Interview With Icculus on GNU/Linux Gaming

Via Phoronix comes a link to an interview with prolific GNU/Linux game porter Icculus about the state of gaming on GNU/Linux. Topics include Steam, Windows 8, his experiences trying to push FatELF vs full screen games, and the general state of the game industry. From the article (on the general state of games on GNU/Linux): "It's making progress. We're turning out to have a pretty big year, with Unity3D coming to the platform, and Valve preparing to release Steam. These are just good foundations to an awesome 2013."

Re:Walled Garden

[Microlith]

The interesting thing here is that Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all building app stores with serious restrictions as a way to improve security, but aside from making stronger brands and improving user experience in removing malware, they don't get a lot out of the restrictiveness.

Google is largely exempt from this implication so long as Android continues to come with a simple check-box for side loading software.

If we could persuade them to split these apart and allow third party security auditing that applies a filter to the distribution system and then put in place policies of completely open distribution, where they distribute anything... but by default apply a user editable filter that removes all the same things they do now it would still solve their security and battery woes for the mass market (potentially improving it by making it competitive) but also open up distribution for third parties like Steam.

For Android this is already possible, as evidenced by the Amazon App Store. For Microsoft and Apple, you'll have to force the issue legally. They're quite content to maintain lock-down on their "current" platforms. I say current because Microsoft has extended the walled garden to x86, but only for formerly-Metro applications.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. DRM in the context of the Linux kernel means Direct Rendering Management, part of the graphics subsystem which does in fact help with desktop acceleration.

Re:And the Linux naming experts strike again

[RCL]

Seconded. I feel that people who use Linux not even for gaming, but for anything graphics-related, are a tiny minority. Available API (de facto standard: OpenGL + SDL) sucks, drivers suck (except for NVidia, who gets blamed for being binary), development tools suck (see TFA about OpenGL debugger), distributing binaries is problematic.

Desktop integration isn't there ("standard" SDL will not help you detect multiple monitors), when your app crashes you are left with broken screen. Just allocating too much (overcommit by a few GB) memory can make your Linux desktop unresponsive enough so you have to SSH to it from another machine and kill the offending process.

Now compare it to Windows where TDR allows you to survive even a driver crash! There's A LOT of work needed if Linux is to become a good desktop, and the majority of it is not about fancy UI. It's about getting a solid graphics stack, good support for debugging, good tools built on top of that. Frankly speaking, I'm not sure that community can provide that. This requires unification of will on a large scale, and community tends to produce loosely-knit patchwork of locally optimal solutions.