Ya know what we need next?

Lets get these Steam compatibility tools on steam.

If Valve could make it possible to upload compatibility tools as an app, you could just bring up the store page for 'Roberta' and click 'Install', and it's added. Then when there are updates you'd get them automatically too.

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Yes this game was a total flop on Linux, and frankly it's entirely Facepunch's fault.

It's amazing there even was Linux players left for this game considering how the Linux customers were treated. Considering the Linux version of the game wasn't marketed at all, was poorly ported with almost zero effort by developers who appear to know nothing about Linux at all, rarely if ever tested and poorly optimised, and had a laundry list of bugs that weren't fixed for a long time, it's amazing anyone persisted with that.

Yes Facepunch was going to have difficulty supporting Linux, when they're making decisions like committing to middleware that is overtly incompatible with Linux, and not even testing their game or even running it on Linux, until Linux players report massive bugs, and not even attempting to learn anything about how the Linux platform works or how to develop for it. They seem convinced that they should be able to treat supporting Linux like just exporting a song into a different file format, like they should be able to just click Export in Unity, pick Linux, and call it a day.

Unsurprisingly when you treat the Linux platform like that, it shouldn't be surprising when your game is a total flop on Linux. If you put in zero effort, you should be grateful you get any sales at all. This isn't a report card on Linux gaming, Linux gamers bought this game at launch and played it, and they were let down by the abysmal support from Facepunch, and thus sales/player numbers reflect that. This is just a case study on how not to develop/publish/support a game to any platform.

And really if Facepunch are going to disconnect Linux version of the game from the Windows/Mac playerbases, and freeze it's development, they might as well just remove the Linux build entirely, since that just basically made the Linux version of the game absolutely worthless. Because otherwise Windows gamers converting to Linux who use to play Rust, will get their hopes up only to discover the Linux version is broken, and just have a terrible experience as a result.

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Frankly I switched to Linux for Liam's Wine puns.

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Honestly, I give up on GIMP, Krita all the way!

Also

YAY!

*Happy Blending Noises*

^_^

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Fantastic work Josh! =D

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Looking at the long term, like say, 5+ years, I think it would be worth our effort to heavily support Godot and any open source middleware as a means of encouraging more Linux games.

An open source game engine like Godot gives 1st class equal support to Linux as it does Windows, which makes targeting Linux dead easy. Plus, because it's open source, any Linux related bugs can be easily fixed up, and performance can be thoroughly optimised to match or exceed Windows, so the degree of Linux support isn't decided by financial motivations of a corporation. When we're at the whims of proprietary game engines and middleware, if they don't support Linux, or they have Linux related bugs or performance issues that are deemed low priority, then there's nothing much we can do to correct that situation. When the game engine is open source, the open source community can 'steer the ship' to an extent.

Another reason to support Godot and open source middleware, is because long term, it could become the most attractive solution for game development. With no licensing fees and it's MIT license, Godot could be adopted by everything from indie game devs to AAA studios eventually, if the industry gives it support. If that happens, you have game development largely occurring within a software package that can export to Linux with a click. And leans game development towards open technology (Vulkan, open file formats, etc), instead of closed technology. That's a huge win.

It will take years for Godot to get there of course, first Godot needs to hit it's 4.0 milestone and get it's Vulkan based renderer, which will add a lot of necessary functionality to Godot to make it suitable for larger scale games. That can be expected to occur around sometime early next year perhaps. But beyond that, there's no reason why it can't catch on. It would be far cheaper for the industry to adopt Godot too, than to rely on proprietary game engines and licensing.

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You're amazing Philip Rebohle! Great work! =D

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This is fantastic, having to add via a terminal a PPA just to install some bloody drivers was a fugly thing, and not clearly explained anywhere. It's just one of those things that you have to learn by talking to other Linux users. That's a terrible first impression for a new Ubuntu user finally giving Linux a go after spending years trying to convince them "You don't need to use the terminal or do anything weird or technical to use Linux" and "Ubuntu is a super user friendly Linux distro for beginners!".

Excellent, anything that makes Linux more user friendly for beginners is always good to see. Smoothing off any sharp corners of a new Linux user's first experience with Linux is really important for growing the size of our ranks.

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That's quite generous of them to be honest.

Real talk, GOG doesn't have a very large market of gamers relative to Steam, and neither does Linux obviously (I mean, I know it sucks to say that but.. well it's true). The developer could have phrased his earlier statements better but they were right about how niche that is. The number of Linux sales they'd likely get for an indie game on GOG is probably pretty low. They really didn't need to do this from a strictly profit driven perspective, so it's quite awesome of them to do this.

Windows and Linux support, no MTX or expensive DLC, a Demo, Steam and GOG releases and no exclusivity in sight, that's a very awesome way to release a game, really supporting consumers and choice of platform/store. Developers like this one really do deserve as much support as we can offer.

I know the Linux port still has some performance issues, but the fact that the developer bothered with a native port when their game was already Platinum for Proton is fantastic, and I'm sure they'll eventually figure out the performance issues.

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Quoting: DesumI've been hearing conflicting information about Mint's plans regarding LMDE. Anyone know if they intend to continue giving it releases (perhaps with renewed interest from Canonical's recent blunder)?

Linux Mint Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE and LMDE are all continuing. And Clem has reconfirmed multiple times that 32bit libraries will be sticking around as well. For now they're mostly holding steady and watching what Ubuntu does, but if Ubuntu ever breaks compatibility with Wine/Steam in the future, they'll work around that so it doesn't affect Linux Mint. At least that's the jist of what Clem has said on the matter.

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