Is porting to Linux cost-effective? Let numbers speak

Article Title: Is Porting to Linux cost-effective? Let numbers speak. Linux is a technology channel of the IT lab in China. Includes basic categories such as desktop applications, Linux system management, kernel research, embedded systems, and open source.

Osmos is a game running on a PC. A month ago, the Osmos development team released the Linux porting version of Osmos. After collecting the data for a month, the team's Eddybox came to the conclusion that porting to Linux had a financial significance. Next let's take a look at the calculation of Eddybox.

　　Overhead

Labor cost for transplantation: 1 primary developer (David) + 2 secondary staff

Time spent on porting: 6 weeks of development and testing + 2 weeks of business system transformation

The above time and labor costs include the time for testing on multiple popular Linux distributions, and the time for testing the Beta version from the beginning to the end. Given that David was familiar with the Osmos code library and has a better understanding of Linux, this may be the fastest porting speed. However, Osmos was initially prepared for cross-platform development. the libraries used are libraries such as OpenGL, OpenAL, libogg, libvorbis, and freetype. At the same time, another developer, Aaron, has also completed porting to Mac before that, so details about gcc/dynamic action have been clarified.

Therefore, the total overhead is two months of personal work.

　　Revenue

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Downloads per day

The Osmos retail price is $10, which includes Windows, Mac, and Linux versions. Therefore, we need to calculate the total downloads of the Linux version. It is the statistics of downloads per day, but the current total number (based on the number of downloads ):

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Total downloads

Because one customer downloads multiple versions, the sum of percentages exceeds 100.

As a result, Linux accounts for 15% of our total sales ~ In the range of 21%.

　　Version

We have created four popular Linux packages: .deb,.tar.gz, 32-bit. rpm, and 64-bit. rpm. Download data:

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　　Source

The above statistics come from our online sales system. However, we need to know that a lot of sales on Mac come from the Steam platform. As we know, Steam will soon be transplanted to Linux, which is a very promising prospect.

In addition, according to the site statistics, the following are the sites that bring the maximum traffic to us:

Linux.org.ru

Linuxgames.com

Habrahabr.ru

Hup. hu

Planet.ubuntuusers.de

Linuxtoday.com

Happypenguin.org

Root. cz

Linuxlock.blogspot.com

Planet.ubuntu.com

Linuxfr.org

Linux-gamers.net

Linuxjuegos.com

Gamingonlinux.info

This is indeed very interesting: a lot of traffic comes from Russia and Eastern Europe. It seems that Linux games have no borders.

　　Conclusion

Although the specific turnover is not made public here, the proportion provided above should be of some reference significance to you. For Osmos, porting to Linux makes money.

　　Editor's note:

The profit method described in this article is still a traditional method of making profits by selling each piece of software. this method is not only not universal in China, but also facing great challenges abroad. However, statistics on downloads, users, and sources are generic regardless of the profit model. The prosperity of the operating system platform lies in the richness of its application software. Do you think porting applications to Linux is a trend of the times? Thank you for your comments.

[51CTO.com .]

Original article: http://www.hemispheregames.com/2010/06/23/linux-the-numbers/