Guild Wars 2

If this thread continues to show interest from ArenaNet’s users, i.e., by keeping this thread on the first page, I believe it will be more likely that they will take it into consideration.

I’d like to post this here as well as on the petition, as this is the proper place to discuss this suggestion.

As someone that has used Linux (Ubuntu and Debian), I prefer it over Windows 7, yet am forced to use a separate operating system in order to play nearly every game I’ve purchased. I also use Windows 8 more frequently than 7 at this point, and am similarly disappointed that GW2 entirely lacks support for the operating system. Whenever I’m on 7, I feel like I’m taking a step back not only technologically but also in regards to my freedom of operating system choice. To see one of my favorite companies develop for a neglected platform I love would be the start of a really great day.

I’d like to say that i support the idea of seeing GW2 on Linux. As someone using linux 90% of time, i’d be glad to be able to play GW2 on my Debian and/or Archlinux.

Deria.9158:

I have no objection to a Linux client, but people in this thread are making some terrible assumptions:

1) OS X is not Linux. It is BSD Unix. Similar, yes. The same, no.

2) Someone described Windows as “terrible” for game developers. The opposite could not possibly be more true. DirectX is VERY GOOD. Speaking as a programmer who has used it, I can say with certainty that it is extremely easy to use and works well. OpenGL is also very good, don’t get me wrong. People need to stop wearing blinders, though. Whether you love or hate Microsoft, you have to admit that they pushed the gaming market -massively- forward with DirectX and continue to do so.

3) Implementing a Mac client makes much more sense than implementing a Linux client. Sorry, but the reality is there are many more Mac users than Linux users in the gaming market. Linux is great, and I love it, but the number of gamers using Linux full-time is minimal. I’d be happy to see ArenaNet implement a Linux client, but the idea that they should have done that before a Mac client is unreasonable.

1) True, but the way they say they’ve ‘ported’ to Mac has an increadably similar parrallel on Linux (which also works on Mac and other *NIXes, as long as they run Intel/AMD processors)

2) Windows is terrible for developers. I know, I have to work with that mess every day. OpenGL would be better if MS wasn’t pulling every dirty trick they feel they can get away with to neuter it. Also, Microsoft don’t push markets, they trail behind them. They may have thrown money at companies to get them to use DirectX instead of OpenGL, but that’s just them trying to maintain their consumer lock-in.

3) ANet actually have the numbers of Windows, Mac and Linux users. (Or they can get them with a little bit of logging of command-line flags to differentiate between Windows and Linux users if they don’t do that already) Also, instead of supporting Mac, they could have supported Wine, which would have given pretty much every non-Windows user support (including Mac users). I don’t see how supporting Wine would have been more expensive than dealing with Transgaming.

The number of gamers using Linux full-time is minimal because the number of games availible on Linux is minimal. Vicious circle. Also, try buying a computer from anyone big without Windows on it. Change has to start somewhere, and then people have to join in the change.

The idea is that they could have done a Mac, and Linux, and BSD, and… client, instead of just a Mac client, for about the same amount of effort. That isn’t unreasonable at all.

I would be more than willing to pay an extra $10 to $20 to cover the cost of a fflash drive just to set my PC to boot from USB plug in the drive and play

WTF???? i already have a flash drive…. its called a computer!

Deria.9158:

3) Implementing a Mac client makes much more sense than implementing a Linux client. Sorry, but the reality is there are many more Mac users than Linux users in the gaming market. Linux is great, and I love it, but the number of gamers using Linux full-time is minimal. I’d be happy to see ArenaNet implement a Linux client, but the idea that they should have done that before a Mac client is unreasonable.

Under what pretenses do you suggest that mac has more gamers than linux. The humble bundles suggest that linux and mac gamers are either neck and neck or linux is slightly ahead but suggesting that mac has many more gamers doesn’t support the facts I know.

lorazcyk.8927:

With rawinput patch gw2 works really nicely on wine.
Only problem is there’s no gem store or trading post. So if they could make a way to have this for us, OR let us buy stuff on the gem store / trading post on a website online, outside of the game, that would help a lot.

