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Google Talks About Its Ubuntu Experience
dartttt writes "There was a very interesting session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit by Google developer Thomas Bushnell. He talked about how Ubuntu, its derivatives and Goobuntu (Google's customized Ubuntu based distro) are used by Google developers. He starts by saying 'Precise Rocks,' and that many Google employees use Ubuntu — including managers, software engineers, translators, people who wrote the original Unix, and people who have no clue about Unix. Many developers working on Chrome and Android use Ubuntu. Ubuntu systems at Google are upgraded every LTS release. The entire process of upgrading can take as much as four months, and it is also quite expensive, as one reboot or a small change can cost them as much as a million dollars across the company."
Bushnell also mentions that Google Drive will soon be available for Linux. Other news out of UDS: there was discussion of a GNOME flavor of 12.10, Electronic Arts reaffirmed that they "won't delay their Windows work for Linux," and Unity 2D is likely to disappear in 12.10.
Unity3D will still be usable without GPU acceleration, it will use a new software implementation of OpenGL called llvmpipe. llvmpipe is a much better software rasteriser than we've traditionally had, but it's still software which means it's significantly slower than even the simplest of hardware OpenGL implementations.
I work for S2Games, and we have had native Linux clients for Savage 1, Savage 2, and currently Heroes of Newerth. It was the Linux support that originally got me involved with the company's games and eventually hired. Our OpenGL renderer is slightly lacking at the moment, but the main problem is that of business and market share, not technical reasons. Maintaining something around only 4% of the user base uses is difficult (mac and linux combined), but many of the community volunteers come from that mac/linux group. As the guy who runs the technical support, I really wish more people would play on Linux. The Linux problems are usually much easier to solve (except alsa problems). With Windows issues, there's a lot of uncertainty with firewall setups, antivirus, file permissions, and odd behavior in general. With Linux, the problem can usually be identified with a few tests. It's a viscous circle. There aren't many Linux games because not many gamers run Linux, and there aren't many Linux games because the companies don't want to have to increase build times for each patch by supporting another OS. EA taking this small first step may help break this cycle, which is only good news for Linux gaming.