We review Linux customer numbers in the wider mainstream operating system space
If you re looking at your data: I am using the app “Navigraph FMS data manager” via a Windows-compatilibilty layer on Linux (wine). I have been using other Windows-only apps from within virtual machines. So just for the record: Linux users will show up as Windows-users if you review download numbers of your apps.
Remark: I have not marked the answer as “solution”. It seems support staff is deciding what “solves” user problems here. I would still prefer to have a better founded (developers would be the ones to ask) answer how much effort it would be to provide a Linux-solution. My guess is: rather little. For sure less than code-signing for MacOS.
Please also keep in mind that you could have the community provide Simlink-compatible flightsim-clients if you would publish some specs and provide acknowledgement. See also API description for Linux implementation - #3 by spainer
I’m probably also “invisible” in that regard. I’m dual-booting between Windows 10 and Linux and run the navdata updates from Windows for ease-of-use but then access the same directories when running X-Plane on Linux, I rarely download ZIP files for manual installation. I do access the charts webapp from Linux on a second PC but that doesn’t indicate what platform I run the sim on. Other users may access charts from Android or iOS apps which gives no clue about the sim OS at all.
The latest FlightSim Community Survey didn’t ask for operating systems either. It might make sense to add that question to the next survey.
If you don’t want to open up the web API specification to submit position data from 3rd-party implementations, maybe you could provide a plugin API so 3rd-party implementations could send position data to the Windows SimLink host application? That one could probably be run via wine on unsupported platforms like Linux. I wouldn’t mind if I would have to submit position data to the charts web API or the SimLink host application as long as I’m able to just get my position data to the moving map either way. (Alternatively, maybe the charts webapp could somehow be opened up to take coordinates through injected JavaScript/browser plugins?)
Edit: Or, even easier: Maybe the SimLink host application could simply accept TCP connections from localhost where any application could simply dump in the required information (lat/lon/altitude/heading) once per second or so?