Guild Wars 2 for Linux

Hey,

as we know there's a Mac port of Guild Wars 2. It would be great to see a Linux port in the future. I believe there are many people who uses Linux as their main OS.

Please discuss. We need your support.

I would love to see this PLEASE Anet a native linux version.

There are not enough users to justify the time to create one.

The last Dev response (that I know of), unfortunately, stated that there were no plans to create a Linux client.

Good luck.

Both mac and windows are official products, there are way to many linux versions and none of them official.

Would love to see one too!

@sorudo.9054 said:Both mac and windows are official products, there are way to many linux versions and none of them official.

I believe you have no idea what you're writing. If there would be dependencies, it depends on the game itself how it uses them. You can depend on local, global or built-in libraries. Another thing is you need to support different Windows versions where in Linux you can say that there's only one and everything else is with a minor differences. On the other hand, Mac OS doesn't have a DirectX support. You're forced to use OpenGL and that's where the porting difficulty comes from. I would guess Mac OS port is using OpenGL. Same thing would work for whole Linux distributions except for the other dependencies.

If you look at the latest Steam survey, all Linux distros total 0.6% of gamers. OSX is 3%. Given those stats and limited resources, I'm not surprised Anet aren't planning a Linux version, nor am I surprised the OSX version has lagged so far behing Windows.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

@Apskritimas.6859 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:Both mac and windows are official products, there are way to many linux versions and none of them official.

and the difference is that mac has a bigger market with all the apple products where linux is made like any other freeware, simulated to oblivion.every time a program is made for linux it needs allot of work just to get it to work, it also depends on windows programs even while it is simulated with wine.

i believe you have no idea who you're writing too, nor do you have any idea about the size of rework just for a pathetic amount of players.

@sorudo.9054 said:Both mac and windows are official products, there are way to many linux versions and none of them official.

all they have to do is aim at Ubuntu as it has the highest user share for gamers Steam did this others figured out to get the Ubuntu aimed binary to work on there distribution of choice. given the fact to port to mac OS the POSIX base compatibility is done, as is the porting to OGL at this point al lit would take is some very small tweaks and recompiling i do however think anet worries about in the process the client being exposed to GPL code and as a result be forced to share the source of the client.

@onevstheworld.2419 said:If you look at the latest Steam survey, all Linux distros total 0.6% of gamers. OSX is 3%. Given those stats and limited resources, I'm not surprised Anet aren't planning a Linux version, nor am I surprised the OSX version has lagged so far behing Windows.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Kind of a chicken/egg problem here. Linux is such a small market share of gamers because there are so few compelling games on Linux*. Meanwhile, there are so few compelling Linux games because Linux is such a small market share of gamers. I personally would switch to Linux in a heartbeat if the games were there, but they are not, so I'm stuck with Windows.

*I am aware that many games -can- be made to play, sort of, on Linux, but the headaches and degraded experience involved make any new-ish games non-starters and MMOs other than maybe WoW pretty much worthless.

'GW2"'will run under 'wine' in most Linux OS's. Check out 'English bob ' on YouTube. He has a video demo.

All I see in this forum is whining about a lot of work, less resources. If linux that sucky, how did Gaijin introduced a native linux client for War Thunder? Wasnt that also alot of work? Did they really need to make it happen?

@"Omega Mayhem.7163" said:There are not enough users to justify the time to create one.

Quoting a movie: "Build it and they will come". You'd be surprised how many people want to switch off Windows but games are keeping them on it. Many of them don't want to go Mac.

I'd reformat and install Linux at home today if there was a Linux client.

I really like Linux and have tried several distros for gaming. The biggest issue I think is that the video and sound driver support is a big stumbling block. I've been able to play several Steam games, and other games using Wine emulation. The problem is that they all seem to run a little laggy compared to the Windows-based equivalent. Not to mention when it comes to video support, the manufactures just haven't really been big on offering any kind of support. Open source can only go so far when you don't have access to many of the features of modern video cards. (I have an AMD Radeon R9 390X, and until recently there was extremely spotty support, if you could call it support at all.) And of course, forget about any support for my SoundBlaster Zx Sound Card in pretty much any Linux distro. I'm stuck with on-board sound in that respect. Doable, but not my first choice after spending the money on the discreet sound card.