There’s an awesomium patch floating around in one of the bug threads attached to GW2’s winehq page. With that the store/TP work great for me.

Canoas.8423:

+1 for linux.
I still don’t understand why the hell is a mac version more important than a linux one.

Cause Apple is the hipster movement of the generation. If your not using Apple your not cool, lol.

Ubuntu ftw +1

Truga.5897:

lorazcyk.8927:

With rawinput patch gw2 works really nicely on wine.
Only problem is there’s no gem store or trading post. So if they could make a way to have this for us, OR let us buy stuff on the gem store / trading post on a website online, outside of the game, that would help a lot.

There’s an awesomium patch floating around in one of the bug threads attached to GW2’s winehq page. With that the store/TP work great for me.

If you’re willing to use PlayOnLinux, it has a wine build that already has the raw3 and awesomium patches rolled in. Conviniently labelled “Guild Wars 2”

Native Linux Client please!
Running Gw2 on Ubuntu 12.04 with playonlinux wine version 1.5.11-guild wars2 patched and i get like 4-16 fps max with my Radeon HD6670 (yeah my card is crappy) and om going to buy a new card just to see if i can get it playable (prolly geforce 660ti).

+1 for a linux client.

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 and playonlinux does not support pulseaudio so I only have one source of sound at once.

Suggestion: Maybe everyone here who wants a Linux client could post the answers to the following questions. This way the developers can see if/how much we are actually willing to pay for it.
Nothing against +1 anwers but I don’t think they can plan well with those. ^.^

- Linux distribtution I use:
- I already own GW2 for Windows:
- I play the Windows version on Linux/Wine:
- I would buy GW2 for Linux:
- I’d be willing to pay this amount for it:
- Miscellaneous:

My answers:
- Linux distribtution I use: Arch Linux (32 bit)
- I already own GW2 for Windows: Yes
- I play the Windows version on Linux/Wine: Yes
- I would buy GW2 for Linux: Yes
- I’d be willing to pay this amount for it: 55,- euro (the same amount the Windows-version costs)
- Miscellaneous: If there will not be a Linux-client could you (ArenaNet/NC Soft) at least support the Wine-project (winehq.org) so that it runs better there? ^.^

Arch 32b here, I’d pay again for the game if it ran on Linux. Such a hassle to have to boot crappy OS just to play games, sigh.

Yep, that’s what I tohught Antiriad. I think many game developers don’t understand that they don’t only target new users with a Linux version but that many of us would buy a game a second time.

OMG this thread is now over 3 pages long and still no response from Anet :S

I would happily pay double for a linux client.

It’s real sad that I can play GW1 and GW2 on linux but I have to use a wine based system which is 3rd party as far as Anet are concerned.

If you, Anet/NcSoft, can’t work out a native client, then please at least officially support the wine project.

How many pages will this thread have to go over before we finally get a response form Anet even if it’s only one that tells us all to stop whining?

BTW: by official response, I don;t mean one saying they have moved it to the correct forum rofl

I too would like to see a linux client for GW2. I’ve toyed with linux in the past, but the two things keeping me tied to windows are GW and photography. There have been a few key advances in linux for photographers lately so a full transition seems plausible at this time, assuming GW were to put out a linux client.

Btw, Valve stated on their Steam-for-Linux blog that after optimizing the graphics drivers they found Linux to actually outperform Windows =P

adagiophoto.4512:

I too would like to see a linux client for GW2. I’ve toyed with linux in the past, but the two things keeping me tied to windows are GW and photography. There have been a few key advances in linux for photographers lately so a full transition seems plausible at this time, assuming GW were to put out a linux client.

For me, the Guild Wars Prophecies works great with Playonlinux (after some tweaking), although the tar lakes and rivers in Ascalon become transparent. Something I also want to add which is a bit off topic: Some games that I have been unable to run through Playonlinux including Age of Mythology: Titans expansion and Sim City 4 work great when I install Steam then install the non steam games using the Steam client.

Again, I’d like to point out that ANet already have the numbers of people playing on Wine. So forum polls on this are rather pointless. If you want Linux support, play on Linux.

