Every time I hear a dev say they skipped Linux at launch I can't help but wonder, "Is there something that could be done to make developing software for Linux easier?". Is there some kind of SDK that the open source community should be putting together, something that reduces the burden?

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I am very interested to see how exactly Denuvo handle supporting Proton 'OOTB' with their AntiCheat solution. I'm going to be pretty keenly awaiting the first game that pops up using it.

I'm kinda expecting that Denuvo AntiCheat will detect that it's running in Proton, then inform the user they need to download and install something separately, not 'in Wine' but to their actual PC, perhaps a kernel level Linux anticheat system that does the same job, detecting the game's process (running in Wine) and detecting any tampering.

If that's how it works, it will be interesting to see how many Linux gamers are OK with installing it.

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DirectX is a cancer.

OK that's some strong language so let me walk back a bit from that.

DirectX is a cancer. ... In the sense that, while perfectly capable of performing it's job and technologically 'OK', it's a tool that Microsoft created deliberately to keep developers on Windows and that's still it's job even to this day. It's constantly holding back the success of the open APIs and protocols like OpenGL and now Vulkan that would threaten the dominance of Windows.

Microsoft push DirectX onto developers because they want developers tied to a technology that Microsoft controls, not an open technology that the industry shares.

For this reason, I don't want to see DirectX 'spreading'. I want to see it 'phased out'.

But with DirectX so widespread, 'phasing out' DirectX and transitioning to Vulkan becomes a very tricky balancing act.

DXVK, translating DirectX into Vulkan for Wine, technically allows DirectX to spread further, so the positive impact of DXVK is 'complicated' to say the least. The negative side effect is that we see DirectX running fairly reliably on Linux now, with great performance. The positive side effect, is that the DirectX is being translated into Vulkan, and it's bringing more users away from Windows and to an OS where DirectX isn't natively available, where DirectX is a second class citizen, something that's being phased out with a compatibility solution in place.

Translating old DirectX games into Vulkan while pushing for new games to use Vulkan directly can be thought of as a slow transition. DXVK is open source and can even work on Windows too, so developers could potentially even use it to translate their existing Windows games from DirectX to Vulkan, although I can't think of a reason why they would unless it reliably produces superior performance.

So effectively, DXVK neuters DirectX.

But this 'DirectX <3 Linux' thing is very different.

Microsoft's motives are clear, if they control the technology stack developers use (cough, Github and NPM), they control developers, and if they control developers, they control where the best 3rd party support goes, and they can ensure that it goes to their products and services, not the competitions.

Microsoft created WSL, because if anyone is going to use Linux, Microsoft would rather that person do so in a way that Microsoft strictly controls.. and preferable in a VM under Windows.

It's no different to how we on the Linux side of the fence regularly try to convert Windows gamers to Linux:

"Switch to Linux, you can play those old Windows gamers under Proton!"

Why do we say that?

Because we want those gamers to be using Linux "most of the time", and only interacting with Windows software in situations where there's no native Linux version available, and where that lack of support would result in a loss of users for Linux. It's a very careful balancing act.

What Microsoft's now announcing with DirectX coming to WSL only, I find very concerning.

Effectively Microsoft are now attempting to do something which will fragment Linux. There will be one version of Linux available to a HUGE number of people across the world, everyone with access to WSL (think about how many Windows users there are in the world) will have access to a version of Linux that can directly access a reliable high performance version of DirectX.

To make matters worse?

OpenGL will be translated to DirectX (sound familiar?) and Vulkan is in a limbo state of "It might happen one day", but by the sounds of it, it won't be a first class citizen like DirectX on WSL.

Then there will be the 'Non-WSL' version of Linux that won't have that access, the version of Linux we all use. This effectively fragments Linux into two groups, keeping in mind WSL has 'potentially' a larger userbase than ours.

Software written for 'WSL' that uses DirectX won't work on regular Linux.
Software written for regular Linux that uses Vulkan won't work on WSL.

Think about that: Microsoft is encouraging the creation of Linux software won't work on any version of Linux except for a version of Linux only available on Windows in a VM.

To make things even worse?

