Windows is a trash fire but it's still the best we have (Jonathan Blow)

Jonathan Blow's Twitch: / j_blow
Tip me: ko-fi.com/blowfan
Jonathan Blow laments the current state of operation systems. He doesn't like Windows but also doesn't believe Linux or Mac to be better alternatives. The discussion (or rant) quickly goes to Win32 API and DirectX. At the end of the video it gets a bit off-topic about how Jonathan Blow keeps spending a lot of money making his next game.

[@mascot4950]

The "I spent 20 million" remark made me think of a vague memory of Jonathan saying something like "I'll not spend 7 years on the next game, that's for sure," after releasing The Witness. So I checked the release date of The Witness and.. I get his frustration.

[@woddlyoats]

He also is too ambitious with his projects

[@ar_xiv]

I might be totally wrong but I think he’s alluded a few times to a secret other game that’s actually the main thing his company is working on, while the sokoban game is more “recreational” for stream content.

[@woddlyoats]

@@ar_xiv yeah he said that other game is Game #3 while the sokoban game is to show off his language

[@AshnSilvercorp]

From a "the user must have no idea how to do computing" standpoint, yes. From a person who's done computing for years, knows how to move files and dig to find and parse them, and even breathed on a tf2 or Minecraft command line? I don't think there's a solid call right now. It's name your poison. Deal with the community of your Linux system; deal with Windows constantly making userspace worse and constantly asking you for subscriptions; or Mac with a high price, walled garden, and guaranteed maximum 5-7 year lifecycle for your PC that will be quickly outpaced... I've found the first easier to deal with. That's just how it is right now. That being said, the people making compatability software like Wine, Proton, VXDK, and I daresay even the conversion tool for the M1 architecture are the real geniuses. They deserve all of our money for the work they put in.

[@SilentShiba]

What is wrong with Linux, I have had such few issues, especially since Steam is officially supporting photon.

[@AshnSilvercorp]

@@SilentShibaThat's the thing. You might not. On Fedora, there's known security settings that cause problems with how older programs try to process information. On Debian, it will give you a warning every time a program is proprietary. On Arch, well... you have to do everything and figure it out yourself. On Mint? Well, you still need to know if it's Debian or Ubuntu based, as it may carry some of that baggage from upstream. None of them are guranteed, but having pre-existing knowledge helps if something comes up.

[@SilentShiba]

@@AshnSilvercorp I agree that there are numerous idiosyncrasies, but I feel that if people use chatGPT, they can very easily overcome all of the problems with linux. When I first started using Linux some years ago, there was definitely a need to reach out to people who knew this better than me, and fortunately I had some friends. Now though, its not nearly as hard thanks to progress in technology, and we should adjust our rhetoric to the smarter normies.

[@CianMcsweeney]

As a programmer, I already have a job, I don't want managing my OS to be an additional one

[@AshnSilvercorp]

@@CianMcsweeney tbh managing windows has felt like a job, but I've had my legs cut off. If I have to take hours of my day to run scripts to kill windows telemetry to keep 25-50% of my CPU from being hogged when I don't want it to every new windows update, I can take an equal amount of time to learn a distro I like, take the bulk time up front and then coast from update to update since I've learned what to expect.

[@TheBuzzSaw]

Jon Blow OS. Jon Blow Ess. Coming 2035.

[@___Hermitage]

Only he can surpass Terry Davis

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

@@___HermitageYou can’t surpass Terry. He came, blessed us with his work for god, then swiftly left this mortal plane. The gods digital temple is perfect already.

[@tico-k9y]

BlowjObS

[@lunabob-ie5qx]

Jon BlOS

[@The-cyber-imbiber]

I know JBlow doesn't watch these short or read the comments, but a part of me wishes he did so he could see us cheering him on from the side lines.

[@youtubesuresuckscock]

He does. They say they don't, but they do.

[@robrick9361]

TempleOS will save the day. Holy Terry will deliver us from evil.

[@nzeu725]

totally 🙏

[@supernewuser]

If he got 4m from braid to fund the witness and only got 17m from the witness and he’s spent 20m on the new game how is that game going to recoup anywhere near that number? I really hope it does and I know he doesn’t care but it’s so hard imagining spending so much for something that has very little chance to recoup that investment even if it becomes the greatest puzzle game in history

[@RespectTheSourceMaterial]

well as you said braid made 4 m and his next game made 17m. That's a big difference. Who knows what will happen next.

[@supernewuser]

@@RespectTheSourceMaterial true. in my mind a lot of that was down to how limited braid's initial distribution was but it will be fascinating to see what happens.

[@adelyawn]

as craftsmen we gotta do what we gotta do. We can always stop and become investors though

[@RomixalView]

It doesn’t have to break even

[@KuroOnehalf]

Braid is getting an anniversary release. He's probably hoping that'll recoup some money too.

[@drygordspellweaver8761]

He’s right about Windows, but it must be hell working for him.

[@woddlyoats]

he must pay well if he spent 20 million on the witness

[@emanks1094]

Thinking the same, I work as a freelancer and had programmers likes him, jesus f c they are so annoying never want to work with someone like them again.

[@dorbie]

@@woddlyoats He's talking about his Sokoban block pushing game, and probably includes Jai's development costs in that.

[@BuzzKirill3D]

@@dorbie I think he's talking about Game #3 not Sokoban. Or maybe both but not only Sokoban

[@dorbie]

@@BuzzKirill3D AFAIK Sokoban is Game number 3, and the scope creep seems to be significant with talk of it being the biggest puzzle game ever. It's also been getting prettier with some of the more recent levels and gameplay footage looking gorgeous.

[@fullmontis]

Windows 12 will stomp on your toes every ten mins and people will still use it cause "its the best we got". Stockholm syndrome is real

[@buoyancydabl]

The problem is old windows is dying one after another. The 7th one died not so much time ago, now I hear the 10 will die soon.. Why, MS, why

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@buoyancydabl To sell new licenses and get rid of legacy. Games should be not make dependent on OS for this reason, there should be always some layer to keep it separate from hardware and OS and maintain compatibility.

[@rysw19]

If it actually is the best option for them, that’s not a syndrome that’s just the reality they’re dealing with. I can’t speak to using and developing games, but for most other usages of a computer it’s in its own category of worst. Purely my opinion of course.

