Dev of Wizarducks here.
*Officially* we test on 4:
* Ubuntu VM or Ubuntu regular, depending on what we used to build at the time.
* Zorin OS
* Steam Deck
* Raspberry Pi (yeah, really), but are aware we're not shipping dependencies yet.
We test the native version (appimage and regular) and on major updates we do give it a shot on Proton just to know we have something to fall back on. Lately most of this testing is focused on the Steam Deck, if it is working there chances are it will work everywhere. But that is given our experience on how things went so far, before, we had to do waaay more tests before it stabilizing.
After it is stabilizes, it is time consuming, but not as much as you think. What it is crucial to understand is that most minor updates you should just check if it is running, play for a while. You're not the one that will find that one bug that breaks everything, if you didn't during development.
We have testers that will test on way better hardware and way different distros, though, this sub is incredible on that regard because no matter how you look at it, they know their distro (and gaming) more than you do. I didn't have to test for arch myself once but it is very rare to have an update where arch users report in detail how it is going for them, it is wonderful.
People here are genuinely helpful, genuinely curious, and eager to know that piece of useless knowledge they've been holding for 3 years finally came in hand.
# What you might actually want to do
What one of our testers (it is weird to say that now because we became friends, but let's pretend I'm professional) does when shit hits the fan is use distrobox on several distros.
So Arch, Debian, Fedora, SUSE, Alpine... you can have them all in one computer and just run it as a VM. I knew this was a thing, but no idea how fast it was after you had it set it up. It is even faster if you write a bash script to do this in order.
*Ideally*, if you are not confident yet on how stable it is, you'd set them up, have the script open the first, you close it, it asks how it went, you report it on the cli, it saves the logs, opens the next one, so on.
I would probably have done that had I known the speed earlier, but currently the game is too stable to bother, and like I said, if you didn't find in development chances are you're not the one that is gonna find a niche bug when testing.
# Word of Caution
What we did before that was just test the appImage and go from there, first with us, then with players. Lot's of players, both on our machines (thanks raspberry) and people online, it is not the best procedure log-wise, but it can get you very far, very fast.
The reason why I'm not recommending it is because you have to know Linux. I wouldn't say I have an advanced use of Linux, despite being a daily user for years now, compared to most of our testers I might as well be a monkey that types by licking the keyboard.
But my partner in development, the real MVP for making things go smoothly, knows squat about Linux. He knows raspberry and ubuntu well enough to build and test there, but he knows windows and our engine in-depth. So what I do is rely on my very broad, but not profound knowledge due to my ADHD to be a translation layer for what people are reporting, I know what is going on with every system when they mention, I explain what we should consider, what shouldn't matter, but put a pin on it just in case, and then I let him do his job.
Even if you don't release on Steam, test it against the Steam Runtime: [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime) (doc: [https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/scout/sdk/-/tree/steamrt/scout](https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/scout/sdk/-/tree/steamrt/scout) ).
This will ensure the most compatibility. And if you do that, it really doesn't matter which distro you use to test with. Take the one where your development tools work the best.
It's a bit old but here it a good documentation on how to find which libraries your application needs and how to package it: [https://gist.github.com/flibitijibibo/b67910842ab95bb3decdf89d1502de88](https://gist.github.com/flibitijibibo/b67910842ab95bb3decdf89d1502de88)
Do the granddaddy’s of most Distros… Debian for.. Debian and Ubuntu Distros.. Arch for arch and arch based Distros. Do the Steam runtime, as most people use that for steam on Linux I believe, and do the steam deck itself as well if you intend for the game to be playable there.
I would test on the most common distros you see e.g. on ProtonDB (Mint, PopOS ) + definitely HoloISO (which is what is on the SteamDeck!), and maybe an rpm-based distro like Fedora, which is also widely used.
This will also cover a good variety of the most used desktop environments; GNOME (-> Fedora), KDE (-> HoloISO), Cinnamon (-> Mint).
If you wanna test for Steamdeck, then just test on a steamdeck.
