I just thought of another one: I gain professional experience by using Windows/MacOS specific software (Graphics/Print) at home. No "Linux alternative" will do that for me.
Ok, I could try to Wine them... but then there are still the previously mentioned issues.
Not that I necessarily "approve" of that, but that's how it is.

I would think people needed a reason to switch.
It probably doesn't matter all that much how easy/difficult switching is, if people don't see a tangible benefit in it. I think you're right that at this point that's just not the case for most people.

I think Linux adoption is so tiny also, because no matter how good the competitor is, there is a huge majority that will not switch from the dominant product/service in the market, just because REASONS.

By REASONS, I actually either mean the notion that nothing could be better than the dominant good/service in the market, or to a lesser extent also brand loyalty and comfort.

Take Steam and GOG as an example. There is rabid unjustified and misplaced brand loyalty present everywhere amongst Steam users, despite the fact that its competitor GOG is better in some ways. Even if GOG had all the features and all the games of Steam, and had something else to boot, like being DRM-free or not snooping around or whatever cool new feature that Steam didn't have - the fact that most people use Steam, is still enough for most not to swear allegiance to or shop at/use another store platform.

Even if Linux today in 2020 ticks off most boxes regarding providing features, functionality, ease-of-use, software and hardware support and options, etc., some people will refuse to use it. Even if it were better in every way (instead of only in some ways) some people still wouldn't use it.

You can't win against basically a monopoly, if even experts in the industry don't see the point/can't be asked to switch, you can't win if people have been using Windows since they were kids and are thus accustomed wholly to it, you can't win if everytime you buy a new PC it ships with Windows to make you use it (applying a Redmond tax even if you didn't want it), you can't win if nobody is letting people know there are alternatives, you just can't win.

But why do you have to win? Who would win in Linux's case? Some big firm? Which firm?

The whole point of it is to offer an alternative and put pressure on the dominating market behemoth, to compete and become better. And in doing so, maybe Linux might 'one-up' the stagnant obese monstrosity in some aspect.

Support for Linux is more a long-term strategy, rather than a short-sighted 'this has to work right now with the least possible hassle'. It's for those who see the bigger picture, and want things to improve. Others just want to maintain the status quo, not to rock the boat, go about their business, head hung low, finish at 5pm and turn off the lights, go home, use mixed metaphors.

Support for Linux will only increase if the market share of Linux users increases but to increase the market share of Linux users, support for Linux has to increase, but it will only increase if....ad nauseaum, lol. Classic catch 22. How to solve this 'paradox'?

Catch them young - offer/make Linux an alternative on PCs early. Boom. Done. You can thank me later.

Gog did their job. They told you that they don't support Linux with this game. And you are on your own to get the mods working. Also Gog does support their customers and if they didn't then you wouldn't have gotten a response from them. Also GOG isn't responsible for the Mods the Mod creators are. So if you have a problem then ask them about it. It's like asking Bethesda about Mod problems for Skyrim when they have nothing to do with them. Stop complaining about Gog's customer service when they did nothing wrong.

Let's see if I can start off on a slightly more productive note here...

It sounds like you started off with some due diligence and followed the usual channels. That's good.

You also might want to take a look at The "Judas does this run in Wine" thread. That's where a number of us try to get as-of-yet unported games working in Wine. Its more of a technical thread, so I might advise against going in there to rant, but it's a good place for troubleshooting very specific issues (bring your logs and a well documented list of everything you tried).

Specifically (back to Civ IV), adamhm's initial install notes were posted here , though they are mostly a condensed version of his Civilization IV for linux thread.

Adamhm has been a very active contributor here when it comes to Linux gaming. Try not to get frustrated by a lack of response. We all just do this in our free time.

As someone who regularly writes lengthy Wine tutorials and helps troubleshoot Linux and Mac compatibility in the GOG forums, I'll just say that it's not unusual for it to take a long time for a thread to come together. Heck, I've got an X3 thread that took over 2 years to resolve. But working a bit with GOG staff and a number of other users, we kept at it and finally got it there.

Over on ProtonDB, Civ IV certainly has some mixed reviews, averaging out at a Silver rating.

Note that although it's Valve's pet project, Proton's not simply a Steam subfeature. It's open source and you can certainly run Proton's Wine build standalone. If you want to give it a go (and you don't want to deal with building it yourself) I'd take Darvond's suggestion and give Lutris a try. I believe their built-in Wine build is Proton-based these days. If not, there are a number of "protonified" options in the available engines list in-app.

