Still no plans for Linux editor support?

They also advertise as supporting mobile and console platforms. Are you expecting editors for those too?

 

Yes, it's absolutely appalling that I can't run Unity on my iPod!

For the record, the Unity site makes it very clear on which platforms you can expect to do development.

--Eric

 

What specifically did you read as childish? Maybe you're seeing comments from @superpig. He joined Unity about a month ago, so the comments he made on this thread prior to that are his own.

 

Well, Unity runs on PCs and Macs as the system requirements show. The editor running on those machines can create content that runs on multiple platforms.

 

Mac has less gross market share than Linux. You want to know why Apple still exist? iDevices (iPod, iPhone, iPad). Take these away and they go *poof*.

 

Linux is much the same way. It is largely Android alongside embedded and server usage. Take those away and you wouldn't have much left over. There is a reason why the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" is a recurring joke.

Not that Windows is too different either. Strip away PC, and the occasional server, and it'd probably die.

 

Unity started out on Mac, back before there were any iDevices. So that argument doesn't really make a lot of sense. Unless you expect them to drop support for their initial target platform.

 

No, I don't expect them to drop support for existing platforms, I expect it to add support for another one.

Following graph is from Wikipedia:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

User agent information is one of most objective form of measuring OS share. Here you can see that Linux has bigger share than iOS and OSX COMBINED!

 

They already support publishing to Android. Which is what most of that chart consists of. You're completely ignoring the remaining statistics given on that page. Namely that actual Linux on a computer is only a couple percent at most.

Which would put it considerably lower than Windows and Apple market share.

 

Um, dude, Android is Linux; that's where the vast majority of that green bar is coming from. I hope you're not suggesting that they should make Unity run on Galaxy phones.

Anyway, Apple was on an upswing long before the iPhone existed. They would still be around without it, just without such a large bank account. OS X marketshare continues to slowly increase, and OS X software typically sells more than Linux by a fairly large margin.

--Eric

 

Namely those published by Net Applications?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Applications#Criticism

Or if you're lazy:
While the statistics released by the company routinely place Operating Systems sold by Microsoft (Windows) and Apple (Mac OS X) with a high market share in the desktop computer category (through 2013), Vincent Vizzaccaro (EVP - Marketing and Strategic Alliances, Net Applications, 2002-) has stated that Microsoft and Apple are among the company's clients. The company has also admitted that their statistics are skewed.

Bolded important pieces for your convenience. Thank you.

 

If you look at the relevant data, the one showing desktop usage, you'd see that Linux falls below even 'other'. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. But you can't blame a company for looking at marketshare and weighing the cost/benefit analysis of porting to a new platform. Porting something as complex as the Unity editor over isn't as easy as changing your target platform to Linux and hitting build.

Edit: Just saw your new post. Even skewed data won't put the marketshare where you think it is.
Edit2: And you think including Android in the list of web clients doesn't skew the data just a little?

 

Of course. But it isn't like UT don't have experience with development for an Unix system. After all, Unity started as Unix (Mac) engine/editor. Plus they can't claim they're unexperienced with development on Linux itself, as they ported engine, large parts of which could be retooled to work as scene/game views in Linux Editor.

At the very least, in intermediate period, they should make everything possible so Unity could run properly on Wine (that means Asset Store and no bugs related to timezones). If it can't be Linux-compatible, at least make it wine-compatible.

 

It's the responsibility of the WINE developers to make Windows apps work correctly. Go bug them.

--Eric

 

It is responsibility of both developers of app in question and developers of Wine.

 

Nope; by no logic is it Unity's responsibility. They make zero claims for the ability of the Unity editor to run on Linux and offer zero support for running it with WINE.

--Eric

 

It isn't as easy as simply saying that they are both Unix based. The kernel doesn't mean a whole lot. It's all the bits and pieces that go on top of it that matter. In that regard, OS X has far more in common with NeXTSTEP. There's a world of difference between developing for Android and developing for KDE or Gnome, or generic X11. Even though all of those things are Linux. Imagine how much larger the difference is going from Mac to Linux.

 

And that's should change. Making it wine-compatible would be much easier than full-blown port. There are only two things to fix: timezone issue (easy workaround, so not a priority) and Asset Store (HUGE problem).

Technically it would be still a Windows build, it would just play nice with Wine.

For the record: My friend is Wine contributor and for some issues without access to source code of app in question or disassembling it (which is illegal), it is impossible to make proper patch for the issue. Sometimes work even has to be done on game's/application side of things otherwise it can't get fixed (some games that are on Wine's AppDB marked as garbage, can be still run and played properly if you find right, usually fan-made, patch that make it talk to wine nicely). According to this friend of mine, Unity Editor is one of these cases.

//edit: This post is in reply to Eric's post. Above one was posted while I was writing this one.

 

It's not a good solution. The Witcher on OS X, for example, was originally a WINE "port", but there were simply too many stability issues, and eventually they ported it as a native app. And you can bet Unity is more complex than The Witcher. I think WINE is an amazing achievement, but it's not currently a real substitute for native ports.

