Games on Linux

[Ian Malone]

On 25 October 2012 08:25, Ian Malone <ibmalone at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 25 October 2012 04:37, Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 16:09:17 -0700,
>>   Alan Evans <ame.fedora at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Apple is essentially single-platform and Microsoft at least tries to
>>> keep things backward-compatible. The Linux kernel devs seem, at least
>>> to the uninitiated, to have some kind of animosity to the very idea of
>>> ABI compatibility.
>>>
>>> Witness VMWare basically recompiling itself every time the user
>>> updates his kernel. No game developer wants that kind of headache.
>>
>>
>> That applies to device drivers, not user space. Differing library versions
>> and limitations of graphics support are more likely to be an issue than the
>> kernel.
>
> That's true, differing desktop environments isn't so much the issue,
> games don't really have to touch the desktop toolkit, since they tend
> to use GL and other things more, but different library versions and
> system layouts make things difficult. You can link things statically,
> but even that only works up to a point. Also installation has always
> been a bit odd.
>

Oh, and sound, the weird state of sound for years was a problem too.
Games are supposed to be fun, too much end user configuration to get
them working puts people off before you've started.

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk