I would like to generally state that we are always interested in feedback from people on platforms we do not currently support. If you are thinking of commenting in this thread because you are a user of another operating system and have nothing to say other than you think we (L&L) shouldn’t consider it, then I will happily move that post as well. It is not relevant nor welcome and only serves to turn what could be an interesting discussion, or even just one point of valuable feedback, into Yet Another OS Thread War. I’ve seen it happen with Android as well.
Moderator stuff aside, as far as things go: it was never stated we would never consider it again, only that it was currently not feasible. This was back in 2015 when the whole project was many years behind the Mac version, and a new Mac version was already on the horizon that would put it even more many years behind. Much effort had to be put into closing that gap, and while there is still more to go, I feel we have done well in that regard since then. It’s less a gap now, and more a thing you have to awkwardly step over now and then.
The other issue back then was a separate matter, and that is how the pilot program was conducted. The indefinite free beta approach with a donation page hardly anyone could ever find was, in retrospect, not a very good way to gauge interest. I recall lots of people actually buying Windows licences they would never in their lives need, just to show support—so that form of feedback vanished into the bucket. If we do revisit Linux (and yes, it is a big “if”), it will be different.
As a Linux user myself, I would of course love to see the software I help create on my OS of choice, rather than running it through virtual machines and such. That doesn’t mean we will, that’s not an official statement, it’s just me saying: yeah, I’d love to see that happen too. It should also be taken as a vote of confidence for the Wine version. I know it isn’t always pleasant (believe me, I know), but I work in it daily and with a few exceptions it is close enough a reference to be used in regular QA testing. That said, it’s not our official position that one should use Wine—I wouldn’t put it that way, it’s a personal choice, so saying it’s a lack of respect is an opinion I do not understand.
To conclude more concretely: don’t expect anything any time soon—but do remember why we put it aside. We are only just getting to the point where we could even think of putting aside heavy ongoing core development for expansion based development. We aren’t there yet, but we will be, and then we can think about this again.
So again, thanks for the feedback, and as I said at the top, it is always welcome. Sorry that you ran into a bit of a mess in trying to share that.