Proper support for the Linux platform

[Jrelvas]

As support for running the Roblox client on Wine officially dies out, this has never been a more relevant request.

We are about to reach mid 2023.

1. Linux keeps getting more attention from game development studios.
2. Linux keeps progressing and maturing as a Desktop platform. It has never been easier to target and publish software in it.
3. Linux’s corporate backing only gets bigger and bigger.
4. Mainstream manufacturers like Dell, Lenovo and HP are offering Linux compatibility, support and hardware pre-loaded with it.
5. The Linux desktop has steadily grown its userbase. Not just in amount of users, but also in its marketshare.
6. The amount of Roblox developers daily driving Linux has increased over time.

Despite that, Roblox has gone back. While everyone else in the industry has taken steps towards the Linux desktop, some even embracing it, Roblox has jumped back to the stone ages and killed off Wine compatibility for their client.

Virtually all other major game engines and development tools have had their SDKs natively available on Linux for years, with support for compiling a Linux target. Even Unreal Engine 4 (Developed by Epic Games, which is famously known for maliciously refusing the Linux desktop) still offers a native Linux SDK and target option.

So what’s up Roblox? Why are you going backwards when everyone else has taken a brave step forwards?

Roblox is a development tool, not just a platform for playing. Even companies that have zero interest in the Linux desktop and offer no support whatsoever for their user-facing ecosystem recognize the need for developers to have Linux SDKs and targets and as such provide the necessary tooling and programs for developing and publishing in Linux.

Roblox, out of all major engines, is the only one that doesn’t offer a Linux SDK. It doesn’t even have a Linux client!

If Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, Frostbite, Game Maker Studio, and so many others provide Linux SDKs, tooling and targets, why not Roblox?

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Roblox’s past statements to its Linux community

Over the years, Roblox has communicated with its Linux community and explained the reasons there’s no Linux support. However, many of those reasons have become outdated due to Linux’s massive evolution since 2017…
The Linux desktop has standards that are universally followed by all major players.
The Linux desktop has universal packaging standards that provide a single target for every distribution.
The Linux desktop has a strict “Don’t Break Userspace” policy that is near-religiously followed. A modern kernel can usually be ran on a very outdated userspace.

@Tiffblocks

It’s a huge amount of effort to make a port like this, like I doubt I’d get even a buggy mess working within a single hack week.

Something is better than nothing. I’d rather have buggy and limited Linux support (or compatibility) over nothing.

@Tiffblocks

The drivers are still super broken. Roblox runs into driver problems all the time on the platforms we support, and Linux drivers are much worse because they are not as well maintained.

The Linux driver situation has massively improved in the last 6 years. There are some exceptions (Looking at you nvidia), but many vendors now have first-class Linux support (Some, like amdgpu, have even surpassed their Windows counterparts and offer better stability and more features!)

@Tiffblocks

There are a large number of Debian users, who have 3 years out of date graphics drivers on top of the drivers being buggy. These users would blame us for any problems they run into, not their bad distribution.

This problem is solved with Flatpak/Snap. Userspace drivers and dependencies are also included in its runtime, bypassing outdated distro packaging. It also bypasses other issues like Fedora lacking hardware acceleration for some codecs due to legal issues, as those are provided by flatpak as well.

@Tiffblocks

We directly use OS APIs, and the usage of these would have to be ported. This is a lot of engineering time, especially because on Linux there aren’t really “OS APIs”, there’s just a heap of libraries.

The Kernel rarely breaks userspace compatibility, so its OS APIs are rarely (if ever) an issue. Other libraries can easily be packaged with Flatpak/Snap, solving the issue with outdated distro packages.

@Tiffblocks

Porting Studio would be a whole extra can of worms on top of the huge effort of porting just the client.

No denying that. But still, it’s important to keep in mind that “half-baked support” is better than “no support”.

@Tiffblocks

Maintaining this support would be an ongoing headache and require continuous engineering time. Especially fixing / working around critical Linux driver bugs.

Again, this is an issue that is much easier to deal with by using universal packaging. With Flatpak/Snap, you only have to worry about a single runtime, like how it usually works with Windows and MacOS.

@zeuxcg

Sure, but Roblox can’t work like that - we need to be in control and push updates every week. So we’d need to support whatever distros we need ourselves.

Flatpak’s default source (Flathub) gives full release control over the publishers IIRC. Even if it doesn’t, what is stopping Roblox from managing their own flatpak source or including a thin installer inside of the package? (Just like how Steam does it,)

@zeuxcg

And re: Steam, note that Linux on Steam is still 1/5th of OSX. This most likely just isn’t enough market share for us to make it worthwhile. If we could get native Chromebook support by doing that that’d be a different story, but that doesn’t work.

Amount of users (and how it keeps rising) aside, you have to consider that a disproportionally big amount of the Roblox Linux userbase is also a developer in the platform. This isn’t just a question of end users, but also developers and people that make a living off your platform.

After 2018, Roblox goes radio silent and no longer comments on the state of Linux support. Eventually, in 2021, Roblox finally becomes usable in Wine (due to the Linux community’s efforts). Although it has issues, this unofficial compatibility leaves most people satisfied enough.

Just as 2022 is about to end, Roblox introduces a new change that makes studio unusable on Wine. Luckily, Roblox ended up providing a quick workaround that allowed Linux users to go around this issue. This was the first time in years that Roblox acknowledged Linux.

@Hooksmith

Just to be extremely clear on expectations for now and in the future: we cannot take Linux/Wine into account as we make changes as it is not a supported platform. Any specific changes to unblock are courtesy fixes.

