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C4 Engine Drops Linux Support, Developer Says Linux Is Inferior

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Oh boy, I do love a good rant from a developer. This time it's the C4 engine dropping Linux support (honestly, how many of you have even heard of C4?).

Warning: It's a real rant.

Choice quote from their announcement
QuoteThis decision was made based on the disproportionate cost, both in terms of time and money, that we incur to support Linux relative to a very small return on our investment. This decision was also made to preserve my own sanity since my personal experiences with Linux have been extremely negative and have resulted in huge wastes of time that could have been better spent on more productive tasks. Terathon Software will no longer contribute to the popularity of an operating system that I personally view as inferior in design to both Windows and Mac OS X. Linux has proven to be Frankenstein OS assembled from a disparate array of barely functioning parts with horrible reliability and little potential for future improvement. Time that would have been spent on Linux support will now be used to strengthen our product on platforms with much greater viability.


The comments are just, amazing. One commenter provided this funny image:
image

And the developer responded with:
QuoteIt's my expert opinion, man.

Oh my, I mean there's being a good developer, and there's being a bit full of yourself.

He has also been dropping gems on his Twitter account:

Finished excision of Linux code from the C4 Engine. Negative 2008 lines. Good riddance.

— Eric Lengyel (@EricLengyel) January 10, 2015



I have reached the point where I feel morally obligated to drop all support for Linux.

— Eric Lengyel (@EricLengyel) January 10, 2015



Things like this are concerning though, and it is a real issue:

I love it when Ubuntu starts freezing for no good reason right before the login screen. That's high-quality engineering right there.

— Eric Lengyel (@EricLengyel) December 26, 2014



I do wonder if it is a hardware or a driver issue, my last freezing issue turned out to be RAM that failed at specific things.

We don't often write about people ranting about Linux, and for one developer making a full bit of kit like C4 it can be time consuming, so we don't have much to say other than "oh well". We still have many more better engines around.

All hail Frankenstein, in Frankenstein we trust. Move along.

P.S. Please try to keep comments reasonable about this topic. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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109 comments
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kozec Jan 13, 2015
Quoting: N30N@lucifertdark, He has given a little more info on forums:
Quoting: Eric Lengyel it would periodically start failing to boot up. Either the boot loader would give me an error message, or the screen would just stay black without anything happening, or I would get to a solid purple screen that just froze. No mouse cursor, no response to keyboard input, nothing. This happens for no reason whatsoever. I never made any hardware changes or did anything out of the ordinary like tinkering with the hard drive partitions. It just spontaneously breaks. So I reinstall. Again and again, every time this happens.
I know what your thinking but…
Quoting: Eric Lengyel And btw, I don't have a hardware problem. Don't even mention it. It's new, and it's high-end.
So, basically, his hard drive is failing, and he doesn't know nor understands symptoms. Shouldn't anyone tell him?

But, at least, he has hi-end :D
Larian Jan 13, 2015
Quoting: XzylOkay two of your posts are direct shots @ Linux users for retaliating against someone who fire the first shot.

Yup, sure did. Because there's nothing to "retaliate" against. One guy had a table-flip-rage-quit moment when he finally had enough of having things break for him, and tons of people queued up to stamp on his nuts with combat boots. "Hey man," you may say, "I only kicked him once!" Uh huh, you and about a hundred other people. That's the problem. It makes us look bad. All of us. He needs help (and possibly derision - I won't be using the C4 engine).

Also, apt-get isn't without its issues either. Get caught in dependency hell ("Dependencies not satisfiable: X package depends upon Y, but it is not going to be installed" ... or my favorite "package depends upon foo 1.9 but the only thing in the repos is foo 1.9.0 so we're not going to install it" ), and I think anyone will see how someone could have a meltdown. Now you could use aptitude to do your conflict resolution, but I virtually guarantee that to start breaking things if used extensively.

QuoteYou ever go onto a hardware (graphics) site and read all the NVIDIOTS vs AMshitD nonsence? Ever go into a game forum and listen to its users blat and wail (Windows users usually)? Apparently not, Linux "fan bois" aren't doing anything any other "fan bois" don't do.

