For fuck's sake, guys! Don't feed the pokémons...

Easy peasy: download the packages on another computer and put them on a USB stick or something. You should be able to make a repo or something out of the USB drive. If you don't think I understand what you're saying, be specific about what you want. We're talking about a system that's designed to let you have whatever you want within reason.

It's pretty trivial on Linux. Set up your local repo mirror on another computer and connect to it instead of remote mirror. That's about it. Just because you never did it doesn't mean it's hard.

Local Linux repo can be installed on any disk without actually running a server.

See: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepository/Setup#local-apt-repository

You said Linux is hard to use for local update, and you were proven wrong. Saying "I can just use Windows" is ignoring your own incorrect claim before. End of discussion really.

Nice strawman you've got there. If you keep beating it; it might just turn into a dead horse. I said that Linux sucks at backwards compatibility (which it does) and I emphasized that Windows is more streamlined (which it is) I never said I couldn't do it. I don't way it works, because you'll need either an entire server locally or a massive 130 gig download for... I dunno about 5 gigs worth of stuff. You could backup all the .deb files but that reqires having another identical machine connected to the internet just for that perpose.

Not efficient or streamlined isn't it hey? Wouldn't you say? I look forward to see how you willfully misinterpret this one.

Your reading comprehension problem is not the topic of this thread. Move on.

lol that's funny coming from you. Alright I'll say something on topic. W3 is not coming to Linux anytime soon and probably won't be worth playing by the time it does if that. If you're not sure why I'd tell you to read my posts but honestly you should just read you're own ask ask yourself. "Do I as a developer, want to deal with that."

I don't use Macs either but I do know a bit about them and have friends that use them, and you'd definitely have the same kinds of issues with Macs as you do with Linux. Perhaps even moreso than on Linux.

I don't know what the problem is with Trine 2, but if there is actually a problem & it's not just a case of user error then I'm sure people at GOG will be looking into it as they do with any other game here.

I've manually extracted stuff from .deb packages before and recently learned how to make .deb packages myself so I'm familiar with what they are and how they work.

.deb packages are essentially just archives containing the files they are intended to deliver plus a control file (which contains basic information about the package for the package manager to use, including a list of any dependencies it needs so the package manager can install those too if not already installed), and possibly some pre- and post- install/uninstall scripts etc.

.NET and Visual C++ runtimes are not at all "compatibility systems" (at least not in the sense you're suggesting), but a set of libraries and related tools.

Look at it this way. Prior to Windows 10, each release of Windows was basically equivalent to an "LTS" release. Over the life of the OS there wouldn't be many big changes, so there won't be many breakages either. But I know from experience that lots of stuff broke going between e.g. Win98 to XP, XP to Vista/7, or Vista/7 to Win10.

And now that Windows 10 is ostensibly the "final" version of Windows and has switched to a "OS as a service" model along with rolling releases, significant changes are more frequent - and consequently so too are breakages.

Mint 18.3 has added support for flatpaks via the software manager - and they run alongside the normal repository system so either can be used, depending on the user's preference/compatibility with the system.

- It is subject to wild swings from month to month. Recently there was a big surge of Windows 7 users causing a huge drop in other operating systems. This was due to a huge influx of Chinese accounts. Certain big-name titles like PUBG can also cause this.
- Steam's statistics differ considerably from what other surveys indicate (and the sales figures given my devs are typically more in line with the other surveys)
- We don't know how many accounts are due to scammers routinely creating tons of new accounts (which will almost all be on Windows) to get around bans
- The survey on Linux appears to be bugged right now. As of last December I hadn't seen the survey for years despite a complete hardware upgrade and several reinstalls (which usually triggers it- at least on Windows), and yet according to Steam's configuration file the last survey date for my system was in September.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but from what you've posted here I suspect the main reason you were having issues is due to misunderstanding how certain things work (and no offense but you seem to be ignorant of a lot of things about both Linux and Windows - even a lot of very basic things).

CrossOver is Wine! It's essentially a version of Wine with certain Wine Staging patches (and the occasional patch that's yet to be merged into Wine/Wine Staging) and a proprietary front-end (which it should be noted is very accessible and does work *very* well). Just before I started using Linux CodeWeavers did a giveaway of a free years' subscription so I used it extensively when I started out & continued with my subscription as it was a big help in moving away from Windows. I actually have a lifetime CrossOver subscription, although I don't use it that much any more (as my Wine knowledge grew I gradually switched to PlayOnLinux to get access to more recent versions of Wine & now use it along with using Wine more directly for creating my wrappers).

Also in my experience the reception to it in the Linux community is generally positive, except amongst the people who are against Wine in general. Buying CrossOver directly funds Wine development :)

2014-2015ish. My suggested approach was to update & install everything you want on the online system (or a VM with online access), then make & copy the apt backup over to the other for installation there. This would allow all of the updates and software installed on the online system to be installed on the offline system (and in exactly the same way), as long as it is using the same distro and release as the online system so that the packages would be compatible.