--Eric

 

The Asset Store problem could be easily fixed simply by allowing us to download our purchases from a browser. It would also give those of us who occasionally find the store running slowly to the point of making it unusable an alternative way to access it.

 

On OSX Darwine is a bumbling mess (they share only small part of codebase with actual Wine project due to licensing concerns, won't go into details to not derail this thread), so I'm not surprised The Witcher on it ran like S***. All you need to know is that Darwine is like cheap, $5 wine from your convenience store when it comes to quality, while Wine is like Bordeaux.

Regardless though, if the worst Unity would do when running on Wine would be to crash from time to time I'm sure users would manage. Unfortunately without access to Asset Store, it's semi-impossible to do a game of good quality. Fix asset store on Linux and wine community will do the rest for you.

//edit: Again, reply to Eric - and Ryiah, you have good point and it's good solution for this conundrum.

 

WINE for OS X was merged back into the main WINE project, so no; Darwine as such doesn't exist anymore. WINE is far from perfect on either platform, and Unity's responsibility for the Windows version is to get it to run well on Windows, not to make hacks for WINE. If they do a Linux version someday I expect it will actually be a Linux version.

--Eric

 

Here is how I see it, Unity's competitors have recently announced that they are creating ports to run their engines on linux, to keep up with their competitors I would assume that Unity will do the same eventually.

If they were to do this, they could very well see their Windows installers decrease in favor of Linux installers.

Now that Microsoft has open sourced .Net, wouldn't that make it easier for them to port to linux now, and isn't Unity built on Mono?

 

It wouldn't make it any easier to port to Linux...as you note, Unity uses Mono, and Unity already outputs Linux binaries, so that part is all set. Unity's not built on Mono, though; that's just one part of the engine. Most (but not all) of the actual "engine stuff" is native code.

--Eric

 

The Unreal Engine 4 Editor is now available for Linux, it's not 100% yet but it's there and they're working hard on it, I'll be trying it out soon! I used to love unity but not it's just not keeping up, Linux is becoming more and more popular over time. At work I'm a e-commerce web dev focusing on design, the backend and maintaining the server, I use Ubuntu exclusively as I rely on a lot of features exclusive to the OS, as well as the blazing fast speeds. We all have the same spec PCs but every few months the Windows installed ones just get way too slow and have to be reinstalled, which is never the case with my Ubuntu machine.

It makes a lot of sense to use Linux really as it can be stripped down to the bare bones where a machine can be built to exclusively edit/run/compile UE4 games without any other software bloat.

While Linux is still very small in the big picture, people deserve freedom of choice and while you can argue that you'd end up having to make the Unity Editor run on all kinds of crap, I don't see any big threads or votes going towards anything else but Linux! Many indie devs live on Linux so it makes a lot of sense to keep up with UE4 and other game dev software by supporting Linux.

 

You make it sound like a major undertaking for Epic, but it really isn't as complex as it sounds. The Unreal 4 editor is literally running inside of the engine itself. Porting the editor involves only those minor aspects that are platform dependent.

Additionally Unreal 4 has little to no middle-ware that it depends on. Porting Unity's editor isn't merely a case of porting the editor, but also every single middle-ware tool would have to support Linux as well. It is a big deal for Unity.

 

Freedom of choice is no reason to invest a lot of money. The only reason for an investment is the potential profit. Unity doesn't believe in the profitability. That's it.
That is the way companies work, that's the way to get a stable business and how to give employees job security. Welcome to reality!

 

Freedom of choice does not pay the bills. Are you going to buy Unity Pro if it suddenly supports Linux?

 

Did you actually read the details on the information you are quoting?
Here you go:

Typically, the most reliable source of statistics for web browsers has been: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp and/or http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

You can even go further down the page for more accurate information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Market_share_by_category

Desktop Linux is very small and not growing, no matter how you slice it.

 

They have tons of choices. The game industry has been around 40+ years. Unity has been a serious engine for about 6. You don't need Unity to make games. You demand choice but seem to require to Unity to make games? Not really a failure on Unity's part, is it now?

Because threads and votes translate to sales? If a serious developer is going to drop 15-45k on Unity, they are more than likely going to spend a $100 on Winders rather than vote and moan on boards about it. Real game developers are resourceful and flexible and are going to do what they need to build a game, whether that is find/write and engine that works on their system or get the tools the need to get it done. Hobbyists who are never going to ship or purchase Unity make up the bulk of those requests. UT knows their market. Random stats and speculation don't make much of case. They know their market a 1000 times better than any of us.

A) Source?
B) if they "live" on Linux, then clearly they are set. If all these mythical linux indie devs really exist, then the lack of Unity clearly isn't a problem.

 

You grabbed the wrong image here dude. The interesting one is the Desktop operating system browsing statistics on Net Applications. And here we have 1.5% for Linux, not 30%. Linux at the desktop is a marginal thing. And that's where you develop. At your desktop. Not at your mobile device.

 

The sad thing is that people still say it with a straight face and believe it.