[@crism8868]

Sass Stomping feet as a service

[@ruynobrega6918]

Yeah I remember trying to run overwatch on ubuntu... what a great experience. The real game was the journey, not the end

[@4.0.4]

I think it's very sad how a few particular things are, in Linux. Namely the Wayland/X11 situation. The Win32 API is the most reliable API in Linux, too (Wine/Proton).

[@PredatoryQQmber]

Yeah. But it's not 'reliability' that is the problem. It's takeover of FreeDesktop organization by corpo-fanatics with weird ideas, who then perverted community into CoC-driven office with forced unattainable goals of corpo-fad-of-the-week. They deliberately break core functionality in X using 'fyucha of Wayland' as excuse but Wayland is in perpetual pre-alpha state with core functionality missing and DEs looking like sh|t from year 1990 with even worse visual style copied from Apple and mobiles. Everything rots.

[@theLowestPointInMyLife]

wayland is obviously winning that

[@masterofdizzzaster]

What is sad about Wayland/X11?

[@b_delta9725]

@@masterofdizzzaster Wayland is good but extremely buggy, and some could say the complexity of creating a compositor is far worse than Xorg for no good reason. I always face a bug that makes me come back to my Xorg session, which sucks because I don't want to use that either, I wish projects like Arcan had half the support Wayland is having but for now it's a matter of waiting for Wayland to win the battle

[@rreece90]

It's so ironic and tragic, that for most of these games on Steam that have native Linux support, it's better to force Steam to run the Windows executable with Proton. Less crashes and other issues (controllers, framerate, audio etc.).

[@Lestibournes]

I left Windows because of how bad it is in regular day to day use. Linux was a breath of fresh air. Now I work as a software developer and all of our work is on Linux, and it's perhaps the biggest software company in my country. Some stuff sucks, but it's because IT makes it suck.

[@XeenimChoorch-nx8wx]

IT loves to make a hash script with 5,000 dependencies then call it a program

[@XeenimChoorch-nx8wx]

Bash script lol, stupid iPhone autocorrect. Also stupid youtube that won’t allow editing comments

[@Lestibournes]

@@XeenimChoorch-nx8wx KZbin allows editing of comments.

[@fariskapo8365]

Please continue uploading these !

[@purpasmart_4831]

I switched to linux fulltime, and have been using it for development on many projects of mine. People who still think the Win api is still better then Linux are obviously stuck in the early 2000s.

[@Babaelow]

It's refreshing to see someone rambling and calling out stuff.... All people always be like: "mimimi, don't complain always be positive, stay positive, mindset mindfulll".... No. Bs. Life is like that. But it's depressing how little of these people are actually thst accurate about the stuff theyre critisizing. No one is smart anymore... Its all about staying positive, if someone becomes uncomfortable...

[@user-fm3wd6uh7c]

funny thing, beind mindful directly contradicts all that crap about positivity. Either you embrace your lows, which is part of life or you just stay 'positive' and bury things, which you perceive as negative

[@Babaelow]

@@user-fm3wd6uh7cyeah, pretty much.

[@MadDeuceJuice]

$20 mil over 10 years and 3 employees? Is he paying them like half a mil each? Or does he include himself as the fourth, significantly better remunerated employee in this calculation?

[@KuroOnehalf]

There's way more people involved in the game. Programmers, designers, art people, music. And it's gonna have VO. Also, the number of people has risen and fallen (actually it may be the highest now since the game is in full production), so you can't average it over the 10 years sensibly. He's also hired people for work in the jai language.

[@yldrmcs]

@@KuroOnehalf this jai language sounds interesting I hope one day he opens source of the compiler

[@lunabob-ie5qx]

there also the braid remaster, the jai language, the secret game and the sokoban game

[@malditamente6713]

if you already have 20 mil and take from them to pay yourself, that math ain't mathing, it's like sseth in the pharaoh video paying himself from its own treasury lmao

[@llothar68]

He does not say he has or had three employees

[@limarchenko96]

Holy hell, if I had 20 millions dollars I'd just run away to a deserted island and make games by myself there.

[@edhahaz]

IMO, a significant factor in John's success is his complete commitment to exploring a genre that others don't consider worthwhile. I think The Witness has the biggest budget among all puzzle games ever made, and no one else seems interested in taking a shot at puzzle games with that level of commitment.

[@DeAdBiGeYeFiSh]

he didn't say he had this money, most probably it's mostly from investors just like it was for his previous games

[@sporefergieboy10]

⁠@@DeAdBiGeYeFiSh It’s Thekla’s money, but I imagine most of it was earned through revenue. I’m sure the company is in financial straights again Jon doesn’t seem to mind. He’s already been bailed out twice (through either equity dilution or debt). When Braid Remastered is released I can almost guarantee that’s when they ran out of money again.

[@weirddingus4620]

Called investors

[@____uncompetative]

I could make a better block pushing game for $2 but it would have no sound.

[@tripplejaz]

We need bLOS

[@MemeConnoisseur]

Maybe use LSP for direct x12?

[@Cynidecia]

"the best we have" Linux is that way. It's waiting. Or just suck it up and enjoy the microsoft plantation.

[@raptorate2872]

Yes but unfortunately at business level, Linux is not an option. Your customers or clients are most likely using windows, especially when it comes to games. And even now GPU drivers aren't as optimal with Linux as they are with windows. Linux is amazing for web development and server based applications. For video games, DX12 combined with latest GPU tech gives you every ounce to make amazing games. Can you make a game on Linux? Sure but windows is just better for developing games and that's where Blow is coming from.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@raptorate2872 Graphic API is normally abstracted away so game developer doesn't need to worry about that. Bash alone is enough reason to do programming in Linux based OS, but there are other tools that are useful like writing something to handle assets. Some people also write game engines or other low level code like to use Valgrind.

[@edgyzero6305]

@@raptorate2872 Things are at least moving in the right direction. I switch to linux recently and have played many games without issue (of course assuming the use of proton). It seems the only way to get there is with compatibility layers which is certainly worse than it just working out of the box but so far it has been much less of a hastle than I would have figured.

[@ErazerPT]

Sad part is, he's right... And while M$ tries it's best, they won't simply run it into the ground fast enough, so we're stuck with it for a long time. Maybe if ReactOS had more support they'd be open to "extending" the WinAPI to make it less sucky. They already have the Win32 support layer so making a Win32Ex that was less sucky and less bogged down with compatibility could be a thing.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

But we don't need Win API. IT is 80's garbage. Software is written in higher level.

