My addition to the wishlist is support for moving maps in the charts on Linux for X-Plane.
Charts work fine in the webbrowser, the lack of the Electron charts app on Linux is not really a big deal, but the lack of simlink plugin on Linux is a critically missing feature for me. I love Navigraph, but since I moved to Linux I don’t feel I get the full benefit for the subscription anymore.
I would even help porting the plugin since I have developed X-Plane plugins for Linux. This would be a great addition and should not cause too much trouble. From my experience with X-Plane plugins the biggest issue is with some differences in the TCP/IP handling.
Reto
So far it is a sad story. Others have offered help already if they would just ask for it and publish the protocol specs.
It probably requires OAuth as has been done for Avitab and several plane plugins already.
Simlink for Linux would require development and ongoing worldwide support staff as per our other products.
At this time the numbers of Linux users doesn’t justify this investment, but the Wishlist is the best place to vote for this and for us to gauge interest.
That is not correct as per the previous posts here. The community would create and support it themselves if you would allow it. We would just need the specs.
That is the usual reason everybody gives for not supporting Linux, to which there is a simple solution: Linux users more than happy to help themselves and to put in effort on the things we need and want. You wouldn’t have to do anything beyond publishing the protocol, maybe an API if you want to get fancy. Then the community would develop our own plugin. You would not need to support end-users because it’s not your plugin; you might have to support the dev team that ends up developing and maintaining the plugin, but even that would be very minimal as long as you have good documentation.
There (once) was a working version called “simlink legacy” or something similar. Anyone got a Download Link for it?
The newest Version is not compatible.
X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins/NavigraphSimlink_64.xpl: invalid ELF header
X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins/NavigraphSimlink_64.xpl. (This file is missing, not a DLL or could not be loaded due to another missing DLL.)
The Charts app works fine in Linux. Download and install the Windows App with Steam / Proton or Bottles). This works for many Windows Plugins / Apps for X-Plane.
I think this is a logical fallacy ( no offence ), if a program is known for running only on windows and Mac then users of other OS’s will look elsewhere for alternatives, you can’t measure a Linux user base out of how many Linux users there are for software that doesn’t work on Linux…that doesn’t make sense.
It is true that we can’t measure the interest in a piece of software based on usage if the software is not available on a specific platform.
However, there are many ways for us to estimate the amount of Linux users, both in terms of traffic to our website, but also statistics from different Flight simulation surveys - including our own.
It has also already been mentioned that supporting Linux and testing the software would be really hard for us since none of the staff uses Linux, and combining the low amount of users with the high effort involved, it just does not make sense for us at this moment. This could change in the future!
We don’t want to publish software that we can’t meaningfully support.
The point of “the community can do it for you” is also common, but we have several reasons for not wanting to go down this route at this moment - one of the main ones being that we are planning a new version of Simlink.
However, this is the wishlist section of the forum. You are free to share this topic with anyone you want to raise awareness! At the moment, there are many requests with far higher interest.
We understand your frustration and we’re sorry that we can’t do much about it at the moment!
Respectfully, I submit that you are missing the point. All that we are asking is that you publish the protocol. If you change the protocol in the future, publish the update. Our community has developed a whole OS from scratch and the utilities on which the Internet is based. I think we can handle an X-Plane plugin and a simple telemetry protocol with really not a lot of support.
Honestly, I believe that the reason you don’t want to do this is simply because… You don’t want to. You don’t understand Linux. You don’t care about it. There is not much money in it for you. Like most Windows-centric people, you are a bit surprised by anybody not wanting to use your OS of choice, and I imagine that every time you see this thread, the thought that goes through your head is “why don’t this people just use Windows like everyone else already?” I, and our community, encounter this attitude constantly.
Maybe you should try Linux yourself? You might like it. And by try, I don’t mean run the live version of the Ubuntu CD. Actually install it on hardware without dual boot, and take the time and effort it takes to really learn it. I promise it’s worth it.
If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine too. To each their own. But just publish the protocol already. You have literally nothing to lose, and a fair bit of good will to earn.
Well, no. If something requires an emulation layer to run on a platform, it does not “run well” on that platform. Now instead of a lightweight plugin, we are talking an emulator and a Steam account to do something that can be done in a few lines of code. I’d rather save the cycles for flight simulation, and I’d rather not introduce yet another thing that can go wrong, needs to be maintained and regularly updated and in general will have me spend more time managing my setup than actually using it.
I’ll add my vote for a Linux Simlink. I’m sure it’s not a large piece of software and it’s true the community can make it for you and support it for you (gnu/Linux works differentially than windows in this matter) if you tell the protocols.
I’ve been looking for years now.
I wish for a Linux version of the simlink. I understand that you might not be interested in supporting it for what you see as a minor customer base; however as stated before, what we really need is a public protocol. Our community would be happy to create and support a plugin ourselves. Thank you.