Linux client?

I've had enough ranting. Take a hike.

 

Do you mean the reality quoted below?

That's not reality. That's wishful thinking. Wouldn't be very wise to base a business decision on that.

Not really. Jim grows two kinds of tomatoes: Cherry and regular. Every once in a while a small band of Camel Toe tomato enthusiasts would rally around Jim's cart and demand that he sells the camel toe-shaped tomatoes that they so love. But they never actually buy any of his other tomato stock. So Jim isn't too eager to spend time and money revamping his whole farming operation to grow a crop of Camel Toe tomatoes just to see them rot in his cart.

Steve, on the other hand, came later to the tomato farming scene, and Camel Toe tomatoes are a byproduct of his farming process so it doesn't cost him much to produce them and offer them for sale. The problem is that Steve's tomatoes smell like decomposing fish, though some people have managed to mask the smell using some elaborate cooking techniques. Steve has been promising a stink-free 2.0 crop for half a decade now, but it is yet to be released.

I think Jim's problem is that he's too polite to brag about his finances and wouldn't outright say that his sales aren't being impacted by Steve's (or any other vendor's) Camel Toe offerings. I think he should at least consider that all the rabble rousing is annoying his existing customers.

 

The present is Linux, Windows, iOS, Android and many more. The future is open source.

(This does not aim at your "release Unity core under MIT license" statement)

Android is based on Linux, the majority of the servers runs Linux, embedded systems use Linux. And many build there business on that successfully.

Casual desktop users do not use Linux. Therefor a Unity editor not a rewarding investment on that platform and that's reasonable. But it does not mean at all that such an editor is a bad idea in general.

Speaking for Debian based distributions I'm very comfortable and miss nothing from Windows except the Unity editor. I dual boot and get my Windows license for free, so no big trouble.

Edit: Might be interesting and worth a smile to take a look at. The Ubuntu #1 bug report (closed)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ bug/1

 

Linux fans have been proclaiming the coming of Linux being a major player in the PC market for years. It simply isn't realistic though to compare it to Android let alone servers and embedded systems.

Android is successful for a very simple reason. It is a single distribution that is controlled and developed by a major corporation with more than sufficient funding to make it work. Linux, by comparison, is multiple major distributions each with potentially dozens of sub-distributions.

Supporting a product on Linux is not merely as easy as Windows or OS X where you spit out a single version. At the very least it requires supporting the majority distributions (Debian, RedHat, etc) and potentially any major sub-distributions (Ubuntu, etc).

Server and embedded hardware is not a good comparison because both are very specialized for a specific task and the companies who develop the hardware are more than willing to invest in developing the drivers for them.

Not to mention most server-side code tends to be written in platforms now that are very multi-platform friendly such as Java.

As @Graham Dunnet pointed out, they need to sell about a thousand Unity Pro copies in order to justify developing a Linux editor. How many copies are you going to buy?

 

And how many of those are valid platforms for a Unity Editor to run on?

I get your point. Linux has found its niche and is doing just fine in it. But when a person declares that "Linux is the future!" in a thread discussing the lack of a Unity Editor on Linux, I think it's reasonable to assume that what they actually meant to say is "Linux is the future on Desktop computers," which, I still maintain, is wishful thinking. So pardon my lack of anal retentiveness in my original post.

EDIT:

I think this pretty much QEDs it.

 

Pretty much. Not that I'm against Linux, I was among those fans for years that stated Linux was going to be the future of desktop operating systems. I wasn't particularly vocal about it, but I did believe it would eventually happen.

After years ticking by with no real progress though I came to the conclusion that it simply wasn't practical.

 

Is amazing how "windows users" angry they become when someone ask for linux support.

 

How many years of "Linux on the Desktop" have we had now?

 

Something like it

Years /SO
10 linux (normal / development)
20 windows (gaming / unity)
3 mac (unity)

 

Care to point specific phrases that illustrate all this bent up rage? Because the only person who got suspended here was a Linux kin. And that's a very bad Yoda impression by the way.

Is that supposed to excuse your trolling?

I think you misunderstood the question, but thanks for giving us a glimpse into your private computing history.

 

I meant it's a nice-to-have, not a must-have-or-die! I'm fine with dual boot.

You shall be forgiven. Actually I predict Linux is the future for 1-2% of desktop users, but that's not what you were going for.

 

This is part of the problem though. If most of your potential Linux users are willing to do this then there is even less motivation to build an editor for that OS.

Personally I used to dual boot Linux but I stopped when I finally obtained an AMD-V (AMD's virtualization) capable processor and virtual machine software started supporting graphical acceleration so long as Windows was the host OS.

