That is basically what I said too, a long time ago. They will either not produce a Linux build at all or one without Galaxy features in which Linux is the gimped version missing the Galaxy features found on Windows/Mac

Even though Windows is my primary OS... I keep a dual boot available and ISO's on my hard-drive. I am excited to try a Linux version of Galaxy if that day ever comes. Like normal GOG completly mishandles things and I have to say how they have handled Galaxy on Linux is probably the worse case.

I like GOG a lot, but sometimes I just want to ask them "what the hell were you thinking here"... though they are probably sick of me at this point as I am already hard on them for how their mishandling Galaxy on Windows. xD

I don't know if it's a lack of being able to find the people to work on Galaxy (regadless of platform) or if it's GOG simply not wanting to vest the resources into it that are needed. But you can't walk the walk and talk like Galaxy is going to take on Steam, if you aren't willing to put the full resources behind it. That's one thing Valve understands. Whatever it is GOG needs to get it fixed.

well, there is always also a financial/economical side of the equation, aside from all the technical crap.
I don't know how things go at your work place, but in my experience you seldom can just declare "I'm going to hire x people to do project y". There are always these pesky people from management looking over your shoulder, being up in arms because supposedly those silly numbers in their balance sheets don't look pretty enough :p
given that the Linux market share is still really low (somewhere < 5% most likely), there is a good chance that Linux support is simply moved to the end of the priority queue.
Because it simply isn't profitable enough.
Spending that money to expand in the Chinese market might just have been the more economical sensible strategy right now.

Look, I'm not saying you should stop complaining. au contraire - keep complaining about the lack of Linux support.
But the ideas being pushed here, that it would be so easy to "just use some multiplatform libs and roll things out to linux" or "just deploy some stub libraries", etc are really unrealistic I think.
And accusing them of technical incompetence seems rather unfair as well, when we basically have no idea how the decision making works in the GOG offices and what factors are at play here.

Of course we can complain about the lack of transparency and scarce flow of information.
But then, we are kind of doing that all the time :p, so that is getting rather tiresome.

*side note:
from what I hear from people in the IT department, finding and hiring good, competent programmers can be rather difficult, even here in Germany.

Yes, that can be a problem. GOG can just comment that they didn't find right people yet ;) Having no people would also mean they aren't working on it, and as known GOG were saying that they are, so it's hard to excuse it with "we have no resources". The way they so far communicated it, looks more like a competency issue.

No, there are. I know, many criticize thar survey (and have every right to do so), but its accuracy is irrelevant. All that truly maters is that developers (and I've spoken to some of them) trust these numbers without any validation. Yes, you can tell that developers have access to much more accurate statistics for their game when it is released on steam, but by that point it is long past the descision moment. Developers choose which platforms to support based on the very same sources as everyone else.
Just in case, here is another source. More accurate, but partial and largely outdated. I'll be thankful for any other sources on this matter (yes, I collect them). ;)
Yes, there are no problems with Linux gamers' finances (given that a lot of them sport really top of the line GPUs just to play those crappy Feral-ports above 30FPS :) ). The issue is in the minds of game publishers.
My condolences. :( Luckily (for me), I did not believe Valve for a second. I always thought that was just a feign swing to scare Microsoft and get higher ground in negotiations.
There is no "magic bullet" to solve the problem. Only hard and costly work: speak to developers, poke those Kickstarter projects for Linux release, correct everyone everytime they use "PC" as an euphemism for "Windows", fix that stupid education system with Windows in every school and kindergarden (this one will be hard, but absolutly essential).
Interesting thought. It never crossed my mind. This… can be! I don't know about Poland, but I'm sure in eastern Europe it is extremey hard to find Linux developer or even someone remotely competent. And wages in US or western Europe are a lot higher so it might be unfeasible for CD Projekt to open offices there.

Linux gaming is growing, it's just not rapid like some expected (not sure why they did). Gaming growth corresponds to general growth of Linux usage.

You mention Steam Stats as if it is some gigantic revelation that nobody has mentioned in the thread yet, even though I myself already mentioned it in this post:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/lack_of_galaxy_libs_for_developers_is_causing_missing_linux_releases_on_gog/post28

Steam Stats is absolutely not a "complete scientific analysis of operating system usage out there". Not by a long shot. It only measures people who actually use Steam, and only then a very small percentage of people who bother to complete and submit the survey. It isn't a complete measure of what people are using across the entire gaming industry by any measure. It is probably the best statistic that is available, but it is not "complete" no matter how one slices it.

I agree that there's no magic solution to the problem. I don't think it's a matter of education and "spreading the word" to solve the problem however, that's just organized religion. It is market forces that determine what people use, and the way to get people to want to use a particular product is to make that product the best that it can be at providing value for a particular usage scenario (ie: gaming) to the people who are interested in that. People don't buy games for Windows because they're unaware that Linux exists, they buy games for Windows largely because it is the superior platform across the board for gaming on PCs at the moment, and that has strong momentum. In order for Linux to win the crown of being the best gaming platform, it first has to become the best platform for gaming, and not just by becoming equal point for point on every point that matters, but by being significantly better. That will drive developers to care more, publishers, distributors and gamers alike to all turn their heads more towards the platform.