Our only response to this, if it results in a significant drop in users to regular Linux, would be to effectively create a DXVK like compatibility layer on Linux that allows the same DirectX API access available on WSL, but translates it into Vulkan. But the performance and reliability would never be on par with that in WSL. Again achieving Microsoft's goal of controlling the technology stack, and thus controlling the developers and where the best third party support is, back on Windows.

Microsoft hinted at the 'possibility' of bringing DirectX to Linux, but don't for a moment think that means they will open source it.

Maybe some would say I'm over reacting, but after watching Microsoft for a very long time, all I see is the same ol Microsoft as ever, new year, new marketing, but same tactics. Stuff like this is why we absolutely need for Vulkan to replace DirectX on Windows, we need to kill DirectX, not let it spread further, and why we need to get the Linux marketshare higher.

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At the end of the day, Microsoft is a corporation driven by an obligation to maximise profits for it's shareholders. Every action they take is going to come down to a cost/benefit analysis where someone looked at the ROI and made the decision to go ahead. If Microsoft 'invests' in open source, it's because they believe they have more to gain than they have to lose.

Given that, I highly doubt any action Microsoft takes with regards to open source software or open standards, will be one that's calculated to result in an overall decrement to their market position, revenue, or vendor lockin of any of their products/services.

I wouldn't expect, for example, Microsoft to open source Windows or a library for importing/exporting Microsoft Office files, or anything else that could possibly help open source alternatives compete more fairly against their products/services.

I especially wouldn't expect them to do anything that could benefit Linux on the desktop front, or weaken Window's position on the desktop. That would allow competitors to easily step up and challenge their market dominance and regardless of what anyone says, Windows is very much so a major product for Microsoft and the cornerstone of their power over the industry. They won't be taking any action that results in a calculated loss of market share or which might result in that happening.

All these comments translate to for me is: "We will engage with open source when it is in our interests to do so.".

And really, "No durr?", that's the position of all corporations these days.

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Love it, great idea

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We definitely need more of this kind of thing.

Freedesktop is a great org, and it's something that should be more significant on Linux, I would love to see it's position elevated even higher.

Standards and specifications are great and I would love to see more focus on getting common behaviours written into open specifications and standards. Desktop environments can offer better features and more consistent user experiences across Linux with standards and specifications to agree upon. Stuff like this just makes life easier for everyone involved, we need to see more of it.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: gradyvuckovicNot necessarily because Adobe is 'anti Linux'

Not necessarily, no. But I've long thought they must be. Everything they've ever done seems to manage to be an important Achilles' heel for Linux. Look at Flash--as far as I recall, first they did nothing to get Linux browser plugins and such working. Then they made some stuff just in time to take the wind out of the sails of open source workarounds. Then they left the stuff they made crippled. Then I think they did it all over again when they bumped versions. So basically they did nothing except when doing something would create results even worse than nothing, in which case they did that.
Sure, Flash was evil, but for years it was nonetheless very important, and crappy Flash support single-handedly made browsing with Linux a second-class citizen for a crucial few years when it looked like Linux might grow on the desktop.

We still as far as I can tell have nothing decent to wrangle .pdf files. Nowadays trying to edit .pdf is the only time I ever wish I had my work Windows desktop when I'm on Linux at home, because I know of nothing remotely analogous to Acrobat pro. And I mean I don't even really like Acrobat that much as software, in terms of how it handles workflow or whatever, but when it comes to taking scissors and tape to a .pdf file nothing else seems willing to do much at all. I dunno, maybe some of the art-type programs can, but that's from a completely different paradigm, not much use dealing with text and merging files and shuffling pages.

I swear over the years Adobe has hurt us more than Microsoft ever did even though MS was trying really hard and landed some shrewd blows. It's plausible that wasn't on purpose, but I gotta say pretty impressive to manage it by accident.

Yeah no doubt. I don't think they are deliberately trying to prevent Linux from becoming popular, only because I see no immediate logical financial motivation for that, short of some kind of "grand scheme", and I feel most of their actions can be pretty easily explained as just Adobe being incredibly lazy and doing only the bare minimum level of support they feel is necessary financially to maintain their cashcows.

