
Gog.com Now Supports Linux - oal
http://www.gog.com/news/gogcom_now_supports_linux
======
clarry
What hardware platforms are supported?

Give it one, three, five, ten or fifteen years. When will these proprietary
binaries stop working?

I look forward (probably in vain) to the day when game developers want their
games to be playable by anyone on any system, any time, even long after
release. Played by everyone. I mean, who wouldn't want his work to be loved by
everyone and forever? Why?

Freeing the code is a first, inevitable step.

~~~
scrollaway
Funny how often, musicians and directors feel the same about their work and
encourage people to "illegally" download their products.

I don't think developers are the problem.

I've played World of Warcraft a lot. It's a game that has affected tens of
millions of people directly, and hundreds of millions indirectly (through
WoW's influence on other games, game models and so on). It has built careers,
businesses, companies, and so on.

Yet one day, it'll close down and nobody will ever be able to play it. All
that'll be left will be the game files - 3d models - and a lot of screenshots.

Sad.

~~~
clarry
I agree about WoW. I've never played it, but I could imagine loving it.
Chances are I never will though.

 _> I don't think developers are the problem._

It depends on the project. So I guess big commercial titles have other
problems. Smaller groups though -- whether indie game studios or just
individuals making freeware games (Dwarf Fortress, anyone?) -- they're usually
what the developers make of it. And it very often is the case that the
developers do not care about others' freedoms or portability and all that.
It's too much work, nobody uses that platform, we don't care about minority
users, whatever. The same old excuses, which are mostly BS.

~~~
pjmlp
Because you know, the baker, the supermarket, the landlord all accept the said
BS as payment.

It is very easy to wave BS to software developers. Now try to earn a steady
income from FOSS desktop software.

~~~
clarry
Way to miss the point. Now try to read again and understand.

Giving users the source so they can help themselves has nothing to do with
landlords and supermarkets. It can get you more money though, by increasing
the user base and making more happy users. It can make your game sell for much
longer. Doom still sells, and people play it on the weirdest of platforms. And
if the developers cared enough, they'd learn that it doesn't necessarily take
much effort at all to make code easier to port. But you do have to care. If
you don't, and you write code under the assumption that you won't and nobody
else should port it, then the result won't be very nice.

So maybe you could still play Doom on dosbox or in a VM, but I don't think
it'd sell much if they hadn't given the source that allowed people to create
legal ports for modern systems, with features that make the game more
enjoyable. People still enjoy Doom.

~~~
throwawaykf05
_> It can get you more money though, by increasing the user base and making
more happy users. It can make your game sell for much longer._

Does not follow. There is no evidence that you can make _more_ money by simply
open sourcing your project. In fact, judging from the number of popular,
widely used open source projects reduced to begging for donations, it's
precisely the opposite. You may simply be assuming as true the same excuses
that pirates use to justify their piracy, saying "Hey, I'm giving you free
advertising!", completely overlooking the fact that 1) advertising in itself
does not feed the creators, and 2) they're primarily advertising it to people
just like them, who'll also simply pirate the product.

Look at the companies making the most money in software. Then look at the
companies making money from open source software. Note: _not_ companies that
use open source or open up some of their non-core code, but those whose
primary product is open source, such as Red Hat. There's a few orders of
magnitude of difference in revenues. This despite Linux running the vast
majority of servers on the Internet and in data centers. Why is this?

While open source proponents like to live in an ideal world where everybody
shares their code and collaborates, the harsh truth is that the vast, vast
majority of the world will take what it can and give nothing back. That is not
conducive to building a viable business when by open sourcing your code,
you're essentially make your product even easier to be taken for free.

~~~
clarry
Way to miss the fucking point. Now try to read again and understand. Pay
attention to the words I make. Note the example I made.

Freeing _the code_ is a first, inevitable step.

This is what id has done with the Doom and Quake series. These games still
sell! And we can play these games on whatever platform, with whatever custom
features, _because the source was released_ and people picked it up and made
it work and improved it.

You're completely overlooking the fact that freeing a game's source code is
completely different from making the entire game free. Business continues as
usual: they sell the actual game, which people need to actually play it.

Companies whose source code is their entire core product are completely
different. You cannot make a relevant point by talking about their problems.

------
wink
I've been using Linux for work for years (software developer) but my main
machine at home is still running Windows 7 because for me, the state of gaming
is still kind of horrible on Linux.

Am I the only one who just gave up because of video and sound driver issues?
That's for 3d, of course - as stated above, everything in a window manager
usually works just fine.

That said, this is awesome news, maybe I'll come around to try dualboot again
(after many, many years) because it could be easier to get my Radeon working
under Linux than some of the other chips (especially on laptops) in the past.

~~~
ekianjo
> Am I the only one who just gave up because of video and sound driver issues?

No issues here. I guess you may be running AMD hardware hence the video
drivers issues, but I haven't had sound issues in games for years.

~~~
grimgrin
Nvidia. Installed System Shock 2 (through Steam) on my Linux machine at work.
Ran it, cool, left the game and resolution was stuck at a really weird one (on
1 of 2 monitors) and I had to fix a problem.

Same game on Windows, likely no problem to fix.

Issues for sure still happen with Linux gaming. Many games are fine though, of
course.

~~~
pdpi
To be fair, dual screen setups and games have a history of trouble (even on
Windows)

~~~
zanny
I have a dual screen desktop running Arch and I play games a lot, on the
radeonSI Gallium driver and Intel driver.

