Is Linux support something that will forever be a no, or would it be reconsidered if the market continues to grow?
I think Roblox would absolutely support Linux if the users existed. There is rumored PS5 support coming as well. This is because there are plenty of people who own a PS5 as their most powerful gaming device.
The problem is supporting a platform has a constant cost (generally speaking)
So if, for example, it takes 50 engineers to support a platform, you have to justify spending this money to operate & upkeep that platform:
50 engineers on windows - millions of players on windows
50 engineers on iOS - millions of players on iOS
50 engineers on Android - millions of players on android
50 engineers on Linux - couple hundred / thousand players at most
So this equation has to balance out. Not to mention, anybody who uses Linux is typically a desktop power user and will also have a Windows / Mac OS to run Roblox. So - they aren’t necessarily “losing” people who run Linux. But if Roblox wasn’t on iPhones, they would actually be losing people who have no other gaming device.
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I think this comparison doesn’t do justice to how much of a pain proper support for Linux can be. The customer support end would have to be prepared for not only an odd combination of hardware, but also potentially an odd combination of hardware, distros, desktop environments, and the software that holds it together (Nouveau vs NVIDIA proprietary, X11 vs Wayland, etc). Customer support needs to be ready to deal with even more combinations of hardware and software than Windows for a much smaller but much more vocal audience. Roblox not supporting this makes sense… mostly. Special support for AMD + Arch for the Steam Deck and future handhelds would be much appreciated.
As I have mentioned many times in several threads, what I don’t appreciate is that Roblox has put in the engineering effort (planning, implementation, validation, and maintenance) to actively block us from trying on native Linux or on VMs. For now, VMs is easy to satisfy with a feature provided by Microsoft. This has raised the bar to having a desktop with dual GPUs and being able to set up VFIO. Laptop users + handheld users + those who won’t buy a second graphics card just for Roblox now can’t even try to play Roblox on Linux. Again, not because we can’t make it work, but because Roblox won’t even let us try to make it work.
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All we ask is not proper support, but the simple acknowledgement and support of community derived tools. As mentioned by many, all we require is the minimum possibility to execute Roblox programs through Wine on Linux.
I’m not sure why, but I feel like a majority of game corporations tend to have a mindset towards Linux/KVM as “an accessory to cheating”, which is highly unlikely as the average cheater would probably not go as far as to switch to another OS & kernel altogether merely to cheat.
Take a look at what Easy Anti Cheat did - where they used to actively blocked Linux and VM users from accessing games (keep in mind how less than 1% Linux users would probably be using Linux to cheat).
Linux users are highly adaptive; we’re developers - we do not require a fully complete & functional client. All we require is acknowledgement for our existence and the minimal execute permissions to run Roblox. I’m sure the community will eventually find ways to patch and make the Roblox experience stable, with no input whatsoever.
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We’ve already figured out how to bypass the Wine check, but yes, Roblox absolutely should give a clear timeline for its removal.
As for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop, it will decrease as time goes on. Especially as the shift to Wayland gets closer to completion.
RHEL considers X11 to be deprecated and will drop it entirely in a future release.
Maybe in a few years Roblox will reconsider? Anyways, right now, the only thing we require to continue using Roblox is a blank check to make the necessary fixes and patches. Blocking wine (even if it’s a relatively easy block to bypass) complicates the situation greatly.
Native support is still the ideal solution long-term, but that might take anywhere from 5 to infinite years. However, Roblox’s unofficial endorsement of community tools and solutions would be a great help in the meantime.
Maybe there’s some sort of low-cost way in which Roblox could help us, such as organizing a community group to allow better coordination with developers of community tools for running Roblox. For example, Roblox could invite core developers and members of the Roblox Linux community to a feedback program, allowing for better coordination between us and Roblox but letting them spend minimal engineering costs and time.
The Linux community would still deal with all of the compatibility heavy-lifting, but also with whatever documentation and support Roblox is able to provide, and possibly even make Roblox aware of possible small fixes and workarounds they’re capable of implementing on their end.
Linux has always been a collaborative endeavor, so it’d be fitting. It’s a good compromise where Roblox would only need to dedicate a small amount of time for communicating with us, while we can deal with developing the solutions for enabling Roblox on Linux.
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It’s doesn’t even have to be a resource problem as much as a value proposition problem. Even if we had infinite resources to work on projects, devs might not get the Linux experience they want. There has been some feedback from developers on the blockage of Wine / VMs in the immediate term, for instance. While those developers are understandably upset as their dominant platform was busted, there would even more developers (and players) upset if we didn’t – or were slower – in curbing exploits.
Users will want what is best for them personally, and that’s okay, but that means that sometimes we won’t be able to satisfy everyone.
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What do you exactly mean by “odd hardware”?
Distro compatibility is mostly solved by using flatpak.
Most mainstream desktop environments are compatible with each other, e.g. if an app runs under Cinnamon then it runs under Gnome and Xfce.
