id Software Considering Skipping Rage for Linux?

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

For gamers running Linux as their primary OS, the choices are unfortunately limited. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to believe that gaming wasn't the main reason that most people either dual-boot their PC, or never give Linux a try in the first place. The former can be said for me. While I run Linux as my main OS, and Windows XP in VMware for "simpler" tasks (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop), the reason I still keep my machine as a dual-boot is strictly because of gaming.

While the gaming landscape on Linux isn't too stellar, there are a lot of choices, depending on your tastes. If you're looking for a commercial game, though, things are different. Companies like S2 Games and id Software have been some of the very few to deliver commercial games to Linux, which made us appreciate them even more. Who doesn't like to have masterpieces like Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and others available to them?

Sadly, as games become more and more robust, and tied to libraries specific to Windows, the chances of seeing blockbuster commercial games is beginning to wane. This was highlighted by a letter that an Ubuntu forum member sent to John Carmack, which asked about the possibility of seeing Rage available for Linux. His response couldn't have been more clear:

"We are not currently scheduling native linux ports. It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision..."

Well, I for one am planning to game 'er up in Quake Live often, but I highly doubt that hundreds of thousands of others are going to join me. Linux gamers are facing a harsh reality, though, because if one of the leading supporters of gaming on the OS is looking to step out, what does that tell us about the future? What in your opinion needs to be done to continue to attract both developers and gamers alike to Linux? Let us know your thoughts in the thread!

The codebase is much, much larger, and the graphics technology pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized. It probably wouldn't be all that bad to get it running on the nvidia binary drivers, but the chance of it working correctly and acceptably anywhere else would be small. If you are restricted to it only working on the closed source drivers, you might as well boot into windows and get the fully tested and tuned experience...

Source: Ubuntu Forums, Via: Slashdot​

One thing I'd like to figure out is... if Rage is supposed to be available for Mac OS X, for what reason won't it be available for Linux? Mac OS X and Linux share a similar underlying body... so this is a little frustrating.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

One thing I'd like to figure out is... if Rage is supposed to be available for Mac OS X, for what reason won't it be available for Linux? Mac OS X and Linux share a similar underlying body... so this is a little frustrating.

It's most likely because Linux has never reached a market share where professional grade development on it makes any sense. Even though more than half the internet runs on *nix OSs there aren't enough home users of the OS to make much of anything worthwhile from a developer's point of view.

I keep up on some of the Linux distros (Ubuntu mostly) and every so often I'll stuff it into a machine to see what's new... I have yet to see anything that even comes close to asking me to flip channels and dump windows. Despite all claims to the contrary, Windows remains faster, easier and far more stable than any *nix distro I've ever tried.

For me the question is about proportions of time... In windows people spend about 10% of their time Operating their computers and about 90% of their time Using them to accomplish other tasks. In Linux this feels reversed, probably about 50/50 to be fair. In a home, home office or small office environment where IT isn't just down the hall, people don't want to spend time changing settings, installing this, updating that... they want to type those emails, fill in those orders, update the family photo album.... and in most cases they clearly don't even want to think about the operating system. Linux just doesn't work well in that scenario... Yet.

I think you answered your own question when you said "While I run Linux as my main OS, and Windows XP in VMware for "simpler" tasks (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop),..." That you have to leave your main OS to do simple tasks, just about sums up the reason for Linux not gaining sufficient market share to attract commercial software developers.

 

[MacMan]

I agree with 2tired2tango

It's most likely because Linux has never reached a market share where professional grade development on it makes any sense. Even though more than half the internet runs on *nix OSs there aren't enough home users of the OS to make much of anything worthwhile from a developer's point of view.

I keep up on some of the Linux distros (Ubuntu mostly) and every so often I'll stuff it into a machine to see what's new... I have yet to see anything that even comes close to asking me to flip channels and dump windows. Despite all claims to the contrary, Windows remains faster, easier and far more stable than any *nix distro I've ever tried.

For me the question is about proportions of time... In windows people spend about 10% of their time Operating their computers and about 90% of their time Using them to accomplish other tasks. In Linux this feels reversed, probably about 50/50 to be fair. In a home, home office or small office environment where IT isn't just down the hall, people don't want to spend time changing settings, installing this, updating that... they want to type those emails, fill in those orders, update the family photo album.... and in most cases they clearly don't even want to think about the operating system. Linux just doesn't work well in that scenario... Yet.

I think you answered your own question when you said "While I run Linux as my main OS, and Windows XP in VMware for "simpler" tasks (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop),..." That you have to leave your main OS to do simple tasks, just about sums up the reason for Linux not gaining sufficient market share to attract commercial software developers.

I agree with 2Tire2Tango, there simply isn't the market for too many top-notched games for any OS with such a small home market share. Linux, like Windows, is used mostly by business users, who frankly don't need or want the ability to run games! Still, there are many millions of home users for Windows and, therefore, it reigns supreme as the OS gaming king.

I'm happy to say, that even though OS X has only 10% of the overall market, it's home usage is estimated to be around 20 to 22 % of American homes, and much, much more than people would give them credit for. With up to 80 million home OS X users (desktop, iPhone and iPod
Touch users), I except to see a lot more gaming in the future.

