh no! An Apple fanboy!
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Rather someone that actually understands how meaningless is Android making use of the Linux kernel, beyond saving money paying for licenses.
    - thenewnewguy 7y ago
      Paying to license what? I'm not aware of any other kernel suitable for mobile phone use you could buy with a license (i.e. iOS doesn't count as there's no way you're getting Apple to sell you even a license)
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Windows and plenty of embedded ones to chose from. After all, it was Series 30, Bada, Symbian, Blackberry, Psion and Windows CE that started mobile phones.
- michaelcampbell 7y ago
  > iOS is the biggest gaming platform, on $$$ per user, including some exclusive hits, with several frameworks and tooling tailored to writing games. Other than "Apple Revenue", in no other world is this a metric of "biggest" in the context of even the most "squint hard enough" contexts of this thread.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Then by that measure, the Web is the biggest gaming platform, where the Linux kernel doesn't have any role at all regarding Web browsers.
    - scotty79 7y ago

imtringued 7y ago

Don't use userspace spinlocks on Linux.

soraminazuki 7y ago

No, the moral of the story is don't use spinlocks in userspace and use established locking libraries that suite your needs. You can't expect any operating system to optimize for poorly written applications when you have thousands of them screwing up in all different ways.