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Linux Users Donate Twice As Much As Windows Users, On Average
sammyF70 writes "The Wolfire/Humble Indie Bundle real time statistics have been updated to show the average amount donated per platform. It looks like Linux users donate twice as much, on average, as Windows users. You can see some graphs on the Wolfire blog."
If this is counting Window's Users "donations" to Microsoft, McAfee ....
Windows users already pay through the nose, so they don't have anything leftover to donate.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Linux has fewer games than Windows, so games would be more highly valued by Linux users than Windows users.
I bought world of Goo through Steam for my windows machine and paid more than the average Linux user contributes more for the whole indie bundle. When folks 'contribute' through different sources, these number don't mean much.
Perhaps because when you feel like you've already got a bargain (infinite value for money on average), you're happy to chuck a few quid in. And can I just say, what a nice, simple, well laid out and advert-realistic that website from TFA is? When we all so often get complete wastes of cycles and eyeballs, that's a really nice website, and we should say so as loudly as we complain about bad ones.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Why would your typical windows user have heard of these people? Why would they donate?
In short, why do I care?
I wondered, will people care enough to start making fake donations, i.e. pay 1c, then download the windows version, to make the other camp look bad?
You've got to take these things with a grain of salt anyway. I know I only paid $10 for the bundle because I wasn't sure it was going to work at all on my oldish hardware. I'm likely to "buy" it again for a higher price as a thumbs-up once I give all games a good try and am convinced I like them.
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
PC: And I'm a PC
Linux: Whatcha doing, PC?
PC: Playing games.
Linux: Cool, which ones?
PC: All of them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yeah, it's funny that they mentioned Mac/Windows at all. I mean, honestly, who uses those?
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
3 days in a row, three slashvertisements for this Humble/Indie Bundle... who's getting their percentage?
Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: line incredibly rude?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I've been using Windows since 3.11, and I've never used the Geek Squad or a similar service.
If you're competent enough to properly maintain a Linux box, you're competent enough to keep a Windows machine clean.
spun: Hi, I'm a spun
Anonymous Coward: And I'm an AC. Say, spun, whatcha doing?
spun: Making a joke
Anonymous Coward: Cool, can I make one?
spun: Evidently not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Unfortunately, two times zero is still zero... /jk, keep donating folks.
It's not an ad. It's a discussion of the indie game house's revenues. Sure it brings people to Wolfire's site, but if the company is providing useful contributions to the game business discussion, they deserve the attention.
NOTE: A slashvertizement would be something like "Wolfire releases new game!"
Macs are generally owned by people better off financially (PCs also have the better off folks in their market of course, but probably a much greater percentage of poorer folks than Macs), so that explains their position. Perhaps Windows and Linux both have a contingent of geeks who care, but Windows has far, far more non-geeks/non-gamers than Linux, and that's where the difference there comes in? (Or maybe it's from saving the hundreds of dollars on OS and other proprietary software, but a lot of that gets pirated anyway, so that still may only apply to the less geeky half of the populace.)
I use Windows Vista and earlier today I got a virus while looking for porn torrents. The virus disabled taskmanager and the ability to run any other executables and flooded the screen with popups advertising fake virus software. It was easy enough to run HijackThis (after renaming it to iexplore.exe to fool the virus) to identify and delete the viral executable; I had the problem fixed in under 30 minutes.
Windows isn't that bad when you actually know what you're doing. Problem is, most people don't. Do you think those people would do any better on Linux? I doubt it.
Why "Windows has better games" and "Windows sux" are not mutually exclusive tough.
I have a windows system named "gameboy", guess what I use it for...
And the abundance of games is not even a virtue of Windows per se, but of it's ubiquity.
But... the future refused to change.
Buying Windows? The trialware preinstalled on a typical home PC subsidizes that. (Otherwise, how would an Acer Aspire Revo with Windows cost as much as a retail box of Windows?) Buying Antivirus? You can use Avast on a home PC for $0. Office suite? Most people using one on a home PC* don't need Microsoft Access, so OOo will suffice.
*If you work from home, Microsoft Office is a business expense that you can deduct if your boss doesn't already reimburse it.
After the purchase, I was asked which platforms I use. I ticked the Windows and Linux checkboxes.
How does this get translated to the graphs? Do they count my donation twice, one for Windows and other for Linux?
I'm from the Windows piece of the pie and I paid $10 which beats the Windows and Mac averages (if only by a little on Mac) ... the thing for me is though that I fit in a category of people that is uncountable by their statistics. That category being, well, someone who doesn't really want the games and never would have bought them for even $5 in a store as a bundle. Why did I do it you ask? Simply because I support developers such as these, people who realize that DRM is bad and that honest customers will pay for game should the real product be superior to the pirated product, as it should be. As someone who hates to see the Ubisofts and other evil overlords of game publication, I donated the $10 and specifically chose the "Developers Only" option (donating to charity is something that can easily be done outside of this offer) because I feel they DESERVE it.
