It's amazing how this thread can survive since 2012.
Can you(or anybody) post a hyperlink to the video. I can't see it because of some issue with firefox atm. Still haven't figured that out. It won't display embedded things...
It is a testament to how much people want to play this game on linux. Or how bored they are... I'm a mix of both.
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I reboot to Windows just for ED and music production. I find it infuriating have to use subjectively inferior OS just to load game I love. For example, I do web coding, I want to take pause, I am playing TF2 because I can't play ED.
Thankfully Windows 7 is still usable and Microsoft can't remotely disable it actually working on my computer. But at some point I will have to say goodbye to Windows completely.
You need to install it via winetricks with an older version of wine as 3.16 fails the dotnet40 install. Also one good thing at least here is the launcher under proton doesn't have none of the glitches in it like running it under stock wine:
Linux is a stable and powerful system.
But its number of users compared to Windows, is its main problem
Not really. Windows will always be dominant. But Linux user numbers have been growing all these years. There's calculations that there are at least around 3-4m Linux gamers out there. And if someone releases port of popular game, it sales are really good, and companies are happy with their investment.
I understand that company like FD wouldn't be very interested into doing Linux port unless Valve vouches for SteamOS port, but other than that....it would make completely sense money wise.
Wow, nice, really nice to see those glitchy launcher artifacts gone. Yeah Wine 3.16 failing to install dotnet40 really baffles me, although I have seen found culprit, I just lack knowledge and time to debug it. Also can't you use Proton's wine binary for that?
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Not really convinced ...
Maybe if there are 3-4 million of "potential" players, but all do not like the same style of game.
How much love the games of the space ?
Considering Linux gamers are mostly geek types, they *love* space games. They love sim games.
They are also of course will most likely dual boot that's why they won't complain if ED is Windows only.
Yet, for example, if ED would just provide experimental build for Linux / SteamOS, community support for that would be overwhelming. People support companies who support Linux. It is simple as that.
Over 2.5 million actual people bought Elite: Dangerous.
Publishers don't invest millions in a genre that doesn't sell enough to recoup their money plus more.
-No Mans Sky
-Stellaris
-Kerbal Space Program
-EVE Online
-Fractured Space
-Mass Effect Series
-Star Trek Bridge Crew
-The upcoming Starfield...
Space based games are a long, long list.
Gamers don't care what OS things run on. They want performance, ease of use and stability. If Linux can provide those things, players will flock to that platform. Steam on Linux bridges that divide. It is currently lacking "killer apps" because it's a classic chicken / egg problem. 'There's no gamers on Linux, because there's no games. There's no games on Linux, because there's no gamers.' A game producer advocating spending millions to port a game to Linux, to quote Yes Minister is a 'courageous decision' in that environment
The Windows OS is simple (relatively) and safe. Anyone with half a brain can use it (and do), but it is today essentially spyware designed to grab your personal info and is loaded with gigabits of unnecessary (and mandatory) crapware. That will only increase over time, because they are a corporation and there's money to be made. Linux demands more brain power from a user as it has a sharp learning curve and you need to know how to both run and maintain it. It is also a leaner OS and with the right skill set you can ultimately decide what goes into it. The majority of people don't want to think about their PC, they just want it to work. They willingly sacrifice control for convenience. Linux users prefer things the other way around.
Of the two OS's, Linux currently beats Windows in the performance and stability categories. When ease of use on Linux improves, then the numbers will swell. The Vulkan API is slowly making inroads. Steam on Linux is nudging that along. Game publishers would love to decouple their games from Microsoft's closed garden, but they want to sell product at minimal expense, so they tend to stick with Windows. Linux is also being shot in the foot because of the vast numbers of distros out there. Game companies can't ensure compatibility across all of them.
The Orbis OS on PS4 is a variant of FreeBSD. Elite: Dangerous runs on that just fine, which underscores my point.
It's not about which platform has got more players, but the potential to rival other platforms (and I'm not talking about PC here). If Valve gets proton right and manage to whitelist a substantial game library then they've solved one of the few main reasons why Steam boxes were a flop, think a 4k 60fps capable console platform with a larger number of great titles would be a nice alternative to a PS4 or Xbox.
As for PC gamers the dodgyness of Microsoft not only with it's data collection practices, but the fact they seem to be gearing up to a UWP only environment where there's a chance that future iterations of Windows will require developers to submit their games to the store or be left behind. If that ever occurs you'd be very thankful someone like Valve developed a way to easily crossover as Linux very well could be the last bastion of independent game studios.
As for PC gamers the dodgyness of Microsoft not only with it's data collection practices, but the fact they seem to be gearing up to a UWP only environment where there's a chance that future iterations of Windows will require developers to submit their games to the store or be left behind. If that ever occurs you'd be very thankful someone like Valve developed a way to easily crossover as Linux very well could be the last bastion of independent game studios.
