Preferred Linux Distro?

[matt]

If you use Linux, what is your favorite distro? What distros do people expect us to support? Steam is only officially supported on Ubuntu, so we'll definitely have to support that. The other programmer hates Ubuntu (I'm not really a fan either), and he runs OpenSUSE, so I imagine the game will work on that. I have a machine running Gentoo, but it's wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too hardcore for me, and I have a friend remotely admin it because if I try to install software on it, I break everything. hahaha

What Linux distro do YOU use? Do you run into problems installing games on Steam or otherwise? Any gotchas that we have to be on the look out for?

Also, I'm trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 on one of my boxes, and it's totally not working. *cries*

[Harry Sunderland]

Not a serious answer, but steamOS would be awesome. However I think at this point in time it's not even remotely feasible.

[matt]

We will definitely support SteamOS. I just wish I knew what it was!

Valve hasn't been forthcoming with details, but I'm going to go to the Steam Dev Day in January, so hopefully they will explain how it's going to work.

Edit: Also, do you run 32 bit or 64 bit Linux? Our game works on Ubuntu 32-bit but is broken on 64-bit... The joys of Linux dev!

[sunsetbrew]

We will definitely support SteamOS. I just wish I knew what it was!

All of us!

Even supporting Linux can be hard because of all the flavors (hence libraries) even forgetting about the hardware. I truly love all things UNIX, but with all that awesome power comes some serious obstacles. Anyway, it would be nice if Valve would make solid choices.

I worked in partnership with Google (in a different large company) when they were developing ChromeOS. It was an everyday nightmare of changing compilers, frameworks, flavors and build systems intermixed with Google's own hackish build scripts. It was utter hell and the only thing clear was that everyday Google was trying something else.

In the end, the Android team beat out the ChromeOS team inside Google and I got to work on my own designs instead of theirs.

[matt]

Honestly, I'm not surprised that working with google was a nightmare. The Android development kit and tools is a complete nightmare - especially if you are doing native development (which of course I am). I've been pleasantly surprised that Nvidia has created a sane development environment for Android. It works a million times better than the regular Android tools although it still has some issues.

It blows my mind that we are at version 4 of the Android OS, and their tool chain is still a hodgepodge of open source software jury rigged together.

It seems like Steam comes with all the common game libraries, which simplifies our lives, but I don't know how the DRM free version is going to work - especially given that there is no uniform way to install a library... I hope Linux users are used to solving these issues.

[LobsterSundew]

Currently my main computer is a 64-bit Linux Mint 15 machine using MATE. Steam works well on it. I haven't had issues with games downloaded as deb files from Humble Bundle.

My first experience with Linux was DSL in a virtual machine on Windows 98. I used Ubuntu 6.06 and stayed with Ubuntu for years. After 2010 I did not like some of the changes to the user interface and I've now switched to Mint which is based off Ubuntu/Debian.

There was a Gamasutra article about Linux game development. I knew there was speculation that SteamOS would be Debian-based or even Gentoo-based in some way, but after checking more recent news articles it looks like it is still not publicly clear what distro SteamOS will be based on.

[matt]

I would be very interested if the alpha build on Steam runs on your machine. I imagine it will because Steam includes all the common libraries. Our exe is 32 bit only, so we had issues with libraries on Ubunutu 32 bit until we realized we could reference the libraries that come with steam.

I suspect that they would start with Ubuntu for Steam OS just because that is the only officially supported SteamOS platform. I think they want their distro to be as easy as possible for developers to support, and Ubuntu seems like a good choice.

Gentoo would be pretty insane because the Gentoo way of doing everything is build from source. Gentoo is a bit of a nightmare to support because there aren't really versions. I guess they could use it as a springboard, but it seems like a bad place to start.

I imagine I'll get all the nitty gritty details at Steam Dev Days in January.

[LobsterSundew]

That 32-bit build should run if I install the appropriate 32-bit compatible libraries. I think some might already be installed for some of my video transcoders. I also think the Steam client I downloaded only had a 32-bit version so those libraries could already be there.

Articles have said SteamOS will be a custom distro. Engadget reported that "The OS is built on Linux (not based on Ubuntu, we're told, but entirely custom)". It won't be Ubuntu if that article is correct, but I do think it makes sense for it to be based-off a custom version of Debian. It will likely be close enough to Ubuntu that SteamOS could use Ubuntu repositories and maintain compatibility with Valve's efforts so far on Linux. Ubuntu is a distro to develop for anyways because of how widely it and Ubuntu-based distros are used in the Linux community. I can run the Steam client on Linux Mint because it is based off Ubuntu/Debian.

With a Gentoo-based option they could be trying to get a bit more performance because of the pick-what-you-need nature reducing bloat and being able to compile for specific Steam Machine hardware. They would have more control than if they went with Ubuntu. What Valve builds as its SteamOS should become a standard to decrease platform fragmentation issues for indie game developers. Other flavours of Gentoo being able to exist shouldn't be able to erode that standard. There are rumours that some physics middleware is already being ported for SteamOS to make it easier for developers who shipped games on Windows who would otherwise have to do huge rewrites. Metro: Last Light's devs confirmed a Linux port is already working.

When a Steam Machine or SteamOS beta happens, there will be Linux users trying to determine what specific decisions Valve made under the hood, They may have started out with a long term supported version of Ubuntu because of the hometest discovered back around April and later decided to go with something else. They could even decide to go with a more from scratch build of a GNU Linux system if they were willing to put in the extra effort. They could even decide to host their own repositories because of their expertise as a digital content distribution company.

[matt]

Wow! Sounds like you have better info than I do. I am looking forward to finding out all the details, so we can make sure the game runs.

[sunsetbrew]

I did not actually say Ubuntu, but I think that is most likely. Honestly, I don't envy anyone that has support Linux in any flavor. My whole career has been Linux and much earlier Solaris. I absolutely love Linux, especially as a programming environment. But supporting the flavors of Linux without giving away intellectual property (read as source code) is a near impossibility. Even supporting Ubuntu alone is a HUGE effort. There are 64 and 32 bit versions, there are many CPU architectures (dozens). there are no less than 3 releases "software generations" on a given day, each with different software. I sincerely wish I could did not have to say this, but it really does suck from an application provider's perspective.

And forget about Gentoo. Gentoo is intended to be optimized in every aspect to each individual user's hardware. And hence it requires custom building for every user independently. Short of a source code distribution, a trip to mars would be easier to accomplish.

Anyway, Ubuntu is based on Debian which is probably the winner in the UNIX uptake systems. Redhat is/was great, but it is more targeted to massive web service architectures (because of Redhat's commercial service) as opposed to user desktops.