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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

Then why not support Linux? Apple devs are used to working around esoteric hardware requirements, they're upset about not getting software support.

Regardless of Oculus's sensible reasons for pursuing a one-platform strategy, you're talking about independent devs who have spent months or years building on a beta SDK only to be left hanging in the final runup to release. I'm confused why you're surprised.

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I'm guessing Linux will be a very small % of the overall Rift demographic. It might not make sense for them to spend resources on supporting 1% (NB: random guesstimate) of the user base just yet, although I'm sure that'll happen eventually.

To be clear, that was a rhetorical question :) My point is just that "underpowered GPUs" is not the reason OS X is getting dropped[], focus on a single platform is.

[] If you're still not convinced, let me point out that Oculus supports Android with a separate SDK.

Isn't the Oculus Android SDK just for the Samsung Gear?

Yeah, it's a separate technology stack, with its own dev team, not directly comparable to the Rift SDK. But that's a bit of a red herring, since the Galaxy S6 at 1440p is actually pushing more pixels to the display than the Rift, per frame. (But at a lower framerate, of course.)

And John Carmack is working on it, and he probably doesn't care as much about OS X. Again, my point is that the constraint here is not the GPU, but Oculus engineering resources.

Also let's not forget there are something like 300mil Android devices out there, whereas Linux is around 1% of desktop user base: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... It absolutely makes sense for them to focus on Android (regardless of their partnership with Samsung)

I can only say that you've definitely found one here. I'll be moving fully to xubuntu once my windows 7 box goes EOL. I'm not willing to invest in what will surely be an ~ecosystem~ when I know it does not fit my long term plans.

I guess because I don't know a single game developer that actually likes making games on Linux. I like linux, I use it for server and web programming, but it is god awful to try and make games on.

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