7 ms·

Epic is probably one of the biggest enemies of Linux since they're killing Linux support of every game/product they buy [1]. And while games aren't as importan

by Jerry2 7y ago

Epic is probably one of the biggest enemies of Linux since they're killing Linux support of every game/product they buy [1]. And while games aren't as important as some business/productivity applications, people do get lots of enjoyment from playing an occasional game. It's a great stress relief. And now even those little indulgences are being taken away. Epic's CEO, Tim Sweeney, is extremely negative on Linux if you check out his Twitter feed [2] and I get a feeling from reading his comments that he despises Linux with passion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241 [2] https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698...

m4rtink 7y ago
Oh, wow, I was not aware it is this bad! I kinda expected they just don't care but not they are actively sabotaging Linux compatibility...
bob1029 7y ago
I honestly cannot blame someone in that business for hating linux. The number of variables to test for if you only care about windows gamers is staggering. Linux is 10x harder than windows if you care about supporting any arbitrary distribution and driver stack. I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. I understand SDL2 exists. I understand that Valve has "mostly" pulled off linux/macos support. But, is it really worth it from a business perspective for all game developers to support linux? How big and wide do your margins need to be before it makes financial sense to fully support both operating systems? How many features (or even titles) will stay in the backlog because your developers are busy chasing down the 5000th weird linux network/GPU/sound bug that only occurs on this one kinda-old version of Ubuntu?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  > I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. As I understand it, this is the direction Steam is heading by running games in containers.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    steam does not run games in containers.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Not yet, but: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-Exp-Containers https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Li...
  - bob1029 7y ago
    If it turns out that this path is acceptable to the masses, I am 100% on board with all game developers following a similar pattern. Personally, I don't have a problem with this, especially considering most games I install these days are upwards of 100 gigabytes anyways. If 2 gigabytes of each game was a Linux OS image and supporting tools, I probably wouldn't notice. Having a standardized Linux image with containerization support shared across the entire industry could be a really powerful tool for game developers who want to target Linux but don't have EA's budget. Over time, this could put Linux on equal footing with Windows in terms of platform support cost.
    - gambiting 7y ago
      That's not going to happen. The main benefit of developing natively for windows is that the game should pretty much compile for Xbox straight away, with some minimal changes to the code. The PC build is almost a byproduct here. I don't personally see devs making a linux-but-not-really version for Windows if that cuts them off having a "free" xbox version. And from financial point of view having a Linux vs Xbox version is almost a non-starter, unless you're targeting some hyper-nieche.
- kgwxd 7y ago
  Supporting only a single distro of Linux would be fine. If it's not my prefered distro, I'd be happy to dual boot into another to play a game. But I don't want Windows on any of my machines, even as a secondary OS.
  - Jasper_ 7y ago
    People always say this, but then post support comments saying stuff like "nobody uses Ubuntu, everybody uses insert distro here". It's a big mess to support.
    - FreeFull 7y ago
      Officially Steam only supports Ubuntu, and other distros do the work to make it run on them. The same could probably be done for games.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      I'm still not sure.why game developers are aiming to support distros rather than library versions. That tends to be the biggest problem with linux is the huge number of versions of libraries each distro could have or not have and the location of said libraries on the system. That's the issue crossplatform developers should be aiming to tackle rather than trying to cater.to every single linux distro. That's like trying to shoot at minnows in the ocean with a BB gun.
      - wink 7y ago
        Also last I checked, if it works on Ubuntu, someone usually will make it work on other distros of roughly the same generation, often within a week. If the core is available, the linux gaming community is quite amazing.
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        I don't even understand why anyone bothers with targeting dynamic libraries. Why not statically compile everything? The system calls aren't changing are they?
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  >I understand that Valve has "mostly" pulled off linux/macos support Although I think the vast majority of their games don't work on the most recent OSX release. Depending on your perspective, either Apple pulled the rug out from under them, or Valve is letting their code atrophy. Maybe a bit of both, but my opinion is more of the former.
  - baldfat 7y ago
    That is 100% Apple's fault and makes me thankful for backwards compatibility. Music Production has been hit hard by this same move. Plugins and virtual instruments that people have been using for years are all gone from support. All the open source plugins are out right now. Everyone is holding off and I am glad I use Linux and Windows 10 for music.
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    > or Valve is letting their code atrophy There haven't been many good reasons to release a 32-bit only macOS app for some time. If Valve is at fault, it's that they didn't require publishers to submit 64-bit builds for macOS years ago.
    - egypturnash 7y ago
      Valve didn't even have a 64-bit build of Steam for the Mac until after Catalina was out.
      - jamesgeck0 7y ago
        I forgot about this. Valve released a 64-bit build of Steam two months before Catalina came out [1], but they did not migrate users of the 32-bit version to the 64-bit version automatically. https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/27/steam-for-mac-64-bit/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/27/steam-for-mac-64-bit/
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      There hasn't been much reason to release a new one, but there also hasn't been much reason to port old ones.
- traverseda 7y ago
  Of course linux is pretty flexible. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just target linux, and get it to automatically support windows/macos? Like a reverse proton? That should be a lot easier than proton ever was. That's the direction I'd like to see steam's containerization go.
- ActorNightly 7y ago
  >Linux is 10x harder than windows if you care about supporting any arbitrary distribution and driver stack. Not really. Most hardware is very standard these days, which is why you can install Ubuntu on most any laptop or desktop and have it work with less than or equal issues than a Windows install. Amd and Nvidia both have Linux drivers that work on all the popular distros. The reason devs don't even bother with Linux is because there isn't enough people that are playing on Linux.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    Amd and Nvidia drivers for what? Big games aren't being made with openGL. What is the state of vulcan across drivers and engines?