Also, if you want a laugh, go look at the Mac bugs list, and compare it to performance in Wine. Looks like they really made a mistake in what would be easier to support

My point is that they don’t need the numbers of people who already play the Windows version under Linux. They will need the number of people who will actually give them money for a Linux version.
That’s why I thought it might be helpful if there is a single place here with a collection of data from Linux users who would actually buy a native Linux game.

Except that they won’t charge you again for a Linux client. You buy a set of login details for their servers, and they hand the clients out for free. I’m pretty sure you can even download and patch them without a login. Look at how the Mac client is handled.

Now, saying: “I’d buy more gems if you gave my choice of OS actual, official support (without breaking anything)” might have an effect, but I doubt they take statements like that seriously.

I would love to have a linux client. I stopped using windows a year before GW2 came out (I prepurchased as soon as it was available) but due to the fact that the game currently doesn’t work as well under Wine as it does in windows, I had to make a gw2 windows partition. I don’t use windows because I like not having to worry about viruses, keyloggers, and the constant “your edition is not valid” even though I purchased my copy from walmart. With the way Windows 8 is shaping up, 7 is probably the last version I will ever purchase. Other game companies are beginning to wake up and see that windows is not the be all end all, and that there is merit to having a linux version (Valve is porting Steam, Blizzard has bashed windows 8, CCP of EvE online has provided Wine fixes for their game).

I know most linux users will probably hate me for saying this, but I would be fine if game companies would choose a flavor they would like to support, so they aren’t having to try and make the game work on every last version. Valve has decided to start with Ubuntu. I’d be fine with that, and in the grand scheme of things I think other users would be too. At least they’d have an alternative to windows.

“I’d buy more gems if you gave my choice of OS actual, official support (without breaking anything)” I already buy gems with cash, because I believe in supporting companies who show they have the good business sense to put their customers first. ANet seems to be one of those. I’d be willing to pony up and buy a linux exclusive copy for, say, another $20-30, and I know at least a few other people that would as well.

I’d really love to hear from an ANet representative to see what they are thinking on this subject.

Hell, I’d be happy if games companies decided that they’d support Wine, never mind a specific Linux distro.

That’s also the best decision for them, as it gets than the entire non-Windows x86 population in one fell swoop. No messing about with which distros they support, no worries about installers, and almost everyone is happy. (ARM machines tend not to be decent gaming rigs (too low spec for modern resource-hogging games), even though I’d love to be able to play on a RaspPI, I don’t see it happening anytime soon)

They even get a cool logo that they can stick on the box.

Common guys, only 95 signatures? Let’s spread the word to other GW2 Linux players so they can sign it: http://www.change.org/petitions/arenanet-inc-consider-development-alongside-the-wine-project-3

I don’t know how effective that’d be, but is better than nothing.

Seeing as ANet can just poll the clients to see which of them are running on Wine, I still don’t see the point of an online petition.

Antiriad.7160:

Btw, Valve stated on their Steam-for-Linux blog that after optimizing the graphics drivers they found Linux to actually outperform Windows =P

Yep, Linux is still the king of operating systems when used properly. Steam is taking the right step for the gaming community and hopefully ArenaNet will join them with a Linux client for us all to enjoy.

Down with Windows 8!

Why get a Linux if you know its not supported by most game developers? XD

Unfortunately, it probably wont be worth it from a profitting perspective because GW2 is already able to be used with WINE. I would like to see GW2 further optimized, however.

As far as I’m aware, GW1 was the king of WINE games. Check WINEHQ!

But can GW2 be ran without the -dx9single command yet? I use LMDE…

Novalitus.7382:

Why get a Linux if you know its not supported by most game developers? XD

Some of us use our computers for more than just gaming.

Kain Francois.4328:

Unfortunately, it probably wont be worth it from a profitting perspective because GW2 is already able to be used with WINE.

WINE runs fine on Mac, yet they felt the need to do a Mac client. The same economics apply to Linux. Then again, they probably can’t do official WINE support now, because it would mean that they’d have to admit to wasting money on the Transgaming port.

