I started this discussion here.
Hello.
First of all I would like to say that I love Bethesdas philosophy in allowing users to hack their games. The user created content is a big part of what makes Bethesdas games not just another video game. The open ended expansiveness is the other.
So I have not been following the story, but is there going to be a Linux port or not? Will users who run a Gnome desktop (or KDE/E17) on a Debian based OS be able to play this game with a native linux port?
Historically speaking a lot of games could get away with expecting users to dual boot, and they would still get the linux crowd…part of me thinks that this isnt going to fly anymore, at least not to the same extent…In my opinion there are a lot more people using linux these days, and its really difficult to get the real statistics unless you do random house calls, since most people buy a PC that is bare bones or maybe had windows and install it on their own, and use torrents to download. There isnt a good way to know for sure what the market share is, but it seems like more and more people are using linux full time these days…maybe I just live in a college town, but most people seem to be shunning windows and the mega-corporations in favor of Mac or Linux, with Linux being the economical and yet more customizable option between the two. I think its a significant market share.
The reason I DONT think that users will want to dual boot this time is because of advances in technology (dual cores) and modern computer habits…people used to have to shut off their other programs to play a game. Now with quad and octo cores and most games using only 1 or 2 cores, its now easy to keep your torrents running, be converting video and audio to free formats, have messenger going, and still play a CPU intensive game or even two…Why is this significant? People dont want to log off anymore. They dont want to shut off their torrents or stop their file conversions so they can log off and play a game on their less favorable system. Not anymore. It didnt matter when you could ONLY play a game anyway. Now it matters.
Another thing to consider is that more people are buying PCs without WIndows on them at all. More people are buying Macs or bare bones or Linux installed PCs from dell or from Systerm 76 or just installing it themselves and not paying for windows…A Mac user can dual boot linux to play a game, or run linux as a virtual machine and not have to log out, but a Mac user isnt going to pay for Windows if they already have a Mac just to play a game…they might however run linux as a virtual within OSX.
On the positive side of writing a linux port, the linux geeks might represent a smaller % of the market, but they tend to be a pretty appreciative crowd. They seem to go out of their way to support game makers who produce Linux ports and there has been a trend of [censored] talking or boycotting game makers who back out of producing linux ports…Not everyone does this, but if a game has a native linux port you will probably get a higher % of Linux users jumping on the game bandwagon because there are fewer game developers who do it…so you will capture a higher % of a smaller crowd, including many who would not have been willing or able to dual boot.
This is just my opinion, but I really hope that somebody is working on a native linux port and not just expecting us to dual boot.