Is there even a possibility in the future for a league client on linux? Even if only debian/ubuntu?

xGuffz·Apr 8, 2015·1 votes·968 views

I hate windows, I love linux. I hate HoN, I don't like Strife, I like Dota2, but much prefer League, not only because it's tons of fun, but also because a lot of my best irl friends play it.

I know there's playonlinux (a WINE front-end), but a native client for Debian/Ubuntu (the 2 premier distros pushing hard for the AAA gaming market thanks to Valve) would be an amazing thing to see.

It probably won't happen, but definitely doesn't hurt to ask!

P.S. Let's not talk about the mac client. We all are very aware how bad it is.

8 Comments

ElysMustacheApr 8, 20152 votes

I would love not to boot into Windows.

yenicApr 10, 20152 votes

I think so. If Riot and Canonical partner and cooperate on this, it would be beneficial to both. I can't imagine Riot officially supporting anything other than Ubuntu releases though, and only LTS at that. For Riot it's more of a community thing and street cred. For Canonical, it would drive a lot, possibly a couple million users to their platform. Even if it's free, they want their name out there and the legitimacy. Companies already sign on with Canonical, it's a way to start being a household name and things just snowball from there. It also gets it ready for SteamOS, wherever that lands. It would be a significant project, even to just support Ubuntu LTS. Ideally League will move to embrace the Vulkan API and modify their engine to use that on all 3 platforms, with the existing DX9 support as a fallback on Windows. Their engine needs work and a path off of DX9 eventually, and Vulkan is the best way forward.

The nail in the coffin for me is that Riot is owned by Tencent which is Chinese. China partnered with Canonical to make Kylin, their own OS based on Ubuntu. A free game on a free OS using microtransactions could make a killing in China. Why Tencent wouldn't be working on supporting Kylin/Ubuntu for the massive Chinese market, would be beyond shortsighted.

They're not that shortsighted, I'd put good money down that it's being worked on.

xGuffzApr 11, 20151 votes

I think they'd be stupid not to make the move. But I am biased towards my main OS (kubuntu)....

yenicApr 13, 20151 votes

Ubuntu would cover Kubuntu. I'm a Xubuntu LTS user primarily, so we'd both be covered by Ubuntu support. Just having that base support would allow those who wanted LoL on their chosen distro to have a relatively easy time getting it to work too.

xGuffzApr 14, 20151 votes

Yes, I know that. They are just different "flavors" of Ubuntu.

Matthias9119Apr 8, 20151 votes

I could maybe -- maybe -- see them considering SteamOS if it does well once it's out of beta (assuming that Valve would want them!), but a straight up Linux client is extremely unlikely. It would be a massive undertaking for a tiny fraction of the PC market.

xGuffzApr 8, 20151 votes

SteamOS is a fork of debian. Also, what people don't understand is that you don't have to build for every single distribution out there (which kind of contradicts what i said in my OP). You ship a binary for linux, and it just works with every single distro, as long as you have the required hardware specs to support the game.

Matthias9119Apr 9, 20152 votes

You ship a binary for linux, and it just works with every single distro...

...sort of. For simple programs, sometimes, but you have to constrain yourself to a limited set of libraries that you can be sure are available everywhere and be REALLY careful not to rely on anything platform-dependent. Often the best you can practically do is to support a few related distros fully.

For something like League, this would be extremely difficult.