Quoting: "MyGameCompany, post: 5060, member: 68"This is the first I've heard of it. Thanks for sharing the link. When I get around to updating my Linux dev articles and/or assembling a Linux dev book, I'll be sure to include it in the list.

Awesome. At the very least, having more options to choose from means more educated decisions :)

Quoting: "MyGameCompany, post: 5060, member: 68"My current sales breakdown by OS is 60% Mac, 20% Windows, and 20% Linux. Most of the Mac and Windows sales are for Dirk Dashing 2 and Fashion Cents Deluxe. Most of the Linux sales are Dirk Dashing 2, with a few copies of Dirk 1 and The Adventures of Rick Rocket being sold too. I may post a blog entry with more specifics in the future, but I'm not prepared to do that yet. I'm kind of in a holding pattern. I haven't really even started promoting Dirk 2 yet, since I'm waiting on the writer to finish the strategy guide for Dirk 2 (should be done very soon now). Once that's done, I can start running the ad campaigns I've got ready to go, issue the press release, submit it various distribution channels, etc.

Cool, thanks for sharing. If/when you do a blog entry about it going into more detail, I'd be keen to read :)

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Quoting: "Hamish, post: 5049, member: 6"Nixstaller is mainly used for games Edward Rudd ports, such as Penumbra, Amnesia, and Overgrowth. I have not seen anyone else use it though, which may be a shame given what you described.

Games are the only proprietary software I run, so I wouldn't know first hand whether or not there's anything else using it. I did read mention of some gene sequencing stuff called Newbler or something that uses it.

It's GPL'd, so it shouldn't be hard for anybody to get their hands on. Perhaps other packagers just don't know about it or are keen to use mojoinstaller because it's a higher profile icculus/loki thing?

I just noticed that we're getting wildly off topic :D

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Quoting: "MyGameCompany, post: 5041, member: 68"I would say the 2 best installers on Linux right now are [URL='http://installbuilder.bitrock.com/']Bitrock[/URL] and [URL='http://icculus.org/mojosetup/']MojoSetup[/URL]. The latter is free, and has been used for dozens of commercial games. Bitrock is expensive (wasn't when I first bought it), but is very powerful and easy to use. Both installers provide you with a single, user-friendly, and easy to maintain package that works on any distro.

Have you heard of/looked at [URL='http://nixstaller.sourceforge.net/viewpage.php?page_id=1']Nixstaller[/URL] (I did some hunting up and that's what Overgrowth uses)? In addition to providing normal, customisable installer behaviour, it's also capable of optionally building distro packages on the fly (currently supporting 10 Linux distributions plus a few flavours of BSD and Solaris). So you get the benefits of a standalone installer that runs on anything, customisable install locations, *and* package manager integration without having to maintain multiple builds/installers. None of the other installers I've looked at seem to give that kind of range, and since some people specifically care about having software registered with their package managers, surely this option is All Things To All People.

That said, it does seem to be pretty slow compared to the other installers you've mentioned (at least for building RPMs).

By the way, thanks for sharing those numbers. It's nice to hear that you've got good diversity amongst your customers. Off topic, do you have any other figures/stats that you make available? I had a quick hunt through your blog forum thingy, but didn't spot anything.

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Quoting: "liamdawe, post: 5039, member: 1"So any clues or indications as to when the next Linux blog post may be?

Nothing that I've seen. That recent blog post by one of the Intel guys might be an indicator that something regarding graphics drivers and optimisations might be forthcoming. This seems to have been the hurdle that was the catalyst for Valve starting to come out about their Linux plans (the call for Linux specialists, inviting Larabel to Valve HQ, the assorted snippets in interviews, and the eventual launch of the Linux dev blog itself), but I suspect that like the other Valve blogs, the frequency of content won't be consistent.

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Quoting: "MyGameCompany, post: 5034, member: 68"There are other problems with using RPMs and DEBs to distribute closed-source binaries, which I detailed in my articles. Mainly, package managers can't always resolve the dependencies, and even when they can, you have no idea how the dependent library the PM installed was built (and whether the configure options you depend on were built into it in a way that makes it compatible with your program - things like rpath, whether to use shared X11 libs, etc).

