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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Two main reasons: history and network effects.
GitHub was an independent company for a decade that provided a vastly superior service to what it replaced, primarily SourceForge. And it was free for FOSS projects, while charging for closed ones.
The improvements paid for by the closed source customers trickled out to everyone. So, it became the best place for FOSS developers, large and small. And as more people moved to GH, the more reason there was to move to it.
Of course, it was constantly bleeding money and eventually had to do something. That ended up being selling to MS.
There was a lot of trepidation about this, but for the first few years they not only kept their promise about supporting FOSS, but actually made it better by allowing small private repos to get many of the services that were previously gated for open FOSS or paid repos.
And the alternatives were stil not as good, and just as importantly didn’t have the user networking that GH does.
Now, some FOSS people are starting to look elsewhere, Codeberg, self-hosted Forgejo, and others. They have come a long way and are nearing feature parity, particularly for smallish projects. But the network effects of discovery and reputation are strong, and GH still provides a few more useful features.
I’ve moved my private repos to self hosted Forgejo, but my public ones are still on GH as push mirrors. I’m not ready to give up the discoverability and Mac/Windows CI runners that I can get from GH for free. I hope to be able to some day, but not yet.
I've only a basic understanding of using Git myself, but I think I'm gonna learn it with a self-hosted Forgejo for my Godot projects too.
Then for the parts that don't have feature parity, I won't know what I'm missing, and I have no need for "iNdUsTrY sTaNdArD LeAdiNg oPtiMiZeD sYnErGyStiC wOrKfLoWs" or whatever hahaha.
It does definitely present a conundrum if you want people to see your open source software though. Damn network effect. =\
The number one thing to remember about git is that you don't need a full hosting service around it for basic functionality. If it's just you, a single local repo will probably serve you just fine, maybe use a bare repo on your main machine or a Pi-level device if you like as a remote/backup. Just
git initorgit init --bareand you're good to go. GitHub, Codeberg, Forgejo, and all the others exist to serve multi-contributor and/or public project-level needs.The number two thing to remember is that it is based around graph theory.
That's some really helpful advice, thank you! 😃 I actually didn't know you could just make any local folder a repo like that.
Would a Forgejo instance still be helpful if I wanted to have "one point of truth" between multiple machines even if I'm the only dev? I already use Syncthing, but for some reason I feel like there'd be a lot of sync conflicts and stuff.
The other main reason for wanting to learn Git, of course, is because it's otherwise more difficult to try out changes to scripts and experiment, without finding yourself lost in the weeds and forgetting what worked last.
My current "version control" is "copy the entire project folder before you do anything major." 😂
If you just want one point of truth, the minimal version is to create a bare repo somewhere that you have ssh access to or your local machine. Then you can clone/pull/push from it.
A bare repo is a special kind of repo meant for exactly this, but can be a bit confusing at first. A normal repo contains all of your current working files and a special
.gitdirectory that holds all the files/blobs/history that git needs to work. A bare repo is just the.gitas a top directory withbare=truein its config. So you can use it as a remote, but it never has a working set. They are usually named something likemy_repo.git.Edit:
Here’s a basic example for setting it all up in a fully local way:
And then you have remotes as your main source of truth in
~/baresand your working copies in~/code. If you want to access from another machine that has ssh access to the first, you can do:And then use git pull/push to keep it all in sync. Don’t use Syncthing on a git repo, it eventually goes badly.
This was really informative, thank you so much for taking the time! Definitely bookmarking this. :)
I was looking up further why you'd use a bare repo over a standard one. Somebody said for just sharing a repo between users, "snapshots just take up unnecessary space."
...But would that mean you can't roll back history? Maybe I'm ignorant on the term snapshot in Git context lol.
But yeah, I really appreciate the post and I think that'll get me on the right foot, to actually developing games instead of setting up yet another tool and procrastinating what I want to actually be doing anyway. 😂
Glad my instinct was correct about not using Syncthing for this purpose. XD
Happy to help! And yes, I have no idea what they’re talking about. If you don’t have snapshots (commits) you don’t have version control.
Let me know when you get your game going, I’d love to check it out. I’m working on a few myself.
Just to give some relevant information: Git, the major program behind GitHub, has been developed by Linus Torvals. The license allowed the free use of git until today. Some people took git and built a web application around - GitHub was born. Sure they added some features, but the engine was git! In 2018 these “creators” of GitHub sold their product to Microsoft. They gave a s**t on the community and what may happen afterwards.
Btw, there are some CI runners on Codeberg, but they're not well advertised, and not as feature-rich