[@ErazerPT]

@@gruntaxeman3740 You do web development right?

[@ErazerPT]

@n0tjak Not sure what you mean. Unless you make it "non copyright", all non trivial implementations ARE copyrighted. But the API method signatures is a very different deal. That's the basis of Clean Room Design. The reverse engineering team must produce specs only, ie what goes in and out, and the CRD team must code to specs without ever looking at the original code. That forms the basis of things like ReactOS, WINE and others. You write code to produce certain outputs based on certain inputs without ever seeing the original code that did it. That way you can assert that any similarities where either because a) it was trivial and it was hard to NOT produce similar code, say functions like min(), max(), top(), ceil(), etc or b) happenstance, because there were only so many ways to do it and you happened to do it in a similar way to the original. Now, if you have b)'s all over the place... you're in trouble for obvious reasons... And obviously output includes "behavior", because having say CreateWindowEx return a handle without actually creating a window isn't of much use...

[@Rexhunterj]

@@ErazerPT What @n0tjak was getting at is that WinAPI is subject to changes that we are not aware of and do not get a say in. It is subject to major faults that are not community reviewed before stable release. Also the fact that Win API (Win32 & COM) is from the 1980s and has not received a upgrade since the very early 2000s (MFC if I remember right) This means it's old and holding the modern computer systems down. Also the issue is that the modern WinForms uses Win32 & COM internally underneath, so all of it is built on an archaic pyramid of ancient technology that the people who made are not working at the company anymore. Linux isn't any better really, your choices are raw Xorg X11 display management or Wayland, and if you're willing to add Gnome to your build chain, then you can use GTK, but other than that it's not really standardised how to create a window and fill it with controls. Even on Windows there isn't really a standard, you can make a semi-modern Win10 app in C++ with Win32 & COM, you cant make it support dark-theme though.

[@ErazerPT]

@@Rexhunterj "This means it's old and holding the modern computer systems down." Are you even semi-serious? In all my years, there was three (3!!!) good GUI API's I've used. Amiga Intuition, Windows Winforms and iOS/macOS UIKit. And I'm blessed that those last two are the ones i have to use daily. List of dogs**t includes but not exclusive : TK, GTK, QT, WxWidget, WPF, Xamarin.Forms, MAUI, Avalonia, Electron, Android (whatever their ui toolkit is called). You know what those 3 have in common? VERY SIMPLE, make no assumptions, do as they're told, don't get in your way. They are one step removed from the raw gfx layer. You know what the dogs**t ones don't have? All of what i just mentioned. If i have to fight the toolkit to get what i want, that's not a toolkit, it's technical debt. Wheels and knifes are old too, and we haven't come up with better options yet... Oh, and on the "dark theme" point, that only works OOB if you're using "system defaults". If you use custom colors all around, it's up to YOU to detect a dark theme preference and change colors accordingly. In a quite funny twist, you end up having to set MORE custom colors on elements because now they are dark when they shouldn't...

[@danfg7215]

I just migrated to Linux a few weeks ago, I'm loving that its game/VR support isn't so good, so I don't get distracted and can focus on being more productive. So that "bug" is actually a feature for me.

[@mwcz5190]

I honestly have the same appreciation. I started using Linux in college to help myself stop playing too many videogames.

[@bluecat2186]

same! had a pretty bad addiction, now 0 time wasted on video games. So much time saved to do more important things

[@tivialvarez]

yeah but as a game dev you probably wont want to be on/support a platform that incentivizes people to not play games lol

[@ofidiotabagista5259]

Too bad Steam almost solved that "bug" with Proton.

[@-Engineering01-]

​@@tivialvarez after I started with Linux, I quit game dev as well 😂 now getting paid more 3x as a backend dev.

[@everythingcouldbesimplify818]

I got a book of Win32 from the 90' and it still works most of the examples in windows 11 with Visual Studio 2022, so yes and it is crazy how it still compatible with old stuff. C# API don't even hold for more than like 4 years.

[@nikolaisafronov3452]

Linux? Mint is good for home use, proton now supports 80-90% of my steam library.

[@FilipCordas]

Linux is terrible for day to day use you spend hours setting everything up to do the most basic things.

[@snippletrap]

Nope not Mint. Plug and play.

[@element1111]

@@FilipCordas "linux" lol. There's a dozen distros that come with lots already preinstalled.

[@FilipCordas]

@@element1111 all of them are terrible every single one

[@appleturdpie]

@@FilipCordas What 'most basic things' don't work out of the box on a distro like Mint? Most things will or are pretty easy to get working and most basic things do not require hours to set up at all. It seems like you are hardly in the position to complain about Windows if you cannot use a user friendly OS just because it is not Windows.

[@Eagledelta3]

I stand by what I tell everyone and that's your OS choice is purely based on what BS you're willing to put up with.

[@nak6608]

3:43 that sigh really resonated with me lol

[@____uncompetative]

I can make a block pushing game for $2 but it would have no sound.

[@Rexhunterj]

Why? Sound too hard or needs funds? OpenAL makes sound stupidly easily. I got a C++ Minecraft clone in my game projects folder that has audio and graphics and is multithreaded like most of the guys who took a shot at doing better than Notch in Java.

[@ussassu]

time to make JaiOS

[@m4rt_]

I've switched to Linux on all my personal computers, but I still have to use Windows for work. Linux works fine for me, though it's not perfect. Some of the issues people talk about are exaggerated or outdated. They say it's hard to use, but that's not as true now. There are user-friendly distributions that look and feel like other Operating Systems, and if you want something a bit different, then you can have that too, though that has a steeper learning curve. Also, those who complain about Linux being hard to use forget they're used to how Windows works after using it for so long. Sure, there's a learning curve, but that's true for any new system. As for gaming on Linux, it's not as bad as it used to be. Support for every game on Steam isn't at 100%, but it's getting better. Most unsupported games have invasive anti-cheat and/or DRM. However, with more developers getting on board, the situation is improving, and there's hope for better gaming support in the future.

[@bennguyen2149]

I think he's saying the developer tools are bad on linux, not how the consumer experience is

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

@@bennguyen2149Linux is not suitable for games. Its sole purpose is server hardware.

[@szor3n]

That’s patently false. The unix developer is *so much better* than the developer experience ever has been on windows. The thing that’s missing are “UI” debuggers. IDEs like Visual Studio etc. People like Blow are obsessed with the developer experience, but refuse to re-evaluate their assumptions that they are correct. There’s a reason a *large* percentage of developers use Mac/linux, and it’s *not* because the tooling is bad. The tooling is very good, in fact. It’s just *not windows*.

