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Open source your games. Open source is the only practical way that existing distros are able to test and support the majority of packages that they ship. If you

Open source your games. Open source is the only practical way that existing distros are able to test and support the majority of packages that they ship. If you do that, the cost of supporting all those other things will fall on the distros, not on you, but you need to actually play ball with them and give them something workable that isn't an opaque binary blob that is illegal to redistribute, modify or reverse-engineer. The feelings you're describing (that you need to shelter 100% of those costs and you have no other options) are a side effect of the game industry's cargo-culting of closed-source business models and refusal to even consider that there are ways to make money from open source.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> Open source your games. Open source is the only practical way that existing distros are able to test and support the majority of packages that they ship Which might be one of the reasons Linux Desktop is so awful to develop for.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  The "Linux Desktop" is not and has never been a thing beyond a vague marketing term. What you're thinking of is a loose collection of unrelated projects. Pick a single stack and go with it and things get better.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    ....Which might be one of the reasons Linux Desktop is so awful to develop for. You wonder why people ignore your platform? Saying it isn't actually a single platform and instead is dozens of different platforms just means each of those platforms is even less relevant. Saying you're not just one platform with 10% market share but actually 20 with 0.5% each doesn't make the case for shipping on Linux Desktop any better.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      I'm not making a case for shipping on the "Linux desktop" because that doesn't exist and has never been a real platform. Most smaller distros are not trying to be "relevant" to whatever the gaming community's fad of the day is. They're perfectly fine filling what niche they do. If you want to target those smaller distros as a platform, you can give them some source code to work with, or you can pay all the cost of maintaining things yourself, or you can just ignore those. They will do fine without your game.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        So what are you saying? Developers should just choose a major distro and target that, then get all the flack for issues their product has on every distro that isn't supported? Because that's basically what's already happening and developers hate it, which is why they often don't ship on Linux at all. And many proprietary pieces of software license components from other proprietary pieces of software, so that even if they did want to open their code they'd have to strip pieces out of it anyway which doesn't really help the cause of distros integrating it. And even if it did, then the developers are reliant on the maintainers for their relationship to their customers. Have an issue with the product? Oh, it turns out that's because of this patch made by the maintainer of the package for that distro, who now has to be contacted and convinced to fix it, which they may decide not to for arbitrary reasons. Even open source developers have problems with this!
        cycloptic 6y ago
        In general, distro maintaners can't help you with legal conundrums you created for yourself (you signed restrictive NDAs and proprietary license agreements and didn't consider the fine print until it was too late) or with other unrelated market problems (lack of popularity, lack of developer interest in supporting your game). If you need to strip out some parts and there is enough will in the community to replace those pieces that you stripped out, then it will happen. If you have a product that is anywhere near being popular among the FOSS developer communities then I don't think it makes sense for you to claim that this will doesn't exist, or that distro maintainers will lose interest.
jaywalk 6y ago
Yeah, the solution to a platform not making enough money to justify supporting it is... giving away your game for free! The self-centered attitude of your comment is astounding, but all too common in open source communities.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  You don't have to give your game away for free. I urge you to look into how prominent open source companies are actually making money and think about how it can be applied to games. It's not an impossible reality. You claim I am being "self-centered" but the fact is if you don't provide something that the distros can work with and instead try to route around everybody and ship an untestable blob then that's your fault. The reason everyone tells you to just support Ubuntu LTS is because they are the only ones who have the resources to support all these random binary blobs for X amount of years, and that comes with all the pains associated with it, as you are well aware of.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > You claim I am being "self-centered" but the fact is if you don't provide something that the distros can work with Alternative view: distros don't provide a stable platform that developers can target.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      Some do provide that, such as Ubuntu LTS and RHEL. Others don't. Expecting every distro to have the exact same release & support cycle is nonsensical.
      - majewsky 6y ago
        Linux LTS releases are not particularly stable from the perspective of someone who wants to distribute applications as binaries. Its API can change with every release, i.e. every two years. It's incredibly unlikely that a binary compiled for Ubuntu 18.04 will be able to run on Ubuntu 20.04 (as in Python etc.). To contrast, if you take a Win32 game from 2003 that targets DirectX 9, it probably runs fine on the latest Windows releases. (You might have to enable some compatibility mode.) "BUT BUT BUT if it's packaged with the distro it's no problem." Remember we're talking about proprietary applications (mostly games) here. Having these packaged with distros for years after the devs moved on to the next project is just a pipe dream.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

