Hey everyone... I have something I want to say... but I don''t want people getting upset with me... Anyway, here goes... How come every time I come to this forum, "Everything Unix" all I ever see are general linux support questions? I understand that people need help with setting things up, and general linux use... but after all this is Gamedev.net, not linuxquestions.org. I would like to see more people talking about things like using OpenGL in linux, or SDL...well, I guess just more that has to do with game programming. Is it just that there aren''t that many people developing for linux, or are people asking these questions in other forums? I''m not trying to complain here, just wondering why people aren''t using this forum for more game specific questions... Mike

As for questions regarding OGL or SDL: besides the fact that they are multiplatform - so they actually don''t belong in the ''unix forum'' - you''ll also get more replies about these things when you post them in their own forums. Most of the questions/answers about these are system-independent: posting them here would limit your target-public somewhat.
Development on unix based systems is not that different from other platforms. That''s the main reason why you get almost no game development questions around here.
On the other hand, I don''t see any reason to remove the Unix forum either. Clearly there is a certain amount of people around that are using unix based systems, so why post your unix/linux questions somewhere else if you can get helped here by people you know.
Anyway, I''d also like to see more cross-platform developed games. It''s really not that hard if you plan it beforehand.

Thanks for the reply
Like you said, I understand that certain questions can be answered, or at least view by more people when put in the specific forums.

I was more curiosu about it . Wasn''t trying to suggest the unix forum be removed I like to read posts from here as well

As for cross platform development, I too wish more people would do that. It would certainly help linux become more popular on the desktop. I''m in the process of designing a game and I will be using linux as the platform to program on.... I''ll most likely be using SDL for window managment and OpenGL for graphics. I''ve seen what can be done in linux, and it''s very comparable to what can be programmed in windows. The only problem I see is that people beleive Microsoft is the best, but they just don''t really see the truth; however, these are my opinions only, and I do not wish to start a flame war here.

Well, I now understand why there aren''t many game related posts here, thank you for the reply..

Mike

People beleive that MS is the only option on the whole, or just discount anything else because they''ve never used it/don''t know anything about it

The description of this forum says that it''s anything related to *nix based OSs, and it''s in the special interest section, so I guess it''s unclear whether or not it was intended to be a *nix game dev forum, or a forum about other *nix related stuff

I find this forum to be very helpful for questions related to programming in any of the unix environments (linux, bsds, etc.). Here, I actually get helpful responses and discussions. Ask on a newsgroup and most of the time you get answers like, "RTFM!", or a link to a document spanning a few hundred pages, or something else equally unhelpful. So I'm all for allowing posts that are not directly about game programming.

Even questions that aren't directly related to game programming may really be about game programming. A game can cover almost any area of programming, and since linux gives the user (administrator) more control than is given to the user in Windows, sometimes there are things that need to be configured, or things don't always work the way you had hoped. So in an indirect way, when someone is asking a question about why they can't find their root partition anymore, it's really a game programming question in disguise :)

There does seem to be a number of general Linux support questions in this forum, and I'd be happy to see more programming and game related posts. Problem is, a large portion of Linux stuff is portable, so questions often apply to systems in general, not Linux (or Unix) specifically. That's probably a big reason why there aren't more of those kinds of posts.

I wouldn't mind seeing some GLX or ALSA posts, but most people who program on Linux like the idea of porting to Windows so that the unwashed masses can also enjoy their creations, thus these Linux specific libs are rarely used directly.

Quote: Original post by Doc

There does seem to be a number of general Linux support questions in this forum, and I'd be happy to see more programming and game related posts. Problem is, a large portion of Linux stuff is portable, so questions often apply to systems in general, not Linux (or Unix) specifically. That's probably a big reason why there aren't more of those kinds of posts.

I wouldn't mind seeing some GLX or ALSA posts, but most people who program on Linux like the idea of porting to Windows so that the unwashed masses can also enjoy their creations, thus these Linux specific libs are rarely used directly.

Yep that's exactly it. I would rather use SDL or wxWidgets than GTK for example purely for their ease of portability. Maybe if we had more linux specific game libraries and tools available this forum would fill up, but until then I think it is destined to exist for the random linux OS question.

The point of this forum most certainly is supposed to be about game devlopment. However, oftentimes, people have some issues that they need to get resolved first before they can actually work on their game, i.e., some major component isn't working.

So indirectly, support questions are development related :P