Can an official statement be made as to why there has not been an official dedicated server release for Linux? This game has been out for years but yet still no official linux server build. I understand that Wine may be able to be used but why should one need to use Wine?
Thanks in advance.
PS: Please no unofficial comments until an official statement has been made by someone that works for LFS that knows that reason.
Why does there need to be one? Scawen has (or appears) to make an effort to ensure LFS working to a tolerable level in Wine (see recent test patch for example). There's nothing lost by running it in Wine, and I (personally) fail to see any improvement if there was a native Linux version, other than greater chance for bugs and incompatibilities (caused by having to maintain 2 versions of a server on 2 different platforms).
If you don't want people replying to your topic you shouldn't start one on a forum. If you're only interested in hearing an "official" statement you could just send an email to one of the developers
I disagree. It needs to be on the forum so that if an official statement is made, everyone can see the reason(s) why. If I don't want people replying to the topic, I'll put a statement in my post to say so, as I did. Of course I knew it wouldn't be respected, but that's OK.
As far as the reason mentioned above, "devs not using Linux", that is a poor reason.
I've thought about the issue some more after posting this thread and realized that the player community for this game is quite small so making a Linux server build may not increase the number of servers/players as I originally thought. So to answer the question above, "Why do we need a Linux server build", I really don't have an answer.
I've seen a lot of games and mods for games come out that don't support *Unix and they usually die mostly because of the lack of Windows server hosts. *Unix platforms are arguably the standard for hosting game servers amongst other server applications and play a major role in the amount of servers that exist for games.
Lastly, I wanted an official post to get a better understanding as to why they didn't decide to develop a *Unix server build. Is it because they didn't see an advantage in doing so or are there other reasons?
Ok this isn't an official response, so feel free to ignore it. The dedicated server for windows works great under linux using wine. There's no need for a linux version.
I disagree. If you want to host a Windows game, it's going to be easier to do so on a Windows server. Don't expect developers to provide native support for an OS that isn't designed to run games. Some do, but that's their choice. *nix systems are far more adept at networking deployments, like web servers, anyway
It's *nix by the way, used to denote a unix-like OS, that's not necessarily unix compliant itself You could just call it Linux though, as other than BSD it's pretty much the only major *nix system in use
The only thing IMO that Linux lacks for supporting games is a better way to manage gaming controllers. It does fine for 3D, Audio it stumbles a touch (TOO MANY AUDIO SERVERS! ), but game controllers... there's nothing to make any consistency.
Now who's signature was it, "linux, a way of getting beards connected to the internet using maths" or words to that effect, never failed to make me chuckle when i used to see it.
Which is the only one that can natively run *.exe, hmm? It's not that Windows is more designed to run games, rather most games are designed to run under Windows
We're not talking about running or playing games on Linux at all. We're talking about running a dedicated server which video drivers are irrelevant for.
I understand that Wine is an option, I just wanted to know why they haven't created an actual Linux build. Wine is a work around, not a solution.
Building a version for Windows and another for Linux would mean developing 2 different versions of the dedi server code. Having 2 versions of the code means it takes longer to fix problems and you can run into problems if only one version of the code is updated (e.g. a patch is applied to the Windows version but not the Linux one or vice versa, meaning there would be a discrepancy between the versions). It would take time to go through the existing Windows code and make the necessary changes for a Linux environment. That means time to make the changes and time to test the changes thoroughly. Then, after all that effort you would end up with a native Linux dedi server that would provide very similar performance to the current Windows version running through wine. If LFS had a large development team there could be an argument for developing a separate version for Linux but since it's only Scawen developing the code of LFS he has to prioritise what he thinks is important. Given that he's actively looking for feedback from wine users he's clearly made the decision that developing a native Linux version isn't necessary at the moment.
This is just speculation but since the LFS client also contains the server's code, I suppose he just builds the server executable via some kind of compile option which strips away most of the client code and adds a little server specific stuff.
Having a linux server would mean having to keep in sync two different code bases, multiply the bugs etc so it's really a decision made out of efficiency of use of coding time.
With the current rate of advancements in LFS I think you'll have a hard time finding someone willing to trade LFS development for a dedicated linux server
Thank for the speculations and reiterations of those speculations. I was unaware of how small the development team was for LFS, apparently one person, and like I said above, I forgot how small the LFS community is compared to other multiplayer games. With that said, I may agree that a Linux dedicated server would have nominal advantages and have only a small numbers of users. I also understand how much time it would take to develop a Linux dedicated server as well as maintaining it to match the Windows dedicated server.
Despite ignoring my request for unofficial statements, I appreciate the information provided and it all sounds logical so I no longer desire an official statement.
Again, thank you for your time in posting your responses. See you on the track(s).
), but game controllers... there's nothing to make any consistency.