from Hacker News

John Carmack: Linux is not the right platform for video games (2013)

by neur0mancer on 3/30/14, 6:35 PM with 18 comments

  • by f00_ on 3/30/14, 9:03 PM

    The title is really misleading, he's saying it doesn't make business sense to make ports of games to Linux, and it doesn't... It's penetration in the market is very low.

  • by FD3SA on 3/30/14, 9:27 PM

    All these things could have been said for Android when iOS and Blackberry's OS were kings.

    The nature of gaming is changing. Listen to Gabe talk about player generated content being the way of the future. Core gamers are a niche bunch, and will spend thousands of dollars for custom hardware. Why would they settle for locked down, legacy software like Windows, when Linux can be made to work just as well if not better, for free, while allowing full customization?

    Linux gaming is not going to be backwards compatible. It's not about now. It's about the future. An open source platform makes sense for the gaming industry, because it allows rapid experimentation and low barriers to entry.

    Core gamers who support indie games have already moved to Linux. The AAA studios will follow once they see sufficient adoption.

  • by Tmmrn on 3/30/14, 9:30 PM

    Ah, it's this "why not wine" article.

    > I truly do feel that emulation of some sort is a proper technical direction for gaming on Linux. It is obviously pragmatic in the range of possible support, but it shouldn’t have the technical stigma that it does.

    That might be a valid point if wine's windows support was like FreeBSD's linux compatibility layer. But it isn't... It is a massive pile of API translation layers and libraries reverse engineered from a huge closed source proprietary moving target. It's a hacky workaround and I couldn't believe he is actually saying reverse engineering windows is a "proper direction" that "shouldn't have a technical stigma".

  • by javanix on 3/30/14, 9:30 PM

    His "D3D interop" layer (I'm not sure why he called it emulation) is almost exactly what Valve just open-sourced.

    https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

  • by contingencies on 3/30/14, 9:54 PM

    It depends on the type of video game. Maybe Carmack's view of industry is stuck in the old 100% focus paradigm, whereas video games of the future will be more casual, more mobile and more interlinked. In such an environment, issues such as strict resource consumption governance and power management can become critically important. Linux features such as control groups can be ideal for facilitating real solutions here. Maybe Carmack is too low level to see the big picture.

  • by yxhuvud on 3/30/14, 9:03 PM

    Linux is used by 1.2%? That is a lot more than I expected.

  • by Giako on 3/30/14, 9:21 PM

    Also look, the linked post is 1 year-old... Long before Carmack left id and switched to Oculus (and now Facebook).

  • by davidgerard on 3/30/14, 9:03 PM

    Y'know, a lot of Windows games work well under Wine, basically 'cos the Codeweavers devs are also gamers ... I'm a little surprised Valve isn't adding to Wine, given that's the really quick way to get Windows games onto the Steambox.

  • by quchen on 3/30/14, 9:19 PM