On 25 October 2012 08:25, Ian Malone <ibmalone(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 25 October 2012 04:37, Bruno Wolff III <bruno(a)wolff.to>
wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 16:09:17 -0700,
> Alan Evans <ame.fedora(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Apple is essentially single-platform and Microsoft at least tries to
>> keep things backward-compatible. The Linux kernel devs seem, at least
>> to the uninitiated, to have some kind of animosity to the very idea of
>> ABI compatibility.
>>
>> Witness VMWare basically recompiling itself every time the user
>> updates his kernel. No game developer wants that kind of headache.
>
>
> That applies to device drivers, not user space. Differing library versions
> and limitations of graphics support are more likely to be an issue than the
> kernel.
That's true, differing desktop environments isn't so much the issue,
games don't really have to touch the desktop toolkit, since they tend
to use GL and other things more, but different library versions and
system layouts make things difficult. You can link things statically,
but even that only works up to a point. Also installation has always
been a bit odd.
Oh, and sound, the weird state of sound for years was a problem too.
Games are supposed to be fun, too much end user configuration to get
them working puts people off before you've started.
--
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk