Comment by jandrese

Comment by jandrese 6 days ago

8 replies

On the other hand building Linux binaries and keeping them running for years without maintenance has proven far more difficult than emulating Windows.

For an example track down the ports Loki games did many years ago and try to get them running on a modern machine. The most reliable way for me has been to install a very old version of Linux (Redhat 8, note: Not RHEL 8) on a VM and run them in there.

pjmlp 6 days ago

Naturally it means GNU/Linux will never improve until being forced upon.

  • jandrese 6 days ago

    It just means Microsoft has put more emphasis on ABI compatibility. This makes sense. In the open source world ABI compatibility is less of an issue because you can just recompile if there are breaking changes. ABI compatibility is far more important in a commercial closed source context where the source may be lost forever when a company shuts down or discontinues a product line.

    • BlueTemplar 6 days ago

      It would be really nice to see open source being more widespread in games, though of course it's harder because they are more art than software.

      Splitting code and audiovisual assets might work ?

      • jandrese 6 days ago

        Even then the rights get dicey when they include third party libraries and development systems. Doom famously had issues with the sound library they used.

        Plus, with commercial software it often happens that the code only builds cleanly on one specific ancient version of a closed source compiler in a specifically tweaked build environment that has been lost to the ages. Having the source helps a lot, but it is not a panacea.

  • wqaatwt 5 days ago

    It didn’t for decades (in this specific regard) why does you think it could change?

    People running Linux hate software shipped as binaries due to various technical and ideological reasons. Why would this change?