Yet none the less, they have been one of THE major thorns in Linux's side from the beginning. Mostly because they are everything that's wrong with proprietary software: Buying successful software to add to their monopoly*, format lockin with file formats that are proprietary and undocumented, subscription models for software that receives little more than quality of life improvements every few months, closed source apps that are only available on a limited range of platforms forcing users to change what software/OS they use to suit Adobe CC rather than the other way around.

(*No joke, look into the history of most of the software that Adobe sells and most of it was bought from other companies (even Photoshop) and they're still buying software to this day, eg: they recently bought Substance Painter.)

It's hard to argue with their logic, their total disregard for how they treat customers and willingness to engage in anti-user behaviour and compete via vendor-lockin has worked very well for them, they're making billions every year from it.

They're one of the last standing giants of the old traditional business model of delivering software in the 90s and 00s, and the only reason they've lasted so long is because of that huge catalogue of software under their umbrella from their acquisitions and format lockin, they're so ingrained in the design industry that removing them is going to be like trying to perform a skeleton-transplant on a living person.

Autodesk are the other thorn in our sides for the design industry, but they're becoming less of an issue now Blender is rocketing ahead faster than anyone can keep pace.

It seems the only way to ever fully muscle Autodesk and Adobe out of the industry, is to make the entire design software industry FOSS, otherwise they'll just keep buying every proprietary application that rises up to challenge their monopolies.

So it's great to see the FOSS design software really stepping up it's game, eventually it will starve Autodesk and Adobe, or at least force them to move into other industries or refocus on providing services rather than software.

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Fantastic stuff!

Disclaimer: These opinions are of a qualified professional graphic designer currently employed in a digital designer role.

I am really of the opinion these days that it's a lost cause to hope for the Adobe software to ever find it's way onto Linux unless somehow desktop Linux achieves a massive marketshare that makes it impossible to ignore, say 40% or more. Wine is the only hope there realistically and Wine still struggles with that complex software, it's just not reliable, and even in the best case outcomes, it works perhaps 99% of the time. When you're in a professional environment, "99%" reliable isn't reliable enough.

Not necessarily because Adobe is 'anti Linux' but because I imagine after such a long development history for applications like Photoshop, porting their codebases to other platforms could be possibly a nightmare that might take years for Adobe to complete.

So it's really important for artists who want to use Linux instead of Windows to have industry grade FOSS tools to work with instead, otherwise Linux just isn't an option.

In our industry, traditionally the FOSS alternatives like Inkscape and GIMP were always in the past considered "nice attempts" but woefully inadequate, not even viable to consider using as an alternative to Adobe's software, at least according to every designer I ever talked to about them, and from my own past experiences I've found them lacking many features I needed to perform my work, and their UIs felt 'ancient' & 'awkward' after any time spent using Adobe's software, like working with one arm tied behind your back.

I've seen some graphic designers spend weeks trying to use Inkscape and GIMP before straightup saying, "No I can't do my work like this, I need an Adobe CC subscription", and I've been there too giving both a solid try for a few weeks before concluding the same.

I've always supported both projects and regularly donated to them in the hope that one day that wouldn't be the case, because there's very little I'd love more than to cancel my Adobe CC subscription permanently.

Inkscape 1.0 is a really substantial update and I think it's appropriate they decided to make this version their "1.0" as this release truly feels like a proper alternative to Illustrator now, the improvements are not just substantial but also raise the quality of the application to within a stone's toss of Illustrator. The UI doesn't look quite as sleek as Illustrator 2020 but it's definitely boxing at the same weight level now.

Krita likewise with it's recent rapid improvements I would consider a feasible Photoshop alternative now, it's not perfect and like Inkscape I would say it still doesn't look quite as sleek as Photoshop, but it's capable of performing the kind of work that graphic designers would need it for at least. A modern live text tool and a lack of user friendly macro recording support is probably the last two outstanding features missing, and the text tool is getting fixed in the very next update I read.

Between LibreOffice, Inkscape, Krita, Blender, ArmorPaint and Godot 4.0, a digital artist/employee has almost everything they need for general office work and 2D, 3D, Vector & Interactive design work on Linux, and I love that!