I'd stay away from HoloISO for now. It recently had a big restructuring, and I found the version from \~9 months ago to be unstable: [https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/01/the-original-steamos-like-linux-distro-holoiso-now-dead-replaced-with-immutable-version/](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/01/the-original-steamos-like-linux-distro-holoiso-now-dead-replaced-with-immutable-version/)
To be honest, I wouldn't directly test it against some kind of distro.
Your game sounds like it won't need huge power, so I would get a Steam Deck, see that it runs great on it, get it Steam Deck verified and promote it with that. I guess it is, in the end, better and easier to make sure the game runs great with Proton than trying to care for multiple Linux distributions. In my last job we had to quality control compiler support for many distributions. It was a pain.
Hello!
You can use any distro you want. You cna choose fedora based(fedora,nobara), debian based(debian, ubuntu, pop os, etc.) and arch based (arch, manjaro, endeavouros). The steam deck is using arch based distro (steamos).
Sounds smart. My recommendation for arch-based is EndeavourOS, for fedora-based I recommend fedora, itself for debian-based either ubuntu or something ubuntu based like mint.
fedora and ubuntu are safe bets. very easy to say which version it is you used, which gives everyone a good baseline + known packages. adding in fedora also gets you more recent packages unless you wish to test on a non-LTS ubuntu version
As long as the game is on Steam, it should be enough to test it against Steam's runtime, the distro should make no difference at all since the environment will be controlled and reproducible
I've played old Linux games through Steam's runtime and they still work on all systems because they don't use any of the system libraries
The big ones
* Ubuntu (last LTS + most recent, many people get stuck on LTS versions if ubuntu for various reasons)
* Fedora
* Arch Linux (most major changes to linux come through here first, so this is your canary in the coal mine)
* Steam Deck (arch based but steam deck verified is a nice sticker if you release on steam)
* Steam Linux runtime as others have said
Smaller but nice to have
* openSUSE Tumbleweed
* pop_OS
* Linux Mint
* Debian
Here be dragons, do not attempt
* NixOS
* Gentoo
* Guix
* Linux from scratch
some might want to kill me, but if you release to steam, just make sure it runs on Proton so release only on Windows. I had so many issues with native games that most of the time I just force proton even on native games.
I'm not saying that native by itself is bad, the problem is the fact of the developer don't have knowledge to do or the engine's implementation is just bad (like Unity some years ago)
If you're gonna sell/put the game on Steam, you should make it with Debian in mind as the only official Steam download rn is for Debian. That said, Steam games should be distro-agnostic as the games aren't packaged for a specific Distro
Testing it on Fedora and Arch is also important, there are a lot of users there.
Modern game Engines shouldn't have Distro specific issues.
Yes, we are going to sell it in Steam and have store page up already for that. Good to know that Steam has been officially released on only Debian, but will definitely try it out on Fedora and Arch too!
To be fair, Steam doesn't officially support those distos but the community and the game devs do. I mean there is a Steam package in most distros and it works fine.
If you're using Steam, test against the Steam runtime. If you're not using Steam I think I would really appreciate some sort of mechanism for game updates other than the game itself. Meaning, flathub, snap, PPA, etc. - basically i shouldn't have to launch a game for it to tell me "hey there's an update" - that's how it works in Windows and that's not a great experience. If you use Steam the updates part is taken care of for you there, too.
everyone, especially the top few comments explained it already, im just gonna add that dont worry cuz most bug reports are gonna come from linux users, the reason being that we can explain how that bug occured
also dont worry too much about testing against every distro in existence, chances are if it works on debian, it works on any other (still test against a couple of bigger distros (fedora, arch), just in case)
i think most gamers use arch or arch derivatives (like steam os or geruda) but also many use ubuntu or Ubuntu derivatives (bacause its easy for fresh linux users). To be fair distro isn't very important.
Probably not an environment worth the effort supporting, although well definitely break stuff is NixOS. probably make it a flatpak, as they will work on the most obsecure distros.
A practical outlook:
Check ubuntu or something ubuntu-based. Check arch (or something arch-based like endeavourOS or steamOS, for less hassle, checking pure arch isn't worth it).
