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Developer of Banished writes up his thoughts on Linux

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The developer behind Banished, a city builder/survival game coming to Linux has written up their thoughts on Linux. It does make for an interesting read.

Sounds like overall he had a reasonably positive experience. A few annoyances like an installer failing to create partitions on his SSD:
QuoteGetting linux going should be easy right? Download ISO, burn disc, install in new machine. But then the installer fails to make partitions on my brand new SSD! That was ok, nothing is ever easy – so I decided to setup the partitions myself using gparted. Does it work? No. After two days I figured out that for some reason the install wouldn’t work with the drive plugged into easy-to-access SATA5. Plugged the drive into SATA0 underneath the video card, and we’re running!


He is still trying to get Intel/Nvidia working together with Optimus, I thought that wouldn't have been an issue by now, as last time I tried it (last summer) the Nvidia drivers were capable of switching, but he didn't give specifics on that.

He ended up settling with a program called SlickEdit for doing code on Linux. I've never heard of it, so worth pointing out as he seems pretty happy with it.

QuoteSo when I told fellow programmers I was going to deal with straight X windows and GLX, they told me I was crazy and would regret it. But really, all I need is to create a window, and render OpenGL into it, and get some keyboard/mouse input.

I am concerned he is using X11 and OpenGL directly, instead of using a library like SDL. Any time this happens multi-monitors become an absolute pain.
QuoteWhen said and done the X11 code I had to write was far far smaller than any 3rd party library that handled the same things, has no extra dependancies, and compiles fast.

The reason the 3rd party library's tend to be bigger, is that they handle all the sore spots for you. Which is why SDL is so useful. There's also the fact that Mir and Wayland are coming within the next year or two likely as the default, and this could cause headaches for him. SDL already have support for both.

It's really great to see a developer talk about Linux, and not in a ranting way, but a productive "here's what happened" sort of way.

I really can't wait to play it, be looking forward to it since I first saw it released on Windows. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial
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About the author -
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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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Muffinman Apr 11, 2016
A true DIY guy. You have to give him credit for going it alone. Hope he gets friendly support when he does reach out for it.


Last edited by Muffinman on 11 April 2016 at 2:20 pm UTC
tmtvl Apr 11, 2016
Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTI really don't get what's your problem, guys. I installed really a lot of linux distros on different systems. The installation always worked except for one notebook - the RAM in that one had errors which caused kernel panics. Apart from that a little bit of finetuning was needed in some cases to get wireless working with some nottebooks. But for that case: Why don't you just by hardware which is known to work oob? If I want a windows system, I do buy windows compliant hardware. If I want a linux system I should do the same for linux.

With desktops I never had any problems. Including proprietary drivers for the GPU.

Most people just buy a Windows computer and install Linux on it afterwards, despite people like Tuxedo Computers, Entroware, ThinkPenguin, and ZaReason offering pretty awesome Linux PCs.

Personally I've never had any problems with partitioning, which might be because OpenSUSE uses magic in their partitioner.
Breeze Apr 11, 2016
Every time I have to install Windows on a system, I need several driver discs or I am screwed. The only thing I do with Linux is add a repo for proprietary graphics drivers. I just had a Windows box from work arrive. It took 2 days until it was fully updated. I went back to check several times a day to see if updates were done and rebooted it manually. I don't understand why people put up with that crap and why they think Linux is harder.
Cybolic Apr 18, 2016
Quoting: throghThis is in fact not a problem within Linux or better to be said of a free distribution. It is more the problem of the hardware and the manufacturer: Releasing some kind of proprietary, closed black-box is the trick. [...]
Don't get me started on soft-raid and win-modems ... *feels rant bubbling*
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