Barring the fact that they probably don't have the budget to hire a high performing senior dev at this point (who will demand a low six figures at least nowadays), they are not helping their case by requiring hires to relocate to Poland or asking them to work with PHP (which might still be fashionable to create a cheap mom & pops website with a cms, but has been in steady decline for over a decade for anything more substantial than that...).

I don't think they need a senior dev, but I have happily harped on the "Must work in Poland" as some nationalistic malarkey.

In windows 10 you can use it without activation. W11 you cant even install it without internet.

If you must use Windows 10, i'd use the ameliorated edition. It strips out a bunch of unwanted stuff and replaces it, and starts with a fixed user/password which you can then reset the password. However you can't make more accounts.

Linus Tech Tips

https://ameliorated.info/

I don't blame them. Targeting GNU/Linux (for the most usual variant) is quite hard when you sell proprietary, binary software. Either you have to offer containerized apps, which are not an option when the games are multigigabyte downloads as they already are and don't need any more bloat, or you have to target a specific implementation.

GOG went through the second option, targeting Ubuntu. This usually goes well; I can run those games in Slackware (current) without modification save for when such programs were compiled against stupid library versions (as in Baldur's Gate EE, compiled against a deprecated TLS version even when the target Ubuntu version had a more modern one). But this has its own set of problems; not every distro can run Ubuntu binaries. Not every distro can run 32-bit binaries; and recompiling binaries for a variety of architectures and libraries is simply not an option.

At the end, you can only get a specific binary which can be run by a limited portion of that operating system, whose installed base is already small as it is in comparison to other platforms. Hence, they would very much avoid it and just offer binaries for Windows. Sad but true.

They don't need the entire team to be senior devs, but in my experience, a lot of devs don't really take ownership and make bad decisions (technology choice and/or design) without having to live with the consequences of their decisions (the industry trend of clocking 2-3 years and then moving on doesn't help).

There something to be said about having a developer on staff that had to see systems evolve and clean people's messes (others and their own) and is prepared to take ownership of either the entire system or at least vital parts of it.

Technologically, you have all sorts. You have the kind that get married to whatever tech stack was popular when they initially learned the ropes and never move on even when the rest of the industry does (seriously another team is stuck with a Drupal project that got developed as a greenfield project in 2017 by someone who really should get out of the software development profession... and now 5 years later, they stuck redoing the entire project because IT won't allow the project to remain as is because of glaring security flaws in Drupal 7). Then, you have the kind that impulsively integrate an ever increasing amount bleeding edge new things without exerting the discipline of learning the tooling they integrate well and waiting for said tooling to be dependable.

Our industry is a bit of a wild west and people with a sense of ownership, intellectual rigor and who have enough investment in their career to stay afloat of current technology development (and learn the tooling well) are worth their weight in gold.

But do you people not think that the ideas of GOG and Linux are similar? Would it not be logical to offer support for the same philosophy?

Sure. I hoped for it a long time ago. But the glimpse of hope vanished and I am not going to expect it anymore. Would totally love it, though.

And the story with the user base: if you don't get your everyday stuff on your preferred plattform, than you have to stick with the other one. If you can't buy your software for your plattform, than you either don't buy it, or buy it where you can use it.

And don't give a dime on the Steam survey. At least I was never asked the hardware survey whenever I was using Linux. I will never understand why they simply don't collect the data on user login. I don't like data intrusion, but I can see some interesting use cases for it. :D

As soon as your daily workflows - basically everything you want to do, with any of your desired feature set - is in place, then you don't need to load up windows on your dual boot system anymore. Which, in my opinion, would lead to a bigger visible Linux userbase.

As long as the "sacrifices" are to big, you're using the less preferred plattform. At least that's how it's with me. You can't supplement every shortcomming.

The ecosystem on Windows ist just more refined and established. Probably because it's where business is happening. If Linux would find more business use (outside of network/server stuff), it might shift. But who knows.

EDIT: grammar

...

In what way?

GOG prefers monolithic kernels over microkernels?
[url=https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os]https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os[/url]/

GOG says fuck you to nVidia?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g

GOG likes penguins?
https://www.gog.com/en/games?query=penguin

I would say GOG is more like iOS (for Macs)

GOG used to be cool and niche. Now it's just another platform with a small market share.

GOG is generally more expensive than other platforms.

Oh, and GOG wants your money.

None of these are criticisms, just the way it is...but GOG is not like Linux.

If we focus more on gaming, using Steam Survey, the result is meaningfully different:
- Windows: 96.31%
- Mac OS: 2.55%
- Linux: 1.14%

You'd think so, but there's a few problems. Linux inherit of it's nature is globalist, borderless, and ownerless. GOG's very history has pointed to being Poland Proud, intentionally or otherwise; picking up otherwise failed games merely because they were developed locally, and favoring bizarre selections (such as AD 2044) merely because they were localized.

And within a certain subset of people (marketing, advertisers, salespeople), there's this stereotype that Linux is nothing but a system for old gurus, suspender wearing fully bearded sysadmins, and hackers who want to smash the system. I don't mean to scare GOG's staff, but there's a majority of them with a Linux system in their pocket, unless they spent GOG's budget on buying this years iStatus Symbol.

(In which case, they merely have a Unix system in their pockets.)

no, because the main reason gOg exist is to make a profit, DRM free is just a USP

Even with those numbers, MAC is still more than doubly relevant than Linux ... and 2.55% of Steam users is a huge number of gamers. Very different comparatively that percentage at GOG.

But honestly, how meaningful are we talking, and can you really trust the results from Steam. In any case it is concentric to Steam, and the sort of person who uses Steam. GOG is likely a different demographic, so one has to consider context, and the fact not all gamers use Steam or bother with surveys.

There will always be tensions with management and there are a lot of bad bosses.

A couple of things:
- If you want to get anywhere with your career, you got to learn A LOT of stuff on your own time (which in my experience at least half of devs don't do) otherwise opportunities will be a lot slower to materialise because you won't be skilled enough to meet them. Open-source projects are great for that (it helps the world and gives you practice AND credibility). In an ideal world, you'd do a 30 hours week and you'd take an extra 10+ to learn, but the reality is that you got to work 40 and still take an extra 10+ to learn. This is why I'm not ashamed to ask for a very nice salary.
- Using the leverage you got from what you know, if your current job is a dead end, you just move on as long as it takes for your job not to be a dead end. Bad managers don't deserve a quality workforce. As simple as that. If you find yourself working 50+ hours without learning anything worthwhile, leave (to emphasise my point here, if the 50+ hours is you working 40 hours, and spending an extra 10+ to learn about some great technology your employer wants to use, that's fine, that's learning time, you're getting leverage in your career in exchange for your extra time). Not only you're getting burned out, but you're not gaining any leverage to work elsewhere.
- There will always be tension with management regarding quality and many managers are allergic to the word refactoring so don't use it. Just silently slip in some refactoring in everything you do (say, a +25% refactoring debt) and make that the norm that doesn't need to be adverstised loudly. If they micro-manage you to the point where you have to justify every line of code you change, look elsewhere.