To be fair, Valve themselves have said they don't see Steam Machines or SteamOS as flop. It got moderate support from vendors, but while uptake has been slow, there are lots of people with SteamOS boxes and / or Steam Machines. It is slow evolution to them and as you say, it is safety net for Valve.
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Yes on Windows which is used by 90% of people who use a computer on the planet.
I can not imagine the number of players on Linux ...
I absolutely do not dispute your words which are right.
But Linux is way too far from the reality of the market and the standard user
the reality of the market is there are thousands and thousands of games for linux, of all varieties.. Linux is a platform no publisher is restricted on, and is obviously capable of playing AAA titles, as there are more than a few already out for Linux, and they all run fine..
The reality of the market isn't even important, this thread isn't 5 years of people bickering about OS wars.. It's always been actively discouraged. Nobody minds talking about it, it's fun to debate these things, you root for your favorites american technology company, i'll root for the rest of us.. everybody can talk crap about which team they're a fan of all they want.. in another thread..
This is and has always been about Elite: Dangerous for Linux.. It is a lively thread these days because it's suddenly possible, thanks to recent investment by Valve, that we are collectively going to get to play Elite: Dangerous under Linux despite FD's lack of investment. FD will see (via Steam's metrics, and snarky Commander names) that; people do indeed (want to) play their game under Linux.. And no, WINE/DXVK/Proton, et al won't really be as good as a native port, but it'll be a hell of a lot better than dual booting. And for those that don't even dual boot anymore, a chance to actually play!
The reality of the market isn't even important, this thread isn't 5 years of people bickering about OS wars.. It's always been actively discouraged. Nobody minds talking about it, it's fun to debate these things, you root for your favorites american technology company, i'll root for the rest of us.. everybody can talk crap about which team they're a fan of all they want.. in another thread..
This is and has always been about Elite: Dangerous for Linux.. It is a lively thread these days because it's suddenly possible, thanks to recent investment by Valve, that we are collectively going to get to play Elite: Dangerous under Linux despite FD's lack of investment. FD will see (via Steam's metrics, and snarky Commander names) that; people do indeed (want to) play their game under Linux.. And no, WINE/DXVK/Proton, et al won't really be as good as a native port, but it'll be a hell of a lot better than dual booting. And for those that don't even dual boot anymore, a chance to actually play!
Not exactly true. I use linux at work, both servers and workstations, but at home i still have windows. And there are 2 reasons for this:
1. While there is a lot of different software for linux it lacks some tools i am used to having. From hardware monitoring/fan speed control to decent audio player. There are a lot of half-finished-half abandoned things that are "nearly good" but nowhere near stable or convenient.
2. All the no spyware/not bloated thing is a lie. Those distributions where steam and most games are supposed to run (ubuntu and derivatives) have even more crapware in stock installation than windows. From search indexing (yeah, i do not need it on gaming pc) to social media apps to dreaded autoupdate and pulseaudio... and most of those are even harder to disable than they are in windows, because authors for some reason put decent amount of work making sure they are "impossible" to disable on purpose. Stability is not great either. Most desktop-related stuff starting with all desktop environments available is by far less stable than modern windows, and so are most of utilities like graphical text editor or file manager.
One interesting thing is - game support is not on of the issues. 99% of games i play run on linux either natively or through wine (the only exception here is actually ED). It is something one may call "general desktop experience" that is holding me back on windows.
I hope all this changes some day, i regularly try to "finally find everything i need to switch to linux completely" and have a dedicated pc just for that, but as it is now i still use windows 7....
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I agree a lot of Linux distro's are a mess, they are either too complex and not ideal for the average user or as the trend is of late too restrictive and watered down.
When people often describe the pros of Linux you'd envision the scene from Braveheart with Mel Gibson shouting "freedom" but instead what you get with the mainstream distro's do a lot of spoon feeding in where you can't download drivers from anything other than it's official repo or package manager without potentially breaking it and updates get held back for weeks.
That said it doesn't mean someone can't create a gaming specific distro that isn't just another pre-packaged steam/lutris or big picture bolted onto Debian. For gaming we really need something that has the perfect balance of both ease of use and technicality potential. I'm hoping Valve pull a rabbit out of the hat and redesign SteamOS not just to be a console only experience but a good desktop environment too, that way they can keep all the gamers under one roof in terms of support.
Anyway back to this game, while porting a native linux version would be best that's probably nothing more than a pipe dream at this stage and given how the games content development is going at a snails pace it's something we'll never see. However a Wine/proton DXVK implementation looks far closer to reality, if only someone from Frontier maybe read this thread and unofficially looked at the one road block (the CRC error) that's hindering ED Linux from being a reality then there's a good chance this game could end up white listed after some wine/proton fixes. The demo plays well so there's no reason why it couldn't be.
Until then I think we'll be stuck at the CRC issue, it's something I doubt future iterations of Wine/Proton would fix.