    - BlackLotus89 7y ago
      > Amd and Nvidia drivers for what? Big games aren't being made with openGL. Doom 2016? > What is the state of vulcan across drivers and engines? Quite good actually. Intel has older generations supported than on windows. There are 2 mature AMD vulkan implementations. Also through investments of valve there is a new shader compiler in the works that got merged in mesa which helps quite a lot. The performance is about equal, but sometimes faster under windows (I didn't look at benchmarks of 2020). Oh and vulkan 1.2 is implemented in mesa 20. Oh and it's vulkan not vulcan
  - proncton 7y ago
    >which is why you can install Ubuntu This is actually one of the root causes. It would be SO MUCH EASIER, for me, an app developer, if every linux user used centos, or ubuntu, or mint, or whatever the hell. Don't care, pick one. But, customizing is part of the fun... anyways. Also yeah, desktop Linux is about 10% of users, depending on who you ask. Worse for gamers, although that's just feedback loops. There's one more thing though, which most people aren't aware of... driver versions. Drivers often ship game-specific hacks for performance fixes. It's an insane, unspoken practice that occurs because some developers will only test heavily on one mfg GPU. Right now, nvidia is taking the brunt of the work because consoles are AMD based.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Nobody is going to support 5 year old Slackware for their game distribution platform. They'll support current Ubuntu and maybe Fedora--anybody else can work out the problems on their own. And by support I mean a one-off build for the platform and a public forum where users can ask and answer questions of other users. Maybe if you're lucky they'll do a new build when a patch is released. Linux users aren't asking for much, and Epic has been more than just dismissive to them. They've been outright hostile, doing things like adding checks to make sure the game isn't running under Wine.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Linux users are asking for quite a lot; not just support for Ubuntu and Fedora but for all the random custom builds and drivers out there. It's simply not worth it when 0.3% of your customers represents more hardware and software configurations than the remaining 99.7%.
    - thethrowboat 7y ago
      I thought steam only supports ubuntu and therefore games only support ubuntu. That being said, I use arch and most games just work.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        Rocket League isn't available on Steam (anymore). Epic does not technically support Linux outside of Android.
        Polycryptus 7y ago
        Rocket League is not (yet) available on the Epic Games Store, and has not been removed from Steam.
    - noicebrewery 7y ago
      You're making things up; who are these Linux users demanding anything? Generally speaking once a game developer gets it working on Ubuntu the Arch wiki guys will happily figure out the rest on their own.
alephr 7y ago
Is that tweet really "extremely negative" towards Linux? All he says is that he doesn't want to abandon Windows but instead push back on changes to it he doesn't like; he doesn't make any judgements about Linux. The reality is there are many barriers to Linux replacing Windows as a desktop platform for users today so it's not surprising that someone who runs a business that depends on users doesn't want to push for a huge switch to Linux if it's not necessary. If a company not wanting to act outside it's interests makes it Linux's "biggest enemy" then it will be a very long time before it succeeds as the major desktop platform.
mroche 7y ago
When reading the context of the statement itself, it isn't that bad. He was concerned that Microsoft would introduce restrictions that place inhibitors on other vendors hardware with the introduction of a Pro operating system. The statement itself isn't the best, but his stance was that as a community Windows developers and users should push back against such changes. An employee at Epic has mentioned that if someone with Linux development skills was interested, they would be more than happy to bring them on to develop a EGS application for Linux. The thread can be found here: https://twitter.com/CanalOCaraDoTI/status/1106218993650728960 https://twitter.com/CanalOCaraDoTI/status/110621899365072896... (scroll to the top for the beginning).
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
It's not hard to hate Linux (Desktop) when you develop proprietary software since Linux seems to go out of its way to make it as difficult to deploy proprietary software as it possibly can [0]. Libraries are constantly changing underneath you in incompatible ways, there are several hundred "distributions" to deal with, etc. [0] And frankly it is only slightly easier if you write FOSS software.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Many of these distributions, at least the popular ones, are nothing more than forks of Debian, Ubuntu and RHEL/SuSE. And most (not all) people who would want to game on a Linux system use Ubuntu as it's by far the most painless thing to get going. Base yourself off of the latest Ubuntu LTS, compile your project statically as far as possible and you're probably good to go, containers can be used to get your project running on other distros if needed. If you're using any engine even better, all of the major ones are cross-platform anyway and abstract all the nastiness away.
- nwallin 7y ago
  Target the steam runtime. All popular distros will either support it out of the box or have an overlay to do it. And it doesn't change very often. Open source is a million times easier. Your source is available. It's up to the distro's maintainer of your package to deal with compiling and binary compatibility. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    > It's up to the distro's maintainer of your package to deal with compiling and binary compatibility. That's bullshit though. Why would you trust some random community maintainer to get between you and the user? Now when shit goes wrong there's one more person in the loop of blame to deal with. There are famous incidents of maintainers introducing problems to otherwise correct software, and ignoring the developer. "I am constantly getting email from users reporting bugs that have been fixed for literally years who have no idea that the software they are running is years out of date." -jwz How is this considered a sane way to distribute software!?
cliftonk 7y ago
1. It seems as if he's addressing the context of the discussion (switching to Linux from Windows) rather than saying anything particularly negative about Linux. 2. I've been making some UE4 projects recently (as im getting back into game development as a hobby) and the toolchain to cross compile to linux is well made and easy to use (and even easy to dockerize). I think unreal engine support of linux is probably the better barometer of Epic's stance towards linux than their not-so-fully-featured launcher/store (which is many years behind steam).
- beatgammit 7y ago
  I haven't tried recently, by UE4 used to work reasonably well on Linux if you build from source, so they're putting at least some effort beyond cross compiling.

