Linux users: Request for information and feedback

[thwright]

Just another voice chiming in about not cluttering my home directory. Please keep configuration, settings, and other cruft under a $HOME/.local/share/foobar path.

Yes, please! Or $HOME/.config if it's a config file.

As another option, which I didn't see mentioned with flatpak and snap, but what about an appinmge file?

[Nurgelrot]

Okay my $.02 having 30 years of UNIX and UNIX like programming and administration. The installer should be a a .bin file; Which in UNIX land is a self extracting shell installer. Way too many different package managers out there to try and support one or 22 of them. There are copious examples on the web for how to create these most of them are for Bash which would be fine since you're only making a LINUX port. The FGU base program and everything need to launch should install under the /opt or /usr/local hierarchy. /opt most likely since again this is LINUX. (don't get me started on that). Trying to keep up with some package management system is just a waste of cycles IMO and this would give us the most flexibility how/where we (the guys running the systems) want it installed.

Once the program is launched by the user all configuration files and any downloaded content should be stored to ${HOME}/.fantasygrounds <-or whatever as long as its identifiable. All you folks going crazy about wanting it under a .local
tree so you home dir is pretty should just go back to Windows IMO Okay I'm 75% kidding a (.local|.config|.whatever) is fine by me as long as I can find it easy.

So like everyone else the real problem I see is the part of the updater that updates FGU itself. The in-app updater should update all the downloadable content just fine. But FGU binaries should only be updated by a privileged user and for the love of all that's holy don't try and do this yourselves. Way to many professional full time UNIX programmers screw that up. I don't need a big old hole in system security due to my gaming table software.

Personally I'm 100% okay with a notice when I hit update telling me I need to run `sudo ${HOME}/.whatever_linux_insanity_is_choosen/FGU_UPDATE-{verx.y.z}.bin` from a terminal and then rerun the in-app updater. Might seem clunky to SmiteWorks and people coming from Windows but LINUX guys aren't going to be too put out by that. Especially since it allows us to keep running our systems the way we want.

-OR-

Just put the whole thing under ${HOME}/someplace owned by the user. Sure this is sorta crappy from a LINUX point of view but I already have several games that will only install that way so... And are you really going to run multiple VTT as different users at the same time? And even if you do. Just install it again as the other user disk is cheap.

[javierrivera]

Way too many different package managers out there to try and support one or 22 of them.

You only need to support one. Either a "universal" one (snap or flatpack) or just a ubuntu deb. Community can build native one for their distro from it.

[BethFields]

I would agree that supporting one universal package (flatpack, appimage or snap) would make it a lot easier for non technical linux users with additional installation through steam for linux.

As not everyone is able to repackage .deb for their own distro (not even all Manjaro users).

It might also help non technical users if entries were made for lutris, play on linux etc...

[javierrivera]

As not everyone is able to repackage .deb for their own distro

I'm not expecting that. But for sure, I can build an AUR package from a deb or flatpack (and upload it), and I'm quite sure someone here can add it to yum or make a PPA from a flatpack or whatever. You just need one user to do it per distro, not each user doing it for themselves.

[jaharmi]

A lot of what @Nurgelrot says applies (albeit with platform differences) to macOS, as well. I also do not want my Mac to be compromised by this software.

[mrgrey]

I likewise agree with Nurgelrot. Unless it's installed in a user's home directory for just that user, installing and updating software on Linux is the kind of thing that only ought to be done by the sysadmin - as such, it might be better to either just require that the user installing the software do so using their own admin privileges (most likely using sudo), or else install into their home directory. Either way, a hidden directory (such as .fantasygrounds) in the home directory is definitely what's needed for all the per-user data.

Another option, of course, is to add a couple of command line arguments to the installer; for example, the default might involve using sudo to install to /opt with a symlink in /usr/local/bin or the like, but you could have a --user_only argument which installs to the home directory instead.

[Gauthic]

As mentioned, the standard place to put config files and settings in Linux is via the OpenDesktop.org standard....
~/.config/$APPNAME/*

I think if you have a ppa/deb and an rpm installer formats you should handle most of the Linux installs. Those who run Arch or Manjaro are usually clueful enough to install from one of that package formats.

[Gauthic]

On a side note (mentioned this in two other topics):

FGU for Windows works with 5.0 (Ubuntu 20.04) - seems sluggish
winetricks d3dx10 dotnet472 corefonts

[Gauthic]

Under wine, it would appear that the Chat [ENTER] command doesn't work, nor does the backspace and several other keys.
Also the right click pie menu items aren't clickable and don't do anything.
Screenshot from 2020-04-02 23-28-55.png