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General discussionlinuxvangog - Fantastic Linux & Mac Guy and Where To Find Him(307 posts)(307 posts)
(307 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 07, 2017
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Hello everyone!

For those who don't know me yet: I am Linux Tech Specialist, member of Product UNIX Team, responsible for technical part of Mac & Linux releases here at GOG. I've worked here since we announced Linux back in 2014 :) Some of the daily duties my team fulfills are:

- packaging (creating installers for on-going game releases/updates)
- quality assurance (game tests and reporting bugs back to the developer)
- games fixing (but mostly in case of classic releases)
- development and maintenance of in-house solutions (e.g. installer and build scripts)

Recently I started being a bit more active in various places on the internet. I want to be closer to our Mac and Linux communities and any feedback regarding our work is welcome! You will be able to find me here:

- @linuxvangog on Twitter
- /u/linuxvangog on Reddit
- linuxvangog on GamingOnLinux

If you have any ideas for the content you would like to see from me, e.g. more insight into our work or technical tips, let me know!

See you around, Linux and Mac gamers! :)

Edit (17 Jan 2018):
I've created some gogmixes you might want to take a look at!

Mac & Linux recommendations for low end machines:
https://www.gog.com/mix/linuxvangogs_list_for_low_end_linux_mac_computers

Mac & Linux recommendations with local multiplayer:
https://www.gog.com/mix/linuxvangogs_list_of_local_multi_linux_mac_games
Post edited January 17, 2018 by linuxvangog
Posted December 07, 2017
Greetings! Always nice to see a blue pop in on the boards. :)
Posted December 07, 2017
Its nice to see that gog is finally starting to notice the underdog communities aka Linux/Mac.

I think we are all mostly interested in when gog is going to start working on Linux version of the Galaxy Client again. You stated on gamingonlinux sometime ago that development was stopped (or as you said its not actively developed) since its not a priority thing.
Post edited December 07, 2017 by Matruchus
Posted December 07, 2017
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Matruchus: Its nice to see that gog is finally starting to notice the underdog communities aka Linux/Mac.
Of course! I am a Linux user myself.
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Matruchus: I think we are all mostly interested in when gog is going to start working on Linux version of the Galaxy Client again. You stated on gamingonlinux sometime ago that development was stopped (or as you said its not actively developed) since its not a priority thing.
That is correct and I'm afraid that for now, nothing changed in that matter.
Posted December 07, 2017
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linuxvangog: That is correct and I'm afraid that for now, nothing changed in that matter.
Some job positions in GOG (like this one) are listing Galaxy and Linux. Is that just a hypothetical position? Or to put it differently, if the project isn't active now, why is that position open? Or will it get unblocked if you hired people?
Post edited December 07, 2017 by shmerl
Posted December 07, 2017
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Matruchus: Its nice to see that gog is finally starting to notice the underdog communities aka Linux/Mac.
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linuxvangog: Of course! I am a Linux user myself.
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Matruchus: I think we are all mostly interested in when gog is going to start working on Linux version of the Galaxy Client again. You stated on gamingonlinux sometime ago that development was stopped (or as you said its not actively developed) since its not a priority thing.
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linuxvangog: That is correct and I'm afraid that for now, nothing changed in that matter.
Thank you for your answer. If I may ask. How is the status of Linux ports for Metro games and what are the problems with getting them to work in a drm-free fashion.
Posted December 07, 2017
I've noticed a nice improvement from GOG towards Linux support lately. Updates are faster and many more games are getting their Linux versions here.

There is much work left but for now I can say I'm a happy GOG Penguineer.

PS: Really enjoying Hand of Fate 2 :-)
Posted December 08, 2017
high rated
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shmerl: Some job positions in GOG (like this one) are listing Galaxy and Linux. Is that just a hypothetical position? Or to put it differently, if the project isn't active now, why is that position open? Or will it get unblocked if you hired people?
There is more Galaxy-related projects than just the client itself, like SDK or services ;) Like I mentioned before, the reason GOG isn't working on Linux client right now is because we have other features in the project roadmap that we want to take care of.
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Matruchus: Thank you for your answer. If I may ask. How is the status of Linux ports for Metro games and what are the problems with getting them to work in a drm-free fashion.
They are not gonna be released on GOG anytime soon. I am not allowed to disclose any details, I'm sorry.
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Ganni1987: I've noticed a nice improvement from GOG towards Linux support lately. Updates are faster and many more games are getting their Linux versions here.

There is much work left but for now I can say I'm a happy GOG Penguineer.

PS: Really enjoying Hand of Fate 2 :-)
Thank you a lot! Your support is flattering!

