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sph | 4 years ago
Linux userspace API has no promise of long term compatibility, and in fact there's a lot of churn, especially nowadays as we approach the Year of the Linux Desktop and technologies come and go as they're improved.
The Windows API instead is known for its long term compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure applications keep running a decade later, and using that as a base for gaming is a win-win, as developers can target two operating systems with one API, and gamers have more guarantees their game will still be playable on Ubuntu 2030 edition.
The last few times I played native Linux games I had to fish for old and unsupported libssl and libjpeg libraries that my distribution doesn't ship anymore. I can blame the port, but nowadays I just try the Proton version first.
snvzz|4 years ago
The so-called steam runtime can be targeted by devs to prevent this.
shmerl|4 years ago
So I agree with your point that long term Wine offers better support than Linux native ABIs.
I doubt Windows ABIs are better than Linux native ones on their own long term wise (i.e. without Wine).
That said, it would be cool for someone to develop Wine-like wrapping of historic Linux ABIs into modern ones so you could have the same preservation effect.
There was for example such project for older SDL over new one.
musicale|4 years ago
Lots of games from the early 2000s still run as-is on Windows 10/11, and many games have updated versions on Steam or gog.com as well.
However, the real question for Linux is: is there any comparable long-term stable distribution format for Linux games other than Windows binaries?
If so, how popular is it?