John Carmack Argues Against Native Linux Games

[Andy Chalk]

John Carmack Argues Against Native Linux Games

The id Software mastermind says it doesn't make sense for game companies to offer native Linux support.

There was a time when John Carmack had a pretty solid reputation as a Linux kind of guy. I actually own an official Linux version of Quake 3: Arena, which I purchased despite not knowing the first thing about Linux because it was cheap and came in a really nice metal box. But based on his comments in a recent Reddit thread, sparked by a February 4 tweet [https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/statuses/298628243630723074] in which he said he believed that improving Wine emulation was a better option for Linux gaming than native ports for individual titles, those days are well behind him.

"I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!); I use Linux for the flight computers at Armadillo Aerospace, but not for any regular desktop work. I was happy to hear that Rage ran in Wine, but no special effort was made to support it," he wrote.

"I don't think that a good business case can be made for officially supporting Linux for mainstream games today, and Zenimax doesn't have any policy of 'unofficial binaries' like Id used to have," he continued. "I have argued for their value (mostly in the context of experimental Windows features, but Linux would also benefit), but my forceful internal pushes have been for the continuation of Id Software's open source code releases, which I feel have broader benefits than unsupported Linux binaries."

He reiterated his support for improving emulation as the "proper technical direction for gaming on Linux," noting that native ports don't do much that a good emulator wouldn't be able to handle. He also pointed out that most major game publishers won't even respond to an email for less than six figures.

"The conventional wisdom is that native Linux games are not a good market. Id Software tested the conventional wisdom twice, with Quake Arena and Quake Live," Carmack wrote. "The conventional wisdom proved correct."

Source: Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_asks_why_wine_isnt_good_enough/c89sfto]


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[ZippyDSMlee]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

 

[Fumbles]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

Not necessarily... Directx is more supported on Windows then Opengl is on Linux. By more supported I mean that it is easier for developers to make stable releases across different platforms.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

We'll see after Steambox hits

Might change the demographics a bit

 

[cidbahamut]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

There's no money to be gained in it, so allowing the community access to the tools they need to do it themselves is the next best thing and he should be commended for continuing to support that.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

And when the amrket is changing to favor Linux and get away from the horror that it Windose? Its laziness...since that is a default mode of most programers. . You can also call it efficiency but that only goes so far. LOL

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

Not necessarily... Directx is more supported on Windows then Opengl is on Linux. By more supported I mean that it is easier for developers to make stable releases across different platforms.

I know but the trouble is everyone is getting tired of windose locked setup and moving to more open platforms IE anything thats not DX.

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

There's no money to be gained in it, so allowing the community access to the tools they need to do it themselves is the next best thing and he should be commended for continuing to support that.

Times are changing you already have 2 Android/Linux consoles on the market, you have Steam which is a huge platform that's trying to get away from DX, now is not then and he as always is behind the damn times.

 

[hermes]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

That guy created modern first person perspective and raycasting in games, is a self taught rocket scientist, helped make a homebrew VR helmet (that works better than anything in the market) and customizes Ferraris, as a hobby...

I would say he is the antithesis of a "lazy guy" and when he speaks, people listens.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I should point out the the last linux release of an ID game was 2007. As we all know, 6 years is a long ass time in the tech world. Things have changed a lot since then.

Spoiler: This was the best selling phone in 2007

Spoiler: This is the best selling phone of 2012

Just because it didn't work out well for them before, does not mean he'll get the same result now.

You know that DirectX only runs on Windows and Xbox?
OpenGL (and derivates) is running on pretty much any platform.

So if your game uses DirectX, you get Windows and Xbox fairly easy, while having to put more work in to make it run on Linux, OSX and all the other consoles.

If you make your game use OpenGL right away (this includes planning - so no ports of an already existing DX game) you get it running on Windows, Linux and OSX fairly easy. The effort for all consoles (except Xbox) depends on how much of OpenGL Sony and Nintendo changed in their own versions. The only one you'll have to do a "real" port for is the Xbox.

Also what he said.

 

[deathbydeath]

"I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!)

Wait, did someone say

Anyway, this is interesting. I'll look into it.

 

[octafish]

Carmack continues to release source code to public, thinks it is better business sense to concentrate on better Win emulators for linux than to cross develop each individual game for a small niche market.

Alternative headline: Smart guy talks sense.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

"I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!); I use Linux for the flight computers at Armadillo Aerospace, but not for any regular desktop work. I was happy to hear that Rage ran in Wine, but no special effort was made to support it," he wrote.

Burning is too good for him, I say. He must be fed to penguins for his heresy.

>.>

*ahem* Now for a more balanced response...

"The conventional wisdom is that native Linux games are not a good market. Id Software tested the conventional wisdom twice, with Quake Arena and Quake Live," Carmack wrote. "The conventional wisdom proved correct

Really? Because the stats from the humble bundles seem to tell a different story.

http://cheesetalks.twolofbees.com/humble/

The market may be small, but there certainly is a viable demand for native linux games it would be a slightly foolish to ignore such a market. Plus given that the total purchases is around the same as mac so by that same logic you could argue that native mac ports are useless and mac users should use wine to run games also.

Also while we're on the subject of WINE, no matter how much it has improved it is still not possible to just install any windows game and have it run without some extra work from the user. Even an expert user, using every trick in the book cannot get every game to run on Linux through WINE never mind getting good performance out of it. This compounds the notion that Linux is a difficult OS to run and install things on which is actually far from the truth. Native Linux packages can be installed just like Windows .exe files without ever needing to see a command line. WINE is at best a stop gap option, I think native support would be better as it also provides the option of choice to consumers.

snip

Also this.