Lutris doesn't have an install script for the GOG version of Civ IV as of now, but if you're semi-comfortable with Wine, it's pretty easy to generate your own build to run via Lutris.

Not trying to be combative, just stating the obvious here... Windows was never meant to be a platform for gaming either. It just had a large install base so developers gravitated toward it, just as they did to DOS before it.

And perhaps it's a bit pedantic to say so, but "Wine Is Not an Emulator" (that's what WINE stands for). Yes, I hate recursive acronyms too, but at least theirs gets their point across.

Anyway, Wine's a compatibility layer that directly translates Windows API calls to POSIX calls in real time, eliminating the performance and memory penalties incurred by traditional emulation. Effectively, that means applications average near-native performance under Wine -- sometimes better performance when the correlated POSIX calls are faster than Microsoft's original implementations.

All that is to say that some Windows games actually run faster on Linux under Wine than they do on Windows. As uncommon as that is, the bottleneck isn't usually in core Windows API translation, but in graphical call conversion -- i.e. translating DirectX to OpenGL calls on the fly. And that's primarily due to proprietary driver implementations more than it is ineptitude, inability, or performance capacity. In other words, it's usually Microsoft's and video card manufactures' propensity for proprietary and undocumented features that leads to incompatibility and performance issues.

This guy ;)

But hey, at least you've got a strong opinion one way or the other. A lot of people aren't informed enough to have one.

I ran Windows XP up until '99, but every version since has only seemed to get worse. So I switched to Linux over 20 years ago and never looked back. I won't touch a Windows machine these days unless my work requires it. To their credit, though, Windows 10 doesn't appear to be nearly the memory hog that previous versions were.

I don't have anything specifically against Windows on an OS capability front. I just don't like built-in user monitoring, forced updates, proprietary filesystems, ineffective security, or registry-key-based application storage. But to each their own. If you're willing to deal with those things for a wider game spectrum, more power to you.

As an aside, though... Microsoft is investing heavily in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Even they realize it's hard to ignore the performance benefits of the Linux kernel over the Windows one. And, on a simpler level, there's just no comparison between their simulated DOS shell and a Bash prompt when you actually need to get work done.

Aside from the few issues we've both listed against Windows, I'm still surprised to hear any level of system administrator say that. The things that make Linux an ideal server platform also tend to make it an ideal desktop environment:

• authoritative and trusted software sources (huge centralized signed application repositories)
• single-file binary-with-libraries app distribution (appimage, flatpak, snaps)
• elective system updates
• built-in firewall (and VPN with the latest kernel)
• simple backups (rsync)
• point-to-point encrypted communication (ssh tunneling)
• running applications on remote systems (xhost and the like)
• per-user/group file and application attributes and permissioning
• process job signaling (sigint, sigterm, etc.)
• (much) better memory and thread management
• (much) higher port connection count
• runs on just about any hardware made in the last 25 years

And at the same time, I have yet to see any Windows user that couldn't comfortably navigate the Cinnamon or Gnome2 desktop environments. The most common problem I've noticed with brand new Linux users is wrapping their head around the idea that they don't have open a web browser to download their drivers and applications.

I enjoy gaming as much as the next guy, but having to work a little harder to get a couple games to run is nothing compared to the time Linux saves me on a daily basis in general productivity.

Fair enough, but as for me: Well, I wouldn't want to have to relearn a bunch of things and make my OS experience more work for all but the strongest of reasons(i'm a lazy git, ya see)....i.e. to me it's too much work for the payoff....but I respect those that do so for good reasons for sticking to it, at the very least.

You might be right on that.

You call it tripe, we call it treating people as one wants to be treated and should be treated(unless the other person is an actual troll that is).

And yes, it is against the guidelines/rules to insult other users or staff overtly as she was doing.

Baseless accusations without proof(your word alone, essentially), and also that is the proper way to solve such....if the both of you won't even try those avenues it shows that you likely don't even want to try working along with staff/the other users and makes the both of you look suspect for doing so(even if that wasn't your intent).

Censoring posts that break rules isn;t harassment(do you even know what that word means or are you just making up your own definition to suit your needs) as defined by/under most country's laws.

No need to be overly dramatic....also GOG is a secular website so appeals to one being damned to hell likely don't mean much.