I would also like a Native (i.e. not a poorly done pre-wine wrapped launcher like SOME OTHER companies do) linux client.

Illiander.8049:

Seeing as ANet can just poll the clients to see which of them are running on Wine, I still don’t see the point of an online petition.

…Except that Wine may be providing such a lousy gaming experience that players just give up and spend the day and a half that it takes to properly set up Windows.

And if you expected a DirectX game to run well on Wine on a minimum/reccommended-spec computer, then you were kidding yourself.

The run-time DirectX→OpenGL converter is possibly the biggest contributor to people’s performance issues, and still seems to work best on NVidia cards. (disclaimer: I haven’t done extensive testing on this, so this opinion is not statistically backed)

And I have a suggestion for those of you who want a Linux client but who don’t have a good enough machine to run on WINE: Run with the same flags as you would on Linux (-dx9single), as that’s the only way I can see for ANet to count Wine users. That’s the petition that they’ll actually look at.

i too suffer the same fate on having too dual boot windows……come on arenanet gimmie a linux client

one more nail in the coffin

Just tried out Guild Wars 2 with Wine. I too agree that people who say Wine is fine, there’s no need for a native client are kidding themselves.

After the ghetto-rigged install on Linux with the installer crashing every couple of files downloaded (which is warned by everyone that it will happen), I proceed to play. It takes around 3 minutes for my install to initially load the char select screen every time.

Then, I must play at much lower settings to achieve similar Windows framerate plus many graphical and miscellanious errors, and suffer from stuttering which ruins the gameplay experience and makes me fear ever engaging in tPvP due to its instability. The stuttering is also a widespread occurence.

And the Black Lion trading company is broken, though I believe you can patch it. Even then, every user must do so much modifying, tinkering, manual patching, and diagnosing individual situations in order to get a ghetto-rigged, inadequate, crap, non-native client working barely.

TLDR: Wine is not an adequate substitution for a proper native client.

+1 count me in I hate windows

Lurch.4793:

With Windows 8 shaping up to be a bit of a shocker, Metro interface chiefly to blame, this may become a necessity!

Windows 8 is fine, I’m running GW2 on it right now and no issues what so ever.

BabelFish.7234:

Lurch.4793:

With Windows 8 shaping up to be a bit of a shocker, Metro interface chiefly to blame, this may become a necessity!

Windows 8 is fine, I’m running GW2 on it right now and no issues what so ever.

The problem isn’t Win8’s ability to run GW2, it’s the fact that not only has Microsoft been so obsessed with creating a tablet OS that some users might think Desktop Mode was an afterthought but they’ve also put Windows on the potential path to eventually becoming a closed system, a fear expressed by a number of software developers of late.

+1 for linux. I’m a mac user so it doesnt affect me in the slightest, but i’ve seen the difference between a non-supported wine product and the product that is currently in use, and the wine has tons more issues than the one produced by ArenaNet.

While i would prefer a native client for both mac and linux, there are definitely difficulties in doing that, such as potentially recreating the entire game so that it fits with openGL. For that reason it’s much simpler and much more cost effective to go with an officially supported wine port.

Besides, with an officially supported wine port, you don’t have to pay for a wine software to use.

I approve of this.
With the recent release of Windows 8, we see an enormous shift in the OS-market, and the views of people on OS’s.
The only reason I use my Windows 7 is because of Guild Wars 2, and some other games. But when Guild Wars 2 will be ported to Linux, I’ll be more than happy to format my Windows 7 partition.
I really, really think that porting Guild Wars 2 to Linux will be good. Not only for the community, but also for ArenaNet as a progressive gaming company.

Posting to show support.

Bushido.2184:

Just tried out Guild Wars 2 with Wine. I too agree that people who say Wine is fine, there’s no need for a native client are kidding themselves.

After the ghetto-rigged install on Linux with the installer crashing every couple of files downloaded (which is warned by everyone that it will happen), I proceed to play. It takes around 3 minutes for my install to initially load the char select screen every time.

Then, I must play at much lower settings to achieve similar Windows framerate plus many graphical and miscellanious errors, and suffer from stuttering which ruins the gameplay experience and makes me fear ever engaging in tPvP due to its instability. The stuttering is also a widespread occurence.