Considering that it's wasting a rather large amount of bandwidth (which isn't free, and will cause slowdowns for other users), their dislike for that is perfectly understandable.

All OS’s have their headaches but I found Linux quite rage educing so I’ll just take your word for it.


That’s good to know, but the point is you need them to get your stuff to work and the pacakge manager needs to index to know what debs to get. IE you need direct internet for it all to work. You can’t just go the library (at least I can’t) to download what you need.

Perhaps systems wasn’t the right word but I was probably tired when I wrote that. Point is, as long as their in your computer you’ll be able to run your VC++ games


Unless you’re using LTSB. I hate Win 10 Pro. I still prefer it over Linux but the constant changes annoy me. Not so much because of the changes in on themselves but having to get used it every time they release a service pack( Redstone update) Now altering the DPI also changes the mouse setting meaning that I have to used a reg file to get 1 to 1 mouse movement. I switched to LTSB and never looked back.



The Steam survey might not be perfect but it’s the best I’ve found got. Please don’t take this the wrong way but those points do sound a little like excuses. Linux got the biggest push for advertising when Steam released SteamOS. This might possibly the most aggressively advertised free product in the world and still didn’t take off. The point of my criticism is that Linux not succeeding is on their end and one anyone. History has thought us that monopolies can be beaten.

Do you have a link to these other surveys I’d very much like to look them over, but no links to Linux sites thank you.


None taken. I hear it a lot but you can’t argue with results. I knew this guy who was a Linux fan and was always criticising my knowledge on computers. Despite fixing all his silly little problems with Maya and Windows he eventually stopped talking to me. I wish I hadn't helped. Point is I might not know all the trivia of Linux but I know how to get thing working in both OS’s and you have more options and salutations open to you through Windows then you do through Linux. Some of this is due to monopoly, but a some of it is also due to a lack of support for closed source work flow. For all the talk of freedom there’s something to be said about ones freedom to have trade secrets. IE closed source software.


I know of the relationship of Crossover and Wine but Crossover is not Wine. For starters it works. Same code and team but it’s clear where their priorities lie. Play on Linux is the worst. The Linux world is full of so many contradictions. POL and Winetricks both rely on direct server access to function. This means that you the user have no true independence to manage your own software. Linux might be free from corporations but it is not free from online servers. I’ve mentioned before how this system is like DRM in terms of functionality, but as long as no brands or corporations are involved the community doesn’t seem to mind.

Oh right I think I remember that. Yes that did in fact work as a backup. I wrote a script to animate the whole thing. Here take a look https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdaevjrrmslkera/Deb-Mint-Cin-18.2.sh?dl=0

But there’s just one problem This is only indented to work for mint 18.2 and with every new release I have to change to the script

That’s right, it’s not worth the bandwidth time or space, so I won’t bother with it. But it does highlight a glaring with how much Linux relies on it’s repositories to work. You might be thinking “hey doesn’t Windows rely on it’s servers” only for updates and activation. Not for apps. Also you can update offline much easier then Linux. Online updating through a client is much better on Linux, no one is going to argue that. But archiving the updates. Much easier on Windows.

The package manager needs the repository indices to know what packages are available (and which versions) so it can both check if the dependency list in the package can be satisfied and automatically install the appropriate dependencies if they aren't already installed.

As of Mint 18 you can use the live environment for downloading packages and their dependencies (the ones that aren't already installed) by using "apt download <package>".

Alternatively if you're only after a handful of specific packages then you could simply download them using a browser.

It's the same with comparable libraries on Linux, with the same caveats.

Which is only legitimately available for enterprise users, and only because they won't tolerate the breakages.

Ok, you *must* be trolling here! First, Valve barely did any advertising, leaving it mostly up to third party companies and the media to market their systems & SteamOS.

Second: Windows 10. Microsoft was effectively forcing that on people, to the point of using exactly the same techniques as malware and causing a lot of disruption... it doesn't get much more aggressive than that. And it was still resisted heavily, and Windows 7 is still dominant.

Unfortunately I do not tend to save the links to them.

CrossOver is Wine. Select a bottle/prefix and open its Wine configuration panel or look in the CrossOver installation directory and look at the binaries and see. They use a version of Wine with some staging patches + occasionally some other yet-to-be-merged patches, the main difference with CrossOver is its front-end and install scripts.

They both work. I've used both extensively and can attest to this fact. You can typically achieve better results with PlayOnLinux (and an appropriate Wine version) or by using Wine directly, but you need to know what you're doing so you can set it up properly for whatever you want to run. CrossOver is a lot easier to use & even if you don't really know what you're doing you're likely to have more success with it without putting much effort in.

