3 ms·
What people seem to have a hard time understanding is that Linux is not an operating system, it's a family of operating systems. Someone running Gentoo with Ope
by cwyers 11y ago
What people seem to have a hard time understanding is that Linux is not an operating system, it's a family of operating systems. Someone running Gentoo with OpenRC and Xfce, someone running Debian with sysvinit and GNOME and someone running Arch with systemd and KDE are all "running Linux." This is more difficult than Windows or OS X, where you can rely on the low-level system plumbing staying the same from machine to machine (versions of OS X are all closer to each other than Linuxes are to each other and there's a lot fewer of them).
- jon-wood 11y agoValve are doing a lot to help here by distributing Steam with a known set of libraries that will be used by any games launched via Steam. There's still going to be some variation, but developers can at least know which version of key libraries they can rely on
- mrec 11y agoI think their new refund policy will also help a lot. Being able to try a game to see if it works, and get your money back hassle-free if it doesn't, ought to take a lot of the anxiety out of the fragmented-target-OS issue.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoSure, the refund happens but now the devs have to contend with all the pissy reviews on their game's store page because the game didn't work with their very specific use cases. Its easier to just not bother unless you want to devote significant support and development resources to making the game run on any linux frakenputer. "Crashes when using wayland. FAIL!"