As for the Linux crowd, I presume the higher donation totals is due to many factors like less games than Windows, pirating itself being a rather Windows centric crowd, and I'd even toss in the purely speculative assumption that the average intelligence and income of a Linux user is higher (lets face it other developers and geeks/nerds primarily).
Let's be more specific then: have fun running any game from the last ten years at anything better than 10 seconds per frame..
Okay Mr. Expert, I call bullshit. Games that run beautifully (some needing more work than others based on hardware and lack of support channels, but that's not saying it cannot be done):
In fact.. I can't think of a game that I actually want to play, that doesn't run on linux (given enough work). I'm not saying that it is super easy to make all these work, but a high and mighty sys admin should see this as child's play; and only be, slightly, complicated to the neophyte convert. So once again, no better that 10 fps... Bullshit. Go eat a dick, and come back when you've shaved that neckbeard.
To everyone else: gaming is far from perfect but it is not this absolute paradigm shift that certain people make it out to be. All it takes is -minimal- support from developers (more if the studio is deeply tied to .net and super direct3d stuff), and BAM shit starts to fall into place. (see WoW, EvE, and the source engine stuff).
After typing out this long post, I see that this is initially in reply to 'virtual' environments, the posts being modded down, and your's being 5: insightful (thereby not being hidden). I agree, virtual environments for gaming ,while it can work, is a shitty idea. It's similar to fixing a leaky faucet by installing a new faucet. Bandaiding the issue, while ignoring the larger problem. If you're post was specific to virtual environments, I'm sorry, disregard all the negative things I said about you, I didn't fully read the hidden comments.
As more games move to working on mac and windows, we'll see a larger shift in games that work well in linux (not because mac apps are easy to run in linux, that's not actually true; It's easier to run windows applications than it is mac applications applications. The reasons are slightly more complicated; Just take my opinion, as a guy on the internet, and regard it as fact.). Steam is the first big -potential- example, The fact of the matter is that the industry thinks linux support is super hard, when it's not as hard as they think it is. (it's comparable to the average man running 2-3 miles every day, it's really not hard at all, you just have to get up and do it). And with companies now actually considering mac versions, linux versions look much much easier.
Ubuntu has about twice the share of all other linux based desktops, combined, it would be nice to give it its own statistical category like mac. You don't just throw mac and 'linux' together as 'unix'. I'm tired of developers thinking they have to target multiple linux desktops with their coding and packaging. If you put out one single file, it should be a .deb.
If correct, these stats could be interesting, and worth investigating more. They could also be a bundle of meaningless misleading numbers, as many are. However, I would say the developers themselves will, in their sales history numbers, have much more data, which will show more relevant results.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I'm up to that challenge. Ten seconds per frame. You are not the sysadmin you claim to be. Get off your dead ass, download all of the virtualization softwares, and TEST THEM!! Really put them through their paces.
I'll grant that you lose a bit of performance in virtual machines. I'll grant that *some* games just won't virtualize. But, many games will load and run, and they do MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better than you claim. And, it's very likely that the developers of VBox, VMWare, and Parallels are working on the problems with some of the games. Hell, I can't really say that they are, but it's quite likely, IMO.
A LOT of games run very nicely. They are just applications, after all.
Just put them through their paces, and stop making ignorant comments. And, next year, take another look. The VM's are really getting better. VBox today is NOT the VBox of one year ago. Given another ~5 years, GP's post may very well be accurate, in that ALL games can be virtualized inside of Linux.
I think it's sweet that I can already run a Windows machine to browse all the malware sites, and collect all the real trash available, to play with at my leisure, then just reset the VM to a snapshot. Awesome!! Talk about real gaming, LMAO
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Donate to what? What on earth are you people talking about? I'm so confused. Why would any clear thinking individual ever donate money to Microsoft? I even went and read TFA, and I STILL have no idea what we're donating to... Now maybe I've been living under a tech rock or something, but can we get some context please?
why is it rude?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
In fact.. I can't think of a game that I actually want to play, that doesn't run on linux (given enough work).
for those of us who don't want to have to maintain and operate four different versions of Wine to poorly play games, there's Windows.