I think the biggest hurdle Linux has to overcome is to get solid video performance, so that the games run on par with Windows. Once they get that covered, things may change in the regard to user base. Once we have the user base, we'll likely see developers more inclined to make Linux ports. Unfortunately, we're just not there yet.

I had high hopes for Steam OS, but that just didn't pan out. Maybe one day... I'll keep my fingers crossed, but in the foreseeable future, I'll be expecting that I will need to keep Windows around for a while yet for my gaming needs.

Windows OS has been the premier OS that pretty much everything in the gaming world is built around for a long time. It's unfortunate that Linux doesn't get much representation, but it is an open source OS and with that, it's going to be less dominant based on marketing and economic conditioning as well as pressures from Microsoft, and on a lesser scale, Mac OS (which is just an OS marketed as an aesthetic superior to Windows for a niche subset of consumers, when in reality, it is on average more expensive, less powerful, and less open-ended than Windows.) With that in mind, it makes sense why Windows support is by and large the most important in this industry. There's really no point in arguing it or asking for a Linux client when they would probably see less than 1,000 users of their market share on Linux machines if they were to release a client for Linux distributions.

Windows 10 spies and reports on its users so much that it qualifies as malware, and the only software keeping me on it is Guild Wars 2. I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat if I could just play my favourite MMO on it. I intend to give WINE a go soon, and I hope that I get better results than I got with WoW on WINE. A native client would be amazing - perhaps ArenaNet could approach Feral Interactive to port it for them?

I would love to see a OpenGL port for Linux. Although it may not be easy because of different OpenGL version for Mac and Linux, but there already is a code base to work on.

As much would be fair however. Why you running Lunix in this generation? XD. I mean Mac gets excluded with software, but Lunix is like an outcast with software. As much I would say that Mac has a client. It's still too jacked up to be acceptable as a Mac client. The client is still nothing compared to the windows version. So even if they will make Lunix. There will be a while for the Mac client 64 bit to be fully stable and efficient like the windows client.

@sorudo.9054 said:Both mac and windows are official products, there are way to many linux versions and none of them official.

As far as I know. The reason why companies make windows first because it's the most complicated system, and it has the most variety of computer systems. That reasoning you said about lunix is actually the reason why all companies do windows first. There's build your own PC's. There dell, Acer, Asus. Soooo many different type of PC's yet everyone supports before Mac. Mac has all the same system so why isn't Mac first? It's the fact that more people love windows. More people buy them. Lunix? IDK where u can get a Lunix computer. Maybe on net. But in stores? No. Most people who buy a PC don't know what they doin. So they find some fake computer specialist at best buy and boom. Sold.

With Gallium Nine enabled and with the CSMT patches, I get pretty good performance with my RX 580. I bought the base game a couple years ago before I switched fully to Linux, but didn't play it much until now. Glad I gave it another chance.

However... since I'm sticking to "No Tux, No Bux" I won't be buying any expansions or gems for now. If official Linux support were offered, I would! Since you've got the game working with OpenGL now (in your new Mac client) there's one less barrier to making a Linux version. I know there's not a lot of us, but I bet a lot of people would be willing to use Linux if GW2 supported it!

if Linux support was provided, what distribution or distributions would Anet have to make the port for?last time I checked, there are more than 483 Linux distributions .

@mauried.5608 said:if Linux support was provided, what distribution or distributions would Anet have to make the port for?last time I checked, there are more than 483 Linux distributions .

Pick 2 that make sense. Ubuntu would be an obvious one since it is tossed out as the user-friendliest. Mint and Fedora would be my personal choices. But, honestly? Even if they only chose one, I'd be running that one tomorrow.

@"Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946" said:

Pick 2 that make sense. Ubuntu would be an obvious one since it is tossed out as the user-friendliest. Mint and Fedora would be my personal choices. But, honestly? Even if they only chose one, I'd be running that one tomorrow.

Ubuntu/Mint in LTS trim to minimize the moving target problem. Fedora is rolling release these days IIRC, which could be a headache for support (not that Microsoft is any better with Win10 anymore.)