Jenshae

Making it more simple, what if they just added two more packages, Linux and Mac. Again, they would have hard measurable figures and no need to do the two lower packs unless it exploded. We get it, less of us, pay a higher premium.

3x devs that are 2x coders and 1x graphics have managed to make a pretty good 3D game in Unity 3D that is platform independent. Admittedly, I think the game has been in Early Access for four years. You can only pick two. They went with Time and are striving for Quality. (Their costs are low because they are in Poland.)

Dense or playing dumb? Obviously the desire is for as soon as possible. 1) Raise funds. 2) Build for Linux according to funding goals reached. The sooner 1) happens, the sooner 2) happens. Basic logic. "A stitch in time saves nine" is also a common concept.

I would rather spend an extra year in Beta / Early Access and have Linux than have another promise like Star Citizen's that amounts to nothing for so long. Imagine a pie chart. Now imagine over time it grows larger in radius. If one of those segments is entirely Windows dependant and impacts its neighbours that can amount to a truly massive overhaul to make the game platform independent. The sooner they shift over, the less work they save in the future because and this is pretty certain unless the game is a runaway success, there comes a point where it actually is not worth doing and will heavily impact development.

Thank you for the link. My original post is straight forward. If the cost of running a Patreon, Kickstarter or such is so unbelievably high then how come so many individuals manage it? An official way of managing how much money Linux users give to this project takes away any guessing. It would be hard measurable figures. Open Source is better for security. Why? Well if you don't trust code, you can read through it yourself and compile it yourself. Other people can look for weaknesses in the code and help you fix them. MANY more people from all walks of life can contribute, quite a lot of professionals working in some very advanced jobs put in an hour or two here and there to improve projects. That can amount to thousands of hours of professional work, which can swamp the entire effort of Microsoft. M$ will always be limited by their own company. It goes as far as them and very occasionally do third party solutions make their way into Microsoft's effort.

1) There are only a few core systems. Debian, Slack and Redhat. I think that even the Linux community can agree that if a game will run on Debian or even narrow it down to Ubuntu they can easily work from there. Why? It is what Feral and Steam support. Right tool for the job. 2) Not necessarily. For example, Unity, C++ and Vulkan would be a solid foundation, where you could (ironically) develop it on Linux and then almost simply run it on Windows with minimal tweaks. It is when you develop upon Windows that you get entangled with various Windows only dependencies.

The best trolling is when you look completely ignorant, even when you try to take the mask off and remain with the same appearance as before?

Early development is a good time to start laying the foundations for platform independence. Before you have a mass of players screaming for new content all the time and you have a massive pile of spaghetti code to wade through.

For most things, there are now packages, like .deb that configure themselves, just like Windows programs. When they hit a point of needing a CMD line, that is usually beyond the point that they need IT support on Windows. Linux can be so easy to use, install it. Done. (It updates while installing) Windows, install it then get drivers, then download more driver updates then get updates 20 at a time because it chokes otherwise, have a nightmare with CD keys, etc. On a day to day basis, I tease the two Windows die-hards on my floor every time I see them frustrated, "Please wait ..." while they get more updates, install and configure them. Linux? It downloads, installs without annoying you, at your convenience and then you restart without waiting during shutdown or boot up. I convinced one accountant to go with a QEMU virtual machine of Windows (to run Sage - bleh) on one screen and then they can use the machine to do web business or load up a terminal server / remote session while waiting for Windows to muck about. They are now happy and that is how much they hate Windows updates, it was enough to get them to try Linux.