I would love to be able to play Elite on Linux. Frankly if Frontier ever did decide to support Linux I would fully switch to the lubuntu I'm currently dual booting alongside Windows. I don't dislike Windows i've just used it for as long as I can remember and Linux gives me a nice change as well as a challenge. Linux also suits my needs better than Windows. Windows is not a bad OS, and I can see there's a lot of arguments such as "spyware" and it's "inferior". I personally disagree, I think both Linux and Windows have their pros and cons and it's up to you whoever is reading my post, to decide which is better for you. I understand everyones concerns about Frontiers financial situation. I actually think it's admirable that people are worried about the future of not just the game, but the developers/publishers making it. However I think Frontier know their own financial situation well enough to make an informed decision. If FDEV decide it's too costly that's fine and there's nothing we can do about it. If however they decide instead that Linux is worth the investment, well I'll obviously be overjoyed 
I don't think people in this thread are expecting or demanding Frontier to make the game Linux compatible. But rather they are holding on to the hope, that this is the case so they can enjoy the game on the OS that suits them better. All I ask is you think before posting responses, and I think Frontier should keep the following in mind if they do read this thread. Is it really an issue you are concerned with whether that be financially or development time? Or are you actually more concerned about the game being made compatible to users of a different OS than you, and you feel the need to put them down?
I don't think people in this thread are expecting or demanding Frontier to make the game Linux compatible. But rather they are holding on to the hope, that this is the case so they can enjoy the game on the OS that suits them better. All I ask is you think before posting responses, and I think Frontier should keep the following in mind if they do read this thread. Is it really an issue you are concerned with whether that be financially or development time? Or are you actually more concerned about the game being made compatible to users of a different OS than you, and you feel the need to put them down?there's absolutely 0 need to care about your distro outside of what graphics drivers (the kernel drm driver and the Xorg driver) is available. That's essentially what Steam takes the time to "normalize" and since Elite already gets distributed by Steam, then they only have to build to steam OS in terms of any sort of shared library use.
So between that and the fact that open source graphics drivers from amd and intel are on par with their closed source drivers for the most part, leaves just Nvidia with being forced to use the closed source ones for any sort of real 3d accel. So between your options, there's nothing keeping linux back from supporting Elite better than Mac ever did and better than what they do with the Playstation port. If you factor in Vulkan, frontier could eliminate all of their backend support and simply support vulkan and rely on wrapper layers for any sort of setup that doesn't support direct vulkan use. It's been proven that these vulkan layers are very low overhead, though not being able to use vulkan directly is just an issue on really old hardware or consoles.
Between playstation's port and mac's, there's really no reason to think the entire game isn't already compatible with linux, since most of the heavy lifting was already done by making the game compatible with those bsd/unix based OS's.
I don't think people are realistically demanding that Frontier port it though. They're just wondering why frontier isn't using already ported code to easily support linux just to cover another OS.
My guess is that the only outlying factor is anti-cheat DRM type software that frontier may be using. Whether it's licensed or in-house, it probably only works in windows. Linux makes for an interesting problem for drm/anti-cheat software unless they can rely on it being locked down so that the user can't be root and can't modify the kernel. Though, seeing as how fast you can accumulate wealth in the game and all, cheating seems rather pointless ...and all the other annoying things players are able to do in the game are actually part of the game.
So between that and the fact that open source graphics drivers from amd and intel are on par with their closed source drivers for the most part, leaves just Nvidia with being forced to use the closed source ones for any sort of real 3d accel. So between your options, there's nothing keeping linux back from supporting Elite better than Mac ever did and better than what they do with the Playstation port. If you factor in Vulkan, frontier could eliminate all of their backend support and simply support vulkan and rely on wrapper layers for any sort of setup that doesn't support direct vulkan use. It's been proven that these vulkan layers are very low overhead, though not being able to use vulkan directly is just an issue on really old hardware or consoles.
Between playstation's port and mac's, there's really no reason to think the entire game isn't already compatible with linux, since most of the heavy lifting was already done by making the game compatible with those bsd/unix based OS's.
I don't think people are realistically demanding that Frontier port it though. They're just wondering why frontier isn't using already ported code to easily support linux just to cover another OS.
My guess is that the only outlying factor is anti-cheat DRM type software that frontier may be using. Whether it's licensed or in-house, it probably only works in windows. Linux makes for an interesting problem for drm/anti-cheat software unless they can rely on it being locked down so that the user can't be root and can't modify the kernel. Though, seeing as how fast you can accumulate wealth in the game and all, cheating seems rather pointless ...and all the other annoying things players are able to do in the game are actually part of the game.
Windows is too though, only users tend not to know it. Just buy a new computer in a couple years or if you're a bit more savvy a complete fresh system install. I think the main difference is that Linux users are more likely to know a bit of what they're doing and getting themselves into. This is a tangent to the topic of the thread though.
If you just want to game on Linux, it's very easy. Getting things to work that aren't meant to in the first place on the other hand can obviously be a bit more challenging.
If you want to make a game compatible with "Linux" Debian/Ubuntu/SteamOS is the fairly obvious choice. No need to over-complicate things, unless you want to, of course.
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