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GOG.com To Add Linux Support
jones_supa writes "More great news for Linux gamers: following the footsteps of Steam, GOG.com is preparing delivery of Linux games. They expect to start doing so this autumn. The officially supported distributions will be Ubuntu and Mint. Right now, they are performing testing on various configurations, training up their teams on Linux-speak, and generally preparing for the rollout of at least 100 titles — DRM-free, as usual. This will update some of the catalog's existing games with a Linux port and bring new ones to the collection. Further information on specific games is yet not known, but GOG invites fans and customers to their community wishlist for discussion."
The old DOS games is for starters. The DX stuff is simply using the Linux port of games that are coming out now for many games. Except instead of relying on the developer to test their Linux builds somehow, they test on Ubuntu and Mint to make sure it at least works there (heaven forbid some game developers merely recompile and ship, or use some oddball Linux config and "works for me!").
It's really an extension of what they did for OS X - DOSbox games are inherently supported, other games are on a case-by-case basis on whether or not a port exists.
They also distribute (and hence support) quite a few Windows games with a Wine wrapper for Mac OS X.
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About time too. All their games catalog which runs on DOSBox and ScummVM should be easy enough to port. Other games have portable engines too like GemRB.
GOG is a vendor that sells DRM free games so more power to them.
This should rope in literally a handful of crotchety old nerds. I almost decided not to buy stuff from GOG because they didn't already package for Linux, and I imagined that it would sometimes be a pain in the ass to make the games work even though it should be easy because I've written dosbox configs before, etc. And lo, I was right. The dosbox configs for example have no consistency in the style department, so you actually have to understand them in order to write the new one. That's just a waste of space in my brain that I could be using for something useful, like Firefly trivia. So I wound up only buying the games I really felt I needed, or games which were a buck, because I would then run them in a XP VM. So huzzah, GOG. I am likely to spend more money with you in the future.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not very hard technologically for them if its only the old dos games which they already distribute with dosbox to run properly even on windows.
This closes an even sillier gap to be honest; because GoG has for quite some time expanded beyond old games to embrace indie games, and it was a bit of a goof to not support linux versions of games that were already natively available on Linux.
I ended up, for example, choosing to buy FTL via the HumbleStore (back before there even was a humble store, and there were just those wierd 'secret' links you could use.) because although GoG has FTL, they only had the Mac and PC; and I wanted to buy something that gave me access to all 3 platforms.
So while it will be great to see what progress GoG can make on on the old DOS (and old windows catalogs) its just great news that we'll be able to get the native linux release of any indies we buy there now. This is a real boost to their indie catalog, much of which is already linux native, and all they have to do is add the downloads.
I wonder how hard it will be to play these games on a Steam Machine. The quantity of Linux games available will make a big difference in the success or failure of that project.
PlayOnLinux can already access your GOG account and install many Windows games automatically and run them using WINE.
Here's a good tip for older games that use DOS4GW.EXE: download the GPL'ed binary from http://dos32a.narechk.net/inde... and re-name it DOS4GW.EXE, then substutite it for the original. You'll find a noticable improvement in game performance, even using WINE o DOSBOX.
If your game uses CWSDPMI.EXE , download the latest version of it from http://web.archive.org/web/201...
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
'How hard can that be?"
Really, really hard. Linux is a mess of mutually incompatible pieces with mutually incompatible dependencies. There have been attempts to create a "common base" that can be used, but very few people seem to use it. Pretty much the only truly safe way I've found to distribute Linux binaries (as opposed to source code, for which there's autoconf and friends) is to statically link all your dependencies and build for as many architectures as you feel like supporting (x86 obviously - probably i586 at best, though and maybe i386 - and likely x64; maybe ARM but probably not). This produces huge binaries with a lot of redundant code compiled in, but it means it works regardless of which libc you use, what version of openssl (or gnutls) you have, and so on.
Distro-specific builds let you use package files which pull in the requisite dependencies. They have smaller install footprints and smaller downloads, and you don't have to push a whole new version every time a dependent package fixes a security bug; you can expect the user's package manager to handle that. You can also massively reduce support costs by assuming that users have a common base of software installed (a full set of standard utilities instead of busybox, a version of python that can execute a given script, etc.)
However, distro-specific builds have their own costs. If you say you support distros X and Y, you have to test on all the common configurations of those distros. The more you add, the more the costs go up. There are over a thousand tracked distros on distrowatch. You have to draw the line somewhere. Ubuntu and Mint are close enough that it's really easy to handle both of them, but it's awkward for those who don't use Debian-derived distros.
For what it's worth, some game companies do take the "support generic Linux" approach. Heroes of Newerth, for example (a DotA clone that predates, and is in some ways better than, DotA 2) has a Linux client that often works... but sometimes it doesn't (I've had real issues with some older Fedora machines), and troubleshooting why can be a real pain.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Funny. It would seem IBM has no problem with their DB/2 UDB releases, which run on every version of Linux I've thrown them at over the past 5-6 years. Sure you have to install some optional modules on some platforms, but how much more complex do you get than a database server?
Shame on the other database vendors for not being able to do the same. Currently DB/2 UDB 10.2 is the only commercial database I was able to install on Debian. Clearly it can be done, but the other vendors seem to take the "RHEL or the highway" lazy approach to "Linux" support.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.