It did the same to me earlier....it's gone for now, though. :)

Ever hear the saying "Convenience is king"? There's a big reason why it is a saying....many dislike wasting time and just like stuff that works, and for many that is a good enough reason to stick with something....in this case MS's OS.

People also don't like needing to relearn new commands for various things as well, which one would have to do with most versions of linux.

And then there's the fact that not every game runs in linux, and one needs to mess with some stuff to get some games to run....this is GOG, where many buy games to just install and play out of the box....just look at how many times we get threads asking how to make simple tweaks to some games. That alone should show how going to linux(any version) is not desirable for many people.

Heck, we've had how many flavors of linux for how long, yet people aren't leaving MS in droves....even with Win10 being a thing....that alone should show how many people value convenience over most else.

Yup.

Because for those of us who use MS/s OSs, it is second nature to do things in those OSs and somewhat easier to do(akin to breathing/etc in living beings).

If one had to learn a new OS they'd have to keep all that info in mind until it also became second nature, and then HOPE they did it right(and didn't bork their file systems, lose data, etc), and then hope all their software/games played easy enough in the new OS.....to most this is likely not worth it vs. setting up Win10 to be more secure(that took me all of a few hours at most, actually).

Nope, no forcing.....everyone should be allowed to use any OS they want, and an OSs market share should rise and fall on it's own merits & not any forcing. :)

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It can't run them all, however, and some not even natively.

Unsubstantiated.

Linux gets no or little virsuses for the same reason Mac didn't for so long....too little a user base to make it worthwhile for virus makers. If Linux were as widespread as Windows it'd likely have people making near as many viruses for it.

Not everyone wants or needs that much ciontrol....some just want an OS that works, plain and simple.

It's like a fancy restaurant vs. a fast food joint....sometimes one just wants/needs a plain old hamburger and nothing fancy.

Win 10 can be made very secure as well, and even so eh...privacy is overrated. That isn't to say it isn't important....just overrated by some.

Linux is free, in part, because they have people willing to put in the legwork to do various things that are needed for free.

But not ALL games.

This, to most here, would likely be a no no(especially that last line, which sounds a bit "cultish"...even if that wasn't your intent).....just as to many Linux users MS would be a no go.

People like freedom, especially linux users, and forcing someone to use one OS isn't freedom.

One word: Nooooooooo

As Charlton Heston once said: "From my cold dead hands....."
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Not to focus on him, but ANY user(in general) that defends something that way only harms their "cause" or their chances of getting people to try out what they want people to try out.

If a person were to say: "Here, this OS does x/y/z better and I think you should try it, and here's why..." I would be more willing to think about it than someone saying essentially "You should use this and if you don't you should be forced to"
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I think he had a valid complaint though.....you essentially suggested people should be forced to do something against their will.
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That only likely works if one knows what to do and when....I doubt a joe schmoe off the street is going to know how to block such correctly and do everything right if they just adopted linux.
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This here...this is a good post....+1 :)

Yeah well I tried it KDE, Gnome, Debian you name it I tried it I had to manually put every piece of hardware I had into the stinking bloody thing then it would only partially register that it was there SOME of the time Horrible then Mesa would NOT finish because it thought the geforce2 gtx I had at the time fleeced it of a PC that was a council cleanup job as well as an orchid sound card to slap into my Junker at the time Pentium 150 MMX the stupid linux distro thought it was a TNT 2 (unbranded) caused me too many headaches to no end then I said Fck it and bought myself a win95b cause I couldn't afford win98 se and winXP wouldn't run on it and windows 98 se was more expensive then the already expensive windows ME

I got it on the linux OS on cover CD's from magazines (My pre-internet days circa 1983-2008) they were sh!t.

that old win95B now has holes in it (FCKING BUGS and RATS)

P.S. those linux distro's did weird things to the CD-Drive would not LET IT GO without manually unmounting the cd-drive i'd push the button to eject the disc nothing happened Linux was too annoying for my liking.

Plus nothing RAN on it **NOTHING**

I also ended up with an ENTERPRISE EDITION of windows LOL IT WAS AWESOME!

You could choose before installing windows what you EXACTLY wanted installed!

Wait, you PAID for a MS OS? When was this btw(I wanna see if the price was high back then for your area of the world/etc)?

Also pic somewhat related...especially given as most I know(yeah I know illegal and all...i'm not explicitly saying people should do it, though, in case anyone thinks that o.0) found it in "other ways".

