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General discussionOn GNU/Linux, has anyone be able to extract the RAR InnoSetup installers?(652 posts)(652 posts)
(652 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 12, 2015
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shaddim: Ok, decoupling without fragmenting the API/ABI and taking UX and usability as first class citizen design-wise, would be a start.
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hummer010: I can agree with that. UI's are easy. Good UI's are hard - I know it certainly isn't a strength of mine.

I don't find the GUI situation in Linux that bad, but then I guess I also run a pretty minimalist system.
It's not bad at all, it's actually way better than on Windows. Tons of great tools are available. Instead of complainign some people can just go an learn them.

Major change is coming to window managers now though - i.e. shift to Wayland. It should make Linux desktop more competitive.
Posted January 12, 2015
Anyway, I propose to stop further off-topic in this thread. If anyone is interested - open a dedicated thread about usability of desktops or OpenGL advancements.
Posted January 12, 2015
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hummer010: If you want a gui in a specific toolkit, and it doesn't exist, it's usually pretty trivial to make one.
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shaddim: Woah...right before our eyes, the typical assumption of Linux devs: "GUIs are an secondary simple afterthought , done after the real work" :(

A good, consistent UX and usability are not afterthoughts at all but the hard part (more than the technical implementation) and would need a software design which inlcude this from the beginning. As afterthought, in the end on top of an existing software, it leads to an unpolished "thing" which feels fumbled together !
Before we get back on topic, let me just say that Eric S. Raymond noted that in his 2003 book, The Art of UNIX Programming, under Problems in the Culture of Unix.

The greater problem of psychology only became clear to me after spending three days at a Macintosh developer conference in 2000. It was a very enlightening experience to be immersed in a programming culture with assumptions diametrically opposed to those of the Unix world.

Macintosh programmers are all about the user experience. They're architects and decorators. They design from the outside in, asking first “What kind of interaction do we want to support?” and then building the application logic behind it to meet the demands of the user-interface design. This leads to programs that are very pretty and infrastructure that is weak and rickety. In one notorious example, as late as Release 9 the MacOS memory manager sometimes required the user to manually deallocate memory by manually chucking out exited but still-resident programs. Unix people are viscerally revolted by this kind of mal-design; they don't understand how Macintosh people could live with it.

By contrast, Unix people are all about infrastructure. We are plumbers and stonemasons. We design from the inside out, building mighty engines to solve abstractly defined problems (like “How do we get reliable packet-stream delivery from point A to point B over unreliable hardware and links?”). We then wrap thin and often profoundly ugly interfaces around the engines. The commands date(1), find(1), and ed(1) are notorious examples, but there are hundreds of others. Macintosh people are viscerally revolted by this kind of mal-design; they don't understand how Unix people can live with it.
Now that I'm working to rebuild all of my old utilities to bring them up to my current standards, I'm taking a "work inward from both sides and meet in the middle" approach since, often, I still don't understand my own requirements enough to take the mac approach to produce a design document and then use a Unix-like approach to implement it..
Post edited January 12, 2015 by ssokolow
Posted January 12, 2015
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shaddim: Woah...right before our eyes, the typical assumption of Linux devs: "GUIs are an secondary simple afterthought , done after the real work" :(

A good, consistent UX and usability are not afterthoughts at all but the hard part (more than the technical implementation) and would need a software design which inlcude this from the beginning. As afterthought, in the end on top of an existing software, it leads to an unpolished "thing" which feels fumbled together !
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ssokolow: Before we get back on topic, let me just say that Eric S. Raymond noted that in his 2003 book, The Art of UNIX Programming, under Problems in the Culture of Unix.

The greater problem of psychology only became clear to me after spending three days at a Macintosh developer conference in 2000. It was a very enlightening experience to be immersed in a programming culture with assumptions diametrically opposed to those of the Unix world.

Macintosh programmers are all about the user experience. They're architects and decorators. They design from the outside in, asking first “What kind of interaction do we want to support?” and then building the application logic behind it to meet the demands of the user-interface design. This leads to programs that are very pretty and infrastructure that is weak and rickety. In one notorious example, as late as Release 9 the MacOS memory manager sometimes required the user to manually deallocate memory by manually chucking out exited but still-resident programs. Unix people are viscerally revolted by this kind of mal-design; they don't understand how Macintosh people could live with it.

