Being "substantially better" than absurd or ridiculous doesn't make your reasons good.

I'm yet to see a reason given for not supporting Linux that isn't easily solvable, usually in the same way the same issue has already been solved, as they tend to apply to Windows and Mac too.

Feel free to enumerate a proper list of reasons instead of an unmarked "reductio ad absurdum" list and we can pick them apart and resolve them.

Hooray! Thank you, gog!

I knew I did right when I bought Shadow Man here instead of Steam. Now I can play it on my Mac, DRM-free! Thanks GOG!

Hmm, you guys have been using third-party solutions this whole time, things from DOSBox to Wineskin. So there might be some piece of software (or someone with expertise) out there who can help you guys with this. I hope the GOG Linux community can organize and come together, and, if you let them know precisely what you need, the more tech savy of them can help you guys out.

Great, thanks!

Original War is a secret gem.

Well, as a Mac user / game buyer I must say that I don't generally frequent the forums and have never posted here before this, but given some of the comments I just wanted to add my 5c worth and say thank you, thank you, thank you to GOG for this latest batch of titles.

I truly appreciate the effort you guys put in, and there are a number of games in this latest batch that I will be purchasing: the three Kyrandia games, Shadowman, Trine, Costume Quest and I am sure several others, once I have a bit of a poke around.

Also wanted to echo an earlier poster who expressed a desire for a Mac version of Master of Magic: I played the hell out of that game back in the day, virtually every variation possible, and there hasn't been another game to hold a torch to it, IMHO, so it would be brilliant to get it up and running on the ol' iMac.

Also, Thief and Thief 2 - pretty, pretty please...? With cream, sugar and a cherry on top...?

the effort is really great and make me just more sad about the fact that many of this old games are programmed to use as much as possibile cpu cycle and no change to the code as been made to adapt them for modern pc. for example i bought alpha centauri and stopped playing it because the plan was to have a lightweight strategic game to play on the go with my macbook, but since it use 100% of my cpu the battery will last just 1h and the temperature goes up to 90 degrees. checked the forum, common problem, not directly a gog fault sure, but still prevents me to buy more games.

Don't you think that this:

is the ultimate reason that you can't discuss with?

If GOG feel thay can't make money offering Linux support, then there's nothing to discuss. They may be wrong, but the only way to prove them wrong is to start selling games the way GOG does, with Linux support, and make money of it.

...which is pretty much what HIB is doing with the Linux ports in their main bundles. Then again, I'm likely wrong, as the proportion of Linux customers is consistently significantly lower than Windows by a wide margin, even though they pay more than double what Windows users do.

Linux is not a popular gaming platform, so GOG cannot be expected to do all the necessary research to create a standard runtime system (with Wine, Dosbox etc) flexible enough to support a) most old DOS- or Windows-based games on b) most Linux distributions on c) most of the common PC-hardware. And then maintain it.

It can probably be done, such a standard 'old-PC' specification and runtime + tools, but I think the Linux open source community has to come up with it. If GOG would do it alone, it would not be a standard anyway. Much of the work has already be done of course. If such a project is successful, GOG would surely be glad to use it and participate.

Until then, it might be more efficient just to buy some old Windows laptop for next to nothing. Or use a virtual machine.

As for the Mac, at least it is a fairy predictable, uniform platform, both in hardware and software, significantly reducing the amount of work necessary. And it probably generates more business.

HB is not providing support at the level GOG claims, and that's the problem here.

It's possible to make money from selling games for linux, but it is a problem for GOG to make money selling games the way they want to do it.

Well, to build a base market Linux games it would help a lot if GOG start selling them...

I don't understand, why linuxers can't still understand it...

I think putting such big emphasis on the question of support is a mistake. How many of GOG customers ever need to contact support to get their games running? I'd be willing to bet that number would be at least ten times lower for Linux users. By self-selection, Linux community consists largely of tech savvy people who know how to troubleshoot issues with misbehaving programs. And if you can't do it yourself, there will always be helpful guides in your distro's forums or wiki. Asking for support from the retailer would be a last-ditch effort that most would simply never have the need for.

Testing games on multiple distros is also entirely optional. I think people often overestimate the differences between various Linux distributions. As long as the game files that run on one distro are provided, getting them run on others does not take a genius. And again, that's where distro forum and wiki community come in to provide free help. For example, Steam only officially supports Ubuntu, but that hasn't stopped people from using it on 42 versions of at least 12 different distributions. (ArchLinux has had a community-maintained package of the Steam client since the day it was launched, and I've had no problem using it.)

Of course, none of this matters for older games where Linux support would only be possible via Wine or DOSBox. Those are easy to get working manually, and GOG already provides everything that is necessary - I don't care if any "official" wrappers are ever provided for these games. However, this is a problem for new games that are released by the developers with native Linux support. This means that despite my support of GOG's policies, I won't buy new games here because GOG does not sell the full product as released by the developers. (Ironic, considering that providing extras is one of GOG's selling points.)

My advice: stop worrying about support, ask developers of Linux-native games to provide their installers, put them up for download and see how wrong you were about not being able to make money from Linux users.