[@beickerzambrano5908]

I think he was talking about low level game dev tools provided by the operating system, which to me it only makes sense if you're developing a game from scratch, something most people are not going to do, and there's also good FOSS game engines where the developers are mainly linux users (as far as I understand according to what I've talked in those communities) so I'm not that sure about linux tooling being bad.

[@1vader]

When you're talking about Linux having good game compatibility, what you're talking about is using Wine/Proton to emulate the Win32 API and the likes though. At least here, Jon seems to be complaining about native Linux graphics APIs and the likes (I assume mainly Vulcan). And from the perspective of a game developer using it, not a user having issues with it.

[@wlcrutch]

Unix guy here…forgive my ignorance: How do you all survive without a posix terminal??

[@MrPoselsky]

WSL, powershell is pretty good nowadays, msys2 or cygwin are also not bad.

[@wlcrutch]

@@MrPoselsky So like, could one just use any C compiler one wants and compile programs in the terminal like normal? I’ve only ever used Windows for .Net and it was to just click “build” 🤣

[@purpasmart_4831]

Yeah using Windows for development is a huge handicap. Can't believe people defend it.

[@raptorate2872]

​@@purpasmart_4831Huge handicap kek. Everybody knows windows programmes are the ones getting shit done instead of the Mac and Linux crowds. Like I have worked across 4 continent's with many people around the world, none of the good or even great Chinese, Indian, russian, German and American and many other developers I noticed used Linux or Mac. They all used and worked exclusively on windows. It's the wannabe developers and posers who think they smarter than the rest just cuz they use Linux. They also cringe IRL. Linux is for people pretending they know programming, windows crowd builds good stuff and gets shit done.

[@jupiterapollo4985]

Windows grahical interface basically allows you to do everything you need to do on a computer, error fixing and all. I know crazy that a GUI gives you full power over your system isn't it? Cmd is also decent for normal usage and powershell is more than enough for everything else.

[@AlexanderArtlett]

Just curious if there exists a video of this guy not being negative? Like is there anything he likes?

[@zocker1600]

yes there is, search for "Jonathan Blow LOVES this BADASS water filter" xD

[@peezieforestem5078]

There are tons of videos of him being positive, it's just these clips that stand out, that's why they're getting clipped. If you actually watch his streams, interviews, presentations and talks, you will quickly find out he's quite a reasonable guy. For instance, watch his recent interview in the 28th episode of The Fourth Curtain, where almost nothing he says is negative in a full hour.

[@woddlyoats]

Jonathan blow critiques things he likes.

[@lefrise5]

Jonathan Blow about everything: there are no adults left in the room

[@necuz]

Imagine the day he buys a new laptop that comes with Windows 11 and has driver support for nothing else. It's gonna be Razer Synapse x10.

[@platinumsun4632]

What?

[@necuz]

@@platinumsun4632 He bought a Razer keyboard, wanted to turn off the lighting, found out you need an account to use their config software and proceeded to throw the keyboard across the room. Windows 11 Home doesn't even let you get to the desktop without an online account.

[@edwin5145]

What does this mean?

[@necuz]

@@edwin5145 He bought a Razer keyboard and proceeded to throw it across the room when he found out you need an account to change any settings on it.

[@edhalferty]

Making an OS is mostly easy. There's just one problematic part: GPU drivers. GPUs themselves are simple, but Intel/AMD/Nvidia have overcomplicated the programming interface, so you'll have to untangle that mess, which will be costly (either in terms of time or $).

[@youtubesuresuckscock]

What an incredibly unintelligent comment. Making an OS is insanely hard and making an OS that actually gains transaction and support is something you can't just force. Either the butterfly effect happens or it doesn't.

[@b_delta9725]

The only way to make those projects work is doing the same that LInux distros do: Make them profitable, make devs from many areas and companies find out about them and make commits, and hopefully get donations. But it already takes years for distros to become usable, so a full OS would probably take much much more

[@edhalferty]

@@b_delta9725 Linux distros are made more complex due to a phenomenon Jon talks about all the time: Existing tools. If you try to create a new Linux distro, you will have to work within the existing frameworks provided. Every time you try to add a unique feature to your distro, you will have to track down some random developer and beg them to add your code. An OS made by a small team, lead by one person, would almost certainly be able to make progress much more quickly.

[@edhalferty]

@@b_delta9725 Linux distros are just the recombination of off-the-shelf parts, so there's really no excuse for distros taking years to become usable (seriously, when was the last time you saw a distro that wasn't just Arch or Debian + Gnome with a different color scheme?). The interchangeability of the components that make up Linux comes at a cost, though. It slows down development. A small, laser-focused team with a singular goal in mind could do a lot better.

[@dorbie]

Oh dear, next he'll announce he's writing his own OS, coded in Jai. 💀

[@d3fau1thmph]

I've been using GNU/Linux (Slackware then Debian) exclusively for over 20 years. I have no idea of what you're talking about.

[@gregandark8571]

Haiku os is the answer.

[@PRIMARYATIAS]

Unfortunatly not yet stable.

[@gregandark8571]

@@PRIMARYATIAS It's not,but it's the answer,definitely!

[@hermestrismegistus9142]

Linux is not perfect, but it is the best we have.

[@iury472]

Linux is hot fucking garbage for games. I might even say that Linux only good when you host servers because he has a free license.

[@laurentbajrami3688]

You're both right

[@sagitswag1785]

Commenting about Linux in a game dev context should be grounds for immediate psych ward hospitalization

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@sagitswag1785 Game programming is programming, and Linux based operating systems are mostly programmers toolboxes. They make programming comfy, including game programming.

[@michalsvihla1403]

@@gruntaxeman3740 Flawless logic, genius. Just like humans are featherless bipeds, therefore a plucked chicken is a human.

[@stancooper5436]

$20 million? Have 'Braid' and 'The Witness' really been profitable enough to fund that?!

[@hagenzwosta]

I am using Linux since 1996. Very happy with it. And I am always on very high end computers, it is my job. But yes sadly Windows has the better gaming API. I understand why game devs develop for the Windows platform. I can play the games on Linux (steam manages all the proton/win configs). So people could actually play games well on Linux. I understand your frustration. I strongly believe Linux could win the desktop too if it had the best graphics/sound API.