By contrast, Unix people are all about infrastructure. We are plumbers and stonemasons. We design from the inside out, building mighty engines to solve abstractly defined problems (like “How do we get reliable packet-stream delivery from point A to point B over unreliable hardware and links?”). We then wrap thin and often profoundly ugly interfaces around the engines. The commands date(1), find(1), and ed(1) are notorious examples, but there are hundreds of others. Macintosh people are viscerally revolted by this kind of mal-design; they don't understand how Unix people can live with it.
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ssokolow: Now that I'm working to rebuild all of my old utilities to bring them up to my current standards, I'm taking a "work inward from both sides and meet in the middle" approach since, often, I still don't understand my own requirements enough to take the mac approach to produce a design document and then use a Unix-like approach to implement it..
Thanks, very good reference again by Eric S. Raymond. Looks like it is true, everything important was told already before in history....
But, to mix this up a little bit still, MacOS is fully POSIX compliant and "Single UNIX Specification" certified, while Linux is not. Maybe they found the sweetspot? ;-)
Posted January 13, 2015
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shaddim: Ok, decoupling without fragmenting the API/ABI and taking UX and usability as first class citizen design-wise, would be a start.
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hummer010: I can agree with that. UI's are easy. Good UI's are hard - I know it certainly isn't a strength of mine.

I don't find the GUI situation in Linux that bad, but then I guess I also run a pretty minimalist system.
It's so much the UI of Linux that is bad per say. Mint has an awesome UI. But rather the UI based programs that are supposed to prevent you from using Terminal. Example: Package Manger, Driver manger, Synaptic and gdeb install. All garbage. None of these work as well as apt-get or dpkg from Terminal. Until a program that can bring all the functions of apt-get and dpkg in an easy to use GUI and when Linux and clean up it's repository system Windows will be preferred. Most people are not programs and don't want to deal with CLI's. Most people want to click on little pictures and have everything work with little getting in the way.
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shmerl: Anyway, I propose to stop further off-topic in this thread. If anyone is interested - open a dedicated thread about usability of desktops or OpenGL advancements.
Good idea, might do that.
Post edited January 13, 2015 by Magmarock
Posted January 13, 2015
Okay guys since I feel a bit responsible for taking this off topic (my apologies) I have started a thread about Linux and OpenGL. If you wish to move this conversation there here's the link http://www.gog.com/forum/general/opengl_directx_linux_and_windows
Posted January 13, 2015
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Magmarock: Okay guys since I feel a bit responsible for taking this off topic (my apologies) I have started a thread about Linux and OpenGL. If you wish to move this conversation there here's the link http://www.gog.com/forum/general/opengl_directx_linux_and_windows
Thank you, I can now take back my trolling assumptions ;)
Posted January 13, 2015
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Magmarock: Okay guys since I feel a bit responsible for taking this off topic (my apologies) I have started a thread about Linux and OpenGL. If you wish to move this conversation there here's the link http://www.gog.com/forum/general/opengl_directx_linux_and_windows
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vv221: Thank you, I can now take back my trolling assumptions ;)
Are you being serious or sarcastic?
Posted January 13, 2015
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GOG.com: As the topic of password protected archives included inside some of our Windows game installers sparked some heated discussions, we’d like to address some misunderstandings around this topic and let you know that changes will be made.

Password protection appeared in selected multi-part Windows installers, about 30 games from our catalogue that had large install files, over 6 months ago. We implemented it for various other reasons as well, many of which have been mentioned in previous posts. One of them was streamlining installation for the less tech-savvy users to avoid the issue of “broken” games after not using the installer to install them (you more proficient tinkerers have proven that it was a trivial barrier against the more advanced users).

We’ve heard your concerns regarding this solution and we do agree it could have been better. Although the same could probably be said about many other answers to this problem, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do better for our community. To that end we will be removing the mentioned archive protection from the select Windows installers that had it until a better solution, both technically and philosophically, is ready. Please continue sharing your suggestions regarding such a solution in this topic - your feedback is very appreciated.

On a side note, we’d also like to invite Captain Obvious here for a moment to remind that GOG offers and supports games compatible with specific operating systems and prepared to be installed on a given system using our included installer for a reason. This is, from the very first day, our way of offering a hassle-free, user-friendly and welcoming experience for millions of our users, no matter what their technical skill level may be.

That is why we cannot guarantee that our installers will never change and will forever remain compatible with each of such unsupported tools. However, it never was and our goal to purposely break compatibility with some third-party extraction tools or emulators used by some of our customers - and, rest assured, it never will be.

GOG.com Team
+ Infinity. This is what good customer service looks like. Thanks for being willing to talk about this!
Posted January 13, 2015
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Magmarock: If you need the game data that badly then just install the game on Windows or a virtual Box and then grab the data you need and save it somewhere.
Really, Linux users should buy and install a copy of Windows just to extract their game archives? That's your suggestion?

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Magmarock: Going through the process of extracting an exe just seems like unnecessary busy work.
On the contrary. Extracting game archives with tools like innoextract is by far the most convenient solution for playing DOSBox/ScummVM/etc games under Linux when GOG didn't officially release them for Linux yet.

Furthermore, running innoextract can be done automatically by convenient install scripts - such as the ones provided by PlayOnLinux, or by some Linux distributions for select gog games.