There was a time when it really had a shot though, unfortunately it was right before the device explosion. Ubuntu does/did rock. Had Apple waited a couple of years on the iPhone, Linux could have racked up some serious numbers I feel. Enough people were in the market for a "utility" computer, one to do the web/mail/communications/etc. Phones and tablets sucked up that market fairly quickly.

 

I switched from Windows 3.1 to Linux and didn't look back until 2001 or so when I got a Mac based solely on the fact that OSX has a Unix core. I bet others did the same, so it wasn't just the iPhone, it was Apple's introduction of the first truly viable Unix desktop.

 

Err, i never said that. This quote is not from me

 

Most people don't care about the underlying core of an OS. Some may care, as can be seen by the fact that there is a tiny percentage of Linux desktop users, but most are simply interested in having a computer that works and don't pay any real attention to the OS so long as it does the job.

I know a number of people that have bought Apple iPads and none of them gave the reasoning that it is Unix-based. It was either bought as a status symbol or because it was a great tablet.

 

Most people don't care, but I wasn't talking about most people. I was talking about myself as a Linux user. People likely who use linux do care, so we have to conclude that a more viable alternative diminishes the adoption of linux. Of course, that doesn't account for the people who use linux purely because it is FOSS.

 

Your wording doesn't agree with you. Specifically the part I had quoted.

 

As this is all about money and you really want it, are you willing to take over the development cost?

 

Which part of that? The part where I said, "others?" Should I have clarified to say, "others like me?" Well, it's clarified now, so apologies for the confusion.

Boy. I am really bad at communicated before coffee apparently. What development costs? I'm on a Mac, Unity is on Mac. I'm not asking for anything. I was merely stating what I believed to be a contributing factor to preventing wider spread adoption of Linux.

Edit: Ah, I think I see the confusion here. I didn't quote Ryiah's post when I responded to it. Sorry about that, I was on my phone and didn't bother. I should have been clearer.

 

It is amazing the number of things people will state to defend their viewpoint that Unity's editor should support Linux, but none of them state the most important thing of all - that they will buy Unity Pro.

If Unity felt that enough people were going to buy it, they'd support it. That they have yet to provide it is probably a good indicator that there simply aren't enough people willing to pay for it on Linux.

 

To avoid the "are they or aren't they"
We're not working on a Linux version of the editor. We're concentrating on Unity 5 and squishing bugs, it's our top priority right now.

 

Whoops! Dunno how that happened. Fixed.

 

Thank you!
We build games, far less complex than an engine like Unity. (in fact one of the reasons we adopted Unity was because multi platform deployment from our internal engine(s) was becoming a headache.) And each time we add a deployment platform, bug hunting and maintaining code becomes a larger and larger task. I can only imagine the complexity and productivity hit that Unity would take adding a third platform. (especially a diverse one like Linux)

 

I have a feeling Unity makes more money from their asset store than they do from selling "Pro" versions of the software (many companies do and that is why the core software is free), so I feel that porting to linux would bring in even more money for them from asset store purchases.

 

No, they've said before that the store isn't a major income source so far. My extremely rough estimate based on various info from here and there is that they earn at least 20X as much from licenses compared to store income. Remember that they don't just sell to individuals.

--Eric

 

And also that you'd have to spend over $4,500 on assets before their cut became equivalent to selling a single Pro license for a single platform, and that's before taking the costs of running the Asset Store and having the free license of Unity around into account.

I suspect that the store is more about having a vibrant and cooperative community ecosystem than it is about Unity directly making cash. You know, someone solves a common problem, is encouraged to share their solution by having an easy way to sell it for cash, this makes it more attractive for other people to use Unity because there's all this stuff that fits somewhere between "low level engine" and "their game" that they can get off the shelf instead of building from scratch. Also, there's just generally more developers doing and releasing stuff than there would otherwise be. And it helps close the programmer/artist gap at the entry level.

Once all of that is taken into account, maybe the Asset Store is leading to increased income... in the form of getting more people invested enough that they make Pro purchases.

 

I've been using Unity on Linux for a while now. The Play on Linux script works. The biggest issue is with Mono, which I detest. However, with .NET coming to Linux there's a good chance VS Community will also port.

With that said, for game development, you really can't beat Windows. The few things I really need in Linux, I can either run in Cygwin or download an open source version that runs on Windows.

 

Again, Net Applications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Applications#Criticism

Their clients are Microsoft and Apple, so obviously they'll skew results. Oh, and their CEO said their results ARE skewed by the way.

See above.

No, the biggest issue is with Asset Store not working. If it would work properly, I'd stop bitching in that thread, format my HDD, install my beloved openSuSE and use Unity via Wine.

 

Yea, because a 5 year old blog post about someone making wild speculation, not supported anywhere else is a source. Virtually every other valid source of browser data (paid or not) reflects the same split. Linux desktop is not remotely 20% (never has been).

 

So the bias inherit in having a client is stronger than the bias of having millions of Android phones contributing to the Linux web browser numbers?