Linux users: Request for information and feedback

[Galach]

I know I'm late to the party, but as a Linux user, I definitely want to chime in!

I think going the Snap route is a brilliant idea (...) I know lots of folks say going through Steam is fine - but, while I'm a steam user - I'd prefer to NOT have to go through a 3rd party to install my app.

Well, a HUGE part of Linux community (me included) is totally against SNAP because of how it was implemented and managed by Canonical - right now, my distro of choice is Kubuntu 20.04 and the FIRST thing I did on my system after install was to open a terminal and type $ sudo apt-get --purge remove snapd - I would prefer to install Steam any day before even thinking about SNAP, specially because Valve NEVER distributed malware "by mistake" (negligence would be a better word, but yeah...), at least as far as I know.

In my case, at least, I would accept to suffer the worse performance and the security issues of Canonical's SNAP packages to use Fantasy Grounds Unity because I already invested too much on it, but I know people who will not purchase it if the platform of choice is SNAP.

Anyway, as I said before, let the people bitch, the world isn't perfect and the only the devs know the size of their problems and limitations right now, so yeah, this is just a humble opinion.

[MusicalCoder]

specially because Valve NEVER distributed malware "by mistake" (negligence would be a better word, but yeah...), at least as far as I know.

First, this is not a flame war... however
2018 Valve released a game via it's steam store that turned your computer (and others) into a cryptocurrency mining botnet

Naturally Valve did not intentionally do this, it was a mistake. Plus, unless games are open source - Valve can't prevent this from happening in the future (if someone were to wait a month or so after install to do some of this stuff). Some bad actor snuck this program in under Valve's nose. So don't hold the fact that some horrible acting 3rd party snuck a bad program into the snap store under Canonical's nose as a failing point for Snap... Snap may have some issues, but its PROS heavily outweigh its CONS.

SNAP is still the best method for distributing on Linux... If you make a Snap, that single snap will work on ALL Ubuntu Flavors, 20.04, 19.10, 18.04, 16.04, as well as ALL future editions of Ubuntu's, which is BY FAR, the single largest distribution of Desktop Linux. Which is way better than trying to distribute a PPA/deb/rpm (which would require updates every six months for each new Ubuntu version), along with needing to update with updates to FG.

The problem with going through Valve as the only method is that it would force some Linux users of FG to sign up for Valve if they don't have an account, where as making a snap ( or flatpak, or app image ) would allow the Linux users to NOT NEED Steam installed to use the program.

[lostsanityreturned]

Agreed.
We just need it out for testing ASAP.

Agreed.

Oh and my vote is also with steam for long term distribution. It may irritate people but from a long term sales perspective it is likely to do better.

[Jiminimonka]

Well, a HUGE part of Linux community (me included) is totally against SNAP because of how it was implemented and managed by Canonical - right now, my distro of choice is Kubuntu 20.04 and the FIRST thing I did on my system after install was to open a terminal and type $ sudo apt-get --purge remove snapd - I would prefer to install Steam any day before even thinking about SNAP, specially because Valve NEVER distributed malware "by mistake" (negligence would be a better word, but yeah...), at least as far as I know.

In my case, at least, I would accept to suffer the worse performance and the security issues of Canonical's SNAP packages to use Fantasy Grounds Unity because I already invested too much on it, but I know people who will not purchase it if the platform of choice is SNAP.

Anyway, as I said before, let the people bitch, the world isn't perfect and the only the devs know the size of their problems and limitations right now, so yeah, this is just a humble opinion.

Instead of using Canonicals crud, how about FlatPak - https://flatpak.org/faq/

[Jiminimonka]

The problem with going through Valve as the only method is that it would force some Linux users of FG to sign up for Valve if they don't have an account, where as making a snap ( or flatpak, or app image ) would allow the Linux users to NOT NEED Steam installed to use the program.

Game players installing Steam... is not an issue. Proton also allows Linux gamers to play loads of games without much fiddling about, including Fantasy Grounds (and even FGU).

[Jiminimonka]

Oh, and I dont use Ubuntu I use Arch.

[Jiminimonka]

OBS-Studio - which is complex piece of software and runs on all platforms might start moving over to using Flatpak - https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/21

[lil]

A few notes (sorry, late to the party, a recent addition to the FGU community). As a primary Linux user, your primary best-bet for usability is to distribute the linux version as the .appimage format. It's the only format supported by pretty much every linux version. This also allows you to distribute the same way you do windows and mac versions (on site downloads).

[Jiminimonka]

A few notes (sorry, late to the party, a recent addition to the FGU community). As a primary Linux user, your primary best-bet for usability is to distribute the linux version as the .appimage format. It's the only format supported by pretty much every linux version. This also allows you to distribute the same way you do windows and mac versions (on site downloads).

Or FlatPak or Snap...

[skj310]

Happy last day of April 2020 (UTC10) FGU LX developers. Just checking in to see how things are going and if there are any projections on a release date?

Only looking for status update please.