To "install the game on Windows or a virtual Box and then grab the data", cannot be automated.
Posted January 14, 2015
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vv221: Thank you, I can now take back my trolling assumptions ;)
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Magmarock: Are you being serious or sarcastic?
I’m serious, at 100%.
From your first posts in this thread and some of your posts I can remember from other threads, I thought you were not here for an honest discussion. You proved me wrong by your last posts here and your opening of a new dedicated thread.

I’m not very good at this, but it *is* an apology.
Sorry for not taking you seriously earlier, I’m honestly happy to see my initial assumptions about your intentions were wrong.

(yeah, I know this post would have been better via MP, but I think a true apology should be public)
Posted January 14, 2015
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Magmarock: Why the hell would you not want to use the GOG installer. It's the best thing ever. Leaving little impact on the registry and somehow knowing what the game save files are. Not sure if this happens on the Linux version but still. I really like the GOG installer. I with more companies used it.
There are many many games in the GOG catalog that work fine under Linux (using WINE) but do not have an official Linux version via GOG. Installing these games is difficult due to having to configure WINE to run the GOG installer, which extracts the publisher's installer, which then calls it to run it. This is why you would not want to run the GOG installer.

The other reason is that we shouldn't have to run the GOG installer if we don't want to. It's as simple as that.

Many props to GOG for making a simple one-click (or one double-click) installer that will work for most of their customers. We, meaning those of us who were upset with the password protected RAR installers, were never against that and think that it's a great thing! We just want the freedom to install it however we wish so that we can get it to work on our (currently) unsupported OS. This problem was already "fixed" when it was found how the password was calculated. Most of us were just upset with how GOG was treating this. I can't speak for everyone but I am more so at ease now that GOG has stated that they are removing the passworded files.

This should not negatively affect most users and will positively affect the ones who were having problems. It's a win/win.

My only question at this point is: why use RAR?
Posted January 14, 2015
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Psykechan: My only question at this point is: why use RAR?
From my experience, RAR is the most polished packaging software available (UX wise and format wise, has also good CLI support). Also second biggest compression file standard after ZIP. So, I can understand them using it, it is a pleasure to use while 7-zip and ZIP are inferior compression wise and UX wise.

For linux (and other platform) users it is also OK, as rarlabs offers code for the decompressor (while under non-GPL license). So, RAR is not an important topic. (The interesting topic is, why is there still no as good polished open-source software available?)
Post edited January 14, 2015 by shaddim
Posted January 14, 2015
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Magmarock: Are you being serious or sarcastic?
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vv221: I’m serious, at 100%.
From your first posts in this thread and some of your posts I can remember from other threads, I thought you were not here for an honest discussion. You proved me wrong by your last posts here and your opening of a new dedicated thread.

I’m not very good at this, but it *is* an apology.
Sorry for not taking you seriously earlier, I’m honestly happy to see my initial assumptions about your intentions were wrong.

(yeah, I know this post would have been better via MP, but I think a true apology should be public)
Thanks, I appreciate it.
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Magmarock: Why the hell would you not want to use the GOG installer. It's the best thing ever. Leaving little impact on the registry and somehow knowing what the game save files are. Not sure if this happens on the Linux version but still. I really like the GOG installer. I with more companies used it.
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Psykechan: There are many many games in the GOG catalog that work fine under Linux (using WINE) but do not have an official Linux version via GOG. Installing these games is difficult due to having to configure WINE to run the GOG installer, which extracts the publisher's installer, which then calls it to run it. This is why you would not want to run the GOG installer.

The other reason is that we shouldn't have to run the GOG installer if we don't want to. It's as simple as that.

Many props to GOG for making a simple one-click (or one double-click) installer that will work for most of their customers. We, meaning those of us who were upset with the password protected RAR installers, were never against that and think that it's a great thing! We just want the freedom to install it however we wish so that we can get it to work on our (currently) unsupported OS. This problem was already "fixed" when it was found how the password was calculated. Most of us were just upset with how GOG was treating this. I can't speak for everyone but I am more so at ease now that GOG has stated that they are removing the passworded files.

This should not negatively affect most users and will positively affect the ones who were having problems. It's a win/win.

My only question at this point is: why use RAR?
I don't know why they are using RAR but I presumed the passwords were there to stop people from injecting viruses. I must be honest since I've started using Linux I've been getting not only frustrated at the OS itself but also at the community that over sold it.

This whole situation reminds me of a common problem I encounter with the Linux community.

One example was on this site that was telling you how to download a deb file. I said to go into Terminal and type in a bunch of commands and then enter an address. What it didn't tell you is that you could just copy and past the address into your browser to get the file. This seems like the same kind of thing to me.
Post edited January 14, 2015 by Magmarock
Posted January 16, 2015
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3316V: Phew.

Now I can continue migrating from Steam to GOG.
What I've done since day one, four years ago when I became a member.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionOn GNU/Linux, has anyone be able to extract the RAR InnoSetup installers?(652 posts)(652 posts)
(652 posts)