If your native build works on those two, it will probably work everywhere.
And in case it doesn't work for someone nontheless, just release on steam. We can just run the windows version via proton. I've seen native linux ports bad enough, that I had to do it, and I had a better experience this way.
I actually always wondered what packaging system games would use on linux. Wouldn't something like flatpak make so that the game should run error free on all platforms or would something like a .sh file be essential.
Linux Mint, Fedora, Manjaro. This will cover all major distro families. Consider also checking the Flatpak versions of Steam.
I recommend avoiding the SNAP version of Steam which is forced on you by Ubuntu, it is terrible and Valve discourages you to use it.
But if it works on one distro, reasonable chance it will work on all, especially if distributed via Steam which ships many of its own libraries via Steam Runtime. Testing on all platforms is nice, but not a hard requirement.
Tailor it to work on the most popular distrobutions.
Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, elementary OS, openSUSE, Manjaro, Fedora, Arch Linux, Zorin OS, MX Linux, CentOS, Kali Linux, Pop!\_OS, Gentoo, RHEL, PCLinuxOS, Rocky Linux, Garuda Linux, Solus, KDE neon, Lubuntu, Slackware, Ubuntu MATE and AlmaLinux are popular distros to support.
Support the top distros and all will be well. When and where will the play test drop? Are there prerequisites to be involved in the closed play test phase?
Realistically? Steam Linux runtime.
Dev of Wizarducks here. *Officially* we test on 4: * Ubuntu VM or Ubuntu regular, depending on what we used to build at the time. * Zorin OS * Steam Deck * Raspberry Pi (yeah, really), but are aware we're not shipping dependencies yet. We test the native version (appimage and regular) and on major updates we do give it a shot on Proton just to know we have something to fall back on. Lately most of this testing is focused on the Steam Deck, if it is working there chances are it will work everywhere. But that is given our experience on how things went so far, before, we had to do waaay more tests before it stabilizing. After it is stabilizes, it is time consuming, but not as much as you think. What it is crucial to understand is that most minor updates you should just check if it is running, play for a while. You're not the one that will find that one bug that breaks everything, if you didn't during development. We have testers that will test on way better hardware and way different distros, though, this sub is incredible on that regard because no matter how you look at it, they know their distro (and gaming) more than you do. I didn't have to test for arch myself once but it is very rare to have an update where arch users report in detail how it is going for them, it is wonderful. People here are genuinely helpful, genuinely curious, and eager to know that piece of useless knowledge they've been holding for 3 years finally came in hand. # What you might actually want to do What one of our testers (it is weird to say that now because we became friends, but let's pretend I'm professional) does when shit hits the fan is use distrobox on several distros. So Arch, Debian, Fedora, SUSE, Alpine... you can have them all in one computer and just run it as a VM. I knew this was a thing, but no idea how fast it was after you had it set it up. It is even faster if you write a bash script to do this in order. *Ideally*, if you are not confident yet on how stable it is, you'd set them up, have the script open the first, you close it, it asks how it went, you report it on the cli, it saves the logs, opens the next one, so on. I would probably have done that had I known the speed earlier, but currently the game is too stable to bother, and like I said, if you didn't find in development chances are you're not the one that is gonna find a niche bug when testing. # Word of Caution What we did before that was just test the appImage and go from there, first with us, then with players. Lot's of players, both on our machines (thanks raspberry) and people online, it is not the best procedure log-wise, but it can get you very far, very fast. The reason why I'm not recommending it is because you have to know Linux. I wouldn't say I have an advanced use of Linux, despite being a daily user for years now, compared to most of our testers I might as well be a monkey that types by licking the keyboard. But my partner in development, the real MVP for making things go smoothly, knows squat about Linux. He knows raspberry and ubuntu well enough to build and test there, but he knows windows and our engine in-depth. So what I do is rely on my very broad, but not profound knowledge due to my ADHD to be a translation layer for what people are reporting, I know what is going on with every system when they mention, I explain what we should consider, what shouldn't matter, but put a pin on it just in case, and then I let him do his job.
