Linux Users Donate Twice As Much As Windows Users, On Average 145
sammyF70 writes "The Wolfire/Humble Indie Bundle real time statistics have been updated to show the average amount donated per platform. It looks like Linux users donate twice as much, on average, as Windows users. You can see some graphs on the Wolfire blog."
I wonder ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is counting Window's Users "donations" to Microsoft, McAfee ....
Windows users already pay through the nose, so they don't have anything leftover to donate.
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Windows users already pay through the nose, so they don't have anything leftover to donate.
The economies of scale in building for a platform with a 90% market share are enormous.
WalMart - the world's largest and most aggressive deep discount retailer - has never been able to significantly undercut the OEM Windows system on price or features.
The naive user running MSE with automatic updates enabled was left unscathed by Cornflicker and Alureon.
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If it is accurate (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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That is why I highly recommend Comodo Internet Security as it is free for personal use, so no subscriptions to run out, low resource ( according to process explorer it is using a whole 15Mb and 0% CPU while running both the firewall and AV) and most importantly IT WORKS.
Comodo is snake oil. The concept of use is when you install new software put it in training mode. Except training mode isn't per application, it's systemwide and if any process does something you blocked before, it now gets whitelisted. There is a known problem that with full screen games that if comodo tries to popup at all the computer locks up on quitting the game. Comodo's response, mark the game trusted or put it in training mode.
https://forums.comodo.com/frequently-asked-questions-faq-for-comodo-f [comodo.com]
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The black screen bug doesn't effect you since it is limited to 64bit windows 7. So I'll inform you it effects basically every use of directx for fullscreen, If CIS attempts to make a popup. It's well-documented in the forums with hundreds of threads and they all get a response linking to that thread "Just put in it in trusted mode". The link may have been written by a guest, but it was also stickied and that's the intended solution they link to all over the place. I don't fault them for not working prop
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Good for you, you must be running a lot more permissively then I'm willing to. But the problem isn't the bug, it's CIS response to the widespread problem. I wouldn't trust a home router that said just turn on upnp because there was bugs with port forwarding.
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Hell, I didn't know about it, so I've never bought it!! I'm not a real game player, I mostly just play the free games that come through the repositories. I've heard of Goo, but never played it. The others, I've not even heard of!!
I may give them a try, and see what I think of them.
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That's because it's not real stats.
I downloaded the Windows version, paid $30 for it, and reported as using Mac and Linux.
And that's before I even saw this discussion on Slashdot.
Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Informative)
The Windows donations still account for more than half.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, very nearly 50% of the money contributed is coming from OS X and Linux. Whether it's because those users are more affluent, more inclined to buy games, or just happy to support any development on their platform, the numbers show there's a substantial market to be tapped. Studies like this are exactly the thing marketing departments want to see.
And it couldn't have come at a better time: Steam's imminent release on OS X and Linux is about to make cross-platform development substantially easier. While it's hardly the Year of Gaming Linux, it would be nice to remember 2010 as the year we started chipping away at Microsoft's PC gaming monopoly.
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The evidence for Steam on Linux is very thin, at best.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:4, Interesting)
And what's the Windows marketshare on the desktop? Probably at least 100 times that of Linux. So, if charity were equal, you'd expect Windows users to cover at least 85% of donations.
That's not even counting people who buy while at work, on their office-supplied Windows machine, while intending to use the games on Mac or Linux. Or those who primarily use Linux or Mac, but dual-boot Windows to play games.
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and how many in that market share play games?
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probably more that the corporate share which run primarily windows
Re:Not surprising... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, as someone who actually BOUGHT the bundle in TFA, I'd like to make note that the OS reporting is voluntary, not linked to the OS running at purchase time, and done when you get the email, not when you're typing in your Paypal/CC info. I registered as Linux, as that's what I have on the most machines, and most care to use, but I probably spend most of my clock time on Windows, either at work (where Windows is mandated), or at home playing the ~50% of games I want to play that aren't available under Linux, or at least not cleanly/easily.
I'm looking forward to this hypothetical Linux Steam client, as it'll let me do more of my gaming on my OS of choice.
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Actually, as someone who actually BOUGHT the bundle in TFA, I'd like to make note that the OS reporting is voluntary, not linked to the OS running at purchase time, and done when you get the email, not when you're typing in your Paypal/CC info.
