I use Linux for all my development (with some win-specific exceptions). My IDE of prefferance is Anjuta :-).

I have been using both Windows and Linux to develope my games. I have to admit the tools on Linux are getting better but they are not up to par with MS yet. That don't mean I dislike developing on Linux, just means I have to work harder at it for some things. Either way, until there is a major benefit to using Linux over Windows, the community will remain a small targeted group. Most computer users are lazy and creatures of habbit. Not to mention, most computer users barely know how to turn their computers on, let alone troubleshoot a problem. They are not going to go to the trouble of searching google for answers. They are going to assume their computer is broken. With Windows are familiar with it. It is comfortable. People don't like change. So if there is going to be any real chance of the Linux market being viable for game programming, there will have to be major improvements that the average computer user would percieve as a better choice. It just hasn't happened yet. We can argue about stability all day long but the end user don't care. It isn't that hard to reboot, not to mention XP has done a great job of fixing some of the stability issues.

Until something changes, Linux will remain a toy for superusers. But I will continue to port my games to it in hopes that one day it is a viable solution.

linux is not a problem to dev on. the main thing you need to keep in mind is that things run a bit different.

i am a hard-core coder so the only thing i need is a text editor with a bit of syntax highlighting if possible, a file manager and a console: nothing more.

i could not work anymore with bloated dev tools like MSDev as i'm just used to free roam work.

automake is so far doing a good job at managing projects. just edit your sources and don't waste any thoughts about possible dependency problems. and what's easier than a ./configure ?

in the end it is a matter of taste but i use no IDE at all as especially not everybody uses KDevelop or MSDev or DevCpp or whatever.

and 'man' rules. you need it only for function definitions and that's what man has been made for: quick and easy.

Regarding IDEs: I don't use Emacs, but as I understand it, it isn't a bloated piece of software as a lot of people assume. It is actually a nicely integrated piece of software. Integration the way it was meant to, not integration like IE, WMP, and the OS.

And I find that once I got used to the CLI, it was definitely much faster for me than to use a graphical file manager to do my work.

As for a lack of documentation, it is a problem, but projects like TLDP help. And as for the man pages, if you don't know what the command is, you're stuck...unless you use apropos, which is beautiful and useful for just this purpose.

So what I gather is that the tools are mature, but the users aren't used to them. Microsoft's newest stuff is considered better than the comparable stuff available for Linux (like MSVS vs KDevelop/Anjuta), but if you are able to handle your own projects, compilation, and debugging using make, gcc, and gdb, you're miles ahead.

Also, the market. You have Linux, made up of sys admins (not likely to be gamers), Gnu Zealots (not likely to play, much less pay for, a non-Free game), and others. Any gamers will likely have Windows for the purposes of gaming anyway, and with most games easily ported between Win32, Linux, and Mac, there isn't much incentive to use Linux more.

Seeing some of the posts on this board, I do hope that there are people who prefer to buy the Linux version of such games when they have the opportunity. I plan on buying the Linux versions of Gish and Bridge Constructor Set, as well as getting Doom 3 to run on my main system. UT2004 also has a Linux client and I do plan on getting that game as well. Half-Life 2 is a game I am not as interested in getting, but it is more because of a bad experience I had with Valve's "customer service". Still, the lack of a Linux client isn't helping their case.

I plan on developing games that work on Windows and Linux, with Mac ports on the way as well. I had BSD in the back of my mind, and I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to produce BSD ports. That would be a fourth platform to support (or would I have to support multiple BSDs? I need to do research) and opens up the market a bit, I am sure.

there's one thing you miss here:
there are amazingly many gnu zealots and other linuxians that would love to play on their linux machine IF the games would run on them.

this in fact is a problem of the devers considering linux a minor system and even if you get games for linux they are just 'a port' of the game, not designed for the system in first terms.

i mean take the old UT. the game logic contains hard-coded WM_SIZE and such windows messages. so for linux that had to 'hack it over' to use that win-crap stuff. with that mentality games will never end up on linux.

the biggest problem is for sure buying games. i'm a convinced LFS user and nothing except self compiled stuff gets on my machine. if the devers would allow me to compile the game for my machine so it gets the power it can (in contrast to 'blend' builds) then i would pay for it. but just slamming an ugly binary on my head and then even in some self-installer i really only take as an emergency solution as it 'taints' my system ;)

Quote:Original post by nuvem

Quote:Original post by C-Junkie
Closed source drivers are buggy drivers. They are pissed upon by the majority of the kernel people for technical reasons, not religious ones, though there are some that do for both.

They seem to work just fine for windows.

correction. they don't. if only i had the source code like for the linux ATI drivers for my old windows back then i could have hacked it to get it run. nah nah... closet source might work for apps but drivers MUST me open source as ten tousand hackers can fix more problems than a ten man team ;)