In short "make it even better, then do that again N times and they will come".

Indeed. I've done some informal queries with fellow developers over IRC around the world a few times and most of them would relocate to the US, Canada, Australia, NZ, Germany, the UK, and a handful of other countries but not somewhere they considered themselves to be more of a financial (or other) risk. Concern over wages was among the greatest concerns. That's why I speculate if GOG might be able to find more talent if they opened an office in another country, however if doing so meant they had to pay much higher wages to people in that office then they might see their developers from Poland want to relocate or exit also. All speculation, but hard to say what the deal really is. In contrast, CDPR does not seem to have any trouble gathering developers presumably on similar terms so perhaps we're wrong about this?

he is not even making the argument that Steam Stats is an accurate statistic. He argues that developers use and trust the numbers from Steam Stats (regardless of its problems). And I would agree with him on that point.

Agreed. :)
Nope.
How people can be sure that Windows is superior, if they didn't even see alternatives? Normal Windows-user never saw anything besides Windows. (S)he does not have expertise to tell apart good OS from bad one. The answer is simple: marketing. People can complain about Windows however they want, but they still want to believe they are using the best product possible. The rationalization is simple: "Yes, Windows has lots of problems and I don't like the way it is going a single bit. But what other choise do I have? After all, Microsoft is a huge company with lots of money. If they can not make ideal product, then nobody can! In other case everyone would use some Linux or such. Pff."
There is a reason Microsoft (with all its love for money) has scholarship programs. They know: current students are tomorrow users.

With that setup it is not the best product wins, it is the more advertized and recognized one. Linux can be ten times better (and some people argue it really is in some aspects); it doesn't matter.
Nope x2. See above. In order for it to work Windows shall become literally unusable (thus forcing users to actively seek replacement) and even Ballmer was not stupid enough to actually do that (albeit Windows 8 with "MetroUI" and removal of "Start" button was quite near) while Nadella seems to be wastly more competent thus far.

I'd like to ask the obvious question, if they're using C++ (which i'm guessing they are), realistically, how much cross platform code do they have to support? They're already using cross platform libraries, and static linking is a thing if you you don't want to bother with dependency hell. Odds are, even with static linking, their client will be infinitesimally smaller than the average game being downloaded. Outside of that, we're looking at, what, issues handling directories? Let's take an honest look at what Galaxy is supposed to offer and ask ourselves how hard that really is.

I suspect the real issue is in the .sh installers. They need revamped to work properly, seeing as they probably should not have been .sh files in the first place. They need to make a "gog galaxy installer script" or something that can be standardized to get it to work with gog galaxy. I'm willing to bet the real issue is that their current method of taking a base game and making an installer out of the files is, in particular, where the trouble is. As i'm currently stuck on windows, i don't have any linux installers readily downloaded to see how modular they're built to look for clues on where the issue is.

I've resigned myself to the realization that the best products are not necessarily the ones that sell. That said, a great example is that Linux is much more efficient than windows, thus is a much better candidate for gaming (lowering hardware requirements), however, between the hardware companies and the game devs, no one wants to make the first move and commit fully to Linux. Microsoft managed to establish Windows as the end all OS for computers. Right now, Android and iOS are duking it out, and non-Android distros and microsoft windows are basically out of the picture for tablets and phones. Glad to see how Microsoft has been responding to the humility: they're trying to garnish Linux support, which tells me that, in the long run, they're basically going to make their own equivalent of android.

Galaxy doesn't use any installers. It applies binary delta to the destination directory where game is installed. Or at least it's supposed to do that. The whole directory tree exists on the server. Client analyzes the local tree, computes the difference, pulls what's needed to sync them up, and applies that locally. That's an expected method of doing it.

They're using only cross platform C/C++ libraries. The biggest problem is probably integration into the Linux environment. Getting an application to compile is easy, getting it to work well in the given environment is not.

The .sh installers are just a glorified self-extracting ZIP file, automating them is easily possible. I wrote a short blog post about how they work, if you want to know more: http://yepoleb.github.io/blog/2016/10/09/how-the-gog-linux-installers-work/

That sounds pretty bad. The way I see it:

1. They aren't working on it at all.
2. They don't know when they'll be working on it, otherwise they could provide an ETA.

The result of it is, that GOG treat Linux as second class citizen now, and don't mind if there will be missing releases here. Pretty upsetting. I don't care about Galaxy itself much, but missing releases are a pretty bad outcome.

So now it is either DRM free, but Windows version, or Steam Linux version?

That sucks major time.

Another disappointment with GOG.

actually, it's quite easy. It usually comes down to environment variables, non-cross platform scripts, and directories. Try it sometime, then you'll see how ridiculously easy it is. It's so easy i develop my projects on my tablet (using termux) these days, then use mingw to compile for windows when it's time for me to see if everything's working on windows. Any issues i run into is due to the difference between clang and gcc, which usually means a difference in supported syntax or optimization level (the latter ends up being a warning instead).