Look, I like Linux. I brought Linux home to fuck my sister. I'm using Linux to write this comment right now. But basically none of the games I want to play play properly on Linux. Games which are listed as having "Gold" compatibility on the Wine site don't work at all. Mechwarrior IV that just came out fails with some memory exception. I got Startopia to launch in Wine 1.0 but never in an earlier or later version. Civ 2 has never worked, likewise Alpha Centauri. Battlezone would sometimes launch halfway and sometimes not at all but I never got graphics. Dungeon Siege errors and quits. In truth, I've tried dozens of games, and the vast majority of even the old games fail. If you truly believe that more PC games work on Wine than don't work, you have no idea what you are talking about whatsoever.
+
I said Tf2 already, but really anything that runs in the Source engine.
Unless it has additional restrictive DRM which doesn't work on Linux. All that CD check stuff tends to break Wine with memory exceptions. You have to strip out the CD checks before games will work, and in most cases, they still don't, not least because of incompetent, amateurish cracks.
As more games move to working on mac and windows, we'll see a larger shift in games that work well in linux
People keep saying that, but it hasn't happened. The Wii was supposed to do it too; there's plenty of non-Wiimote games on the Wii that would have been easy to port. Also, any incompetent PS2 or PS3 port (which underuses the EE or the Cell, respectively) should be an easy port, but we've got basically zero games like that. Making it easy to bring a title to Linux doesn't bring it there; it has to look profitable, too.
(not because mac apps are easy to run in linux, that's not actually true; It's easier to run windows applications than it is mac applications applications. The reasons are slightly more complicated; Just take my opinion, as a guy on the internet, and regard it as fact.).
You're a stupid ass. This is slashdot, we can understand that OSX is POSIX, and that Objective-C and OpenGL are readily available on Linux (not to mention OpenStep.) Few slashdot users want to be talked down to, especially by someone like yourself, who is unqualified.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In a sense it's no so much regular donating (as in simply giving money for a good cause) as appreciating something which is given to you for free and paying an amount you see fit.
For example I like to download free audio book episodes through www.podiobooks.com. They have a feature where you can donate money in relation to a specific show.
The majority of that money goes to the author/creator of said show and the rest to the site which provides the service. That way you can give money to the people who decided to share what they created for free and at the same time support the upkeep of the free service which made it posssible for the creators to share it with you.
I can't even name a Source engine game that has additional DRM besides Steam.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
[paraphrase]You're wrong because I can name off n bad experiences[/paraphrase]
I'll actually meet you on MW4, but it is a general trend for games coming of of MS's game studio to not work on wine. As for all your other games, sorry you've had bad experiences Dungeon Seige has a platinum rating, Alpa Centari a garbage rating, and civ 2 a silver rating. The point is, my parent said it was impossible to do any games better than 10 fps, and I called BS on that. I went further to say that many mainstream games work great. To which you grudgingly reply "oh yea? well... civ 2 doesn't work". I'll leave that there.
[paraphrase]CD check drm doesn't work well.[/paraphrase]
the is simply not true for all games; some yes, most, not at all. TF2/source games, not at all. This issue simply doesn't hold water.
[paraphrase]Hah.. you're so wrong about mac stuff being hard, it's all unix and psoix and c workds and opengl works and yadda yadda yadda[/paraphrase]
Okay smart ass, then you tell me how to run this itunes.dmg installer. I glossed over the topic of it being slightly complicated (I admitted it in the post). But if you want to break it down, yes you can compile anything on linux, man if you're willing this much effort into compiling obj-c mac stuff on linux, yet you complain about wine difficulties? Sorry but your counter argument right here tells me you don't know what you're talking about, great that you laid the acronym penis measurement on me, maybe if I had more in my op I'd not have been so wrong?
[paraphrase]On a final note: shut up guy on the internet, you don't know what you're talking about.[/paraphrase]
There is always this chance when you take up arguments with random people online. I could not know what the fuck I'm talking about, in fact everything before, imagine I made it up. Personally I think it's more likely you don't actually know as much as you seem to think you do.
[predicts]I'm a system admin for unix, veteran of n years, shut up kid[/predicts]
I'm sorry, but that gives you no authority on running modern games on linux with wine... None at all. Okay, you have about the same authority on the subject as random guy on the internet. I personally have a beef with self proclaimed 'unix sys admins' because my father in law is one... and I have to deal with his handycap (he thinks he knows what he's talking about) all the time; thus making me an expert on unix sys admins.
Actualyl looking back, I shouldn't have said every day, I should have said 2-3 miles, 2-3 times a week. Every day is actually a bit rough (unless you plan on running 5ks and such and competing).
This was also seen (perhaps inspired by?) 2D Boy and World of Goo. The wrapup page is http://2dboy.com/page/4/
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
As for all your other games, sorry you've had bad experiences Dungeon Seige has a platinum rating, Alpa Centari a garbage rating, and civ 2 a silver rating.