Winetricks does not require internet access unless it strictly needs it. e.g. if you install DirectX components then it may need to download the approprate DirectX redistributable, but once downloaded it is cached in ~/.winetricks/directx9 for future use so it does not need to download it again. Similar to how you need internet access to download things from the repositories, but if you download the packages and indices manually & put them where they're supposed to be the package manager will happily install/update everything offline.

POL does the same thing, but that does require internet access anyway because it doesn't store its install scripts locally (or at least it didn't last time I looked into it- I don't like this behaviour either).

My own Wine wrappers also work completely offline as long as the required components have been downloaded already.

Well yeah, because otherwise it'd be like downloading all the updates for Vista, forcibly installing them on Win7 and wondering why it's now BSOD'ing. "But I installed all the updates..." - they weren't meant for that system!

It's entirely possible to download only system updates and dependencies through the repositories while installing additional software separately (and I use a bunch of software that's installed separately to the repositories), but the repositories are favoured because they are far easier to use and keep updated.

Oh I forgot about the Windows 10 upgrade thing. Because I disabled update it wasn’t a problem for me. Anyway no I’m not trolling but I don’t think anything will be good enough because on the desktop Linux isn’t good enough. No one outside of a small fringe of people want to use it. SteamOS was all over the front page of their website. I keep hearing and if Dell and HP promoted Linux more people would use it. Bullshit, no they wouldn’t and once again we’d have to have all the reasons why it didn’t work. That wit wasn’t set up properly, they didn’t do this, they didn’t do that. The reality is that in it’s current state no one wants to use it.


I see, well I’m gonna need more then just your word.

If you say something along the lines of “it’s really easy to use” and then follow it up with “if you know what you’re doing” then you’ve contracted yourself. Nonetheless I have a small challenge for you. Get Fear to run at a playable frame rate using Wine 1.6 you can use POL and winetricks but you’ll get bonus points if you don’t.

That’s good to hear. You should be able to understand why though people don’t want to go through all that. I don’t have the patience for it. I have a habit of asking GOG to include unofficial patches into some of their games to prove their functionality. They often don’t but I wish they did. The less steps you go through to get something to work the better. Otherwise people will just go back to consoles.

Yeah well it’s annoying, I have to edit the script every time they make a change. I got sick of it.

The only other way I know of to reliably install software into Linux us with Appimage

It's much more complicated than you make it out to be. Advertising alone wouldn't be enough, even having it work flawlessly wouldn't be enough, because the truth is that people are resistant to change and generally avoid it unless they are forced to - especially when it involves changing to something that's unfamiliar.

There's also path dependence and lock-in, where people rely on software that's Windows only and moving to Linux means quite a lot more effort to either find alternatives or try to get said software running in Wine or so - or possibly go without. As far as gaming is concerned many games also do not have Linux versions yet nor do they run in Wine, which puts off a lot of gamers.

In addition Linux has network effect working against it, where the smaller userbase can make it more difficult to find people to help when you run into issues.

This is all gradually changing though as more developers start supporting Linux, as Wine improves, and more people start using Linux.

GamingOnLinux did/do a series about sales statistics from various developers: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/linux-game-sales-statistics-from-multiple-developers-part-5.10064 (includes links to earlier parts too)

In terms of actual sales, Linux tends to consistently get around 2%, with Mac around 4% and the rest being on Windows, although there are outliers in either direction (one developer even reported 11% of sales on Linux: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/an-interview-with-the-developer-of-space-sim-helium-rain-who-says-linux-gaming-is-alive-and-well.10982 )

I never said that; read it more carefully. I said: "You can typically achieve better results with PlayOnLinux (and an appropriate Wine version) or by using Wine directly, but you need to know what you're doing...".

CrossOver makes it a lot easier by providing a lot more automation (and based on the experience I had when I started using Linux 5 years ago with zero prior experience, it is pretty damn easy to use) - but this comes at the cost of having much less control over it which means the results aren't going to be as good as what you can get by setting up and fine-tuning everything manually. There's also the fact that it isn't updated as frequently as Wine or Wine Staging so it tends to lack features compared to regular Wine/Wine Staging as time goes on between releases.

Wine 1.6 is ancient and is missing many features, including some very important features for gaming performance such as CSMT. Also FEAR runs great in Wine; I already made a standalone Wine wrapper for it some time ago: https://www.gog.com/forum/fear_series/fear_fear_2_for_linux

If it was done properly you shouldn't need to change the scripts at all between releases. The scripts I gave you didn't - they just backup and restore the apt cache and indices, the locations of which are standardised. Just run the backup script on the online system, then copy the backup to the offline system and run the restore script. Then after that you can simply install the packages via the update manager/software manager/etc as if the system was online (it'll first complain about the lack of connection as it reloads and tries to refresh the indices but then it'll let you install the new packages).

Why a challenge to use a 5 year old version of WINE? I challenge you to get FEAR playable on Windows 98.

Because Wine 1.6 is still currently the latest version in the default Ubuntu repos