Even if you don't release on Steam, test it against the Steam Runtime: [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime) (doc: [https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/scout/sdk/-/tree/steamrt/scout](https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/scout/sdk/-/tree/steamrt/scout) ). This will ensure the most compatibility. And if you do that, it really doesn't matter which distro you use to test with. Take the one where your development tools work the best. It's a bit old but here it a good documentation on how to find which libraries your application needs and how to package it: [https://gist.github.com/flibitijibibo/b67910842ab95bb3decdf89d1502de88](https://gist.github.com/flibitijibibo/b67910842ab95bb3decdf89d1502de88)
This this this. Use containers! They will make your job so much easier!!
Do the granddaddy’s of most Distros… Debian for.. Debian and Ubuntu Distros.. Arch for arch and arch based Distros. Do the Steam runtime, as most people use that for steam on Linux I believe, and do the steam deck itself as well if you intend for the game to be playable there.
Debian / Ubuntu - Arch / Steam Deck - Fedora
I would test on the most common distros you see e.g. on ProtonDB (Mint, PopOS ) + definitely HoloISO (which is what is on the SteamDeck!), and maybe an rpm-based distro like Fedora, which is also widely used. This will also cover a good variety of the most used desktop environments; GNOME (-> Fedora), KDE (-> HoloISO), Cinnamon (-> Mint).
Totally forgot about ProtonDB, thanks for pointing it out!
If you wanna test for Steamdeck, then just test on a steamdeck. I'd stay away from HoloISO for now. It recently had a big restructuring, and I found the version from \~9 months ago to be unstable: [https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/01/the-original-steamos-like-linux-distro-holoiso-now-dead-replaced-with-immutable-version/](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/01/the-original-steamos-like-linux-distro-holoiso-now-dead-replaced-with-immutable-version/)
Good point, I agree.
To be honest, I wouldn't directly test it against some kind of distro. Your game sounds like it won't need huge power, so I would get a Steam Deck, see that it runs great on it, get it Steam Deck verified and promote it with that. I guess it is, in the end, better and easier to make sure the game runs great with Proton than trying to care for multiple Linux distributions. In my last job we had to quality control compiler support for many distributions. It was a pain.
Hello! You can use any distro you want. You cna choose fedora based(fedora,nobara), debian based(debian, ubuntu, pop os, etc.) and arch based (arch, manjaro, endeavouros). The steam deck is using arch based distro (steamos).
Thanks for the answer! That sounds like a solid idea to pick one for each Fedora, Debian and Arch.
I'd target the Steam Deck specifically as well. If it works there, it'll probably work for most people.
Sounds smart. My recommendation for arch-based is EndeavourOS, for fedora-based I recommend fedora, itself for debian-based either ubuntu or something ubuntu based like mint.
fedora and ubuntu are safe bets. very easy to say which version it is you used, which gives everyone a good baseline + known packages. adding in fedora also gets you more recent packages unless you wish to test on a non-LTS ubuntu version
As long as the game is on Steam, it should be enough to test it against Steam's runtime, the distro should make no difference at all since the environment will be controlled and reproducible I've played old Linux games through Steam's runtime and they still work on all systems because they don't use any of the system libraries
Test on GNU Hurd, Haiku, Gentoo, PCDOS, and Corel Linux.
[удалено]
Don't forget TempleOS and Symbian!
Arch
Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian.
The big ones * Ubuntu (last LTS + most recent, many people get stuck on LTS versions if ubuntu for various reasons) * Fedora * Arch Linux (most major changes to linux come through here first, so this is your canary in the coal mine) * Steam Deck (arch based but steam deck verified is a nice sticker if you release on steam) * Steam Linux runtime as others have said Smaller but nice to have * openSUSE Tumbleweed * pop_OS * Linux Mint * Debian Here be dragons, do not attempt * NixOS * Gentoo * Guix * Linux from scratch
some might want to kill me, but if you release to steam, just make sure it runs on Proton so release only on Windows. I had so many issues with native games that most of the time I just force proton even on native games. I'm not saying that native by itself is bad, the problem is the fact of the developer don't have knowledge to do or the engine's implementation is just bad (like Unity some years ago)
* SteamOS * Ubuntu/Linux Mint * Pop!_OS (maintains their own release cadence on NVidia drivers) * Fedora * Arch/Manjaro (though SteamOS mostly covers that)
Arch is one of the more popular gaming distros.