That's interesting. I bought the bundle too, but after about three days, haven't clicked on the email link yet (I already bought most of those games anyway). Seeing as I never saw any "what platform do you use" option, I assumed those stats must have come from browser user-agent IDs.
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Hi, I'm a Linux (Score:5, Funny)
PC: And I'm a PC
Linux: Whatcha doing, PC?
PC: Playing games.
Linux: Cool, which ones?
PC: All of them.
Re:Hi, I'm a Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac
PC: And I'm a PC
Mac: Whatcha doing, PC?
PC: Playing games.
Mac: Cool, can I play too?
PC: No.
Re:Hi, I'm a Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Mac: "I've got a date with a hot guy tonight. We're going to see Rent."
PC: "Steve, you ol' tiger, you! What about you, Poindexter?"
Linux: "Aww..."
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You joke of course, but with Steam for OSX coming out in, say, 5 days - Mac computers will have several extremely popular games.
A: Because it breaks the flow of a message (Score:4, Funny)
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Your comment illustrates the problems with top posting, not starting the comment in the subject line. Which in this instance does not notably break the flow because everyone is already familiar with the flow of the commercials. While you could certainly critique starting the comment in the subject line, you'd have to find a different way to do it. But then again, all of us from the Usenet era know this quote, so we can follow your analogy, flawed as it is.
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While you could certainly critique starting the comment in the subject line, you'd have to find a different way to do it.
For one thing, it breaks the quote button.
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No seriously (Score:4, Funny)
why is it rude?
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Linux: Whatcha doing, PC?
PC: Playing games.
Xbox, PS3, Wii in chorus: LOL WUT?
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Xbox, PS3, Wii in chorus: LOL WUT?
they also say "roffle" out loud when they laugh, don't mind them, they're just a little retarded. Due to the structure of their brains, games are the only thing they can think of for more than five seconds. PS3 had a side gig for a while, but it was just too hard, and it interfered with playing games. Plus, it was never really very good at it anyway, due to having one hand tied behind its back.
Re:Hi, I'm a Virtual Machine. (Score:5, Funny)
spun: Hi, I'm a spun
Anonymous Coward: And I'm an AC. Say, spun, whatcha doing?
spun: Making a joke
Anonymous Coward: Cool, can I make one?
spun: Evidently not.
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Why "Windows has better games" and "Windows sux" are not mutually exclusive tough.
I have a windows system named "gameboy", guess what I use it for...
And the abundance of games is not even a virtue of Windows per se, but of it's ubiquity.
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Let's be more specific then: have fun running any game from the last ten years at anything better than 10 seconds per frame..
Okay Mr. Expert, I call bullshit. Games that run beautifully (some needing more work than others based on hardware and lack of support channels, but that's not saying it cannot be done):
In fact.. I can't think of a game that I actually want
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In fact.. I can't think of a game that I actually want to play, that doesn't run on linux (given enough work).
for those of us who don't want to have to maintain and operate four different versions of Wine to poorly play games, there's Windows.
Look, I like Linux. I brought Linux home to fuck my sister. I'm using Linux to write this comment right now. But basically none of the games I want to play play properly on Linux. Games which are listed as having "Gold" compatibility on the Wine site don't work at all. Mechwarrior IV that just came out fails with some memory exception. I got Startopia to launch in Wine 1.0 but
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I can't even name a Source engine [wikipedia.org] game that has additional DRM besides Steam.
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[paraphrase]You're wrong because I can name off n bad experiences[/paraphrase]
I'll actually meet you on MW4, but it is a general trend for games coming of of MS's game studio to not work on wine. As for all your other games, sorry you've had bad experiences Dungeon Seige has a platinum rating, Alpa Centari a garbage rating, and civ 2 a silver rating. The point is, my parent said it was impossible to do any games better than 10 fps, and I called BS on that. I went further to say that many mainstream games work great. To which you grudgingly reply "oh yea? well... civ 2 doesn't work".
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As for all your other games, sorry you've had bad experiences Dungeon Seige has a platinum rating, Alpa Centari a garbage rating, and civ 2 a silver rating.
