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A comment on GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it works on a native client. Parent comment

Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by Shorel on Friday January 30, 2026 @10:25AM (#46825493)
The most stable Linux API is Wine/Win32.

There are many older games I can't install on Linux anymore, because they used an older SDL1 or some particular X11 version or some GPU driver that's no longer available for the current kernel.

The exact same game, Windows version, can be installed and runs flawlessly on both Linux and Windows.

So, native Vulkan executables? Sure, if they can continue to run in 20 years.

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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by pjmlp on Friday January 30, 2026 @11:00AM (#46825986)
Just like for OS/2, what a great success it was.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by aleph_minus_one on Friday January 30, 2026 @11:34AM (#46826462)
The development tools for OS/2 were worse and far more expensive.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by groundzeros2015 on Friday January 30, 2026 @11:35AM (#46826476)
It’s working right now, what are you arguing against.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by pjmlp on Friday January 30, 2026 @12:26PM (#46827173)
It seems to be working, that is the thing building castles in foreign kingdoms.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by groundzeros2015 on Friday January 30, 2026 @04:12PM (#46829967)
What do you mean? There is a whole library of thousands of win32 games spanning more than 2 decades and the community is tracking and reporting bugs in each and classifying their level of performance.

That’s one of the most successful computer projects I’ve heard of.

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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by pjmlp on Saturday January 31, 2026 @03:11AM (#46834537)
Sure, if one ignores all the existing emulators for previous computer generations, and game consoles.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by groundzeros2015 on Saturday January 31, 2026 @08:14PM (#46842674)
If you want hardware emulation you can use a vm like virtual box…

I don’t even know what you’re arguing now.

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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by tapoxi on Friday January 30, 2026 @01:58PM (#46828399)
It's a different situation, OS/2 was significantly more expensive than Windows, Linux is free.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by jdkfkgkkdbkd on Friday January 30, 2026 @06:05PM (#46831201)
os/2 2.1 was free during some periods in the 90s, I and several friends got it just for the free floppies. Though none of us paid for windows either, I guess it was free as well.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by LtWorf on Friday January 30, 2026 @11:55AM (#46826782)
There are a lot of older games that won't run on windows 11 as well. In fact most of my games no longer work on windows 11.

Your point?

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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by jayd16 on Friday January 30, 2026 @12:36PM (#46827266)
Yeah? Most? So like what?
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by LtWorf on Saturday January 31, 2026 @05:15AM (#46835236)
So targeting windows isn't stable either? Which is why GOG even exists.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by jayd16 on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:08PM (#46842233)
I'm asking what your game library is full of if most can't run on windows 11.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by LtWorf on Sunday February 01, 2026 @04:24AM (#46844782)
directX 5 :)
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by Shorel on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @09:48AM (#46871634)
I still have a couple of brain games I use from the Win 3.11 era.

And they run fine.

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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by TingPing on Friday January 30, 2026 @12:53PM (#46827532)
Those games did weird things. Every distro still ships SDL1, x11 didn’t really break API, and requiring a specific driver is obviously broken from the start. I won’t say none of this happens but the platform isn’t to blame there.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by TheCycoONE on Friday January 30, 2026 @02:21PM (#46828686)
Even glibc breaks ABI. The linux userspace ABI is too unstable and games don't have to be doing weird things to hit it.
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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by cardanome on Friday January 30, 2026 @03:29PM (#46829456)
I never understood why glibc needs to break ABI. It should not be allowed to. Ever.

You are not reinventing the wheel. Just maintain the damn thing and keep it running as is. As Linus once said "If there's a bug that people rely on, it's not a bug, it's a feature.".

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Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor... by seabrookmx on Friday January 30, 2026 @07:09PM (#46831764)
Valve is working on this problem for native Linux games: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/blob/steamrt/...

This is a similar idea to flatpak/snap etc.

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