[@someoneelse5505]

I like his excuse for wasting 20 million dollars on what looks like the most generic puzzle game ever. The guy sure knows how to be productive.

[@nintendude794]

Nice Beginner’s Guide music at the end

[@PaulSebastianM]

Microsoft needs to build a new OS from scratch instead of adding features to the existing one. And the existing one has to go on maintenance mode. But they always think of shyte to add, like now with AI... adding things nobody wants or asked for.

[@SimGunther]

That could go for a lot of software, yet it doesn't happen because user expectations might _subverted_ too wildly from having a simple, fast, and working product

[@gruntaxeman3740]

They are also removing features and dropping backward compatibility, like they have done for past 25 years. I don't see why they should build new OS from scratch. You may very well use the latest Windows and use it only in S -mode so it is a bit more locked. You wont be able to install then anything unmanaged that has features that are gonna removed on next update.

[@FilipCordas]

Read a post about how Microsoft gave complete control of windows to UX people and they all use Mac. Some of the things are just ridiculous the only strategy they have now is let's copy something else and trick people to use it.

[@steve16384]

Game Engines like Godot and Unity make OS choice irrelevant.

[@woddlyoats]

Jonathan blow doesn't like engines

[@Rexhunterj]

@@woddlyoats He's too lazy to get out of bed I bet. Learning is just too hard for some sub humans.

[@semihkaplan]

​@@Rexhunterj You say it to someone who makes his games in his own programming language and a game engine that is written in that language? Bro, you must be on some really good dope. Learning Unity or God forsaken Godot wouldn't even be a weekend pastime activity for him.

For $20 million I COULD HAVE BUILT THAT OS.

[@snarkyboojum]

And someone who works for Microsoft, I enjoyed this rant greatly :)

[@ak47-hz4fq4np3z]

Does anyone know what he means by them adding utf8 support, have had this be a continual pain in my scripts, getting around any unusually-named folders and files

[@Bananamann]

It's crazy how bloated it has become lately, I have multiple old laptops that just shit themselves even trying to run Windows 10, but you install Linux and they run amazingly, it's crazy. As much as I don't like Google if they could make a push for people to install ChromeOS on their older hardware, ChromeOS might be a genuinely viable alternative for people who don't use their computer all that much. Even now their support for Windows applications is scarily good. It is pretty much just wine but still.

[@antiMatterDynamit]

so he blew through the entire witness earnings ???

[@MindBlowerWTF]

I wonder who works at Jonathans Company

[@Bananamann]

As much as I don't like Google if they could make a push for people to install ChromeOS on their older hardware, ChromeOS might be a genuinely viable alternative for people who don't use their computer all that much. Even now their support for Windows applications is scarily good. It is pretty much just wine but still.

[@mitchellschoenbrun]

I'm not a game developer and have never used any version of DirectX. I have been using MIS-DOS from version 1.0 and every version of Windows. Well, not 11 yet and I skipped 8. Microsoft's OS has always been a trash fire. The reason can be summed up easily. Bill Gates never really cared about the quality of the OS, just that it dominated. In pursuit of the latter he went to great lengths to destroy any serious competition in the early days. This culminated in the anti-trust case the US government file against Microsoft which failed for the usual reaons, money and influence.

[@etiennez0r846]

just switched to macos after a windows update killed the bios of my old laptop, waiting to see how mac is

[@krux02]

It is kind of better in that regard, but it has the entire apple ecosystem lock in. I don't know what's worse.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

If something killed your bios you would not be able to boot your computer, maybe you mean boot partition. Learn how computers work, backups, snapshots etc. People who know how to configure computers properly rarely have problems.

[@XeZrunner]

Development on macOS is even weirder than on Windows, but usability-wise, I like it quite a bit more than Windows 11. If macOS had proper, nicer-to-use APIs, especially Metal, it would be great.

[@etiennez0r846]

@@JamesSmith-ix5jd a windows update came with a bios update from HP without notifications, the laptop got stuck on a loop where it wrote the bios blocks and reboot and the wrote the bios blocks again infinitely.. nothing to do on my side

[@knufyeinundzwanzig2004]

@@XeZrunner objective-c ruined it for me

[@rory_o]

I hope he succeeds, though he’s probably way over his head at this point. He’s spun so long in a language and new tech instead of making the game. Void Stranger took the idea of a top down tile game and blew the expectations of that genre wide open. Like he did with the witness and environmental puzzle games. And Void Stranger was just done with fucking Gamemaker. At the end of the day you have to make something, and he’s spinning so long in the tech and not making progress on the actual thing. The environment changed in seven years. Void Stranger took five years work without having to invent technology at the same time.

[@Irockman1]

He's not making a language for a single game though. He's making a language to benefit the development of all his future games and the games of other interested developers, and he's using this game as a way to test and refine the language. It's also worth considering that Jon and his team built a new engine for The Witness, and the game took longer than he expected, and it was still successful.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@Irockman1 Well, year 2009 that makes sense a lot. Ready engines were then expensive, or started to be outdated for visual fidelity. Right choice. But that language thing, is it language to game parser / NPC communication, game story... or programming language? Developing programming language for game development is hard to justify.

[@Mark-np5ss]

Linux exists and only gets better.

[@ninefingers6306]

no it doesn't get better

[@spht9ng]

Gets better at running Windows games

[@Mark-np5ss]

@@spht9ng Get better at everything, including running losedose games. Tbh, considering wine is written without any input form MS, it's a fucking miracle. Praise Valve ig (no fuck them);.

[@spht9ng]

@@Mark-np5ss That doesn't change that Linux is not a good system for games to natively run well on it today. The games industry has no incentive to switch priority off of Windows even with a growing base of gamers on Linux because it's not a good game dev environment.

[@Mark-np5ss]

@@spht9ng So what? Who the fuck cares about the native platform nowadays? If Linux can run Windows games without a hitch, what would exactly be the reason for developers to develop for both platforms? All things considered, the only thing that might change is they might make games more proton-friendly and that's about it. Also nobody cares who develops on which platform. Linux is clearly better for programming unless you're a C# or Swift developer, but for game dev it's subpar (but not impossible) because a lot of utilities are simply proprietary and don't have Linux as a platform of choice. I've seen how game dev works, it's not very good even on Windows tbh, devs are just playing with the cards they've been dealt. The only people who care about games being Linux native are fanatics and people who are clearly out of touch with reality.