The disc or the PC itself? If the PC you have some nasty rats...i'd think about setting up fencing/traps. :|

A bit hyperbolic, as likely stuff you couldn't afford or get would have likely worked with Linux, but yeah....it's that level of entry that turns many off...needing to maybe buy new hardware parts, setting it up, learning it and new apps for some tasks if need be, getting some games to work in Linux, etc.

I love those editions and also pro editions or "black editions"(if one goes the argh matey route.....think MS OS versions without all the bloat as it is cut out).
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EDIT: Forgot Pic....attached now. :)

win95b(d) was $230 oem for the boxed version it was $450.00 inc G.S.T. (rip off tax)
win98 SE OEM was $420 boxed editon $799.00 inc G.S.T. (rip off tax)
winME was $320 OEM for boxed it was $645.00 inc G.S.T. (rip off tax)
win2000 was $500 OEM for boxed it was $1645.00 inc G.S.T. (rip off tax)

for an example of Australian prices for things here is Aussie McDonalds prices (current)

Mcdonalds prices in Australia

I've lost 8 PSU's and PC's to rats in the old house!

Nah these were really old versions of linux KDE 2.3.0 2002 version

Yeah, Linux as a desktop environment was pretty rough and tumble pre-2000, and it sounds like you ran the gamut. But comparing a community-driven project to it's state over 20 years ago and maintaining old biases is unfair, both to the work people have done since and to yourself for missing out on it over a grudge.

My first real go at full-time desktop Linux in early '99 was with Mandrake, which of course led to Red Hat -- which of course led to bailing on that for Debian. Then in 2004 Ubuntu arrived on a sour note and I didn't touch them again for a couple years. But '06 was a good year -- CentOS finally provided a good community-driven RHEL alternative and Canonical finally got their act together with Ubuntu 6.06 and LTS support.

But for all the wild west bravado going on there, the Linux community continued to prosper (notably in the server market, but on the desktop front as well), while Microsoft just kinda quietly sucked along with it's NT/2000 stack. I loved it back in the DOS and Win 3.1 days. Then Win 95 put a shiny veneer on an otherwise unstable base, but it got the job done. 98 felt like a great upgrade, both cosmetically and user experience -- plus Netscape had been so well received that when Q-Link became AOL somewhere around there the internet exploded.

At this point in reminiscing, I realize I have to adjust my time table -- because I'm recalling the huge letdown that was Windows ME. As you'd expect, I reverted to 98 and then started seriously considering the Linux alternative -- and started playing around with those terrible magazine cover CDs you mentioned on my at-the-time shiny new P3. The adjusted time table comes in realizing I'd pretty much switched to Linux before XP even came out. But I did put XP on another hard drive around -- what would that be, '01? -- and "dual-booted" the hard way (swapping the IDE cable) for a year or two before quitting on Windows all together... just as the games were starting to get good too. Man, some days I miss me some "Tribes" ;)

Since then though, particularly since '06, Linux has gained significant improvements in the desktop experience year over year. I myself was a large contributor to the Beryl project (later merged with Compiz) -- and let me tell you, we were none too happy when Apple started stealing all our UI concepts... but I digress. Around the same time Wine was starting to make real progress in gaming -- most notably due to the newly added d3dx stack. After some hacking at the render stack, me and a few other guys got Guild Wars running pretty smoothly and it felt like Xmas. Linux was finally ready for gamers... but nobody outside the community knew it, and most still don't.

Meanwhile, Microsoft effectively turned their focus elsewhere (Xbox, Windows Phone, etc.) and let the Windows experience go stale. Vista was a disaster. 7 wasn't too bad -- kinda felt like an "XP Reloaded" -- but it had some major networking and security issues. 8 was the "let's make my laptop feel like a phone" release... those tiles felt terrible. But I will say that they succeeded in making laptop touchscreens a thing, and I guess I'm happy about that -- I'll be happier when Apple jumps on that bandwagon. Otherwise Windows 8 was a flop. But that flop came along with their cloud-services prep (in large part copied from Apple) under the hood to gear up to what I like to think of as "Windows 10: Spyware Edition". On the front-end it's basically Windows XP with trendy flat graphics and a few of the menu features we all used to use from PowerToys and TweakUI. But on the back-end... ouch. While there are a number of performance improvements, they're still using legacy filesystems, stuck to their mediocre-at-best memory management and paging system, added in a bunch of telemetry (user-tracking), and (not to put all those years of Windows Phone / 8 experience to waste) brought what are effectively mobile apps to the OS -- and let me tell you, I know a few engineers at Microsoft who are absolutely hating UWP.

