Ben Golus

I respect your opinion, howewer if @PA_the_game team looks at Linux users this way then I'm unsure about the future of PA:T on Linux and decided to move to another game. RTS is about investing a lot of time and who knows when they're going to drop support.

Yeah ... I'm not directly affiliated with PA anymore. Linux support was a passion for many on the project, and I was a proponent in favor of that support. My point was that Linux support isn't free, and rarely profitable.

I left Uber a year ago, and wasn't really involved with PA for the last 3 years I was there. Heck, PA isn't even at Uber anymore. @PA_the_game isn't likely to drop support any time soon.

My personal feelings on native Linux support are I would love for it to be a successful platform, but it's a big risk for a small studio using bespoke technology.

There is no denying that there are plenty of issues with some parts of Linux, but still I believe it will become predominant gaming platform, especially in the more "appliance" space. It is worth investing in the know-how early.

It already is, it’s called Android, and desktop Linux experience is essentially useless when developing for it.

I don't agree with this comment specifically. If you are using the NDK directly, and the cross compilation debug tools for this, then it is identical to a PC Linux dev environment except for targeting a different arch. All love and absolutely no hate is attached with this reply!

To me this kind of stuff isn't much different between Linux, Mac, or even some Windows setups, and that's not generally the problem with getting into Linux development. The issue is all of the gotchas of different distros and drivers.

I should note, Android doesn't solve the fragmentation problem, in fact it's worse for Android than desktop Linux. Google themselves have said they can't keep track of all of the hardware & software permutations that exist. However the user base numbers make up for it.

Yeah, I agree with your high level point about Linux fragmentation, which is a nightmare! But the comment that PC Linux dev experience isn't valuable when developing on Android was hyperbolic, as it is actually invaluable, since as you say, similar issues exist on all platforms.

I am sure you are just getting exhausted from responding to all the replies to this thread! I completely understand the frustration you have gone through with graphics dev on Linux, and I apologize for any frustrations on mobile. Driver devs suffer similarly from the same problem

One thing people who know me would never call me is hyperbolic. Never ever, not in a hundred thousand years...

I'm very grateful you've supported #Linux with your game Planetary Annihilation! Thx a ton! Especially as you've kept your promise to bring this game to Linux. I think the vocal part of Linux gamers helped to spread the word, including causing sales on non Linux platforms

Hard to know the impact on sales. Some on the team argued this same point. At this point I'd guess that benefit at best cancelled out the additional costs rather than being a net positive.

The Linux community likes to take credit for a lot of the Kickstarter success, but we found no direct evidence of this.

Don't most slot machines (gambling in Vegas) run on Linux? How are they able to create a reliable experience? Is it because they control the hardware and all components? So, they just have to write code for a specific set of components?