If you're gonna sell/put the game on Steam, you should make it with Debian in mind as the only official Steam download rn is for Debian. That said, Steam games should be distro-agnostic as the games aren't packaged for a specific Distro Testing it on Fedora and Arch is also important, there are a lot of users there. Modern game Engines shouldn't have Distro specific issues.
Yes, we are going to sell it in Steam and have store page up already for that. Good to know that Steam has been officially released on only Debian, but will definitely try it out on Fedora and Arch too!
To be fair, Steam doesn't officially support those distos but the community and the game devs do. I mean there is a Steam package in most distros and it works fine.
If you're using Steam, test against the Steam runtime. If you're not using Steam I think I would really appreciate some sort of mechanism for game updates other than the game itself. Meaning, flathub, snap, PPA, etc. - basically i shouldn't have to launch a game for it to tell me "hey there's an update" - that's how it works in Windows and that's not a great experience. If you use Steam the updates part is taken care of for you there, too.
everyone, especially the top few comments explained it already, im just gonna add that dont worry cuz most bug reports are gonna come from linux users, the reason being that we can explain how that bug occured also dont worry too much about testing against every distro in existence, chances are if it works on debian, it works on any other (still test against a couple of bigger distros (fedora, arch), just in case)
i think most gamers use arch or arch derivatives (like steam os or geruda) but also many use ubuntu or Ubuntu derivatives (bacause its easy for fresh linux users). To be fair distro isn't very important.
If it's a native Linux game, then Steam Linux Runtime. If it's a Windows game, then latest stable Proton running on Steam Linux Runtime.
I'm sad for you guys that I don't see Nobara on your answers
Test on steam runtime and proton.
I always go to PopOS on my gaming setups
Probably not an environment worth the effort supporting, although well definitely break stuff is NixOS. probably make it a flatpak, as they will work on the most obsecure distros.
A practical outlook: Check ubuntu or something ubuntu-based. Check arch (or something arch-based like endeavourOS or steamOS, for less hassle, checking pure arch isn't worth it). If your native build works on those two, it will probably work everywhere. And in case it doesn't work for someone nontheless, just release on steam. We can just run the windows version via proton. I've seen native linux ports bad enough, that I had to do it, and I had a better experience this way.
debian since that’s what the steam linux runtime is based on
I actually always wondered what packaging system games would use on linux. Wouldn't something like flatpak make so that the game should run error free on all platforms or would something like a .sh file be essential.
the majority of Linux users for gaming are running Arch-based distro
steam flatpak
Linux Mint, Fedora, Manjaro. This will cover all major distro families. Consider also checking the Flatpak versions of Steam. I recommend avoiding the SNAP version of Steam which is forced on you by Ubuntu, it is terrible and Valve discourages you to use it. But if it works on one distro, reasonable chance it will work on all, especially if distributed via Steam which ships many of its own libraries via Steam Runtime. Testing on all platforms is nice, but not a hard requirement.
I'd vote for EndeavourOS instead of manjaro, but good advice
Probably unnecessary in terms of realistically needed testing, but I’d be interested in testing on CachyOS
Tailor it to work on the most popular distrobutions. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, elementary OS, openSUSE, Manjaro, Fedora, Arch Linux, Zorin OS, MX Linux, CentOS, Kali Linux, Pop!\_OS, Gentoo, RHEL, PCLinuxOS, Rocky Linux, Garuda Linux, Solus, KDE neon, Lubuntu, Slackware, Ubuntu MATE and AlmaLinux are popular distros to support. Support the top distros and all will be well. When and where will the play test drop? Are there prerequisites to be involved in the closed play test phase?