by Jerry2 7y ago

m4rtink 7y ago

Oh, wow, I was not aware it is this bad! I kinda expected they just don't care but not they are actively sabotaging Linux compatibility...

bob1029 7y ago

I honestly cannot blame someone in that business for hating linux. The number of variables to test for if you only care about windows gamers is staggering. Linux is 10x harder than windows if you care about supporting any arbitrary distribution and driver stack. I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. I understand SDL2 exists. I understand that Valve has "mostly" pulled off linux/macos support. But, is it really worth it from a business perspective for all game developers to support linux? How big and wide do your margins need to be before it makes financial sense to fully support both operating systems? How many features (or even titles) will stay in the backlog because your developers are busy chasing down the 5000th weird linux network/GPU/sound bug that only occurs on this one kinda-old version of Ubuntu?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. As I understand it, this is the direction Steam is heading by running games in containers.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  steam does not run games in containers.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Not yet, but: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-Exp-Containers https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Li...
- bob1029 7y ago
  If it turns out that this path is acceptable to the masses, I am 100% on board with all game developers following a similar pattern. Personally, I don't have a problem with this, especially considering most games I install these days are upwards of 100 gigabytes anyways. If 2 gigabytes of each game was a Linux OS image and supporting tools, I probably wouldn't notice. Having a standardized Linux image with containerization support shared across the entire industry could be a really powerful tool for game developers who want to target Linux but don't have EA's budget. Over time, this could put Linux on equal footing with Windows in terms of platform support cost.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    That's not going to happen. The main benefit of developing natively for windows is that the game should pretty much compile for Xbox straight away, with some minimal changes to the code. The PC build is almost a byproduct here. I don't personally see devs making a linux-but-not-really version for Windows if that cuts them off having a "free" xbox version. And from financial point of view having a Linux vs Xbox version is almost a non-starter, unless you're targeting some hyper-nieche.
kgwxd 7y ago
Supporting only a single distro of Linux would be fine. If it's not my prefered distro, I'd be happy to dual boot into another to play a game. But I don't want Windows on any of my machines, even as a secondary OS.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  People always say this, but then post support comments saying stuff like "nobody uses Ubuntu, everybody uses insert distro here". It's a big mess to support.
  - FreeFull 7y ago
    Officially Steam only supports Ubuntu, and other distros do the work to make it run on them. The same could probably be done for games.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    I'm still not sure.why game developers are aiming to support distros rather than library versions. That tends to be the biggest problem with linux is the huge number of versions of libraries each distro could have or not have and the location of said libraries on the system. That's the issue crossplatform developers should be aiming to tackle rather than trying to cater.to every single linux distro. That's like trying to shoot at minnows in the ocean with a BB gun.
    - wink 7y ago
      Also last I checked, if it works on Ubuntu, someone usually will make it work on other distros of roughly the same generation, often within a week. If the core is available, the linux gaming community is quite amazing.
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      I don't even understand why anyone bothers with targeting dynamic libraries. Why not statically compile everything? The system calls aren't changing are they?
Rebelgecko 7y ago
>I understand that Valve has "mostly" pulled off linux/macos support Although I think the vast majority of their games don't work on the most recent OSX release. Depending on your perspective, either Apple pulled the rug out from under them, or Valve is letting their code atrophy. Maybe a bit of both, but my opinion is more of the former.
- baldfat 7y ago
  That is 100% Apple's fault and makes me thankful for backwards compatibility. Music Production has been hit hard by this same move. Plugins and virtual instruments that people have been using for years are all gone from support. All the open source plugins are out right now. Everyone is holding off and I am glad I use Linux and Windows 10 for music.