> Open source your games. Open source is the only practical way that existing distros are able to test and support the majority of packages that they ship Which might be one of the reasons Linux Desktop is so awful to develop for.

cycloptic 6y ago
The "Linux Desktop" is not and has never been a thing beyond a vague marketing term. What you're thinking of is a loose collection of unrelated projects. Pick a single stack and go with it and things get better.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  ....Which might be one of the reasons Linux Desktop is so awful to develop for. You wonder why people ignore your platform? Saying it isn't actually a single platform and instead is dozens of different platforms just means each of those platforms is even less relevant. Saying you're not just one platform with 10% market share but actually 20 with 0.5% each doesn't make the case for shipping on Linux Desktop any better.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    I'm not making a case for shipping on the "Linux desktop" because that doesn't exist and has never been a real platform. Most smaller distros are not trying to be "relevant" to whatever the gaming community's fad of the day is. They're perfectly fine filling what niche they do. If you want to target those smaller distros as a platform, you can give them some source code to work with, or you can pay all the cost of maintaining things yourself, or you can just ignore those. They will do fine without your game.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      So what are you saying? Developers should just choose a major distro and target that, then get all the flack for issues their product has on every distro that isn't supported? Because that's basically what's already happening and developers hate it, which is why they often don't ship on Linux at all. And many proprietary pieces of software license components from other proprietary pieces of software, so that even if they did want to open their code they'd have to strip pieces out of it anyway which doesn't really help the cause of distros integrating it. And even if it did, then the developers are reliant on the maintainers for their relationship to their customers. Have an issue with the product? Oh, it turns out that's because of this patch made by the maintainer of the package for that distro, who now has to be contacted and convinced to fix it, which they may decide not to for arbitrary reasons. Even open source developers have problems with this!
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        In general, distro maintaners can't help you with legal conundrums you created for yourself (you signed restrictive NDAs and proprietary license agreements and didn't consider the fine print until it was too late) or with other unrelated market problems (lack of popularity, lack of developer interest in supporting your game). If you need to strip out some parts and there is enough will in the community to replace those pieces that you stripped out, then it will happen. If you have a product that is anywhere near being popular among the FOSS developer communities then I don't think it makes sense for you to claim that this will doesn't exist, or that distro maintainers will lose interest.

jaywalk 6y ago

Yeah, the solution to a platform not making enough money to justify supporting it is... giving away your game for free! The self-centered attitude of your comment is astounding, but all too common in open source communities.

cycloptic 6y ago
You don't have to give your game away for free. I urge you to look into how prominent open source companies are actually making money and think about how it can be applied to games. It's not an impossible reality. You claim I am being "self-centered" but the fact is if you don't provide something that the distros can work with and instead try to route around everybody and ship an untestable blob then that's your fault. The reason everyone tells you to just support Ubuntu LTS is because they are the only ones who have the resources to support all these random binary blobs for X amount of years, and that comes with all the pains associated with it, as you are well aware of.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > You claim I am being "self-centered" but the fact is if you don't provide something that the distros can work with Alternative view: distros don't provide a stable platform that developers can target.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    Some do provide that, such as Ubuntu LTS and RHEL. Others don't. Expecting every distro to have the exact same release & support cycle is nonsensical.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      Linux LTS releases are not particularly stable from the perspective of someone who wants to distribute applications as binaries. Its API can change with every release, i.e. every two years. It's incredibly unlikely that a binary compiled for Ubuntu 18.04 will be able to run on Ubuntu 20.04 (as in Python etc.). To contrast, if you take a Win32 game from 2003 that targets DirectX 9, it probably runs fine on the latest Windows releases. (You might have to enable some compatibility mode.) "BUT BUT BUT if it's packaged with the distro it's no problem." Remember we're talking about proprietary applications (mostly games) here. Having these packaged with distros for years after the devs moved on to the next project is just a pipe dream.