And Hand of Fate 2 is hell of a game :)
Posted December 08, 2017
Yes, I've noticed more releases for Linux. It's great the work you're doing; thank you! :-)
Posted December 09, 2017
MojoSetup installers are quite nice when you want to tinker with them, I especially like that you can easily extract the game contents with tools like unzip or bsdtar without running the installer.
The only nitpick I have with them is about the naming scheme : 'game_1_2_3_789.sh' is a bit less easy to understand than 'game_1.2.3_789.sh' would be. It is still much better than the previous naming scheme (the one that had no indication of the game version).

Overall, Linux games are working out-of-the-box, and it’s very rare that I have to tweak them before they run on my setup.
By the way, is there a good way to report issues related with Linux version of games? Is a direct ticket with support the best way?
An example that comes to my mind is Chaos Reborn: it runs in full screen on first launch, but full screen mode is bugged on some setups. A simple work-around would be to run it in windowed mode on first launch, but you need to generate a config file prior to running the game and I guess a lot of people won’t know how to do this.

Less related to your job, but still interesting for me (and probably others): how do you feel about projects like Adamhm’s, Ganni1987’s or mine that provide alternative installation methods for some games? I‘ve always had good feedback from developers/editors (usually on the line of "We won’t endorse it officially but what you’re doing is nice, please keep going on."), but I don’t think I already asked their opinion to a redistributor…
Posted December 10, 2017
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vv221: The only nitpick I have with them is about the naming scheme
My nitpick is that annoying $HOME/.gnome directory that's created every time GOG installers run. There is a bug here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90775
But I doubt it will be fixed any time soon. GOG developers should just patch the script and drop this obsolete stuff.
Post edited December 10, 2017 by shmerl
Posted December 11, 2017
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vv221: The only nitpick I have with them is about the naming scheme : 'game_1_2_3_789.sh' is a bit less easy to understand than 'game_1.2.3_789.sh' would be.
(...)
Only alphanumeric characters and underscores are allowed in my book ;)

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vv221: By the way, is there a good way to report issues related with Linux version of games? Is a direct ticket with support the best way?
It depends. If the game still has active developers, you're better off contacting the game developer or publisher directly. In such cases, it's pretty rare to add our own fixes to such titles, so if we learn about the issue, we need to wait for an update from the original developer anyway.

In case of games we maintain directly (most of DOSBox, Wine and ScummVM wrappers), a support ticket is the best way.

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vv221: Less related to your job, but still interesting for me (and probably others): how do you feel about projects like Adamhm’s, Ganni1987’s or mine that provide alternative installation methods for some games? I‘ve always had good feedback from developers/editors (usually on the line of "We won’t endorse it officially but what you’re doing is nice, please keep going on."), but I don’t think I already asked their opinion to a redistributor…
Obviously that's just my personal opinion here :)

I like adamhm's work, because by using Wine they add a relatively easy way to install games that are unlikely to get an official release from the publisher.

As for repackaging games into distro native packages, flatpaks or snaps... Frankly I don't see much benefit coming from these, but if it makes someone's life easier, then sure, why not?
Posted December 11, 2017
Hi linuxvangog.

So you and Judas are the Product UNIX Team?

You are the person to pester about missing Linux ports or missing features like multiplayer?
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vv221: The only nitpick I have with them is about the naming scheme
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shmerl: My nitpick is that annoying $HOME/.gnome directory that's created every time GOG installers run. There is a bug here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90775
But I doubt it will be fixed any time soon. GOG developers should just patch the script and drop this obsolete stuff.
I didn't notice this stuff, thanks, but you are absolutely correct. This seems like a very desktop specific, non-standard and probably obsolete place to put desktop files.
Post edited December 11, 2017 by hollunder
Posted December 11, 2017
Thanks for set up a direct channel for linux users on forum. We appreciate your efforts (Judas included) to improve the scenery. A broad question: Why games with linux versions elsewhere don not get them released here?
Posted December 11, 2017
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hollunder: So you and Judas are the Product UNIX Team?
There are 4-5 of us, programmers and QA. @JudasIscariot is not a part of our team but we work with him closely :)

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hollunder: You are the person to pester about missing Linux ports or missing features like multiplayer?
Yes, and no. I don't make business decisions - I only provide technical expertise. See my answer to @tokisto in the bottom of this post.

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shmerl: My nitpick is that annoying $HOME/.gnome directory that's created every time GOG installers run. There is a bug here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90775
But I doubt it will be fixed any time soon. GOG developers should just patch the script and drop this obsolete stuff.
This is an xdg-utils bug (or is it rather a feature?), but it doesn't have a big priority so we might or might not fix it somewhere down the road.

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tokisto: A broad question: Why games with linux versions elsewhere don not get them released here?
You might want to take a look at my Reddit reply on this subject.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionlinuxvangog - Fantastic Linux & Mac Guy and Where To Find Him(307 posts)(307 posts)
(307 posts)