This is what's called the appeal to popularity fallacy (argumentum ad populum) - everybody else is doing it, so it's okay for me to do it too. See, the thing is, it's not okay. I don't care what everybody else is doing. Unless of course you actually want to sound like a "Windows fan boi." And I think I speak for all of us when I say dear god, please don't.

QuoteThe best part about bashing this guy is that ANYONE who has installed Ubuntu can officially talk down to this guy as that is his level of incompetence (apparently).

I've got $100 that says if I give anyone his machine and have them use his install method (wubi as I understand it), they're going to have exactly the same experience that he did. That's not incompetence, that's shit that doesn't work. I've installed Ubuntu dozens of times with no problems whatsoever. And then I had an experience that I wouldn't have believed if I didn't watch it happen. Contrary to popular belief, Linux does NOT play nice with everything out there yet, just the vast majority of it. Someone's personal experience successfully running installers that other people wrote entitles them to nothing other than working software.

And while we're at it, I noticed that someone brought up the fact that wubi isn't supported. I vote that it shouldn't be available for download if it's not supported. If you're going to offer a product as a viable solution to install your software and then orphan the thing, that's just bad policy. You're begging for bad PR and rants like this dev made.
sr_ls_boy Jan 13, 2015
WOW! What an 'expert' !

Phoronix got me interested in Solaris. But the automated install was borked.
As a result, I had to reinstall Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. No problems. I only had to
replug my wifi usb adapter back in, to get online. This happened yesterday!
Then I come here and read about some PH.D. nerd can't install linux at all.
I wish I had his pay check.
Liam Dawe Jan 13, 2015
He claims it's not a hardware issue because it's new and high end? More stupid statments.

Guess what happens with new hardware and old hardware...they both fail.

If the freezing is random it sounds like a bad driver though, as i doubt he had the same issues with Windows on it. To claim it's not a hardware issue just because it's new and high end though is just idiotic.
tmtvl Jan 13, 2015
I'm an Archer and I have problems with Ubuntu 14.04/14.10: for some reason the entire system gets installed under some kind of /@ folder instead of good old /.

Also, game development happens typically pretty close on the hardware when compared to what web servers do. So I can understand his pains in a way, that being said...

The way he lashed out was as unreasonable as how I lash out against Google and Microsoft, which are the two most evil companies in existence. Linux isn't a company (well, okay it kind of is Red Hat), it's a Free Software kernel. If he's got a problem with GNU/Linux, he's welcome to step in and send his own fixes to a maintainer.
Aryvandaar Jan 13, 2015
Quoting: LarianI've got $100 that says if I give anyone his machine and have them use his install method (wubi as I understand it), they're going to have exactly the same experience that he did. That's not incompetence, that's shit that doesn't work.

I don't want to get into semantics, so I don't care if it's incompetence or not, but when I got into Linux I considered something like a wubi installer, but I decided to read more about it because installing a OS within a completely different OS seemed like a very bad idea.

Just because there is a lot of software out there that doesn't work without serious bugs doesn't mean that you should trust it blindly, or blame another piece of software because another one failed. That is basically what he's doing. He's using a third party installer and blames Linux, a kernel.

The very fact is that this guy has no idea how Linux OS works. He went in expecting it to work like Windows. Whatever this guy have to say about Linux is irrelevant, because he doesn't seem to have any proper experience with it.

It's what you teach your kids, you try the food before you decide if you like it or not.
EKRboi Jan 13, 2015
wait.. so the guy is trying to install 14.04 on "new, high end" hardware? NO FREAKIN WONDER! The 14.04 live usb wont boot up right with my hardware (x99, maxwell) even with "nomodeset" to "bypass" the nouveau. 14.10 however does start up just fine with nomodeset during boot with its "newer" 3.16 kernel. I use it to image my OS drives about once a month.