Sure, but is creating a package with bundled libs and no dependency metadata (you still get the benefits of being easily uninstallable, and some level of integration with users' normal methods of installing software) a better or worse solution than a standalone installer? I think this is what the Wolfire installer does. It seems to give the best of both worlds (or at least as much as is possible).

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Quoting: "Hamish, post: 5031, member: 6"That does not answer the question - I fully accept that package managers are an asset and a strength of the platform, but I disagree that they are the best course of action for third party proprietary software for reasons I have already mentioned. I do not consider that to be throwing away a privilege but recognizing the faults and strengths of each approach. Proprietary software is always going to be alien on a free system - as such alien solutions work best for it. That is my take on it at least.

Sorry, I thought your questions was rhetorical (and I think that saying that it brings back a problem that we are trying to move past probably indicates what my answer would be anyway) ^_^

I don't really agree with the reasons you mentioned for third party proprietary software. IMO it's better to register software with a package manager so that it can be easily removed and conflicts can be identified than it is to bypass it.

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It surprises me that there are people who don't quite grasp that package management systems solve the problems that individual installers create. DEBs and RPMs (and the tools to manage them) exist because there are problems with way that things are done on MacOS and Windows. Sure, there are advantages and disadvantages to each, but embracing what we've been actively trying to escape feels a bit like taking a backwards step.

At the end of the day though, it doesn't make much difference. Unless Valve are going to integrate Steam with local package databases to register individual games and other stuff it installs, Steam will essentially be its own isolated package management system.

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Quoting: "Hamish, post: 5009, member: 6"I do in general dislike registering games with my package manager, yes. I am also unsure how you think that if a company only releases a DEB version of their game (or an RPM for that matter) it would not be restrictive. All the LSB provides is a standard set of libraries and operating standards. It does not make it so that one package format will work on any distro. That is what I was arguing about.

Providing DEB or RPM packages doesn't *need* to be restrictive at all. They're just archives with little bit of metadata that tells the package manager what it depends on and how to remove it. As I understand it, the actual content of the packages don't need to differ at all. Of course, I'm not talking about exclusively providing one or the other...

If the app is self-contained enough to be unpacked from a .tar.gz or a .run, I don't see why that itself couldn't be put into a package manager friendly archive in exactly that form as well.

Wolfire's way of handling it is interesting. Their installer gives the option to build a package manager friendly archive appropriate for your system on the fly. It takes a long time to build an RPM (I haven't tried it on a DEB based system), but it's pretty new and hopefully will be better over time.

The LSB (based on POSIX) also governs what stuff should live where, doesn't it?

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Quoting: "Hamish, post: 4998, member: 6"I have to agree with Liam on this one - I dislike games packaged in RPM or DEB packages as I like to keep my games and my system seperate. Going other routes also means that developers do not have to worry about making multiple packages and that end-users do not have to fear being locked to certain distros.

This is why the LSB (Linux Standard Base) exists and why it is important to respect it where possible. I don't really understand why installing to LSB friendly locations would make users fearful of being locked to a specific distro though (or were you just saying that you dislike the idea of games registering themselves with the package manager?).

Also, correct me if I am wrong, but if I installed Desura to a system directory (such as /usr/local/games or /opt or whatever) would that not mean that it could be used by everyone? Or alternatively, if I did install it in my home directory but granted other users the permission to read (or even write) to the Desura directory, would that not also allow other users to access it?

You are correct, I believe (I haven't tested this though). Desura doesn't give you an option for this kind of installation though (in fact, the installer doesn't ask you where to install at all - it just installs into whatever folder the installer was launched from).

This is something that the application should be providing for though, not something that users should have to configure themselves.

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Quoting: "liamdawe, post: 4993, member: 1"Same as the way Desura does it though? It's just my personal preference.

To my knowledge, the current Desura client doesn't support multiple users and would need duplicate copies of games by default. This isn't ideal IMO.

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