Over all, Windows hasn't seen any major improvements in user-experience in 20 years. And, unlike the Linux comparison, I think it's more than fair to point that out given their market dominance and huge profit margins. So what has Microsoft done with their time?

• Azure (cloud computing) - Great... has nothing to do with the desktop experience.
• Hololens - F'n awesome... if it's ever consumer ready that is. Still no help to desktop users.
• Surface - I like touchscreens. My desktop computer doesn't have one.
• Xbox - Plug-n-play gaming action at its finest... well, except for Sony's Playstation.
• DirectX - Fully functional proprietary vendor lock-in (you know how hard it is for us hackers to translate these APIs?)

I kid (kinda), but DirectX is, in my opinion, Microsoft's greatest contribution to their desktop OS business since MS Office. And since XP, it's basically their only real contribution. But that's not saying a lot.

Open GL (and now Vulkan) have kept pace with DirectX, trailing at times by a couple of years. But for a primarily community driven effort that's an impressive amount of work. If Microsoft would open-source DirectX (or preferably put their effort into Vulkan) there would be no compatibility issues for gaming between systems.

But they like it that way... it's profitable business. And that's fine... but Linux outperforms Windows in every other category but gaming, solely based on deals Microsoft has made with manufacturers and vendors to maintain DirectX feature parity and keep the market locked down. We're always playing catch-up. That's not a problem with Linux. It's a side-effect of the proprietary nature of business and intellectual property.

But Valve's (essentially failed) attempt at a Linux gaming machine and their subsequent fallback to Steam's Proton stack is telling. When a hugely successful company that makes all of their money off of Windows gamers starts pushing Linux, it's worth taking note. Linux outperforms Windows, it's just lacking in market share (well, outside the server environment). The dev stack is more maintainable and the resultant software is more capable, even on lower-end hardware, and that grants the potential to make gaming available to a significantly larger user base.

No matter how you look at it, it's a mater of scale. But in today's high tech world, scalability is always more important than the current scale. Yes, Windows is the best OS for gaming, but it's not scaling well at all.

--edited for typos--

If your country charges 100%/near 100% tax for such I can see why some might not get it through official channels. ;|

Also why not buy such through eBay(did they have such back then?)/etc secondhand? Lower prices or no?

Also also I checked and saw the australian currency vs. the US dollar makes those prices way too high...ripoffs even.

You should find a way to guard them better then....maybe build a metal enclosure around them and the cabling if you can somehow?

Well yeah, now some are much easier and work with more stuff....back then linux was more the tech specialist's OS of choice(meaning most who used it needed to know what they were doing).
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Lastly, make sure to reply and quote me next time if you could I know you replied. :)
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I agree people should give stuff fair shakes, but even today the easiest Linux OS versions still have a learning curve compared to one who has been used to Windows/etc for years and years.

That's one thing I dislike about Linux, so many types to choose from and there's pluses and minuses to weigh with each.....one would likely need a spreadsheet of pluses and minuses with all of them and some time to compare, and then update and compare every so often....too much hassle for me.

(Though I can see some being ok with it for what they get from it)

98(esp SE) was pretty good, I agree....less bloated and did what one needed it to do for the most part.

Dual booting the hard way....you had guts and patience, my man.

Actual serious question: How can you expect people to not steal from those who make such if no one patents/etc anything to do with Linux? That is one of the downsides to making it free for all.

Agreed.

Dude you don't have the type of distractions that I have at home so it isn't possible to make sure to quote I have to be Up and at em at a trillionth of a nanosecond and spitting out answers to questions that make no sense even faster then that (You don't and couldn't understand the sh!t I deal with) So I can't dick around on the forums quoting ANYTHING as I simply DO NOT have the time. (you don't have a parent that screeches at you every 5 seconds to COME HERE THIS INSTANT just so they can ask you a barrage of questions up to 100 even though you are busy)

1.) My country charges a 10% G.S.T. on things of this nature. (more like 11000%)

2.) You didn't read my reply where I said I didn't HAVE the internet UNTIL 2008 no quick jump online Ebay for me back then all PC trader magazines and yes all Aussie prices are frigging rip offs.

3.) Thankfully we don't live in that rat infested hell hole anymore

4.) I still won't touch linux with a 50 foot barge pole because of how sh!t it was back then I couldn't and can't code for sh!t unlike everyone else and all the kiddies can these days.