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Question - IDE Will we ever get a Linux IDE for GMS?

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GMWolf

aka fel666
C++. And they HAVE it running on Linux internally already. The question is whether it's viable as a commercial product. They want to see 10's of thousands of customers before they'll consider it viable.
Im pretty sure the IDE is C#....
But it would be nice if they 'accidentally' leaked a linux build.
This way they wont need to support it. (naaturally, you would still need the login process and all).
 

csanyk

Member
Unfortunately, almost every (or just every) person in here who's saying they want GM on Linux is showing that GM would help Linux, not the other way around...
As their customer, I'm interested in YYG/GMS helping me. I'm not advocating for Linux, other than in that it furthers my own interests.

YYG doesn't care about helping us all migrate over to Linux, guys. They care about selling more licenses than they al ready do. "I currently buy your Windows license, but I'd totally stop buying that in favor of a Linux license if you dumped a huge amount of money into a Linux module," isn't a very convincing argument, haha. ):
I'll continue using GMS as long as Windows 7 is viable (supported by Microsoft for security bug fixes). But I refuse to upgrade to Windows 8 or 10. I want to be done with Microsoft already, and I would be if there was a GameMaker port to Linux. That's my situation and where I'm at. If YYG wants to keep my business, they'll support me where I want to be, which is on Linux.

I'm not happy with the direction that Apple has taken, especially in recent years with their computer product lines, so I don't want to switch from being locked into Microsoft to being locked into Apple. That's not a viable plan for me. I'm glad YYG want to cater to OS X users, but that won't be me.

Maybe enough other GMS users are like me in this regard, maybe not. We don't know unless we all make ourselves known.
 

Mike

nobody important
GMC Elder
First.... the IDE is written in C#, not C++

Also, we've "had" it running on Linux, but no where in a complete form; that is it wasn't able to load projects or anything like that. This was also some time ago.

Lastly.... porting to Linux is a massive undertaking, lets not pretend it's not. Even with OSX (which is much higher than 10-15% of our user base) having been done, Linux is just a different beast. Yes the OSX build helps, but each platform the IDE runs on needs significant amount of work to port it.
Now lets even ignore that portion of work. The fundamental issue is maintenance. Every time we update something in the IDE it must then be fully tested - and fixed, on all other platforms. Without a significant user base, it's simply too expensive to maintain a Linux build. We also can't just do one build, throw it out there and never touch it again as games can, IDE's change ALL the time, update ALL the time. The dev time is expensive, the testing increases massively. Not only do you need to test the whole IDE every time you do an update, but you also have to test you can build to every platform, make sure it can talk to all the devices etc.

Without tens of thousands of users, it's simply not viable. We either need massive numbers of users begging for it, or we need a directive from on high saying they'll shoulder the expense for "other" reasons.

Doing a Linux port is not a small or cheap task, it never was.
 
N

NPT

Guest
Your entire argument is based on a premise - "Well 2% feels like a small number. And because that number might be smaller it means practically nobody who uses Linux is interested in this!"
Actually no, my entire argument is based on history and actual business cases.

Linux is and always has been a poor business market for proprietary software sales. The fact of the matter is, if Linux could provide the business oportunities you guys keep suggesting it would, then why hasn't it.

Linux isn't some dirty little secret that only a handfull of people know about. There's a reason Software sales for the absolute majority of software doesn't exist on Linux. The market isn't there.

Mike has explained the interest isn't there, you guys don't accept that, then turn around and expect them to propagate polls with there marketing resources. If the market was there, why can't you guys demonstrate it? All I see is yet another handfull of people jumping up and down insisting a Linux port is feasable.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
I think this topic has run it's course and there isn't much more to be said that is of any use to anyone, so I'm closing it. There will be no Linux port of the IDE just now for all the reasons that have been outlined by @Mike above, and should this change YoYo Games will be sure and let everyone know. :)
 
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