adamhm: Is anything planned to resolve the other issues with these new installers? e.g. the significantly slower install speed, the potential for a lot of unnecessary SSD write cycles/wear, not retaining the original file timestamps etc?
immi101: I second the request to provide the original timestamps.
Regarding the...
- install speed: we observed that in some cases Windows games actually install b]faster than before, and in cases when they install slower, the difference is only about 10-20%. If your experiences with them were different, please provide us with your data so we can investigate.
- increased SSD usage: I honestly don't even know how to reply to that. Yes, the change introduces additional file operations during installation process, but not that much more than before. Data storage drives are meant to be used.
- timestamps: could you tell me what do you need them for and what do you mean by "original"? Can you name examples? Installed files have timestamps from the moment of file creation after unpacking. From our knowledge, it has never caused a problem with running games sold on GOG.com.
Ganni1987: (...) unless the situation improves, it seems I won't be buying any more old Windows games for Wine use.
ariaspi: (...) I will hold on buying anything here until some "clean" installers replace the current ones, if that will ever happen.
Sorry to hear that. I'd like to emphasize that installing Windows games on Linux systems is still possible by using Wine. As for other options, now and in the future, I have already mentioned them in my previous post.
phaolo: (...) I don't understand(...)
Yepoleb: (...) Don't understand (...)
ariaspi: I understand (...) but how come (...)
immi101: [They] only package the game once, then push out the result via galaxy and embed it into the offline installer.
instead of doing it separately for each distribution method
immi101 is right. And that's really what the change is about here.
One of the biggest issues reported is that in some cases, game updates distributed in offline installers are/were behind updates distributed by the Galaxy client, sometimes even lagging by a day or two. This might not be your priority, but we are now resolving this problem for everyone interested in being up-to-date when using offline builds.