As a direct result, there has been an ever increasing flood of PC games coming over to OS X, and now that the iPhone, which runs on OS X ,has seen ten of thousands of developers, their growing library of software now can be easily ported to the desktop!

Apple's so-called upcoming and revolutionary 'tablet' is expected to increase that to a fererish pace!

With OS X Snow Leopard now being officially released this Friday, I suspect that it's underlining technologies such as, OPEN CL, GRAND CENTRAL, 3D TRANSFORM, etc., (Coolris is based on 3D Transform), that gaming developers will be able to do things that have never been possible on any existing OS, be it OS X Leopard, Windows 7, or any of the five million different Linux versions!

The gaming future looks bright, but, unfortunately, only on OS X and Windows! Maybe, someday, when Linux can possibly hit the magic 5% of the home user market, we will finally begin to see developers get serious about spending the serious money and time into porting their apps over to the Linux OS?

I hope so anyway.

YEAH - Snow Leopard this Friday!! http://www.apple.com/macosx/

 

[Brett Thomas]

For me the question is about proportions of time... In windows people spend about 10% of their time Operating their computers and about 90% of their time Using them to accomplish other tasks. In Linux this feels reversed, probably about 50/50 to be fair. In a home, home office or small office environment where IT isn't just down the hall, people don't want to spend time changing settings, installing this, updating that... they want to type those emails, fill in those orders, update the family photo album.... and in most cases they clearly don't even want to think about the operating system. Linux just doesn't work well in that scenario... Yet.

You've done a good job of trying to structure this viewpoint well, 2Tired2Tango, but I have to disagree.

I work in an office environment for my job. That job involves a lot of data mining tasks. We are, unfortunately, a windows-only office setup. Windows is GREAT for the office environment a good 90% of the time. However, when you're doing complicated data mining, it's AWFUL.

For instance, I have a database I'm working on right now where I have about 450 orphaned stocks that need names and stats to go along with the CUSIP (the only part that I have at the moment). In Windows, my option is to export the list of CUSIPS out to excel and then slowly and painfully look up each ticker by manually typing it into my browser aimed at google, since the two cannot talk to one another. I can then copy/paste this back into my spreadsheet and export it from excel back to access, or skip the export step and dare to directly enter the info in my database (and hope I don't flub).

OR,

I can write an 8 line script that takes all the info out of the excel file, searches google for me, puts the names and stats in next to the CUSIP, formats it into a comma delim spreadsheet for me and allows me to import my new list into access.


The copy and paste method took me about 2 minutes per stock (I did about 10 before I realized this was NOT productive) to find everything I needed. Times 450 cusips, that's 900 minutes / 60 = 15 hours at $150 hour (Office rate - not that I make that much, but my time is being spent NOT doing things that are billable hours).

Script took me 5 minutes to come up with, including downloading putty to SSH into my linux computer at home to run it. 10 seconds to execute and 20 minutes to harvest the results cause I was kind and didn't want to be a data dick and flood google.

If you're a boss, tell me which OS just spent less time. "Doing other tasks" in these descriptions often ignores that you have to work AROUND the limitations of your OS while you DO these other tasks. And since there is no command line, no built in scripting, no cross-talk between things not of the Office or IE family...

Don't take this as an MS bash. I love windows as far as an office system, for the most part. But the idea that we on the CLI spend "more time on the OS" is pretty much an outdated myth. The OS has a lot more USEFUL tools built into it, and people DO spend time learning those. But that's the major difference - I can do with a bare OS or a few command line apt-get statements and a script what a Windows user would spend 900 minutes or pay for an expensive program to do. Each OS favors different tasks, and if you learn to acknowledge each has a very important place in the world, you'll be better off.

 

[Rob Williams]

It's most likely because Linux has never reached a market share where professional grade development on it makes any sense. Even though more than half the internet runs on *nix OSs there aren't enough home users of the OS to make much of anything worthwhile from a developer's point of view.

I don't think you're seeing my point. Mac OS X is based on a similar underlying kernel as Linux, so from the sidelines, it appears that if the developers wanted to port to Linux, they could with little effort. Chances are that Mac OS X's graphics libraries are more robust than Linux, but the fact is, neither OS supports DirectX, and both support OpenGL, so I don't quite understand why one is supported and not the other.

Given that id Software has always been such a great supporter of Linux, all I can figure is that this new mindset has a lot to do with ZeniMax Media, who acquired the company a few months ago.

Windows remains faster, easier and far more stable than any *nix distro I've ever tried.

If you are comparing your highly-optimized Windows XP to Linux, then of course one is going to be faster than the other. But if you are comparing base installs, I'm doubtful that one is going to prove much faster than the other, especially where application-loading, boot times, et cetera, are concerned. So my question is, what part of Linux do you find slower than Windows?

In some ways, Windows can be called easier, especially where installing applications is concerned, but aside from that, I'm confident that neither OS is more complicated than the other. It all falls back on which you have experience with, and how much time you've actually devoted to the other.