[@piotrd.4850]

Desktop is - in common perception - thing of the past. We're moving to thin-cloud-clients and add-ware is making comeback in force.

[@SolarPlayer]

Linux seems so much less bad than windows to me... I don't get it

[@johncruelty1]

people hate change

[@93nada]

It seems to me that a lot of the times he likes to adapt some stubborn view on things and then defend it just to be contrarian and not even give a chance to alternatives. From my point of view its actually amazing how far desktop linux has come, yes there are problems and its not perfect, but at least it gets better all the time. I dont remember last time when windows or really any proprietary software got any better for the user, but of course Blow refuses to see it that way.

[@shaurz]

VSCode with gdb is pretty good actually

[@pkop4]

He's talking about developing games, not basic-bitch desktop use

[@emyrulz]

Linux is good only if you write code for the specific distro you control or if you develop web APIs that you deploy using containers. If you want to actually ship binaries to a lot of users that cannot just "build it from source" you will soon realize that Linux is a disaster. Even Linus Torvalds said it in a Debian conf if I remember correctly.

[@Masonicon]

If my Windows 10 desktop PC are forced into Windows 11 somewhere in 2025, I can also consider windows 12 to clean-reinstall on it Even when my hopes for Windows 12 aren't that high, good think I have steam deck to prepare myself go to Linux

[@Bramble20322]

@n0tjak There's a reason no one other than neckbeards and developers like linux. It's shit, every single distro, all shit.

[@HieuTran-tj5rq]

I thought he was joking at first when he said 20 million dollars... Jesus this game he's working on better be great.

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

lol it’s just a sokoban clone. You know, the ancient game about pushing boxes. It will flop hard

[@SonicTheCat]

20 million isn't very much for a game. It takes a lot of money to make a modern game

[@okaravan]

Half-Life 2 was 40 million USD. On today's money it's 62.

[@SonicTheCat]

@@okaravan Expectations have increased a LOT since Half-Life 2. AAA games cost orders of magnitude more than that now.

[@gavi888]

​@@youtubeenjoyer1743 At some point a game gets so many "clones" it becomes a genre. Sokoban is a genre. Baba is You was a sokoban and it's one of my favourite games ever, it's amazing. Void Strangers came out last year, it's a sokoban and its brilliant. Like imagine if Half Life 3 was announced and someone just went "lol it's just a doom clone, y'know that ancient game about clicking on demons". I don't even like Blow's games, I just dislike your disrespect towards a type of puzzle game.

[@jamesmillerjo]

"Windows is a trash fire but it's still the best we have " I can't agree more

[@error17_]

Windows been going downhill is all Im saying

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@nonamenolastname8501 Yes. There have been two event that caused real downhill for Windows. Linux + Apache HTTP caused that Windows servers started to disappear. They are rare now. Second event was Android. Apple and Google in phones/tablets are just very strong. I think it is x86 architecture and applications depending on legacy Win API that holds people in Windows in some computer. Is there any threats to that? Well, yes. Intel and AMD can't keep up in processors as ARM devices are so much energy efficient and we really don't need that WinAPI. Most of the software that people are using doesn't care about hardware architecture. I don't expect that anything changes for next three years but there has been done preparations for long time. When ARM computers start to get more common, we can see Windows downhill.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

Win32 API roots are in Win16 API. 32-bit version was about same 80's API. POSIX from year 1988 was, and still is way more better API as it is standards based. Back in 80's and 90's problem was that it was not used any home computers. That is where Win32 comes. No one really used Win32 as it was very lowlevel. Microsoft offered MFC and Borland VLC, and those were mostly wrappers for Win32. And we got Visual Basic, Java, wxWidgets etc. No one really write C for Win32. It was already old and there was higher level APIs for application programmers in 90's. Win32 was in beginning almost useless for huge part game programming. Too slow, no sound mixing, no changing screen modes etc. Then Microsoft created WinG, DirectX 1 & 2 and those were garbage. DirectX3 was first usable as long as it usage was limited. 3D-graphics was still garbage so it was best to use software renderer and add OpenGL support. POSIX did not have API for graphics but unix systems had X11. That was, and still is terrible but it has worked to this day. Because of this mess what we had in 90's, game progammers started to use middlewares that take care of API mess. OS does not matter. Microsoft of course has deprecated and removed stuff and Win32 does not matter as every software is written for higher level API. They are stable and backward compatible and changes in Win32, or even complete replacement does not matter. This kind of process is happening in Linux as there is ongoing replacement X11 to Wayland. Applications written in higher level APIs continues to work. I don't see what is the problem, there are plenty of excellent OS to use in home computers.

[@baumstamp5989]

it'll all be wrapped ... they can build their little dependency mazes as much as they want.

[@gustavcoetzee5018]

Windows needs to die. So does javascript. It feels like we are all screaming at the wall... i will help dont know how or when. But gosh damn lucker poppos. The shit is wrong world wide. Love you mr blow. Wish i was better...

[@Daniel_Zhu_a6f]

my experience is that by itself some linux distros feel much better than windows: they are fast, they have ok settings out of the box, they have nice utility apps, like gcc or python 😂 (no, really, file browser, media players, etc are not worse than windows ones). and, of course, the best thing about linux is how you can tune it for your purpose specifically. the problem really is that most professional apps are windows-exclusive (like adobe, matlab-like things, etc), as well as a lot of industrial hardware control (cctv, industrial automation systems, research equipment, planning). and this is largely a path dependency: windows pays a lot to ensure that their operating system is used by schools and as a default by computer vendors, so every user is familiar with it, so that windows becomes the default choice for app developers. if a large enough anacho-communist country emerges, it would probably quickly turn things around in software world in an attempt to separate itself from dependency on foreign capital.

[@mitchellbartolo9063]

Yeah but j blow doesn’t like open source.

[@Daniel_Zhu_a6f]

@@mitchellbartolo9063 what's not to like? it's not like closed source doesn't have the same problems, it just hides them behind the corporate firewall. in fact, closed source has a huge pitfall: it dies with the company. i think, code ownership should have an expiration date, much like patents, a very short one (1-2 years, maybe). of course, it would be better to abolish all IP laws, but a short expiration date would be a reasonable start.