I can look in the database too. But since I can't get Dungeon Siege to work on wine 1.0, 1.1, or 1.2, with all options turned off or with all options turned on, and further have never got civ 2 to work more than to open and then crash when I try to move or something similar, I trust that database about as much as I trust you. I read the reports and they say they take out the CD check and it works. I try the same version, and the same patch, and it fails. Shrug.
blah blah blah huaglghalghah blah blah blah
The chip on your shoulder is interfering with t
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Well I'm glad you got that vitriol of your chest before you realized you weren't responding to what I was saying. We aren't talking about WINE, which as we know is Not an Emulator. Mr. Dumbfuck was claiming QEMU would run games virtualized at full speed.
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In fact.. I can't think of a game that I actually want to play, that doesn't run on linux (given enough work).
Medieval Total War 2. I've looked at the lists of games on winehq, Cedega, PlaysOnLinux, etc. Nobody got it actually working.
I'm not saying that it is super easy to make all these work,
That's a problem for me. I want to spend my spare time playing games, not configuring them.
I'd love to be able to play all my games on Linux or Mac, but for the time being I've given up on it. Too much work, too much uncertainty.
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I'm up to that challenge. Ten seconds per frame. You are not the sysadmin you claim to be. Get off your dead ass, download all of the virtualization softwares, and TEST THEM!! Really put them through their paces.
I'll grant that you lose a bit of performance in virtual machines. I'll grant that *some* games just won't virtualize. But, many games will load and run, and they do MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better than you claim. And, it's very likely that the developers of VBox, VMWare, and Parallels are working on
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Well I'm the admin for a very large VMware system, 30 IBM Blades running Vsphere. I've taken all the classes and used VMWare for some heavy duty applications, mostly Linux based. I can explain all about virtualization performance to you, if you'd like.
Here's how I know you don't know what you're talking about. You can't virtualize a 3D card. What shows up for the VM client system is a generic card without 3D acceleration. Games are not just applications, in order to get decent performance, they need to acce
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Well, FFS, no, the latest and greatest games don't run in VM's - and if they do, you won't get near the performance that you'll get on hardware. I jumped on that "hyperbole" as it deserved. Anyone who believes that you CAN'T_PLAY_ANY_GAMES in a VM is full of shit - and you obviously know that.
But, I think you'll grant that GEEKS and GAMERS are two separate groups, who overlap somewhat. The things that geeks use computers for run well in a VM. The things that gamers use computers for pretty much suck. Al
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I don't think you needed to jump on that hyperbole, as I doubt anyone with half a brain failed to recognize it as a humorous reversal of the normal 'frames per second,' as when we say that Hummers get 10 gallons to the mile.
I'm asking you, how do you get 3D acceleration from a VM? You don't. If your games run fine without 3D acceleration, they aren't the same games I run. I'm currently playing Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition at 1920 by 1080 resolution, it looks beautiful and the frame rate is high.
I'd be
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I'll be perfectly honest - I'm not sure if I'm getting 3D acceleration or not. Those few games that I've bothered to install "ran alright". Virtual Box has (now it has, I guess it's been there for something like 6 months, maybe a bit longer) a setting to enable 3D acceleration when you create the machine. It was "experimental", that tag has been taken away now.
So - I need to sort the kid's games, find one that specifies that it needs 3D accel, install it, and see what happens. I have to many brands in t
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I'm posting just to agree completely. I'm an Ubuntu user who doesn't dual-boot. I'd love to play some nice games. Everything else works nicely, but man I'd love to play some stuff without emulators that never seem to work anyway.
To be fair, I haven't upgraded my computer in years, so maybe I should blame the victim a bit too...
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
Second theory: a much higher percentage of Windows users paid 1 cent for the games. Kids are less likely to have a more expensive Mac and Linux is much more likely to be installed on an adult's machine. (Might be a stupid theory, feel free to poke holes).
Similarly, we can't forget that the total raised includes donations to EFF and some other charities. It would make sense to me that Linux users are more likely to donate to EFF?
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I paid a little more than the average as I downloaded the bundle for all OS's and intended ot install on 4 machines, 1 Windows, a Mac Mini and 2 Linux.
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My random guess is because Windows users have a greater amount of games to choose from, they're less likely to consider donating alot of money to a single game making group.
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Linux has fewer games than Windows, so games would be more highly valued by Linux users than Windows users.
The Windows gamer also has choices like Gog.com. Classic MSDOS and Windows games. All genres. Ready to Run under Windows 7. $6 to $10. Bundles $10-$15.
