I work on a program that ships for "Linux" and we support every distribution that calls in. We also ship on HP-UX, AIX, Windows, Mac OS X, and so on.

Supporting Linux isn't that hard, we just provide the key libraries we will need. This isn't ideal in every way, but it works reliably for us and for our customers.

Meanwhile claiming that autopackage and LSB not succeeding is just showing the original poster's ignorance. Autopackage was a collection of horrifying hacks, trying to basically ignore the technical hurdles in the way of the approach selected. The author refused to accept that hacking your way past problems is not a good choice for *infrastructure* and so no one serious was willing to use it.

LSB meanwhile was a minimum commonality target. It provides a set of commonalities that you can target and expect your application to work on any LSB-enabled system. For what it is, it works. You can target that set and have a working app on any such system. The problems are that it is by necessity limited in scope, so if you want full integration with current features of provided libraries, you have to forgo LSB to get the current stuff. In practice the third party ISVs who were being targetted by the LSB effort (like my company, or GOG) typically just chose the technical approach that my company does -- make a binary that works everywhere you have libc w/in the last 2-4 years, and call it a day.

The challenges with shipping binaries on Linux all have relatively simple solutions, it's just a matter of going out and doing it, and building that expertise. It's also a matter of having the necessary talent to get the project started.

Hey guys :)
Interesting thread, I do wish for the gog guys to start shipping officially Linux versions of games.. especially those games that are already natively supported by linux itself (see: scummvm and dosbox games).

I really see no reason why you wouldn't want to, the Linux community is dying to get some damn good games going :D

In the meantime, if you want, you can check out my project, I just released it today in open beta status: http://www.gogonlinux.com
It's a gog client for Linux, we provide custom patches to make most games work without any hassle or problem (still working on getting more and more games, wallet is really unforgiving :( )

I also made a thread here http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogonlinux_gog_client_on_linux_more_likely_than_you_think_wwwgogonlinuxcom in case you want to report back, I'd appreciate it :D

I agree, supporting Linux for a software you wrote from the ground up with that requirement in mind is never hard.

Supporting software that wasn't written by you, to which you don't have source code access and which has more complex requirements than most regular software (taking a wild assumption that the software you work on doesn't tie in closely to the graphics system or graphics hardware acceleration) is a whole different animal.

The dosbox games would be easy.

The windows games are another matter. Some fairly reliable, some not.

Scummvm games (and some others too, like flash) won't be a problem either.

As a Linux user I'm going to go out on the limb and say lets take back porting off the table. Recompiling old games for linux that were not originally made for it is not a reasonable thing to ask for. There may be some things that can be done there(repackage dosbox stuff) but the reality is for that stuff we need to harp on the wine people, not GOG. What I would like on the table is Trine, or any of the plethora of other modern platform independent games being made right now being sold by other vendors. Many of them aren't in GOG's catalogue, but several are, and the pressure is on to start doing what others are already doing.

Once competitors start offering something you say isn't really possible, all of those nice, quality excuses for why you "cant do" start sounding like Charlie Brown's teachers to your customers. They may be very valid, but too many others are overcoming the issues here, and it gets hard for people to buy into. I'm personally getting a little weird about buying games twice, or avoiding my preferred retailer because the guy next door is selling the Mac, Windows, Linux set GOG isn't .

This being said fragmentation and all out overexposure to Linux development on a consumer level is its blessing and its curse. I think we are in some transitional state in PC gaming where Linux could find itself in an important position, but for that to really work it may need to have a champion distro or to fork in more than one direction. The desire to have a techy playground for computer geeks is no longer compatible with where the OS needs to be for the people whom are trying to make good use of it. It needs to be able to provide a stable experience and it cant do that with new versions coming out every 4 months across 10 variants. Versions that won't let you run Gimp 2.8 instead of 2.6 when its not even that old. It gets old being forced to do a complete distro upgrade because the one you got doesn't or even cant get current versions of popular programs. A problem that rarely exist on windows.

Somebody is going to have to make that call soon about what "version" constitutes the mainstream distro, and the mass community is going to have to support that decision, and we all have to pour all our effort into supporting that version for a real duration of time. Not 6 months, more like 3 years. Life cycles need to be more like windows or it just doesn't work.

I know people have their pet distros, but this doesn't mean Arch linux, or fedora, or what have you disappears. It just means you are a different player playing a different game. Maybe stuff will work, maybe it won't but its up to you and your super skills to make a way. But there is one nice perk of the OS being free, you can have more than one.

As side note. If some guy really is smart enough to be using a custom distro build and using an e-ink screen, but too stupid to not understand why he can't play GOG game XYZ, just call him an eccentric, or an idiot and be done with him. Don't let that guy be the reason GOG doesn't offer something people want.

I agree, GOG should offer all versions of the game IF they are available. But look at most indies on Kickstarter. The funding threshold for "make this for Linux" is almost always higher than "make this for Mac". Meaning that Linux support is likely to be added at a slow rate.

It's a vicious cycle, nobody supports Linux hence nobody develops for Linux. Honestly, if I were a Linux developer (which, in a way, I am) and I see a platform as big as gog.com start selling Linux titles (both exclusives and multiplatform), I'd feel more compelled to release a Linux version as well, simply because the market is still so empty (with a lot of demand though, as we can see from steam linux clamour, wine, playonlinux, gogonlinux, etc etc) that a single mediocre game released on Linux could potentially get way more revenue than the same game on windows (because it'd get drowned by other titles).

Some Kickstarter projects support Linux (typically the ones designed for Unity) so this might change, but it will require a great deal of support from fans. I helped fund Super Retro Squad, which will be available in Linux because it's a Unity game.

Unity the game engine and not the GUI right? Rochard used it and preformed well for me (fun game.) I believe its linux support is "experimental" but in decent condition.

There are a lot game engines that have done a lot of the hard work for making things Cross platform. One of the hardest parts in migrating to linux is making incompatible decisions in the beginning with out knowing it. Using DirectX, not understanding that the Linux file system is case sensitive, and computing paths incorrectly are all easy missteps. That stuff can make it hard if a developer thinks they will just up and slap Linux version together after the windows version ships.

The issue that seems to be the bigger issues is this concern about deployment. In software development you rarely do it all yourself. A lot of times you latch onto things (libraries) other people have made and your software has to have it to run. A lot of times it has to have a specific version to run. Different distros have different ideas about what software and what version of software goes onto a given installation(so does time), and that thing you need may just not be on someone's computer even though its on yours and 100 other people's. Then different distros have different ways of getting software installed onto the system. Some things come without installers, but then you have to unpack, and create your own shortcuts, and I doubt GOG is in to that sort of thing.

Unity the game engine, it's listed on War for the Overworld, among other tings, and is in pretty common use.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/subterraneangames/war-for-the-overworld

So many excuses. Just start providing DOSBOX versions in Linux. Then provide .debs and .rpms. Of course, at least some knowledge is required. Just selling and earning is the easiest way.

Even CDPR themselves already work on making their Red Engine cross platform. It already supports OpenGL (as you can see in The Witcher 2 Mac OSX release). So may be when they'll get to the point of releasing Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk for Linux, GOG will start shipping other Linux games as well.

What if some Linux user uses a sheet of paper as her monitor? The games wouldn't work, and that's not how GOG does things.

If you really think that OpenGL support = Linux support please get into software development, STAT! You'd make a fortune if you can actually get that to work as you say.