And the Black Lion trading company is broken, though I believe you can patch it. Even then, every user must do so much modifying, tinkering, manual patching, and diagnosing individual situations in order to get a ghetto-rigged, inadequate, crap, non-native client working barely.

TLDR: Wine is not an adequate substitution for a proper native client.

Ok, several things wrong with what you’re saying:

1: Default WINE isn’t ok for GW2: true. If you read anything about this, you would know that you need some patches, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, then you should use PlayOnLinux’s GW2 build. This includes rawInput and awesomium, which fix the mouse-look and BLTP (Though I think I saw that rawInput has been rolled into core WINE now). I write software for a living, and I stull use PlayOnLinux, purely for the convinience.

2: The installer crashes every few thousand files. But if you already had a copy of GW2.dat, you could have simply copied it over.

3: What model is your graphics card? WINE has always played best with nVidia cards for me. I have had major issues with the DirectX converter on AMD cards.

4: Of course on WINE you have to use lower performance settings than on a native Windows install. It’s doing run-time translation of every system and DirectX call. Unless your system was screaming along at max settings on Windows, what do you expect?

Personally, I don’t think they’d need to do much at all to support the PLayOnLinux WINE build officially, other than cope with an outpouring of support from the Linux community. My biggest issue is a low framerate for about a minute after loading into a new zone while it background-loads everything.

And for fair comparison, here’s my system specs:
AMD Phenom™ II X6 Processor
GeForce GTX 460 (1GB)
16GB Ram

GW2: everything is on high, 1280×1024 monitor.

I’m not talking for a.net here but more generally from an industry point of perspective. I work for a 2000 people industrial automation company and have a few Linux customers every month.

- The company I work for has a pretty big software environment which only works under Windows. There are very good reasons for that. First of, with Windows, you know what you work with. As bad as Windows is out of the box, you never now how bad someone kittened up his Linux distribution.
Be honest, would you be willing to help anyone with his homebrew Archlinux, Gentoo or LFS??? How much would you charge for that? On the other hand, Microsoft actually gives pretty good support to it’s industrial customers. In case of emergency, our in-house developers are 2 phone calls away from any Microsoft developer.

- For Linux, such support does not exist. Whenever a company develops for Linux, they also have to hire someone to develop Linux for the simple reason that lots of stuff is in beta and for serious use that’s not an option. Most big Linux software packages are a joke by industrial standards, not because they’re bad but because lack of serious support.

- Also, you never know when a Linux branch is going to die. If, for example, you base your software kit on emacs, it may just die tomorrow unless you support emacs financially. However, emacs is open source so all your money is down the litter bin and you have no rights to any code you paid for. If you base it on Visual Studio, you almost certainly know Microsoft and VS support will still be there in 10 years.

- Windows is actually very flexible, and if something isn’t possible yet, it’s usually possible to make it. The company I work for has a real time kernel that runs completely parallel to Windows. There’s nothing you can do with Linux which you can’t with Windows.

For companies who have to pay salaries and share holders, going with open source partners is simply unfeasible and corporate suicide. Valve is big enough to start a joke project they know will cost more than it’ll earn, but I don’t think a.net has that luxury position.
When I have customers calling me with Linux problems I invariably say I can’t and won’t help them. It makes no sense to devote 90% of resources to a minority of users, because frankly, solving a single Linux problem takes more time than 100 Windows problems. We allow customers to use Linux but don’t give any form of official support on it.

So while I support this thread in that a.net could one day allow a dev write an unsupported Linux client in his spare time, I would not expect such a thing to happen anytime soon. Unsupported and spare time being the key words here.

Perhaps using a commercial Linux distro would alleviate some of the issues marnick.4305 has mentioned?

So many misconceptions here.

marnick.4305:

I’m not talking for a.net here but more generally from an industry point of perspective. I work for a 2000 people industrial automation company and have a few Linux customers every month.