When I swapped out all the 990FX/FX-8350 stuff on this machine to the new X99/5930k with Arch I didn't have to do ANYTHING but plug the drive in and boot it. Windows on the other hand.. ppfffttt.. it freaked out (as per usual).
N30N Jan 13, 2015
Quoting: CybaCowboy
Quoting: N30NStrange approach, but at lease with all the frustration and (apparently) negative feedback he is still attempting once again to resolve the problem.

Um no, I'm pretty sure he's not... He said he's installing Microsoft Windows 7, not a Linux-based operating system.
If you see my previous comment, he wants to use the Wubi.
Quoting: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuideAt this time, Wubi does not work with Windows 8 default boot-loader. Thus at this point Wubi would not work on a new Windows 8 machine. You would be able to install, but not reboot into Ubuntu.
EKRboi Jan 13, 2015
Ahh.. thanks N30N.. it is all making much more sense now. Win8 or no win8 I don't understand his insistence on using Wubi though.. I've had a UEFI install of both win8 and Xubuntu and then Win8 and Arch on a single SSD before.. was no trouble at all. I never made either UEFI bootloader aware of the other and simply used the "native" UEFI bootmenu (f11 on my machine during bootup) to select which Win Boot Loader when I needed to boot windows.. otherwise Linux was default and it never even shows grub.
Larian Jan 13, 2015
Quoting: AryvandaarI don't want to get into semantics, so I don't care if it's incompetence or not, but when I got into Linux I considered something like a wubi installer, but I decided to read more about it because installing a OS within a completely different OS seemed like a very bad idea.

I would rather not use wubi if I could help it either (and it's hard to imagine how I couldn't). However, something tells me he's having compatibility issues that aren't wubi related. And as always, I could be wrong.

QuoteJust because there is a lot of software out there that doesn't work without serious bugs doesn't mean that you should trust it blindly, or blame another piece of software because another one failed.

I think you meant "There's a lot of software out there that works without serious bugs", but I'm with you so far.

QuoteThat is basically what he's doing. He's using a third party installer and blames Linux, a kernel.

Not with you anymore. :) I gather that his latest troubles with Linux are just that - the latest ones. He's specifically griped about apt-get, Ubuntu, and basically everything but the Nvidia drivers (which he praises). He's not talking about the kernel ... at least I don't think he is. He's talking about GNU/Linux being a giant pain in his nether regions and he's not willing to support it after this latest batch of issues (as an aside, ask me about how code::blocks borked an entire Ubuntu install for me, x86_64 and 32-bit compatibility libraries, PulseAudio being forced down my throat whilst breaking things for years, and my adventures in SDL2 sometime).

And yes, I think he threw a temper tantrum unbecoming an adult. But man, do I ever understand.

QuoteThe very fact is that this guy has no idea how Linux OS works. He went in expecting it to work like Windows. Whatever this guy have to say about Linux is irrelevant, because he doesn't seem to have any proper experience with it.

I'm only bothered by your use of the word "proper". I don't know what proper Linux experience is. This dev is telling the world about his Linux experience, and people are somehow offended by it. That doesn't seem terribly fair.

But tell me, is one's experience "proper" only if they've had a certain number of hours running Slackware? Or what if they've done the Ubuntu thing for a month after coming in from Arch? What if they've got UNIX experience with OSX, but haven't done the penguin? Or what if it happens that they're just trying to figure out a modern linux distro and have had nothing but headaches because the documentation for what they want to do sucks? I admit it would be different if he were lying through his teeth (and if so, release the hounds - and a squadron of lawyers), but I don't think that's the case.

Keep in mind, I find his comments to be bombastic, overwrought with hyperbole, and just plain old ill-considered, but we, as a community, should fix what he's bitching about, not kick him around for daring to bitch in the first place. If it's broken for him, then it's bloody well broken. If wubi is the culprit, then the misbegotten thing shouldn't be available because it tears stuff up. And should it turn out that his brand new hardware isn't properly supported (Liam's suggestion - and I agree), then that really is Linux's failing.

QuoteIt's what you teach your kids, you try the food before you decide if you like it or not.

I like pie. And barbecue ... just not together.
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