That in combination with the fact that many things can be accessed via web apps and hence are compatible with every OS by default, like Slack, Discord, Office 365, etc, definitely makes working on Linux much more realistic.

Video & Sound editing software still need some work, but for my basic video and sound editing needs I find the existing options acceptable, but I know professional video and sound editors don't find the existing options quite good enough yet.

And we absolutely need a proper alternative to InDesign. Scribus vs InDesign is like MSPaint vs Photoshop.

The next big challenge is fighting the format lockin of Adobe's products, as you can imagine with Adobe CC being 'industry standard', more often than not, every time I get sent anything from another designer, it's often in Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign format and there is really no straightforward conversion methods for such complex file formats. These file formats store information that in some cases can not be translated into anything that Inkscape or Krita can understand, which makes editing those documents very difficult.

But still, we're getting there, things are improving, and I think partly what has helped is Adobe's laziness in recent years, they've really slacked off and are just sitting back relaxing, milking Adobe CC subscriptions, their software updates to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign in recent years have been pathetic, mostly just cosmetic and superficial changes.

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Been working with Godot a lot lately, it's really awesome.

There's a lot planned on the horizon for Godot, including usability improvements after 4.0 which I'm really excited about, as I think that's probably going to be the final touch needed to really help Godot take off.

I think Godot has a great future ahead of it, and will become a serious player in the game engine space very soon, and as a result we'll see popular games made with it. Which will be great for Linux, Godot's Linux support is absolutely first class, not just an afterthought, so supporting Linux for games made in Godot is very easy for developers.

I think it will be a while before we see Godot used in the AAA game market, probably many many years, but I can easily foresee a few popular indie games made in Godot emerging in 2021. The engine is just perfect for indie devs.

Between Godot 4.0, Blender 2.9, Inkscape 1.0, Krita 5.0, and ArmorPaint 1.0, the FOSS toolkit for creatives emerging on the horizon is really exciting.

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Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: MohandevirI would like to see GoG integrate Proton in some form... Maybe offer proton wrapped versions of their Windows games, if at all possible. I'd be a lot more inclined to support them. Having to deal with Lutris or wine is not something that I look forward to...

The thing is these anti-drm people don't get what DRM is about, practically you are asking developers to work on a "trust" system when they depend on the "goodwill" of people that they will not share the game you bought without DRM through any portable storage system to other people that didn't buy the game. It is like the disc/cassette era with the difference you still keep your copy of the game.

Most of you end of you ended any debate about this matter with the sentence "This is my choice" so as you want your opinion to be respected you should respect devs choices too, and if they decided they need at least some sort of protection, good for them, I completely agree.

I just played my steam TW3 copy without internet connection last week because of a mistake by the ISP, so this "argument" of players needing constantly internet to play their single-player games is just bogus.

But you GOG users keep wishing GOG will use proton, keep wishing more devs will release more games on that platform. My money is going at least to a company that makes things to happen, Valve, I live the reality, I can play windows games on my linux install with a single click.

You can keep dreaming that GOG will be a thing one day. Good Luck.

PS: Proton is open source, still needs someone to work on it, does GOG have the money, the interest or the people capable of doing the job? NO!

Completely agree on all points. It would be nice if we could live in a world where everyone is honest and everyone can develop software and games for free, or everyone just honourably paid a donation to whoever provides them entertainment. But that's just not compatible with the real world, I don't blame game devs for wanting to try to protect their products from piracy.

Quoting: legluondunetThis is why Linux gamers community should support Valve that invests a lot and support Linux OS. Stop buying your games on Origin, Uplay, Epic, Playstation....stores until they do the same.
I put GOG appart because they give support to Linux users at their level and they promote no drm games.

That's basically my position, I only buy games from Steam now. Steam is throwing everything at making Linux gaming happen, and everyone else is basically throwing nothing at Linux gaming. So hence my money is going to Valve every time, they're supporting us so I'm supporting them. Our success is mutually connected at this point, Valve's success is our success, our success is Valve's success.

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