Con Kolivas returns with a new scheduler

Linux has a number of serious deficits in terms of video drivers and API support on it's desktop that makes what Adobe does on Linux very very difficult. It's much harder for Adobe to get good and consistent performance on Linux then it is on Windows or even OS X due to a number of reasons.

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Here is a example.

Look at DirectX vs OpenGL + SDL. SDL and OpenGL is about the closest we have to DirectX.

As you know gaming development is now dominated by DirectX. Now.. why would developers choose DirectX over OpenGL? OpenGL is fine and can take advantage of hardware just as well when you add vendor extensions and OpenGL is cross platform. So there has to be other things that the developers find valuable over DirectX.

Now you can point out developer tools and hype/marketting and that sort of thing, which is true. However I am convinced that one of the major reasons why DirectX displaced OpenGL as the API of choice for gaming developers is because of _constistancy_.

Even in Windows each vendor has it's own OpenGL stack. Sure you get a generic one from Microsoft, but when you install proprietary drivers then you end up using their proprietary stack.

Intel, ATI, Nvidia.. all have different OpenGL implementations. And vendor extensions are different from one to another. They have different performance profiles, different effects, and so on and so forth.

So in effect when your program for OpenGL on Windows your not targetting 'windows'. Windows is a like the Genus. Each video card provides you a different species of platform.

Were as with DirectX, Microsoft forces each vendor to have a consistent hardware platform and provides the unified software stack. When you program for DirectX there is not going to be much difference between end user's computers. This dramatically lowers the cost, effort, and support overhead of making games.

So in this way one of biggest reasons DirectX wins is not because of the techology, it's because of the developers have a easier time with it.

Now fast forward to Linux....

Linux is extremely schizophrenic. It's MUCH worse then anything you'd ever face in Windows.

Open source drivers vs nvidia drivers vs ati drivers vs open source nvidia drivers vs open source ati drivers. For a huge part of the target audiance you can't even depend on there being _ANY_ acceleration at all. And what acceleration is present, all except for proprietary nvidia users, is very inconsistant, buggy, and universally slow.

API support is spotty and incomplete. The only people have any sort of constistancy and performance approaching what you can get in Windows is proprietary Nvidia drivers... and even people using nvidia hardware they have to go through extra steps to install the drivers otherwise (until very recently) they lacked any sort of 3D acceleration at all.

Look at the discusson that went on here with Gnome 3.0 and Gnome shell. You have half of everybody bitching that requiring any sort of acceleration at all is just going to break their machines and make everything perform like shit, make it buggy, use to much resources, etc etc. When in fact when you take advantage of acceleration it _SHOULD_ things _faster_ and more efficient... A composited desktop is more efficient and faster then one that is not, for example. (it's just a better design.) Yet the common user experience on Linux is almost exactly opposite.

Any computer made in the last 13 years or so has relatively decent acceleration. Enough for many tasks. Any computer made in the last 7 years or so should have the capabilities to run simple and older OpenGL games and whatnot with accepetable performance. Even IGP stuff.

Yet it's very likely that a machine sold _yesterday_, when Linux is installed, will lack the ability to play Quakelive/Quake3 with good performance.. which is based on a _open_source_ game engine that was originally released for Linux 10 years ago.

This makes doing any sort of graphics work, if your goal is to support anybody other then just proprietary Nvidia users, just pure hell on Linux.

This is primarially why Adobe Flash on Linux sucks and is why you'll see the majority of open source and indie game development is happenning on Windows.

It's interesting that Linux users like to complain about the poor quality of proprietary software implementations for their platform. What vendor actually makes *good* proprietary software for Linux? All I ever see are complaints about Nvidia, complaints about VMware, complaints about Adobe, etc.

It's possible that all of the developers at all these companies are stupid or incompetent, but I'd put forth the claim that it's simply really hard to do quality *proprietary* software for Linux. Things change way too fast, APIs break all the time, and you pretty much have to rely on the community being able to fix your code, which they can't do, because it's proprietary.

It's at least a more reasonable and less offensive position to come out and just say that proprietary software sucks (for all the usual reasons/ethos/ideology etc.), but it's annoying to see the complaints directed at these vendors with the implicit assumption that they could somehow do better while retaining their current software distribution, development, and revenue models. I don't think they can.