I don’t think it matters to the game engine which display driver you use (nouveau or propertiary), other than performance, unless you mean choosing the appropriate drivers by the user. It’s a support case that you can easily prepare for on Ubuntu-based distros. Users of other distros are usually technical enough to figure it out themselves.
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On PC + Linux, you can have an uncountable number of combinations of hardware. CPUs, GPUs, RAM, USB devices, displays, and much more. Pair in your choice of Linux distro, kernel, desktop environment, and packages, and who knows what issues support will get.
“mostly” is the important word. Roblox’s customer support would need to be ready to deal with literally anything that can go wrong with a Linux install. Even with tools like Flatpak, it is no guarantee a random distro will be completely fine. I’ve had some funky stuff happen just from switching distros or even desktop environments.
That is a really bad assumption to make into the future.
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Ignoring the fact that its based on Gentoo, afaik ChromeOS users run the Android version of Roblox, straight up. Im not familiar with how this is accomplished on the system, but I am curious as to how this is handled from a support standpoint and how this differs from running roblox through wine.
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Why not leave the experience of developers to the developers? As I have stated above, unofficial patches will eventually get better. Furthermore, I doubt that developers on Linux will complain much about the lack of stability on Linux - as a majority of them are aware that Linux patches are just hacky solutions not intended to provide a proper setup.
If a developer is brave enough to make the jump to Linux and continue using it, it would make sense for them to get accustomed to lack of officially supported programs and set their expectations right.
EDIT: I do agree official support would be highly unlikely, considering the ratio of the amount of effort to be invested to the amount of probable return is low. The goal of an anti-cheat should be to minimize the amount of total cheaters, usually by eliminating the mass - not to attempt to remove cheating altogether. Hampering Linux users by actively blocking wine is not the way to do this.
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I believe this message paints an unfair picture for the Linux community.
It’s not just hundreds or thousands of people who play Roblox on Linux, it’s hundreds of thousands. Grapejuice is the most famous solution to run Roblox on Linux, and it has 200,000 downloads on flathub, which is just one of the places where grapejuice can be downloaded.
Also, most people who use Linux only use Linux, not other operating systems. I personally know at least 20 people who use Linux, and half of them don’t even have a virtual machine. Many people prefer Linux for reasons other than being “technical”, such as security, being free and mainly the lightness of the system compared to any other.
About native Linux support, many people are against it because it needs to support several distros, but nowadays we have flatpaks packages, which are practically universal packages that work in any Linux distribution. Most of the applications I currently use are flatpaks.
Roblox never made anything for Linux, but the community always created new tools to provide the possibility to play. I’m honestly very disappointed that they explicitly blocked even community support.
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That’s the case with Windows as well.
I agree, that’s a flaw of the Linux desktop ecosystem as a whole.
Indeed. For me the main appeal of using Linux is not using Windows. If I have to dual boot then I might as well stay on Windows.
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You know that there are more good people which want to help the FOSS be even better and more secure than people which only intentions are to cause harm?
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To clarify one detail: while we have no plans to release a Linux client, we are aiming to support Wine again. It seems possible, and we see a lot of value in it as a way of letting people run on Linux without the large investment on our end of releasing a native client. For all the reasons described above, Wine won’t ever be something that we guarantee will work, but also for all the reasons described above, we’d really like to make it work.
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That’s just awesome to hear, but can you give us a very rough estimate of when this might happen if possible? It’s ok if not though since just knowing that this is something Roblox is considering and planning for is honestly more than what I expected and it makes me and probably everyone here more than happy 
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It probably is not high on their priority list, but it’s probably something for them to work on when they’re done with their planned updates.
I’d expect it to come out this year or next year
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That’s the case with Windows as well.
Some of which - not so. For example, the amount of CPUs and RAM are limited depending on which Windows edition license you’re using. One of the reasons there are practically no supercomputers are running Windows - and almost no large scale servers run Windows also.
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In enterprise, it isn’t a question of what you can work on, but what you prioritize. Adding more people does not always make projects go faster. Adding proper Linux support (the focus of this post, not WINE support) is the equivalent of a new platform, which would satisfy <1 million people. Picking a platform like the Meta Quest 2 or PlayStation 5 would give you many times the benefit. A native Linux version won’t be able to be prioritized until Linux has the same type of market share that macOS does. WINE, on the other hand (not the point of this post), is a lot less work and could be a practical option.
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Worth has nothing to do with how much money they have. Roblox actually loses money every year, but their stock value is worth billions. Also, as other users have stated, it isn’t entirely about the technically ability, but if it’s worth it.
As the user above me stated, they could get way more users by supporting PS5 as opposed to Linux.
On top of that, Roblox has already stated they plan to try and support Wine, which would be nice for Linux Users.
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Does ROBLOX Studio at least work on linux? I never really play games on ROBLOX anymore and 100% of my activity is building static showcases in Studio. I heard the game client doesn’t even work in virtual machines anymore either, but does this also apply to Studio as well?
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