- The company I work for has a pretty big software environment which only works under Windows. There are very good reasons for that. First of, with Windows, you know what you work with. As bad as Windows is out of the box, you never now how bad someone kittened up his Linux distribution.

When you’re helping Windows clients, do you tell them how to sort out their utterly trashed Windows system that’s been trojaned up the wazzo, or do you just tell them to reinstall and call you back? Why would anyone expect you to do anything but support your own software?

There are two major layouts for Linux systems: Debian and RedHat. Most distros use one of those two. Also, you can build your stuff so that it doesn’t care. It normally involves rolling your own libraries in, which makes your software easier to support, as you then don’t have to figure out which version of libraries they’re using or where they are.

Be honest, would you be willing to help anyone with his homebrew Archlinux, Gentoo or LFS??? How much would you charge for that? On the other hand, Microsoft actually gives pretty good support to it’s industrial customers. In case of emergency, our in-house developers are 2 phone calls away from any Microsoft developer.

- For Linux, such support does not exist. Whenever a company develops for Linux, they also have to hire someone to develop Linux for the simple reason that lots of stuff is in beta and for serious use that’s not an option. Most big Linux software packages are a joke by industrial standards, not because they’re bad but because lack of serious support

You should really try talking to Google, RedHat or Canonical about that.

Then there’s the fun question of “When does a Beta end?” Would you consider any Windows OS from before it’s first service pack to be ready for serious use? Beta means something differeing in Free Software circles to what Microsoft means by it.
Beta for MS seems to mean: “We’re going to release this in 6 months with whatever bugs are left, and then patch some of the rest after you’ve paid for it, maybe they’ll be the ones that you care about.”
Beta for Free Software means: “We still have some major bugs in there.”
Most Microsoft prouducts would still be considered Beta by Free Software standards, wouldn’t you agree?

Also, what’s the standard web server set: LAMP. Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python. How much of that is Free Software? Try again with your “Not up to scratch” claim, please.

marnick.4305:

- Also, you never know when a Linux branch is going to die. If, for example, you base your software kit on emacs, it may just die tomorrow unless you support emacs financially. However, emacs is open source so all your money is down the litter bin and you have no rights to any code you paid for. If you base it on Visual Studio, you almost certainly know Microsoft and VS support will still be there in 10 years.

Is Microsoft any less likely to die than RedHat? Really? You would put money on MS still being relevent in 10 years?

Oh, and please actually read some lisenses sometime. You seem to be under some major misconceptions about the GPL. I can correct those some other time.

- Windows is actually very flexible, and if something isn’t possible yet, it’s usually possible to make it. The company I work for has a real time kernel that runs completely parallel to Windows. There’s nothing you can do with Linux which you can’t with Windows.

True, but it’s almost certainly cheaper and easier on Linux. I program on Windows for my day job, and the number of times I’ve run into a bug in Microsoft’s code that I could probably have fixed if I had source access 10x faster than the work-around took is pretty big. And that’s not mentioning the one that I can’t work around.

For companies who have to pay salaries and share holders, going with open source partners is simply unfeasible and corporate suicide. Valve is big enough to start a joke project they know will cost more than it’ll earn, but I don’t think a.net has that luxury position.

Again, I really suggest you take a look at what Google says about it’s systems. In fact, I’ll quote them so you don’t have to go looking: “Why would anyone use anything else?” Or there’s Oracle, why don’t you ask them about their “Unbreakable Linux” (or you could ask them about Solaris, I suppose). Even Microsoft run some of their servers on Linux.

Also, Valve is getting better performance on Linux than on Windows. “Joke project”?

When I have customers calling me with Linux problems I invariably say I can’t and won’t help them. It makes no sense to devote 90% of resources to a minority of users, because frankly, solving a single Linux problem takes more time than 100 Windows problems. We allow customers to use Linux but don’t give any form of official support on it.

So while I support this thread in that a.net could one day allow a dev write an unsupported Linux client in his spare time, I would not expect such a thing to happen anytime soon. Unsupported and spare time being the key words here.

I’m not even asking for a native Linux client. Mac doesn’t have that either. All I’m asking for is official WINE support. Even official support for a specific version of WINE with a specific set of patches applied would be good for me. Because then I won’t need to worry about a future patch stopping me from playing.