[@PRIMARYATIAS]

Communist ?? 🤯

[@shyflyf3772]

I understand your feelings but "anarcho-communist country" is literally an oxymoron even if there would be some socialist revolution we aren't seeing it in 100 years, not on that scale

[@user-og6hl6lv7p]

throwing communism at random problems isn't going to fix anything, you're totally indoctrinated lmaoooo

[@IchiOne.]

Soulja Boy youuuuuuu

[@MrMastrsushi]

Dis dood lik Mario travelin in time!

[@FF-FAN9999]

he spent 20 million dollars..on that? no wonder he's pissed

[@meow2646]

temple os is the way

[@dreastonbikrain1896]

I don't think Jai is paying off, hope I am not right.

[@MenkoDany]

making jai cost Jon 30 million dollars. I wonder how much money it would take for him to make an OS. But honestly he's getting old too, if he released 3 more banger games at his schedule he still won't have the time to earn enough money for the company to make an OS

[@MenkoDany]

oh he talked about it 04:30

[@youtubesuresuckscock]

He couldn't make an operating system if he wanted to. No one's going to use his toy programming language.

[@MenkoDany]

@@youtubesuresuckscock Reported your username. Enjoy the ban :)

[@youtubesuresuckscock]

@@MenkoDany I'm not going to get banned, but you are a little begins with B and rhymes with stitch.

[@MenkoDany]

@@youtubesuresuckscock OK boomer

[@mantictac]

Unfortunately for Linux, lack of software compatibility at the hands of Windows developers is the only major problem with using Linux as an alternative. The solution is simple. Don't write software for Windows. Only develop software for people who have a vague, general understanding of how to use a computer, and enjoy having one that doesn't fail in arbitrary ways every time you tell it to do something. But that won't happen, because Microsoft is profit

[@Bramble20322]

Hahahahah good joke.

[@WickedQuence]

Linux works on my machine for gaming

[@mendelovitch]

What is that xylophone music at the end?

[@BlowFan]

The Beginner's Guide Soundtrack - Lecturing

[@MrAbrazildo]

4:21, I would like to know what's the issue. Would he be willing to pay $1 million for a 2D version of this game? Then he could launch the 2D version 1st, and later the 3D, adapted from the previous.

[@paulywalnutz5855]

well i like linux more

[@ali-4096]

if only jon had used an LSP!! things would get done much faster /s

[@BrigadoonZyphoon]

What's another 20 millions dollars, right?

[@IRGhost0]

wait... he spent $20 million on the thing that's on the screen? wtf.. that looks like trash.

[@defectivenull]

nice beginner's guide music there.

[@zeushi]

Btw, we can all use Arch.

[@kahahabahaha]

True, but I dread what I would have to do to use proprietary Windows applications though, not sure if using VGA pass through and a Windows VM is good enough for gaming yet (and I'm sure anticheat would hate that.) Most of my music production applications are windows only (Cubase, Kontakt, Ableton, Vienna Ensemble Pro), and I never really experimented with running them through Wine. I also have no idea how if passing through an Audio interface is possible or desirable in a setup where I have an arch host/windows guest sorta setup.

[@totally_not_a_troll]

Man, 20 mil? Jezus! I would have set up a trust fund, or something! Sure, keep making games, but ...

[@KusanajiKei]

20m... JESUS

[@CianMcsweeney]

hiring quality employees and keeping them costs a lot, especially over a long development period

[@Salantor]

@@CianMcsweeney Which still feels weirdly expensive. 20m for 3 people in 7 years, for a puzzle game that is still not finished.

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

Indie games cost a lot.

[@VACatholic]

@@Salantor He didn't hire just 3 people.

[@Salantor]

@@VACatholic He said something about three people, but ok, it is probably more. Still, 20m. I guess some of that money went to Jai.

[@plaidchuck]

Lol blasting employees publicly, thats a good way to end up with no employees. Leadership 101 says you praise publicy and criticize privately. Don’t air dirty laundry. And if hes hiring people not good enough that also shows hes not good at evaluating talent.

[@Anavski]

Graphics programmers are hard to come by

[@macbobXD]

directx 12 is trash

[@sv_gravity]

I like macOS and it's vertical integration with hardware and IMHO it is currently the best thing that game developers choosing to ignore with great passion no matter how bad MS Windows is getting. Human cognitive biases at play here.

[@CianMcsweeney]

While true, Apple has made developing for their devices a nightmare and the completely locked down ecosystem with an insane barrier for entry makes it a non starter

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

$9000 system vs $4000 system - similar performance and more apps on the 4k one, sorry I am not paying the Apple tax no matter the integration or efficiency they have.

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

@@JamesSmith-ix5jdwtf do you need a $4000 system let alone a $9000 system for? Are recompiling chromium browsers and Linux kernels 24/7?

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

@@youtubeenjoyer1743 I prefere to buy best of the best and stay on it for 10+ years, changing only the GPU after 5-6 years

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

@@youtubeenjoyer1743 I did run Gentoo for 2 years, so recompiling on 64+ threads and 128+ gigs of ram would not be unutilized in my usage. If I had such a system I would also like to play with Houdini.

[@SimGunther]

Why not get more people to boost Arrakis into OS supremacy and improving the ISAs/SoCs on these overly-complicated CPUs instead of whining about how "Windows is the best we got evan though it's still a dumpster fire"?

[@SimGunther]

@@GreenRabbit-i86 Barrelfish sure would've done wonders, but their profit line wasn't ready for "the future of operating systems"

[@ssl3546]

Well that's a conclusory statement. MacOS is great as a desktop operating system, both using it and programming for it. Unless your definition of "desktop operating system" is "glorified Xbox" then, uh, ok.

[@ak47-hz4fq4np3z]

Wrong. TempleOS exists

[@sporefergieboy10]

LSP fixes this!!!

[@nexusrift420]

Windows blows

[@Simboiss]

Usually, the only reason someone would not go Mac is because of games, and it's mostly the fault of game makers. If you think Windows is the best we have, the problem runs deep. It sounds like a junkie addicted to a drug, and trying to justify the addiction.

[@mikufd]

Lmfao, Blow really getting mad at his employee productivity and they are using Jai.