Funding ports now helps build up Linux for the future. I would rather not have Windows on my machine in any form. Currently, I run it as an application (VM) for a very few games. That is Win7. I won't be running Win 8 or anything newer. I don't agree with the business direction of M$ nor the constant series of vulnerabilities in Windows. When it comes down to it, the most advanced IT users go for Linux because they know it is better. Super computers 99.9% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Supercomputers Web servers, server farms and such are about equal to Windows and growing in market share. Mainframes and local hosts are about the same. Android is 60% of the market, so many people don't know they are Linux users, it is that good. The only place Windows is holding strong for now is on desktops (and Xboxes obviously). This is because: ignorant users don't like change Vicious circle of DirectX games, players buying them, developers getting stuck on them because of tools and so forth. Another circle of users feeling dependant on Windows applications, like Office, Skype and such then development going into that. Munich are dropping Linux, reasons being things like not being able to run Skype ... but there is a native client for it. That basic wilful ignorance will take a slow grind to change in the masses. ... and yet, Barcelona is going to go with Linux The ultimate weakness of Windows, which will be its eventual downfall is that they don't patch out all of their vulnerabilities. They leave it to third parties, anti-virus companies and such to try and band aid fix things. ... and if you are relying on well known commercial / business anti-virus or anti-malware companies to protect you then you might be in for a nasty shock. Vulkan is better than OpenGL and is at least on par if not better than DirectX. Vulkan is also being supported by both Nvidia and AMD. https://developer.nvidia.com/Vulkan https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/vulkan-gets-official-with-1-0-release-and-amd-driver/ Historically, DirectX was doing work arounds for Nvidia that caused faults and tearing with AMD, who were blameless. This created the Nvidia + DirectX and AMD + OpenGL divide. Now that both of the giants are throwing their support behind Vulkan? The writing is on the walls. It will take over the majority of PCs if not in this human generation, in the next or at the latest the one after that. (I will tell you something, in the 90s, I tried Linux, Gnome and Knoppix, I didn't understand the hype. I hated it, didn't understand it and couldn't get why people would want it. After Vista came out, I hung onto my WinXP machine for as long as possible then resolved to try Linux again. Not because I wanted Linux but because I was so determined to get away from Micro$h***. I completely understand the average user's mental block about it. I get why Linux has a reputation of being difficult to use. The leaps and bounds it has made to be user friendly are utterly staggering! 60% of my office are now on Linux, converted PCs that failed as Windows, were old 32 bits ones or are new Linux iGels. I also put the old people that live around me on Linux and Chrome. One of them installed Opera via command line without any help or prompting from myself in their first week of using it! (They didn't need to do it that way, there is an easy to find package that simply installs and updates automatically) They are happy and I am happy. They get updates, stability and easy to browse a free application library, while I don't have the headache of removing their viruses or trying to fix their corrupted / broken operating systems with formats and re-installs.) Linux simply works.

Dear developers, Short version, please make a Linux crowd fund so that we can put our money where our mouths are. Top aim would be a native client. Secondly, approaching Feral to help port the game. Third being a supported Wine wrapper. Finally, the lowest rung, some cornered off time that a developer writes guides or answers some questions that we can try get it running on Wine or in a virtual machine. It has been two years since I played EVE. When they sold skill points, that was a goal post moved that I could not accept but this game seems to hold a possibility of not only filling that hole in my mind but scratching an itch that I didn't think was there. What I can find about it from you looks positive. I can not promise that it is all sunshine but if you can become platform independent, surely: Windows + Mac + Linux > Windows only revenues. Vulkan has opened up a huge path for making platform independent games. Many Linux gamers are counted in statistics as Windows players because we resort to virtual machines and Wine. Statistically, we also spend more given the opportunity on our hobbies and passions. Linux statistics can be surprising. Personally, using myself as an example, I am on the following machine: Intel Core i7-5820K (6 cores, 12 threads) @ 4.1GHz Mobo: ASUSTeK model: X99-E Memory: 16201.8/64335.1MB Graphics card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Hawaii PRO [Radeon R9 390] (I won't be buying MSI aka Micro Sun International again, the build quality does not impress me). GLX & Vulkan Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.2.8 HDD Total Size: 2000.4GB (12.7% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: MZV6E500BW size: 500.1GB ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST500LX025 size: 500.1GB ID-3: /dev/sdc model: ST500LX025 size: 500.1GB ID-4: /dev/sdd model: ST500LX025 size: 500.1GB (That is an M.2 for boot and some games + 3x SSHDs in ZFS RAID 5 for bulk storage.) My Steam account is also rather healthy. We bought into a vague promise from Star Citizen and we are still waiting. The key to this request is that you can see the direct contribution that Linux players make and adjust what you do for them accordingly. Thank you, Jen