We cannot hold back specific changes or feature additions just because they block Linux users. Only supported platforms are taken into account w.r.t. compatibility. We currently do not have bandwidth to consider or test against Linux/Wine usage.

I recommend to support an existing feature request around having Linux as a supported platform for Studio.

Although Roblox still refused official Linux compatibility and explained how it could “die out” at any moment, the transparency and willingness to investigate the issue was very refreshing and showed that whenever possible, Linux issues would be looked at.

But then, just a few months later, Wine compatibility ended for the client.

@MrEakar

Hello Jrelvas, Unfortunately this block was intentional. With the Windows 64-bit client launch we made the conscious decision to block the use of Wine. We came to this decision due to a combination of security and compatibility concerns. As a Linux user I am sure you understand the challenges of the Windows ecosystem. Wine is not officially supported but we are committed to working towards compatibility where possible. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a specific timeline for this support. However, I assure you that it remains a priority for our team.

Unfortunately, the reasoning was very vague and the future has since been uncertain. We got no timeline and no further explanation on what Roblox’s views on Linux are.

@Bitdancer

Thank you for your well thought out post. First and most importantly, we are not trying to punish the use of Wine.
Our Windows 64-bit client is in some regards quite different from the 32-bit client. We are currently gathering telemetry to analyze and hopefully fix existing issues and prevent future ones from popping up. For this process to work, it is of utmost importance to collect data from the indented target operating system. You will also find that we blocked the usage of VMs for the very same reason.

I hope this clarifies some of the thought process behind the blocking of Wine. As MrEaker mentioned before, Wine remains a priority for our team, and we are certainly not deaf to the voices of our community.

@Bitdancer

I can confirm that currently there is no code in Studio that actively prevents Wine. Also, to my knowledge there are no plans to have any Wine blocking code added to Studio.

The reasoning behind the Wine block was further explained, but sadly no more information about the future was given, besides that “Wine won’t be intentionally blocked on Studio”.

@Bitdancer

The current version of Hyperion operates solely in user mode. This might change though.

In fact, the future has been left even more uncertain with this one single statement. A kernel-level anti-cheat would make Roblox impossible to run on Wine.

@Bitdancer

Please do not take my words as confirmation of anything. However, I can say that we have many dedicated individuals at Roblox who volunteer their personal time to improve Linux support and more.

@Bitdancer

Thank you for your kind words. I understand that the bug forum can be challenging, but please know that the people here at Roblox share the same passion for the platform as all of you out there.

@Bitdancer

This is a very nuanced discussion. There was never a hard Yes or No on either of those two technologies. It is much more of an ongoing discussion, where we try to balance the desires of the community vs. protecting Roblox creators. It’s important to keep in mind that cheating doesn’t just hurt other players, but it can also greatly harm experience creators.

@Bitdancer

There is potential to unblock both technologies. For Wine, it depends on making Hyperion compatible. For virtual machines, it depends on how much they are being used to reverse engineer our technology.

@Bitdancer

Thank you, Blodau. You have identified the issue very well. As you suspected, one of the reasons Hyperion is not running on Wine is because we delve deeply into the internals of Windows.

Not much else was clarified, essentially all we know is that “compatibility might eventually come back”.

@Bitdancer

Maintenance and QA is a significant cost factor

This should be better explained. Has anything changed since 2017?

@vvv331

Are there any plans for linux releases? I’m just curious.

@Bitdancer

I’m sorry. I cannot answer this question.

No information about an official Linux release either.

@Bitdancer

The Linux community is one of our most dedicated and technically savvy communities, and their input is extremely valuable to us. We do not want to lose this community.

Rolling out a new product, such as the 64-bit Windows client on the scale we are, is rather challenging. As this is a staggered rollout, it will take some time. We need this time to address issues that arise with the introduction of new technology.

At this point, the biggest help would be to give us the benefit of the doubt and not assume malicious intent on our part.

In the end, Roblox claims that the Linux community is extremely important to them. But this statement completely contradicts the total lack of any information of when we’ll be able to use the Roblox client in Wine again, other than an unconvincing “we’ll try to fix it eventually”.

We’ve never really received an update on past information, and in fact, Roblox remained mostly radio silent until the Linux community detected Wine compatibility was about to be broken. This lack of communication means Roblox’s current stance on Linux support and its Linux community is still unclear and sometimes contradictory.

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Improving communication

I believe that both sides would benefit greatly if Roblox made a statement that sums up their current views of Roblox on Linux, what’s holding it back from becoming officially supported and what plans Roblox has with it.
You’ve told us that you care and that’s a great beginning, but we need more information.

The following questions need to be answered with up-to-date information:

• What is Roblox’s commitment to its Linux user and developer community?
• What is currently blocking official Linux support/compatibility?
• What is Roblox doing to improve Linux support/compatibility?
• What is the future for Linux support/compatibility?
• If there’s a future at all, are you able to provide any general timeline or priority?
• Are there any plans to improve communication and transparency?

Many years have gone by and old information is now outdated. Roblox should make a new statement that clarifies the state of everything right now. Communicating with the Linux community about the challenges that you’re currently facing will massively increase the amount of trust we’ve been placing on this platform and prevent developers from leaving to other game engines that provide Linux SDKs.

Even if Roblox has no “good news” to give, this gesture would nonetheless show to everyone that Roblox is acting in good faith and cares about the issue.

One of the most important assets Roblox has is its development community. Roblox should improve communication in order to maintain the trust its community has placed on it.