As for Windows being more stable than Linux, I'll just have to assume that was a joke.

For me the question is about proportions of time... In windows people spend about 10% of their time Operating their computers and about 90% of their time Using them to accomplish other tasks. In Linux this feels reversed, probably about 50/50 to be fair.

I have used Linux on and off for over ten years, and full-time for three, and I can assure you that I have never spent more than 10% "operating" my computer, rather than using it - and I'm using one of the most complex distros available. If I had to guess, you never really gave Linux an honest go, because if you did, I'm not sure how you could come up with these conclusions.

If your PC is set up and ready to go, why would you need to continually spend 50% of your time tweaking and operating the OS? Any OS is going to require some poking and prodding before it's considered ready to go, including Windows, so I have no idea how you can come up with such an exaggerated figure.

That you have to leave your main OS to do simple tasks, just about sums up the reason for Linux not gaining sufficient market share to attract commercial software developers.

It sums up that application developers aren't willing to spend time and money to deliver apps on this platform. If applications like Photoshop and Office were available native under Linux, I'd be the first one in line to purchase them.

Still, there are many millions of home users for Windows and, therefore, it reigns supreme as the OS gaming king.

The main reason Windows remains supreme for Windows is because of DirectX. It's made easy for developers to use, and Microsoft doesn't license it out. If they did, you'd see far, far greater support for alternate OS'.

As a direct result, there has been an ever increasing flood of PC games coming over to OS X, and now that the iPhone, which runs on OS X ,has seen ten of thousands of developers, their growing library of software now can be easily ported to the desktop!

Right, and that's awesome, but what's stopping these developers from porting to Linux? I'm honestly unaware and would love to know. Is the code base that different? Something tells me if it works for Mac OS X, it wouldn't take too much effort to convert whatever code is needed over to Linux. Of course, Linux has a far smaller market share, but in order for it to grow, companies need to take a leap of faith - especially if they are so close to having a Unix port to begin with.

Don't take this as an MS bash. I love windows as far as an office system, for the most part. But the idea that we on the CLI spend "more time on the OS" is pretty much an outdated myth. The OS has a lot more USEFUL tools built into it, and people DO spend time learning those.

I truly believe the CLI to be one of the best features with Linux. One scenario I can give with script writing comes down to my backup script. If I were running Windows, I'd have no choice but to go download or purchase some backup software, but with the tools built right into Linux, I wrote a robust script that backs-up my entire machine every few days to an alternate hard drive and my NAS box, and also backs up our website servers on a regular basis, including handling of the MySQL databases and other things. I wrote this script in about an hour, and it's far more finely-tuned and specialized than any Windows backup software I could have gotten.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

You've done a good job of trying to structure this viewpoint well, 2Tired2Tango, but I have to disagree.

No problem ... But I would remind you this isn't about difficult office tasks, the original commentary was about why games manufacturers are passing on Linux.

I'm quite well aware of things Linux does better than windows and visa versa. But games isn't one of them.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Ok... I can see I've hit a nerve here.

Please accept my apologies if I've insulted your favorite OS, that was not the intent.

I was merely offering an opinion that because linux has made very little actual penetration into the home user market, perhaps some gaming companies don't see porting to it as a profitable venture... even if they have working copies on machines in their office, there is still the cost of packaging, distribution and merchandising to be considered.

 

[Rob Williams]

You didn't hit a nerve, at least with me, but I strongly feel that some of your comments are a little exaggerated and really give off the wrong idea about Linux. If gaming wasn't important, and people had no need for things like Office and Photoshop, Linux wouldn't be considered such an outcast OS. It has gotten so much better just over the past few years, it's truly incredible. It's just too bad, like I said, that commercial developers aren't yet taking it seriously.

I'm not sure I'd call any OS my "favorite", since they all have their pros and cons, but here's what I personally list as reasons why I like Linux so much:

1) Performance - Linux is optimized, not bloated (depending on the distro), and it's fast.
2) Security - I have -never- been affected by a security issue in Linux.
3) Command-line - It's just unbelievable... so robust. I could write an article on it.
4) Cost - Even though I own commercial apps (like Photoshop, Office, etc), I can't help but love the fact that under Linux, every-single application I use is completely free (alright, except Nero which was $20).
5) Repositories - Common Linux software is available through most repositories, so you don't even have to open up a web browser to download and install what you're looking for.
6) Optimization - This is Gentoo-specific, but the power I have over my OS install is unparallelled compared to other OS' out there, and even most other distros.

Even though I seem so pro-Linux, I could easily make a list of twenty cons. I love the OS, but there is room for much improvement, I'll be the first to admit that. In fact, I should really make an editorial out of that sometime soon...

even if they have working copies on machines in their office, there is still the cost of packaging, distribution and merchandising to be considered.

It depends on the game, and how it's developed. EPIC for example, creators of Unreal Tournament, just include a Linux logo on the box, and leave it up to the user to go to their site to download the latest version of the client executable. That's all the games needed... a simple binary to execute (similar to .exe for Windows, but for Linux).

It's just too bad that things have gotten so much more complicated over the past few years.