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Those DOS games mostly run fine under DOSBox, and if someone really wants to run them then FreeDOS runs fine under a VM and games that old are nothing to run on a recent machine. The really classic Windows games should do okay under Wine for the most part, as they're all under 9x or XP. Many of the older Windows games actually run better under Wine than on Windows 7 (unless you use XP mode, but that's virtualizing an OS again).
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Indeed, the "Windows" DOS games on Gog.com are pretty much all just bundles of the original DOS game plus a copy of DOSBox anyway. So they work exactly as well on Linux as on Windows; you just need to (apt-get|yum) install dosbox first.
And I can vouch for many of the Windows games running fine in Wine. The Fallout games are perfect on Linux, for example.
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It's interesting you mention the Fallout games. Does that include as far back as Fallout 1? I ask because Windows 7, no matter what compatibility settings I try, does not present proper colors for Fallout 1 without XP Mode.
Of course (Score:1)
Those who use windows have less money due to having to pay for geeksquad for cleaning the scumware and viruses off their computers or buying new ones. Which reminds me, my computer is passing that 20 minute boot up time, probably need to buy a new one...
(...Kidding guys, don't flood me with suggestions)
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I've been using Windows since 3.11, and I've never used the Geek Squad or a similar service.
If you're competent enough to properly maintain a Linux box, you're competent enough to keep a Windows machine clean.
Seriously (Score:3, Funny)
I use Windows Vista and earlier today I got a virus while looking for porn torrents. The virus disabled taskmanager and the ability to run any other executables and flooded the screen with popups advertising fake virus software. It was easy enough to run HijackThis (after renaming it to iexplore.exe to fool the virus) to identify and delete the viral executable; I had the problem fixed in under 30 minutes.
Windows isn't that bad when you actually know what you're doing. Problem is, most people don't. Do you
Bah. (Score:3, Informative)
I bought world of Goo through Steam for my windows machine and paid more than the average Linux user contributes more for the whole indie bundle. When folks 'contribute' through different sources, these number don't mean much.
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Your personal, single, anecdotal experince obviously completely shatters the average of 59955 sales. Really? Why do you think anyone would care about individual peak values. It's the total income that matters, nothing else, when selling software.
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Your personal, single, anecdotal experince obviously completely shatters the average of 59955 sales.
I don't see any mention of sales, much less a number, in TFA. They seem to be talking only about the "donation" part of it. Can you provide a reference for your claims?
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http://www.wolfire.com/humble [wolfire.com] They keep a running tally of the number of sales on the front page... it's 61606 as I post.
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Er, it says "number of contributions", not "number of sales".
Also, that page is only for the bundle. GG...P point was that those games were already available for purchase on Windows separately for quite a while, and specifically via Steam, where indie games generally sell rather well - so a lot of people on Windows already own them and paid for them.
What would be interesting is if they aggregated all Steam sales statistics from all the games in the bundle together with donations.
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At the moment, we have about 53,500 donations -- far more than we expected! But where did they come from? Our breakdown for number of donations per platform is: 65% Windows, 21% Mac, and 14% Linux. However, when we look at the amount donated per platform, we see something different. Our breakdown for total donation size per platform is 52% Windows, 25% Mac, and 23% Linux.
I think what we can infer is that the "sales" figure here is the "53,500 donations" figure, since all contributions in exchange for the bundle were chosen by the user. "Number of contributions" = "Number of sales" in this experiment. Maybe some windows users have already bought WoG on Steam...I myself downloaded it from 2dboy directly in their paywhatyouwant sale for both Windows and Linux. I also bought the Penumbra "trilogy" a while ago. But what the hell does that matter? The point of this news story is
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And how much of that did the devs actually get?
Who cares if retail gross is higher, if retail net is lower.
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No, I don't think I am.
I also had the choice to buying the game cheaper elsewhere, with profits going to the developers. My decision was instead to buy through Steam. I like the Steam distribution model. I trust the Valve folks to Vet stuff more than some indie site, and Valve has a reputation of being decent with developers that want to use their distribution system.
If you are weeding out users who have already bought the game earlier (and paid more when it was offe
And again, the world is a little nicer. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And can I just say, what a nice, simple, well laid out and advert-realistic that website from TFA is?
It looks practically the same as all the other blog-type websites I've ever looked at.
But then I use adblock and noscript. Kinda funny how those two can take some many crummy websites and not only remove all the suck, but actually make things look decent.
