Proper support for the Linux platform

Bitdancer and other ROBLOX staff should seriously understand that Linux is growing, in fact the market share reached 4.33% today (according to StatCounter) And it will very likely continue to grow each month, as it has been doing. So if you want to make your Linux customers happy, put the effort into porting onto Linux. I made a Linux distro, you can make a Linux game. Seems fair enough. There are flatpacks, snaps, appimages, bundes, and more. Most of these app extensions are universal which means they can work on Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, etc. (This is just my opinion and probably a lot of others feel the same way, but ROBLOX you should take my word whether or not you port to Linux.)
Thanks.

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7% unknown :thinking:
what unknown desktop operating system stands between mac and linux/chromeos?
2024 is truly the year of the unknown desktop.

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Unknown is a combo of Linux installs with unknown user agents, modified Windows installs, etc.

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I am confident that the Linux market would grow significantly when developers start moving over due to Roblox support

I myself want to use Linux but I am unable to because of the current restrictions. I don’t see any issues with just supporting popular distros like Debian, Ubuntu, or Mint if they don’t have issues and if support would come at all. Lots of others are usually just spinoffs of the same thing anyways.

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You can’t just only “support popular distros”, because that’s not possible. Usually applications on Linux are packaged as .rpm or .deb. What so if a person is running another distro that’s not those 3, they get blocked? Roblox would have to face all the bug reports for other distros that are Debian or Arch based.

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There are several universal packages including .flatpack, .bundle, .snap, and .appimage, which work on almost any distro.

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Supporting some is better than supporting none though.

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I totally understand but a release with little-no support expectations for most platform is still better than nothing. At this point with the state of RoL it needs to crawl before it can walk and it seems that they’re trying to fly. Widespread support won’t happen easily, but they should start with a smaller subset and expand as time goes on. If they’re constantly trying to cater to all bug reports from all groups they’re gonna gridlock themselves, which is happening right now.

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As much as I’ve come to hate Ubuntu and Canonical, the best option would be to release on the Snap Store. Ubuntu is by far the most popular desktop distro and iirc, Canonical pays companies to add their app on Snap.

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If Roblox is going to ever release on linux the main target is probably gonna be the Steam Deck so a Flatpak package makes much more sense, but it’s possible that they might have a separate Snap or .deb package for Ubuntu.

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fr man, they must begin to support linux as its getting more popular every day

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I think that’s a valid point that often goes unnoticed.

It’s curious why Linux isn’t as widely adopted. One reason could be that companies hesitate to support it due to its lack of popularity, creating a bit of a catch-22 situation.

I’m considering making the full switch to Linux myself, but the only thing holding me back is Roblox. I’m sure there are many other developers in the same boat, using Windows simply because Linux isn’t an option.

It’s kind of like banning Apple tomorrow and then pointing out that Apple has no market share in Roblox, thus no reason to unban it next day.

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Judging by what’s happened throughout history, I believe it has to with the fact computers have always come with some form of Windows as the main OS, from cheap to expensive, all come with Windows.

There was a protest about this, if you know anything about “Windows Refund Day”, but as you can see, didn’t really work.

If this hadn’t have been the case, Linux and OS X (macOS) would have great software support and not Windows.

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This. I use Windows because I started on Windows. Google may be trying to get the same results by pushing so hard on ChromeOS in schools. Linux doesn’t have this. You won’t find a Linux laptop in most or all Best Buys or Micro Centers, and no manufacturer is selling Linux handhelds in stores. While the Steam Deck and potentially the upcoming Manjaro Orange Pi run Linux, you can’t just walk into a store and buy it, and because of that, a lot of people have never heard of it. More people have heard of the ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go because they are on display in Best Buy and other stores, and they ship Windows. The MSI Claw will be the same story.

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If Roblox supported Linux I would switch immediately from Windows.

It’s good to stay realistic though. They’ve said multiple times a native client isn’t coming. Wine support is dead with the anti-cheat. I think in a way, Roblox on Linux is more dead than it has ever been…

All we can do is wait, hope and use spyware (exaggeration :sweat_smile:) as our OS.

Personally I don’t see why all of a sudden their answer that has been consistently ‘no’ for some years would change. In the end it’s just about money really. They don’t want to lose money… Understandable.

I think the biggest change to the ecosystem is devices like the steamdeck. Adding Linux support would bring support to millions of those handheld devices.

A true metaverse should work on many devices.

Honestly, as far as I can see Linux is the only major platform that’s left for Roblox to port to. Why not take that last step?

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Another thing possibly ideal would be Proton. It too is a bundle of technologies (Almost seems similar to Snap when put this way). However with Wine blocked for the forseeable future it would be quite difficult to do either Snap or Proton.

Also companies approach Canonical to have their app packaged as a Snap rather than the other way around. Like the Firefox Snap is completely owned by Mozilla as the developer, Powershell is completely owned by Microsoft as the developer, etc.

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Honestly, if Roblox can only support 1 packaging format, Flatpak is the better option over Snap. This isn’t an opinion from creating them, or how they sandbox - it is simply that Flatpak is common on more distros than Flatpak. On Ubuntu, Flatpak is a simple apt command to get going. On other distros, Snap can be a simple command, or a very involved setup (like NixOS, right now). More importantly, Flatpak is pre-installed on the Steam Deck/SteamOS while Snap isn’t.

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Agreed with this. Flatpak would good. However you can install snapd just as easily through the AUR (Arch and SteamOS) if this is the path preferred too. It really depends though like you said on “how they sandbox”. It would also be really cool if Roblox ever interfaced with Steam though. Might be wishful thinking for that though. Overall though I’m just hoping that some day Wine gets unblocked again.

I’d like to interject for a moment. What you are referring to as Linux is in fact GNU/Linux or as recently i have taken to calling - GNU+Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself but rather another free component of a full functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.


Snaps are quite possibly one of the most hated Linux features. Just go with Flatpak. It even supports atomic distributions (Fedora Silverblue for example)

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It is true that Snaps are hated but the only reason it is brought up is because Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros out there. Not to mention it is a base for several other distros. I understand though it is VERY trivial to add Flatpak to any distro too.