It is a real shame that more game developers do not take advantage of open source. If AH were to transition to open source, the game would grow much faster, due to all the open source resources, and people that are willing to contribute. I am suggesting using existing open source projects, not making AH open source.
With dockers (containers) coming along nicely. It would be easy to provide a docker that would allow anyone to run AH on any version of Linux. Dockers allows the developer to provide not only their software, but all the dependencies that their software needs, hence the ability to provide custom modified dependencies that may not be available on every flavor of Linux. Solves the problem of different Linux flavors doing things differently. The Docker will run on any Linux flavor running Dockers.
Yes m$ also uses dockers on their servers. Since m$ is embracing open source, has joined The Linux Foundation, and included dockers support in their servers, they know that the desktop market is going to continue to dwindle, hence the change in their business plans. Which no longer centers around the winblows desktop. They will most probably eventually include docker support with windows, they had to with servers, due to the demand. But it will probably take time with windblows, as they probably do not want to allow anyone to run anything on windblows without their intervention, a good reason to get rid of m$ windblows, m$ is siphoning your personal information and data-basing it and selling it, no privacy at all, not to mention no control at all over what is installed or not installed.
Besides using dockers, AH could actually build a Linux OS around the game, that could be installed to any drive, including a usb, or sdcard. It could be setup on it's own drive, or dual booted from an existing drive. SSD's cost as little as $35 USD, small change to have a drive that is dedicated to AH only. Would reduce workload substantially by building the OS around the game, rather than attempting to build the game around numerous different OS's and OS versions.
Since AH uses so little ram, and most game systems have at least 8GB. The game it self could be run directly from ram, providing for better performance, eliminating the drive bottle neck. Common practice with Linux, in fact some flavors of Linux run entirely from ram. If I want a a specific Linux program to run at it's fastest, I load it in ram and run it directly from there, a common practice with Linux.
What can be done so that there is persistence and backup. is run a raid 1 with 2 physical drives, and 3rd drive in ram, nice way to have everything running from ram, but of course, you really need 64GB for that though, 32GB will do, if you are running a binary release, if compiling for instance with Gentoo, then 64GB is better, as you will need some ram for the compiling.
There are so many advantages to Linux, it is really surprising that a company like hitechcreations has tied it self to m$ so tightly. One can understand big corporate entities sticking with m$ through the long slow death. But there is no reason for hitecreations.
There are so many really dedicated talented intelligent people that contribute open source, it is really surprising that a small company like hitecreations is not taking advantage of such resources. All they would have to do, is go to the developers websites and start talking to the developers themselves to get some ideas. No need to spend money, that is the m$ business plan, with open source it only takes interaction and intelligence to take advantage of the resources.