The funny thing with multi-screen gaming on Linux is that the "default" target
SDL picks is not your primary monitor, it is the monitor on the left. It
doesn't matter what input order its in, or anything else, I can reconfigure my
screens however I want but "full screen" always means leftmost panel.

------
rogerbinns
Note that many of GOG's Windows games will work on Linux under Wine too. The
good news is you don't have to figure anything out - use PlayOnLinux which
will prompt you for the games setup executable and then do everything else.
Start at
[http://www.playonlinux.com/en/supported_apps-1-0.html](http://www.playonlinux.com/en/supported_apps-1-0.html)
and scroll down to the ones beginning GOG.com.

------
endgame
I'm surprised that Papers Please is missing, given that the game has already
been released on GNU/Linux release through the developer's website. I wouldn't
be surprised if there is other such low-hanging fruit in their catalogue.

~~~
ekianjo
There are many others. First, many games that can run on DOsBox on Linux
(probably several hundreds from their catalog) and many other indie ones. And
Witcher 2 (however the port/wrapper used was horrible).

~~~
tormeh
It had low performance, but once I figured out that the keybindings were all
empty and you had to restore them to default everything kinda worked ok. Low
FPS, but playable on my Nvidia GTX760M laptop.

------
tormeh
What's the state of AMD Radeon cards for gaming on Linux right now? I think
I'll soon upgrade my desktop computer's graphics card, and I wonder if I'll
have to restrict myself to Nvidia only. (Intel's not an option because of
performance)

~~~
bryanlarsen
The open source version of the AMD drivers have gotten a lot better for very
recent versions of the Linux Kernel. Is it better enough? Good question.

[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux316_...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux316_radeon_boost&num=1)

~~~
tormeh
Yeah, I've heard complaints about short support periods, weird bugs and games
that just crash, but performance seems as good as Nvidia's from what I've
read.

This seems to suggest that Nvidia's drivers are vastly superior on new OpenGL
4 features, though they do come from Nvidia:
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_apite...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_apitest_nvidia&num=1)
It's probably cherrypicking benchmarks a bit, but cherrypicking shouldn't have
that dramatic results... Seems like I'll be sticking with Nvidia.

------
ekianjo
Flatout s running on Linux for the first time as well with this announcement

------
exterm
Can't wait for them to give more of their extensive back catalog the linux
treatment.

With this and steam linux edition, the future looks bright for linux gamers.

Playing colonization on linux this evening :-)

~~~
Nemcue
Pro tip: never trade guns or horses with indians.

------
aktau
Oh man, there goes my time. I remember FlatOut 1 fondly from when I was a kid
and was still using Windows (great soundtrack too, I remember sending No
Connection an e-mail and they even replied). Now I couldn't resist buying
FlatOut 2, even if just to show my support.

I read on the forums they're wine wrappers though (officially supported, but
still). Native ports would be the best, of course.

~~~
jenscow
The DOS games I've seen are DOSBox wrappers.

I wonder if they've made the games work (if they didn't already) by hacking
DOSBox, rather than the game.

~~~
Narishma
FlatOut is a Windows game. As for DOSBox, if a game works on it in Windows it
will work on it in Linux as well.

------
mladenkovacevic
I would recommend Normality as an oldie but a goodie. Quirky story and an
amazing atmosphere. This was also one of the first games where it didn't feel
like it consisted of static sets or levels where you had to solve a puzzle
then move onto the next one but you were more or less freely roaming like a
Grand Theft Auto game and having to solve puzzles within a larger environment.

------
thristian
I will probably keep downloading Windows binaries for backup purposes (I
expect Win32 and Wine will still be a thing long after glibc 2.17.3 binaries
are no longer supported on any distro), but it's super-encouraging to have a
reliable vendor of DRM-free, cross-platform games.

------
pervycreeper
Not to minimize the accomplishment, but most of those "first time on Linux!"
titles were previously playable via Dosbox, or free software source ports.
That said, can't wait for Rollercoaster Tycoon.

~~~
jenscow
I don't think it's the technical accomplishment that's significant - more the
fact that producers are increasingly recognising Linux as an emerging gaming
platform.

~~~
pervycreeper
I agree. I should have said something more like "diminish their efforts"
rather than "minimize their accomplishment". My point is the marketing claim
that these titles are appearing on Linux for the first time is a stretch.

------
bachmeier
Unfortunately I don't see a lot of kids games. Not for me, of course, but for
my son. As he gets older, these Linux game release announcements will be more
meaningful.

------
drdaeman
Why they're using Ubuntu logo in "Works on: X + Y + Z" instead of Tux or GNU
symbols?

~~~
exterm
Because they officially support only ubuntu and mint. The provide a tarball
for other distros but don't officially support them.

~~~
drdaeman
But they say "Linux" nearly everywhere, not "Ubuntu" or "Mint" (even though
they're the only supported distros and the rest is best-effort tarball).
There's inconsistency between iconic and textual data.

Obviously, one can't support "Linux" \- that's abstract shortcut title for
plethora of various GNU/Linux-based OSes. Yet, I think Tux is universally
recognized symbol for those.

~~~
scrollaway
I have to ask: Why do you care?

This is great news, why care about the small, completely irrelevant things?
Why make it look like the Linux community is blasé, whiny and will complain
about _anything_?

------
bussiere
i love you gog.

------
rythmshifter
you just emptied my bank account