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  > or Valve is letting their code atrophy There haven't been many good reasons to release a 32-bit only macOS app for some time. If Valve is at fault, it's that they didn't require publishers to submit 64-bit builds for macOS years ago.
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    Valve didn't even have a 64-bit build of Steam for the Mac until after Catalina was out.
    - jamesgeck0 7y ago
      I forgot about this. Valve released a 64-bit build of Steam two months before Catalina came out [1], but they did not migrate users of the 32-bit version to the 64-bit version automatically. https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/27/steam-for-mac-64-bit/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/27/steam-for-mac-64-bit/
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    There hasn't been much reason to release a new one, but there also hasn't been much reason to port old ones.
traverseda 7y ago
Of course linux is pretty flexible. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just target linux, and get it to automatically support windows/macos? Like a reverse proton? That should be a lot easier than proton ever was. That's the direction I'd like to see steam's containerization go.
ActorNightly 7y ago
>Linux is 10x harder than windows if you care about supporting any arbitrary distribution and driver stack. Not really. Most hardware is very standard these days, which is why you can install Ubuntu on most any laptop or desktop and have it work with less than or equal issues than a Windows install. Amd and Nvidia both have Linux drivers that work on all the popular distros. The reason devs don't even bother with Linux is because there isn't enough people that are playing on Linux.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  Amd and Nvidia drivers for what? Big games aren't being made with openGL. What is the state of vulcan across drivers and engines?
  - BlackLotus89 7y ago
    > Amd and Nvidia drivers for what? Big games aren't being made with openGL. Doom 2016? > What is the state of vulcan across drivers and engines? Quite good actually. Intel has older generations supported than on windows. There are 2 mature AMD vulkan implementations. Also through investments of valve there is a new shader compiler in the works that got merged in mesa which helps quite a lot. The performance is about equal, but sometimes faster under windows (I didn't look at benchmarks of 2020). Oh and vulkan 1.2 is implemented in mesa 20. Oh and it's vulkan not vulcan
- proncton 7y ago
  >which is why you can install Ubuntu This is actually one of the root causes. It would be SO MUCH EASIER, for me, an app developer, if every linux user used centos, or ubuntu, or mint, or whatever the hell. Don't care, pick one. But, customizing is part of the fun... anyways. Also yeah, desktop Linux is about 10% of users, depending on who you ask. Worse for gamers, although that's just feedback loops. There's one more thing though, which most people aren't aware of... driver versions. Drivers often ship game-specific hacks for performance fixes. It's an insane, unspoken practice that occurs because some developers will only test heavily on one mfg GPU. Right now, nvidia is taking the brunt of the work because consoles are AMD based.
jandrese 7y ago
Nobody is going to support 5 year old Slackware for their game distribution platform. They'll support current Ubuntu and maybe Fedora--anybody else can work out the problems on their own. And by support I mean a one-off build for the platform and a public forum where users can ask and answer questions of other users. Maybe if you're lucky they'll do a new build when a patch is released. Linux users aren't asking for much, and Epic has been more than just dismissive to them. They've been outright hostile, doing things like adding checks to make sure the game isn't running under Wine.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Linux users are asking for quite a lot; not just support for Ubuntu and Fedora but for all the random custom builds and drivers out there. It's simply not worth it when 0.3% of your customers represents more hardware and software configurations than the remaining 99.7%.
  - thethrowboat 7y ago
    I thought steam only supports ubuntu and therefore games only support ubuntu. That being said, I use arch and most games just work.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Rocket League isn't available on Steam (anymore). Epic does not technically support Linux outside of Android.
      - Polycryptus 7y ago
        Rocket League is not (yet) available on the Epic Games Store, and has not been removed from Steam.
  - noicebrewery 7y ago
    You're making things up; who are these Linux users demanding anything? Generally speaking once a game developer gets it working on Ubuntu the Arch wiki guys will happily figure out the rest on their own.

