John Carmack: Linux is not the right platform for video games (2013)

John Carmack: Linux is not the right platform for video games (2013)(ubuntuxtreme.com)

26 points by neur0mancer 12 years ago | 18 comments

f00_ 12 years ago |

The title is really misleading, he's saying it doesn't make business sense to make ports of games to Linux, and it doesn't... It's penetration in the market is very low.

waps 12 years ago | |

Yeah the sad truth is that Windows XP, a 12 year old OS, has 20 times the market share on the desktop that linux has. [1]

I'm a linux user at home and at work (for everything except starcraft), but I don't feel the need to pretend otherwise.

But read that stat again. 20 times. For every linux user there are 20 windows xp users, and 35 windows 7 users.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

eruditely 12 years ago | | |

This is not even that surprising. 12 yrs is nothing compared to the inhuman amount of time it would take to port it, and considering how much work into it in the first place(?).

FD3SA 12 years ago |

All these things could have been said for Android when iOS and Blackberry's OS were kings.

The nature of gaming is changing. Listen to Gabe talk about player generated content being the way of the future. Core gamers are a niche bunch, and will spend thousands of dollars for custom hardware. Why would they settle for locked down, legacy software like Windows, when Linux can be made to work just as well if not better, for free, while allowing full customization?

Linux gaming is not going to be backwards compatible. It's not about now. It's about the future. An open source platform makes sense for the gaming industry, because it allows rapid experimentation and low barriers to entry.

Core gamers who support indie games have already moved to Linux. The AAA studios will follow once they see sufficient adoption.

mbel 12 years ago | |

> Core gamers who support indie games have already moved to Linux.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim? I've seen plenty of indie games targeting GNU/Linux, but no evidence of large amounts of players so far (the fact that there are GNU/Linux games does not mean that more than few people are playing them). From my personal experience (couple of demos of unfinished projects and loads of time wasted lurking into indie forums like TIG and /r/gamedev) the Windows is still pretty much the standard target platform.

FD3SA 12 years ago | | |

Certainly:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/02/steam-linux-500-games

malandrew 12 years ago | |

Exactly. Game developers should support those decisions where the best, most portable tools get the most attention. Games are immersive and take up the whole screen, so gamers are barely tied to the underlying operating system. It's not like serious AAA games on OS X really have ever used cocoa or carbon. If you made an amazing, mind-blowing game for Linux, then people will figure out how to install and use linux just to be able to play the game. In fact for the younger gamer demographic, getting the system a game runs on for free on commodity hardware is preferable to a wold where you need to pay for a expensive new console every 2-4 years.

Insofar as games are concerned, at the end of the day, the game design matters many times more than the runtime of the game.

Tmmrn 12 years ago |

Ah, it's this "why not wine" article.

> I truly do feel that emulation of some sort is a proper technical direction for gaming on Linux. It is obviously pragmatic in the range of possible support, but it shouldn’t have the technical stigma that it does.

That might be a valid point if wine's windows support was like FreeBSD's linux compatibility layer. But it isn't... It is a massive pile of API translation layers and libraries reverse engineered from a huge closed source proprietary moving target. It's a hacky workaround and I couldn't believe he is actually saying reverse engineering windows is a "proper direction" that "shouldn't have a technical stigma".

scott_karana 12 years ago | |

Actually, I had the feeling that he's specifically recommending not to use Wine.

> A good shim layer should have far less impact on performance than the variability in driver quality.

As he describes in great length, most of the characteristics of games are either identical, or similar. It sounds like he's advocating more of a simple JIT translator than an OS-level compatibility layer.

javanix 12 years ago |

His "D3D interop" layer (I'm not sure why he called it emulation) is almost exactly what Valve just open-sourced.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

contingencies 12 years ago |

It depends on the type of video game. Maybe Carmack's view of industry is stuck in the old 100% focus paradigm, whereas video games of the future will be more casual, more mobile and more interlinked. In such an environment, issues such as strict resource consumption governance and power management can become critically important. Linux features such as control groups can be ideal for facilitating real solutions here. Maybe Carmack is too low level to see the big picture.

yxhuvud 12 years ago |

Linux is used by 1.2%? That is a lot more than I expected.

davidgerard 12 years ago | |

That's about what I expected, as it matches the browser numbers reported by Wikimedia (a completely neutral party which runs a top 10 site whose audience is the general populace):

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...

About 12% Linux!!! ... of which 11% is Android.

qbrass 12 years ago | | |

For clarification, that's 11% Android, 1% Linux proper. Not 12% Linux with 11% of the Linux share being Android.

Giako 12 years ago |

Also look, the linked post is 1 year-old... Long before Carmack left id and switched to Oculus (and now Facebook).

davidgerard 12 years ago |

Y'know, a lot of Windows games work well under Wine, basically 'cos the Codeweavers devs are also gamers ... I'm a little surprised Valve isn't adding to Wine, given that's the really quick way to get Windows games onto the Steambox.

quchen 12 years ago |

Original Reddit comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_a...