I can look in the database too. But since I can't get Dungeon Siege to work on wine 1.0, 1.1, or 1.2, with all options turned off or with all options turned on, and further have never got civ 2 to work more than to open and then crash when I try to move or something similar, I trust that database about as much as I trust you. I read the reports and they say they take out the CD check and it works. I try the same version, and the same patch, and it fails. Shrug.
blah blah blah huaglghalghah blah blah blah
The chip on your shoulder is interfering with the operation of your tinfoil hat.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well I'm the admin for a very large VMware system, 30 IBM Blades running Vsphere. I've taken all the classes and used VMWare for some heavy duty applications, mostly Linux based. I can explain all about virtualization performance to you, if you'd like.
Here's how I know you don't know what you're talking about. You can't virtualize a 3D card. What shows up for the VM client system is a generic card without 3D acceleration. Games are not just applications, in order to get decent performance, they need to access the hardware at a lower level than most applications.
Sure, the 'ten seconds per frame' was hyperbole, but only slight. When most people talk video games these days, we're talking 3D heavy games, not Tetris. If you've gotten any games with 3D graphics working quickly in a VM, I'd love to hear which ones and what frame rates you are getting.
Trying to explain virtualization to me is like trying to teach your grandma to suck eggs. Simple fact, unless you are a programmer working on virtualization systems (and you aren't) then I know far, far more about them than you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well I'm glad you got that vitriol of your chest before you realized you weren't responding to what I was saying. We aren't talking about WINE, which as we know is Not an Emulator. Mr. Dumbfuck was claiming QEMU would run games virtualized at full speed.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, FFS, no, the latest and greatest games don't run in VM's - and if they do, you won't get near the performance that you'll get on hardware. I jumped on that "hyperbole" as it deserved. Anyone who believes that you CAN'T_PLAY_ANY_GAMES in a VM is full of shit - and you obviously know that.
But, I think you'll grant that GEEKS and GAMERS are two separate groups, who overlap somewhat. The things that geeks use computers for run well in a VM. The things that gamers use computers for pretty much suck. All the REST of the computing world hardly has any idea what a VM is all about, so we can pretty much leave them out of the discussion.
I'm the geeky type, and everything that I've ever wanted to do in a VM ran anywhere from alright to great. Those games that I really want to play, all play decently. I may fire up a few of the more advanced games, and see which run, and which don't. My kids have piles of games, some of them fairly new, so I have fodder to feed the machine. Maybe I'll find that I'm overly optimistic about what the system will do, maybe I'll find that you haven't done all the homework that you claim.
I'll try to remember to post back when I'm done playing around. ;^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I don't think you needed to jump on that hyperbole, as I doubt anyone with half a brain failed to recognize it as a humorous reversal of the normal 'frames per second,' as when we say that Hummers get 10 gallons to the mile.
I'm asking you, how do you get 3D acceleration from a VM? You don't. If your games run fine without 3D acceleration, they aren't the same games I run. I'm currently playing Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition at 1920 by 1080 resolution, it looks beautiful and the frame rate is high.
I'd be interested to hear the results of your investigation. Having tried games with 3D acceleration under VMs, I can say, they have to use software rendering because a virtual machine can not grant direct access to the 3D hardware, and that drops your frame rates down to 1-2 frames per second for even the simplest games.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'll be perfectly honest - I'm not sure if I'm getting 3D acceleration or not. Those few games that I've bothered to install "ran alright". Virtual Box has (now it has, I guess it's been there for something like 6 months, maybe a bit longer) a setting to enable 3D acceleration when you create the machine. It was "experimental", that tag has been taken away now.
So - I need to sort the kid's games, find one that specifies that it needs 3D accel, install it, and see what happens. I have to many brands in the fire to start that experiment today - and may not find time til this weekend. But, I WILL do some experimenting, and try to quantify and qualify the results.
I don't even know when slashdot archives these discussions - maybe this one will still be open when I get it done.
One thing that WILL NOT work on my hardware with Vbox, is that Bumptop that was discussed recently. It throws up an error related to video, and won't even try to start.
Whatever - I'm making a note to experiment, and find out which games work, which work well, and which don't work at all.
Talk to you later!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Windows users are forced to buy and re-buy software. No wonder they don't have anything left! Thankfully us Linux users can keep our wallets tucked away, far from Steve Ballmer.
In fact.. I can't think of a game that I actually want to play, that doesn't run on linux (given enough work).
Medieval Total War 2. I've looked at the lists of games on winehq, Cedega, PlaysOnLinux, etc. Nobody got it actually working.
I'm not saying that it is super easy to make all these work,
That's a problem for me. I want to spend my spare time playing games, not configuring them.
I'd love to be able to play all my games on Linux or Mac, but for the time being I've given up on it. Too much work, too much uncertainty.