alephr 7y ago

Is that tweet really "extremely negative" towards Linux? All he says is that he doesn't want to abandon Windows but instead push back on changes to it he doesn't like; he doesn't make any judgements about Linux. The reality is there are many barriers to Linux replacing Windows as a desktop platform for users today so it's not surprising that someone who runs a business that depends on users doesn't want to push for a huge switch to Linux if it's not necessary. If a company not wanting to act outside it's interests makes it Linux's "biggest enemy" then it will be a very long time before it succeeds as the major desktop platform.

mroche 7y ago

When reading the context of the statement itself, it isn't that bad. He was concerned that Microsoft would introduce restrictions that place inhibitors on other vendors hardware with the introduction of a Pro operating system. The statement itself isn't the best, but his stance was that as a community Windows developers and users should push back against such changes. An employee at Epic has mentioned that if someone with Linux development skills was interested, they would be more than happy to bring them on to develop a EGS application for Linux. The thread can be found here: https://twitter.com/CanalOCaraDoTI/status/1106218993650728960 https://twitter.com/CanalOCaraDoTI/status/110621899365072896... (scroll to the top for the beginning).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

It's not hard to hate Linux (Desktop) when you develop proprietary software since Linux seems to go out of its way to make it as difficult to deploy proprietary software as it possibly can [0]. Libraries are constantly changing underneath you in incompatible ways, there are several hundred "distributions" to deal with, etc. [0] And frankly it is only slightly easier if you write FOSS software.

mschuster91 7y ago
Many of these distributions, at least the popular ones, are nothing more than forks of Debian, Ubuntu and RHEL/SuSE. And most (not all) people who would want to game on a Linux system use Ubuntu as it's by far the most painless thing to get going. Base yourself off of the latest Ubuntu LTS, compile your project statically as far as possible and you're probably good to go, containers can be used to get your project running on other distros if needed. If you're using any engine even better, all of the major ones are cross-platform anyway and abstract all the nastiness away.
nwallin 7y ago
Target the steam runtime. All popular distros will either support it out of the box or have an overlay to do it. And it doesn't change very often. Open source is a million times easier. Your source is available. It's up to the distro's maintainer of your package to deal with compiling and binary compatibility. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  > It's up to the distro's maintainer of your package to deal with compiling and binary compatibility. That's bullshit though. Why would you trust some random community maintainer to get between you and the user? Now when shit goes wrong there's one more person in the loop of blame to deal with. There are famous incidents of maintainers introducing problems to otherwise correct software, and ignoring the developer. "I am constantly getting email from users reporting bugs that have been fixed for literally years who have no idea that the software they are running is years out of date." -jwz How is this considered a sane way to distribute software!?

cliftonk 7y ago

1. It seems as if he's addressing the context of the discussion (switching to Linux from Windows) rather than saying anything particularly negative about Linux. 2. I've been making some UE4 projects recently (as im getting back into game development as a hobby) and the toolchain to cross compile to linux is well made and easy to use (and even easy to dockerize). I think unreal engine support of linux is probably the better barometer of Epic's stance towards linux than their not-so-fully-featured launcher/store (which is many years behind steam).

beatgammit 7y ago
I haven't tried recently, by UE4 used to work reasonably well on Linux if you build from source, so they're putting at least some effort beyond cross compiling.