Oh, and we already have the “make it work in WINE” flag on the game, which is why I keep telling people that if you want to see official Linux support, to run it on Linux. So that when ANet poll how many people are using it, they see the actual numbers.

We have enough bots already without a linux port :/

Chamone.6890:

We have enough bots already without a linux port :/

This sentence make no sense. Are you seriously associating Linux with botting and tarring its users with a large brush?

That’s like associating all mechanics with illegal street racing. o_O

Valve is showing the world that Linux can be a first-rate gaming platform with their Steam for Linux beta.
Follow Valve’s footsteps, Arenanet(I mean, you guys are basically neighbors), make a Linux client for GW2! =D

Illiander.8049:

So many misconceptions here.

When you’re helping Windows clients, do you tell them how to sort out their utterly trashed Windows system that’s been trojaned up the wazzo, or do you just tell them to reinstall and call you back? Why would anyone expect you to do anything but support your own software?

I know how our software behaves in a functional windows environment. If that environment has been altered too much, I will indeed tell them to try with a fresh install. Microsoft is kind enough to give a free VM XP with every legal copy of windows 7 pro so testing this is very easy (eg over Teamviewer). In Linux there is no common baseline.

There are two major layouts for Linux systems: Debian and RedHat. Most distros use one of those two. Also, you can build your stuff so that it doesn’t care. It normally involves rolling your own libraries in, which makes your software easier to support, as you then don’t have to figure out which version of libraries they’re using or where they are.

And yet for Windows there’s only 1. Should I tell my customers I only support RedHat? That would be even more of a joke. We could indeed roll in all those libraries, or we could use the ones that are already available in every windows based computer without hassle. In a world that revolves around making money, option two is the correct one. Theorycrafting doesn’t make money. I’m very sorry, and I don’t like it either, but that’s the sad truth.
If the Linux world can step up and provide one monolithic distribution that everyone is expected to use, it will become competitive for industrial use. Otherwise, it’ll remain a joke project for IT in their free time. We do have some of those joke projects in our “unsupported tools” folder on the company FTP. The name of this folder is pretty much key.

I don’t mean joke in a bad way. Linux is a very good way to learn the innards of computers. But on a company scale, it indeed is a joke because Linux development requires far more resources for far less results.

You should really try talking to Google, RedHat or Canonical about that.

Then there’s the fun question of “When does a Beta end?” Would you consider any Windows OS from before it’s first service pack to be ready for serious use? Beta means something differeing in Free Software circles to what Microsoft means by it.
Beta for MS seems to mean: “We’re going to release this in 6 months with whatever bugs are left, and then patch some of the rest after you’ve paid for it, maybe they’ll be the ones that you care about.”
Beta for Free Software means: “We still have some major bugs in there.”
Most Microsoft prouducts would still be considered Beta by Free Software standards, wouldn’t you agree?

Which is why most of my customers are running the extremely solid and proven operating system called XP service pack 3. Some still use NT4.0 and there is no reason to “upgrade”. Just like no serious company will use Linux, none will use a pre-service pack Windows. We can pretty much agree on that.
I know Chrome and Android is based on Linux, but the reason for that is because Chrome isn’t an OS developing company but rather an advertisement company. Google is known to allow their employees free time to program joke projects. Some of those become good, most fail. Gmail and Android happened to be joke projects that had potential, but all those other projects, you never heard of.

The only thing I mean with “joke” is that it’s not intended to earn you money. Please understand that. Developing for Linux can be good because it deepens knowledge of your software and the machines it runs on, but only the largest companies have the ability to earn money on Linux. Because of that, a Linux client for GW2 by default would be an implementation that’d cost Arena.net more money than it’d ever make through Linux clients.

The choice being made is in the following: a 15 years old newbie installs Linux because it’s cool to hate Windows. His GW2 doesn’t work and he buggers support. The time it takes to solve his problem, could be used to check 20 hacked account tickets. Which path should a.net take? Even if I personally wanted to support the rare Linux question I get, I simply wouldn’t have time for that.