I mean to say.. or ask... or comment on is how easy Linux is vs. learning curb. Basically I'm talking about the graphics, sound and system routines that are common to most games. I wanna know how many other developers out there feel the same way I do. I personally, feel that Linux was pretty easy to learn my self. Again, I'm talking about the basic system parts that are common to most games. More importantly though, I've found that X11 isn't all that good. Coming from windows (i.e. Win32) it was quite a change. I don't like the way it looks, at all! But it works at least. It's cool when you get a window open running OpenGL on another operating system... I think it is anyways. Sound. Sound was amazingly simple using OpenAL. Not even 100 lines of code and I have a decent sound system ready. Add in a WAV reader for loading sounds into OpenAL and now I have a fairly complete sound system. -Minus streaming of cource. Which didn't look to hard to handle I might add. So I guess I'm wondering why more developers are not taken by the simplicity of Linux and it's lil sorts of APIs for game development. It seams easy enough for me to learn and play with. It would be cool to be able to buy a game off the shelf from Wall-world for Linux. I have noticed better frame rates on certain things when porting applications I've created. I like it... what about you?

Linux users don't pay for software.

Selling to people who are unwilling or incapable of paying is not a good business model.


And no, no holy wars. It's a fact. Look at market shares. Unless you're RedHat, selling enterprise contracts, there is no money. There is definitely no money in boxed software.

And if there is, Windows and Mac markets are thousands to million times bigger, so might as well focus on that.

I use Linux for everything and finds it very good. I only do simple games. If you use cross platform libraries like SDL things will work mostly the same as on windows.

I understand why you think X11 is ugly. It is just the basic functionality that other desktop environment build on. Install GNOME, KDE, Xfce or some other desktop environment and you will see a huge difference.

I would never buy a game for Linux. Half the point is that it is free/open source software.

@Antheus

I'm not going to argue that Linux is a viable platform to target, but stating that Linux users cannot or will not pay for software and claiming that it's a fact is kinda ridiculous. You could say that they're rarely willing to pay, but a flat no is just asking for a rebuttal:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Linux-users-contribute-twice-as-much-as-Windows-users

Linux users don't pay for software.

Selling to people who are unwilling or incapable of paying is not a good business model.


And no, no holy wars. It's a fact. Look at market shares. Unless you're RedHat, selling enterprise contracts, there is no money. There is definitely no money in boxed software.

And if there is, Windows and Mac markets are thousands to million times bigger, so might as well focus on that.

How do you explain the humble indie bundle and those numbers then?

@Antheus

I'm not going to argue that Linux is a viable platform to target, but stating that Linux users cannot or will not pay for software and claiming that it's a fact is kinda ridiculous. You could say that they're rarely willing to pay, but a flat no is just asking for a rebuttal:

http://blog.wolfire....s-Windows-users

I agree with. I have and will continue to buy games on linux. A lot of people that want to run linux do. People do on Android all the time. People that want to buy do buy if you make it available. I intend to open a company based on platform independent games. I want to distribute it in the chrome, android, and Ubuntu store. Many indies are doing this and making money. Also, with game making tools like panda3d. Its easy to make games. I'm going to make a game for a class I'm taking right now with panda and its fairly easy to use. I'll also willing to help anyone that wants it. I want friends that want to develop open source games on linux. Just email me @ perry.brian@gmail.com

Some games like Quake 3 you would have had to pay for. Quake is open source now, but that doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure there are other game companies that sell or port their games to Linux. It's true that most Linux users would prolly expect the software they would run to be open and free like their OS, but that's not always the case. I know I downloaded Linux for free but that doesn't mean I wouldn't pay for it to support those developers that spent countless hours working on it; or its games. What I was really trying to say, is that it would be cool to see more Linux based software on the market. It would be cool if PopCap would actually port their, or some of their games to Linux. I'd go buy Bejeweled again just for that, I don't care its only a couple bucks and I make more then enough money to afford their games. That's why I own, like 5 of their titles I believe...nope its 4: Bejeweled Twist, Bejeweled Blitz, Bejeweled 3 and Plants vs. Zombies. I like em all and I think it would be so awesome if they ran on a few Linux distros too. But any ways. I could of swore that the PS3 was either linux/unix(one of the two) and the Droid was linux also. I also know that Mac is unix based. So taking from that, I though that Linux or Unix wouldn't be such a bad place for developers to start apposed to Microsoft's Windows. Nothing bad about them, but... hey... Linux is free! Unix isn't, but Linux is. I'm just saying, it would be nice to have more choices or the choices people have, made more obvious.

Hey Wooh, I have Gnome running on X11. What I was referring to was the way the setup/initialization code looks for X11 & GLX. It think its a bit uggy, but oh well.

I mean to say.. or ask... or comment on is how easy Linux is vs. learning curb. Basically I'm talking about the graphics, sound and system routines that are common to most games. I wanna know how many other developers out there feel the same way I do. I personally, feel that Linux was pretty easy to learn my self. Again, I'm talking about the basic system parts that are common to most games. More importantly though, I've found that X11 isn't all that good. Coming from windows (i.e. Win32) it was quite a change. I don't like the way it looks, at all! But it works at least. It's cool when you get a window open running OpenGL on another operating system... I think it is anyways. Sound. Sound was amazingly simple using OpenAL. Not even 100 lines of code and I have a decent sound system ready. Add in a WAV reader for loading sounds into OpenAL and now I have a fairly complete sound system. -Minus streaming of cource. Which didn't look to hard to handle I might add. So I guess I'm wondering why more developers are not taken by the simplicity of Linux and it's lil sorts of APIs for game development. It seams easy enough for me to learn and play with. It would be cool to be able to buy a game off the shelf from Wall-world for Linux. I have noticed better frame rates on certain things when porting applications I've created. I like it... what about you?

Development for Linux isn't that much different from Windows, if you use a library to interact with the elements you listed above. For example, SDL on Linux isn't much different than SDL on Windows. "Rolling your own" and trying to work with the base libraries themselves may give you a little trouble, but the curve isn't so vast.
____

Somehow this topic quickly turned into "Linux people don't pay for software, don't bother". That's simply not true, and people who use Linux aren't simply people who don't pay for software. A good portion of them simply want control of their system. With market situation so light as well, there's some great opportunity to get noticed and paid. Similar to how Mac was in the earlier years (and to some degree now). I'd provide links and references, but some already have and it's pretty trivial to find more examples.

How do you explain the humble indie bundle and those numbers then?

They aren't Linux, they are portable?

Which means they use SDL or something similar, which abstracts away the very issues mentioned on all platforms. It's not like OpenGL or OpenAL code is different on Windows.

If you're portable, Linux will be your last market. If you're Linux exclusive - well... TuxRacer is pretty big I hear.

The premise of OP is invalid. OpenGL and OpenAL or any other similar libraries are inherently cross-platform. So saying "Linux is great" doesn't make sense - it's same on all platforms.

As for "boxed games in Wal-mart". Not for Linux. Which is what I was referring to. Indie bundle sold online, with huge marketing and it was a giveaway. To put something onto shelves it costs millions and big name publisher. And unless it's top of the line, it won't cover the costs. Boxed software is passe anyway, let alone on Linux where apt or rpm covers every possible need.