Re:And again, the world is a little nicer. (Score:4, Interesting)
I like this new world, new kind of culture (yes, the elders would yell "the world is falling down!" anyway), ideas - for which people will pay, if they are worth anything. It's perhaps related to how, apparently, heavy p2p users actually buy a lot of music...only it's not so often from the major labels anymore (but often with "useless" nice physical addons, quite common in indie world).
Two different spheres, but in a way with converging ideas. Hey, RIAA would like us to believe that p2p users are thieves. And why would those hippie Linux users, wanting everything for free and loathing closed source software, pay more in this case?... (and when not being watched)
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Donate to who, and for what? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why would your typical windows user have heard of these people? Why would they donate?
In short, why do I care?
Must be all that disposable income (Score:1)
... from not buying Windows, antivirus software, an office suite, ...
No need to buy Windows, Norton, or Office (Score:2)
Buying Windows? The trialware preinstalled on a typical home PC subsidizes that. (Otherwise, how would an Acer Aspire Revo with Windows cost as much as a retail box of Windows?) Buying Antivirus? You can use Avast on a home PC for $0. Office suite? Most people using one on a home PC* don't need Microsoft Access, so OOo will suffice.
*If you work from home, Microsoft Office is a business expense that you can deduct if your boss doesn't already reimburse it.
As this was mentioned the other day, (Score:3, Interesting)
I wondered, will people care enough to start making fake donations, i.e. pay 1c, then download the windows version, to make the other camp look bad?
You've got to take these things with a grain of salt anyway. I know I only paid $10 for the bundle because I wasn't sure it was going to work at all on my oldish hardware. I'm likely to "buy" it again for a higher price as a thumbs-up once I give all games a good try and am convinced I like them.
Yawn (Score:2, Troll)
3 days in a row, three slashvertisements for this Humble/Indie Bundle... who's getting their percentage?
Not a Slashvertisement! (Score:2)
It's not an ad. It's a discussion of the indie game house's revenues. Sure it brings people to Wolfire's site, but if the company is providing useful contributions to the game business discussion, they deserve the attention.
NOTE: A slashvertizement would be something like "Wolfire releases new game!"
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EFF?
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Laws of Mathmatics. (Score:1)
Unfortunately, two times zero is still zero... /jk, keep donating folks.
My best guess (Score:1)
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Macs are generally owned by people better off financially
Not sure I agree with that statement. I see a lot of students sporting macs. These students live at home, don't have jobs (well, not one that is required to pay for a roof, food, utilities, etc) and still have their iphones and macs. Financial irresponsibility comes to mind as well.
I know a few that have fulltime jobs, and get the latest revision of macs (at least one every two years) but still live at home because "the baby boomer generation has priced them out of the housing market" and they need to "s
Not completely explained (Score:1)
How does this get translated to the graphs? Do they count my donation twice, one for Windows and other for Linux?
My View (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm from the Windows piece of the pie and I paid $10 which beats the Windows and Mac averages (if only by a little on Mac) ... the thing for me is though that I fit in a category of people that is uncountable by their statistics. That category being, well, someone who doesn't really want the games and never would have bought them for even $5 in a store as a bundle. Why did I do it you ask? Simply because I support developers such as these, people who realize that DRM is bad and that honest customers will pa
Seeing as (Score:1, Funny)
Ubuntu has about twice the share of all other linux based desktops, combined, it would be nice to give it its own statistical category like mac. You don't just throw mac and 'linux' together as 'unix'. I'm tired of developers thinking they have to target multiple linux desktops with their coding and packaging. If you put out one single file, it should be a .deb.
What? (Score:1)
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Somebody found an obscure and meaningless way to show Linux is better than Windows. The context is Slashdot where anything pro-Linux and anti-Windows is automatically "stuff that matters", even if it doesn't.
Depends ... (Score:1)
In a sense it's no so much regular donating (as in simply giving money for a good cause) as appreciating something which is given to you for free and paying an amount you see fit.
For example I like to download free audio book episodes through www.podiobooks.com. They have a feature where you can donate money in relation to a specific show.
The majority of that money goes to the author/creator of said show and the rest to the site which provides the service. That way you can give money to the people who decid
Also seen with 2D Boy / World of Goo (Score:2)
Re:Define major (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it's funny that they mentioned Mac/Windows at all. I mean, honestly, who uses those?