Linux is not the pure command line OS it was back the day, the last ten years have seen vast improvements in Linux distros. Hell I've been using Linux OS's for 5 years and improvements in usability from the likes of Ubuntu 8.10, which I first used to the current 12.10 version of Ubuntu is quite astounding.

EDIT for grammar

You'd think with all the command line work, I'd be better at typing accurately

 

[ASnogarD]

... problem here is that MS (ie Windows) doesnt support mainstream gaming on the PC either, or rather MS would be far happier if players used the PC for office and media player, and a 360 (and / or nextbox) for gaming, and its pushing real hard for that event.

It would be far better for PC gaming if a alternative OS is hanging about to threaten to grab the PC gaming market should MS slip up.

Carmack also knows business wise if the PC slipped off the gaming scene altogether, there would be no loss in revenue... it would be picked up by consoles, initially.
On the other hand if the PC market had to disappear there would be no cheap indie zone for those experimental games, so no real innovation as even indie development on the consoles has a cost which could mean a crash for a studio trying something new.

I think in a weird way PC gaming would actually benefit from a reboot, where the major devs and publishers dont make PC versions, I think this would open up a market for fringe developers to work on and develop unique titles for the PC while the mainstream drowns in generic FPS titles.

 

[cidbahamut]

A bunch of enthusiasm for Linux

Here's the thing. People don't use Linux on a widespread basis, and Linux enthusiasts have been proclaiming for decades that the Linux revolution is just around the corner.

When you can show me that fully 33% of home desktops are running Linux for *all* of their PC needs, then we can talk about how supporting a Linux as a gaming platform might make any business sense.

If you want to make a case for converting all consoles to a Linux back-end that's one thing, but until people are using Linux as their desktop OS of choice en masse, supporting Linux ports is a colossal waste of developer resources. You don't have to be happy about that, but you need to come to grips with the reality of the situation.

 

[Fumbles]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

And when the amrket is changing to favor Linux and get away from the horror that it Windose? Its laziness...since that is a default mode of most programers. . You can also call it efficiency but that only goes so far. LOL

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

Not necessarily... Directx is more supported on Windows then Opengl is on Linux. By more supported I mean that it is easier for developers to make stable releases across different platforms.

I know but the trouble is everyone is getting tired of windose locked setup and moving to more open platforms IE anything thats not DX.

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

There's no money to be gained in it, so allowing the community access to the tools they need to do it themselves is the next best thing and he should be commended for continuing to support that.

Times are changing you already have 2 Android/Linux consoles on the market, you have Steam which is a huge platform that's trying to get away from DX, now is not then and he as always is behind the damn times.

Yes I do know that. I was trying to say that Carmack has been a big advocate of Direct X (with his "games"(really just Tech demos..see Rage).

I am actually very happy that Steam is on Linux, I just worry about some of the games not playing because of outdated architecture (Direct3d).

 

[Fumbles]

... problem here is that MS (ie Windows) doesnt support mainstream gaming on the PC either, or rather MS would be far happier if players used the PC for office and media player, and a 360 (and / or nextbox) for gaming, and its pushing real hard for that event.

It would be far better for PC gaming if a alternative OS is hanging about to threaten to grab the PC gaming market should MS slip up.

Carmack also knows business wise if the PC slipped off the gaming scene altogether, there would be no loss in revenue... it would be picked up by consoles, initially.
On the other hand if the PC market had to disappear there would be no cheap indie zone for those experimental games, so no real innovation as even indie development on the consoles has a cost which could mean a crash for a studio trying something new.

I think in a weird way PC gaming would actually benefit from a reboot, where the major devs and publishers dont make PC versions, I think this would open up a market for fringe developers to work on and develop unique titles for the PC while the mainstream drowns in generic FPS titles.

I agree that Carmack knows that right now making Linux games is not financially viable. Maybe in a few years, but right now not so much.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Really shocking statement for a guy who can't be bothered with proper PC versions anymore... we would have never guessed you gave up on it all.

If he had any interest in making games run proper then WINE would be the last from his list of suggestions, yes it's a neat last resort but it takes absurd amounts of extra power not to mention the creators constantly haveto reverse engineer Microsofts shit so anything will work at all, while MS desperately wants to keep them out of the loop.

 

[Slash2x]

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

And when the amrket is changing to favor Linux and get away from the horror that it Windose? Its laziness...since that is a default mode of most programers. . You can also call it efficiency but that only goes so far. LOL

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

Not necessarily... Directx is more supported on Windows then Opengl is on Linux. By more supported I mean that it is easier for developers to make stable releases across different platforms.

I know but the trouble is everyone is getting tired of windose locked setup and moving to more open platforms IE anything thats not DX.

Lazy guy dose not want to have to redo things for an OS he gave up on.

No, it makes no business sense like he said. They tried. It failed. He's all for offering the option for support, offering up the source code, so modders can make it functional to their hearts content.

Sensationalist article titles like this bother me. I guess it gets views.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

There's no money to be gained in it, so allowing the community access to the tools they need to do it themselves is the next best thing and he should be commended for continuing to support that.

Times are changing you already have 2 Android/Linux consoles on the market, you have Steam which is a huge platform that's trying to get away from DX, now is not then and he as always is behind the damn times.

^this

And the MAJOR change since the days of Quake is the rise of Ubuntu..... (sounds like a game title) This is the first time that Linux is really falling under one major release and the majority of the software has become so easy to use nontechnical people can use it now.