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.
I wrote a question about this a while ago (see here), but are you able to provide a rough estimate on approximately when A/B testing for the 64-bit update will finish before it starts being pushed out to everyone?
I just want to drop in to say thanks. Seeing this kind of two-way communication is a real breath of fresh air. Normally I just lurk in these sorts of conversations, but I felt like I should say something since I normally serve a lot of criticism.
Thatās not to insinuate that I believe dropping Linux support is philosophically a good thing, of course, but I understand that there are likely roadblocks, especially where deep-reaching systems are involved, to preserving compatibility. It is good to hear that at least this is a point of consideration.
I would like to think I also speak for a lot of other people who are likely lurking on this thread right now, but who you likely wonāt hear because theyāre not replying. Genuinely - thanks. Your transparency is not going unnoticed
I know this is off topic, but I feel like it has to be said.
The fact that Bitdancer is STILL ANSWERING QUESTIONS DAYS AFTER THE FACT is the kind of reassurance needed for me to truly believe Roblox will not block WINE forever considering how communication has gone in the past.
I may not have a whole lot of interaction with Developer Relations, and I am very well aware each and every engineer does not have the time to invest in open communications like this (I work in the MSP field, itās get the details then get off the phone), but I feel like this thread needs to be used by Roblox to establish better procedures for communicating with its platform. As previously stated, itās been a long time since Iāve seen this level of engagement with any aspect of the community, and the fact it can be done at the shear size Roblox is now compared to 2008/2009 means itās still possible if done right.
If your asking me to create a new bug report on this devforum, i cannot create one as i havenāt browsed this part of the forum regularly making me unable to create posts.
EDIT: there is a similar post with the same issue im having.
Has anyone here considered the android client??
If you can emulate that, then itās not the end for Roblox on linux. Iām pretty sure it even supports mouse and keyboard.
Unless this blocks emulation of the android client? that would suck lol
That is actually possible with any android emulators and run it from wine, though it would kind of suck since you have to emulate roblox inside an emulator.
However I would still use 3rd party software with a caution because if you get banned then your account gets terminated and you get permenantly HWID banned.
Iāve heard that rollout is taking place rather quickly! Do you have current statistics for enrolment into the A&B test? If so, is there a public resource or API which can give us the same information?
Iām experiencing this on Fedora 38, and the lack of communication prior to cutoff was frustrating to say the leastā¦
Edit: I appreciate the transparency from BitDancer though, itās been good to see at least some sort of response after a bit of disappointment on my end
No, you canāt run VMs such as āandroid emulatorsā in Wine/Proton/any compatibility layers in mind.
However, there are better solutions for Linux since Android basically uses the Linux kernel for most of itās operations.
If you have AMD or Intel GPUs, you can try out Waydroid, which is a compatibility layer for running Android apps, with similar approach as Wine and Proton. Install the ARM64 compatibility libraries in using waydroid_scripts and install Roblox in it. You might need to use a compatible kernel such as Zen though.
If you have an NVIDIA GPU, bad luck though, you do need a VM-based emulator to run the android client. However if your CPU is from 2012 or later, you can use QEMU with KVM enabled + virtio-gpu, and install x86 Android ISOs such as BlissOS in it. Might not be as fast as compatibility layers, but still better than Windows VMs (which requires a GPU passthrough, and you might have to install either a Byfronād 64-bit client or a Microsoft Store client thatās more buggy (such as mouse locking and acceleration issues) and will probably be Byfronād very soon) and performance should be closer to the native method.
While itās not publicly said, thereās a good reason why employees like @BitwiseAndrea and @peraldon are so renowned and praised by the community (even if implicitly), itās that they communicate with our community and we communicate back. Itās not something we not taken entirely for granted.
As a Linux user, it is unfortunate that this is the case that Linux support is put on hold this way but I feel something different, that someone out there does care even if itās not today. Does the thread need a good clean? Oh boi it does.
