Linux

I hate to **** into everyone's cheerios (including myself, mind you); I'm in TEST, so I guess it's almost a duty for me.

But the devs already check the builds against WINE. They stated, more than once, that in the devs team there are some die-hard linux fans, playing their own game on linux. "Confessions" gathered during fanfests and other equally informal venues. They keep loving us (the very existence of this forum is a testament), but just can't be too loud about it. Remember: development != management!

I remind you all that CCP is born basically as a Microsoft shop. This changed during the years (official linux client - albeit non native, DUST on PS3, winks to the mobile world, not dominated by Redmond, etc.), but they will never recode the engine out of the DX nightmare it is now.

And, as you probably noticed, every major release is a huge pile of problems for EVERY platform. Take a look at the Issues thread in the Information Portal (first forum), and you'll see pages and pages of bugs, workarounds, half-fixes, and announces of further updates. And that's for Windows, their main target platform!

Linux is the future, but the present isn't. Not that I like it - in fact, I don't. If we can keep playing after all these years and builds, we should thank their work, the work of WINE devs, and the self-help of the community.

Still, don't hold your breath for a native client. We got a lot from CCP. We can ask more. We just can't pretend more.

sure they do ... windows XP laptop - no issues at all, launcher and patching went great. linux box at home, took me 2 days to get it to run and had to wipe my wineprefix and settings to get it to work ... not tallking about the performance regresion (had sync fps before 1.5 in station, now I am at 30% of previous values).

Last week I took the very sad decision that after six years in-game (and also being an elected member of the first CSM) it was time for me to stop even _trying_ to play EVE. Why? Because the recent introduction of a mandatory launcher has meant that individual patches are no longer downloadable, making my linux machines unusable for EVE.

Now when I tweeted about this I had a number of people questioning why I was complaining as "there is no linux support"/"no official linux client"/etc. to which my comment that CCP _used_ to recognise that some of the people paying their dues used linux and were happy to do so, playing the game under Wine even though it required jumping through some hoops, plus there is this _officially supplied_ forum on linux. But those points fell on deaf ears as the "go buy M$ or an Apple" crowd piled in.

I agree that a 'native' client in the way the old linux one was (ie wrapped) isn't really wanted. But the change from the past ability to 'install' EVE under Wine was appreciated by many - though CCP have no idea _how_ many because we linux users appear to be windows muppets - but this launcher change effectively puts an end to that for many (if not all) linux users.

I'd really like to think I'll be back in pod one day (hell, on one character I've got 1.9m spare SP waiting for the coming Station skills!) but as of now that is looking unlikely.

ps. *NO*, you can't have my stuff!

If part of the issue that CCP doesn't directly support linux as a valid gaming platform is the lack of data available, why don't we knock the windows version in winecfg down to something like win 3.1.

Am sure that if ccp sees a spike in the number of win 3.1 versions and we prove to be in enough numbers then there could be that slimmest micron thick chance ccp could take notice and put a little more effort into our small clique.

Personally I don't really see a complete linux port as valid. From their point of view, the megga bux are always going to be in M$ and mac but perhaps some further testing (I think we all need to step up on that one) before release we could, working together with CCP, ensure that these hickups become less frequent.

Has anyone tried to use the repairtool instead of the launcher to upgrade the client? If that works we may as well be able to build a native launcher as this uses a zsync source as far as i know.

There never was a native client, it was a something like cedega wrapped around the win client (pretty much as the mac client is now) and even then eve ran supposedly better under wine.

On the other hand it would be nice to have someone at ccp test their clients under wine (stable or latest version) on various distributions and systems specs. However I don't see it happening anytime soon as most linux issues tend to be solved by a couple of experienced users. Maybe one of those people could apply for a job at CCP

It was as native as it could be for CCP. The Windows client is not a native client either by your definition, because it runs on Python, needs some other open source libraries to run and is only a 32bit application. What mattered most was how it was advertised, sold and supported. As such was it a native client.

The discussion itself takes place at a pretty bad time, because CCP had to cut staff not too long ago and we are living in a time of a boring economy. Other game makers expand out onto the console market to survive, because the PC market itself is not very large. Therefore asking CCP to do a native Linux client is not going to happen. You will have a better chance with asking for an EVE client for the XBox 360.

Besides the evidence that getting a consistent experience out of wine is easier than supporting a half-dozen MSWindows variations with various patchlevels and who knows what drivers.

Browse the general support forum for a bit if you think we have troubles...

LoL, the windows client is native because all the code can be compiled into windows binaries regardless of the fact that it uses python or not. Python perfectly runs natively on Win / Linux / Mac.

On the other hand the Eve client can not be compiled to native Linux binaries because it relies on DirectX (most likely there are other issues as well) which last time I checked does not run natively on linux because there are no native binaries. No surprise there because it is very doubtfull that MS will produce binaries of DX for Linux.

To oversimplify it, the Cedega wrapper essentially translates the windows function calls to Linux function calls, it is by no means a native client.

Still, it is irrelevant. Take all your software development knowledge and throw it away, because strictly speaking are 32bit Windows binaries when run under 64bit Windows not native either and need support to run in a 64bit environment. 32bit Windows binaries run native under Linux with WINE, because WINE Is Not an Emulator. You could go as far as saying that any software that is not a 64bit C/C++ application, which directly interfaces with the operating system and hardware, are not native applications on either Linux or Windows. Some of EVE's code was compiled with GCC some with M$V8. Why draw a line?! Even the shader code needs to be compiled by DirectX and OpenGL before it can run on the GPU. You are trying to draw a line somewhere, which serves no purpose. Your argument is pointless in this discussion, because it is not about what you see as native and lack to understand, but what gets support through CCP!