I don't use linux as my desktop OS for quite some time (now it's windows and osx, used to have Redhat and later fedora workstations). My question is, is it possible to target 'linux' in general as a single platform at all? I thought heterogeneous nature of linux distros is what would hinder that effort. Something like when you buy certain graphics programs, you get to have only this and that linux variant with this and that software on it in order to run it.
You don't need to ship distro-specific packages. You could ship a tarball with a statically linked executable. Take a look at the Humble Bundle, for example. Every game published in the bundles is cross-platform, and work great Linux regardless of distro choice.
Ah, never thought about that. As good old DOS games were, everything contained within program/directory itself. Interesting, makes using some of the external code a bit harder due to licenses though.
In the 'enterprise' market, targeting 'Linux' means targeting RHEL. I don't think that would be the way for Valve to go though. If they are really going to release anything to the public for Linux I imagine they will just officially target Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is focused on delivering a great desktop. I'm not a fan of Unity and find that to get the same performance I used to have, I have to run my games on Unity 2D. Regular Unity (3D) eats a lot of my games's FPS.
If Steam picks Ubuntu then I hope they work with Canonical to get Unity to perform as fast for games as Unity 2D (and Gnome 2).
I'd imagine that it would be some serious work to see whether just turning off compositing would be enough and what effects that has on running non-game apps that are in the middle of using compositing.
