Official Linux Distribution?

[Eamonn]

After reading up on the wiki about Linux Distribution, it seems there is no "Official" way to do it. So, are there plans for it? Are there any work-arounds to get your game to work on almost all Linux Distro's? Apparently, the documented way to do it doesn't work on a lot of distro's.

Also, I have a question about Elementary Linux: Does LÖVE actually support it? It will not run C++ programs, and LÖVE was written in C++... so does it work? Has anyone tried it?

Thanks!

[raidho36]

Standard Linux distribution method is .love file. It's a standard way to do it overall, but most users of Windows and Mac won't bother downloading and installing LÖVE manually, whereas Linux version would simply have the dependency marked, and it will be downloaded automatically.

[Eamonn]

Yeah, Linux users are more willing to download stuff I guess. Thanks!

Are there any plans to make it so you can distribute to Linux without users having to install LÖVE? It doesn't matter, because I'm sure they'll be ok with downloading LÖVE, but just for my own personal curiosity, is it planned? I think Linux has it's own universal file extension, but I don't know what it is. I remember reading somewhere it did, but I don't know what it is.

[master both]

I'm not an expert in the this, but is there a way to make .deb (Ubuntu, Debian) packages for our games?

[raidho36]

You can create a package out of virtually anything, even an empty folder! Just read the manual.

Actually, you're discouraged from distributing binary Linux game packages because of huge variety of Linux setups, against everyone-right-about-identical Windows and Macs. Chances that your binary won't work on some Linux distro are pretty big. You can aim at Ubuntu, but there's no guarantees that it won't stop working after next Ubuntu release either.

Why would you want so bad to distribute a binary? Nobody's gonna steal your übër-1337 cødęs, and if they going to they will do it anyway, regardless of distribution type.

[master both]

Oh Thanks, I never knew that making a .deb package was so easy.
About distributing a binary, the problem I have is that distributing a .love file is obligating the user to install LÖVE to run it, and I personally hate when you have to install a program to run another one.
A long time ago I found this page http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html for distributing applications to any linux distro and made a package, i don't know if it works on other distros since i haven't try it yet, but it work on mine(ubuntu 32-bit).
Here is the package if you want to try it. https://www.dropbox.com/s/xs54ogohk7w53 ... t-test.zip

[bartbes]

Oh Thanks, I never knew that making a .deb package was so easy.

Indeed the "official" way is to create a package depending on the love package.

[Eamonn]

I didn't want to make a binary Linux distribution in case someone stole my game, I wanted to know because I was curious.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

[raidho36]

Now that I think of it, there's also a way to create Windows .msi package with dependencies, though it won't be as pretty as Linux package. You'll need to forge an .msi installer that would download and install LÖVE if it isn't present on the target computer, and then install the game. This way you may even not need to create a .love file, you can just install full directory tree to the target PC and use a tiny executable (or batch script) to run the program.