[@MrMastrsushi]

My language + My engine = some mediocre game that could’ve been done in unreal with half the effort/money

[@baki9191]

@@MrMastrsushi oh look, yet another person who just doesn't get it

[@MrMastrsushi]

@@baki9191 There’s nothing to get, it’s ego boosting. Modern hardware doesn’t need microscopic optimizations to do the stuff he makes

[@georgeokello8620]

@@MrMastrsushiyou talk as if you do standard web dev stuff trying to input about low level programming. Just by that statement you probably think graphics engineering is something programmed with non garbage collected high level programming abstractions.😂😂😂

[@MrMastrsushi]

@@georgeokello8620 Um, a lot of graphics programming IS done without garbage collectors you dunce. Also guess what, webGL is a thing. But im sure you think JS isn’t real programming. Which is the sort of thing a jobless neckbeard would think. “Ahh only real programmers use C++ like meee”. Time to draw a triangle in openGL and pretend you’re a REAL programmer.

[@monad_tcp]

3 years at 6 people each for $100K/y is $20M, lol people thinking $20M is that much money. Its not for a company. A million dollars is a lot of money until the day you need to pay people, then you realize how fast it goes.

[@bnug242]

6 x 100k x 3 = 1.8m ?

[@chrisdistant9040]

😂

[@chrisdistant9040]

Especially when you’re not that good at numbers, money goes reaaally fast!

[@surfingbilly9654]

hahahaha 😂@@chrisdistant9040

[@bumblebee9337]

Give up your game addiction / limit your addiction to Linux compatible games / develop ReactOS into a release candidate.

[@Rexhunterj]

*nerd voice* "I wish there was an alternative to windows so I could stop buying/stealing corporate slop" Linux exists. Linux Mint exists, probably the best 1:1 in features with a Windows OS. Proton exists on Linux thanks to Valve/Steam you can play like 95% of games on your linux PC now, I have not logged into Windows for 8 months since I made the full switch. Even better if you're poor and own AMD hardware, the drivers for that is baked into the kernel now, install Linux and you have all the drivers for your AMD setup Just be honest, you're too lazy to make the switch and learn the minimum.

[@tonyvisente5286]

Yeah, now that Proton exists there are no more excuses to not use Linux...

[@MEMUNDOLOL]

20 mil to make a puzzle platformer indistinguishable from 2000 others on mobile app store made by 2 indians in a van for 1000$, sry... even better "almost make", i wonder how'd his OS would be goin lol

[@cgwworldministries83]

You spent 20 million on a snes looking game? And they call me stupid...

[@woddlyoats]

It still isn't done.

[@cgwworldministries83]

@@woddlyoats hilarious

[@dave7244]

I am not clear on the history of the project But he complaining about the game development and the amount of money he has spent. He is literally programming this while build another programming language by the looks of it. To me that is madness.

[@____uncompetative]

I have spent 25 years designing the ultimate multi-paradigm programming language. Although, I haven't worked on it in the past seven years. I plan on starting the implementation of its interpreter next month. As far as I can assess my language is the mythical "Silver Bullet" of development. I can write 49,000 characters a day, which when given a word that is 7 letters is 7,000 words. A sentence might be 28 words. So that is 7 x 4 so 250 sentences. Code in C++ needs about 4 lines for a FOR loop or 5 for an IF/ELSE IF then about the same for boilerplate declarations and importing headers, etc. So an idea (sentence) might be 18-20 lines of fewer characters. If a sentence is 28 x 7 = 30 x 7 - 14 = 210 - 14 = 191? characters. Then divide 191 by 19 to get 10 characters per line which seems fine for the average as some lines will be half that and others will pick up the surplus. So, in text I am writing 250 sentences/day = 250 x 19 lines of C++ = ugh... call it 250 x 20 ... 5000 lines, which is 5 KLOC/day (where industry standard of debugged code for an experienced developer is 300 LOC/day), and I am happy with the text I write on KZbin so I don't have to quarter my productivity as I don't need to change my mind, and I know what I want to say in text, but appreciate it isn't the same with a game when you won't know what works until you have a prototype to try it, so I am not doing a compiler as it will just slow the development process. I want to run the game whilst I edit and have it change its state whilst I change the code. This may seem like a rewrite, but it is only a change to work "done" if I have the attitude it was "done". In truth it is only done when I move on from that layer of the dynamical system to one which is less foundational that is built atop it. So, worse case I redo it 5x to get what I didn't know I wanted and "find the fun" (and that might mean removing all the obstructive annoying blocks from the game and adding a fishing rod). That is still a 300% process improvement and I am not even factoring in productivity spikes attributed to joy. ...or procedural content generation of 420,000,000 planets.

[@doltBmB]

you have to be mad to make video games

[@Scaevola9449]

Jonathan Blowathan

[@thefakewitchdoctor]

Windows maintains backwards compatibility and has unparalleled developer support. Macos and Linux distros (except for SteamOS?) change stuff in the kernel that breaks things for complex software written in system languages like C++. That's why Windows is the best of a bad bunch.

[@MaxterTheTurtle]

I think that the Linux kernel usually remains stable. There's a common adage from Linus: "don't break userspace". It's usually libraries that have breaking changes between versions. We're now seeing flatpaks (and other packaging formats) that use a runtime approach to offer a similar stability guarantee like Windows. It isn't perfect, but the situation is definitely getting a lot better. Edit: Steam also offers runtimes ("soldier", "sniper", etc.) for which developers can build their games against.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

You are taking this out of your ass? Linux supports 20 years old systems, and if you are willing to do some patches to the kernel 30+ years old systems. Now try installing Windows 11 on Pentium 4, actually why going so far back, install it on a 2016 system without command line tricks, the official way.

[@troffdiga1067]

Linux maintains exceptional backwards compatibility. For example, it entirely migrated executable formats from a.out to ELF in 1995 and kept up support for over two decades, only removing the feature when a userspace wrapper came out. You can still run decades-old binaries on Linux. Userspace libraries may break compatibility, but the Linux kernel does so rarely, and when it does, it introduces flags for special use-cases.

[@thefakewitchdoctor]

@@JamesSmith-ix5jd begone incel

[@thefakewitchdoctor]

@@troffdiga1067 Thanks. I had a long chat with a CEO who owned a company that made high-end animation software for the big studios. I had worked in the industry, but never heard of them. Anyway, he explained to me why they couldn't release on MacOS and Linux. These days I work in the enterprise world and Microsoft support is still vastly superior to any other support contract we have with other vendors. We pay them just as much, millions per month even. So high-end CAD, animation, Finite Elenent etc remains Windows only for those reasons. The developer support is unparalleled. I think I didn't make my position clear enough at the outset.

[@theonlybrian]

Linux lives in Jon's head rent free

[@denvernaicker8250]

valve os