If I need to do something in Linux, it is as simple as firing up the virtual machine, dragging the folder with the files over to the guest OS, and doing it.

 

That was mean lol.

I can understand wanting to work on linux because it's free, but so is

Spoiler: WHOA NSFW

piracy! #notsorry

. I sleep at night by blaming all of those habits on Unity not being available on linux.

 

So the subject of this entire thread is, by your own admission, largely immaterial to you. You just came in to ensure that any cyber archaeologist who digs up this thread is made aware of the irrelevant facts that Linux powers Android, servers and embedded system; that the phrase "Linux is the Future" actually means "Linux is the future for 1-2% of desktop users" ; according to you; and that you run a Debian-based distribution of Linux (which you probably should name lest anyone thinks you an Ubuntu commoner).

Duly noted. Anything else you wish to add before allowing this discussion to go back on track?

 

Actually as far as support for different distros goes, you should just support Ubuntu (most popular distro) and users of other distributions will manage if they have native binaries. I've ran many apps that technically were for Ubuntu only (including Unity, the desktop environment just for the hell of it) on openSuSE which is my distro of choice and it wasn't particularly hard once I knew libraries versions I need and what exactly libraries.

So port to Ubuntu, rest of the world will manage.

Also I know about Wine solution that what posted before here, but it doesn't allow for using asset store so it's a no-no for me (if not for the fact that biggest feature on Unity is missing when it's run from Wine, I'd stop complaining and just use get drunk with wine).

Another thing is that in most cases porting is just about recompiling codebase, chances are that any bug that will occur in the port will be really minor (wrong position of menu/missing text, etc.) and no things like segfaults, which would occur in the all versions anyway.

Plus, most of the porting is done already: Runtime is on Linux, most of its code could be repurposed for in-editor testing. Mono, started on Linux as .NET replacement so there's version of Mono for Linux as well. MonoDevelop already has Linux version, same reason as Mono itself. The only things that would require some work are things like BEAST/Shuriken, but if they were written properly it should be as simple as ./configure && make .

So it will be easy to do and not as money consuming as you think it would be.

And really, UT, even if 10% of people who upvoted damn #1 suggestion on your feedback site would buy Pro, it will still be enough to cover the costs.



Wear this badge with pride, UT. Put it on the main site, you really deserve it.

 

@darkhog, there are several programmers working at Unity who like Linux and they even got the Unity Editor kind of running. They must be very lousy and stupid that they didn't make a product out of it or easily got it running properly, because according to your logic it is just a trivial thing to do, if the code was implemented properly. The only thing that this kind of statements means is that you never tried to do something comparable.

The particular suggestion on the feedback page is worth nothing. It would be interesting to see how many of the accounts just voted for Linux and never did anything else. Yes, that statement from mine means that I expect that lots of fake accounts are the cause for this.
As you may know, this is not the only source based on which Unity makes decisions for future development. They make surveys, I am sure they are influenced by the discussions in the forum as well and many other sources.

 

Any proof they got Editor "kind of running" on Linux except a word of random guy on the Internet? And ever heard before term "executive meddling"?

They could port Editor in no time at all, I don't doubt their coding skills, but if their managers kill the project there's little such coder can do. Plus not everyone is dedicated enough to take work home as I doubt they'd let do them porting in working hours.

As for cost of such venture I'd estimate it'd be $40k, $50k tops (including QA for at least 2 years). Not much considering millions UT has at its disposal.

//edit:

You know the drill.​

 

Quite the opposite. It's very frustrating to see everytime someone dares to bring up the topic in a legit and sane manner (@Teun), some troublemakers either try to FUD Linux or make predictions about future usage. Smartphones are the best example that you can't predict the technology more than a year ahead.

Linux has a future as long as there's a stable usage, even on the desktop (1-2%). And if actually some more people would care about privacy and trustworthy technology, it would be way higher. But that's none of my business.

So the only correct answer to this thread is: There is currently no plan to support the Linux editor, because the investment is too high for the profit.

FYI what I meant with a Debian based distribution: I use Debian at work, Ubuntu at home and tried Xubuntu for while. So what was your point? I can't speak for all Linux distributions, so I named the branch I'm most familiar with.

And so far I did not feed any of the trolls, did I?

 

They did it in a Ninja Camp. Can't find the source at the moment. It might have been covered in a video.

Interesting estimation, according to Unity the cost is a lot higher as they would need to sell a lot of pro licenses in order to cover the cost. My assumption is that Unity has a little more insight and experience for that kind of estimation.

 

Ohhhh BlackBerry gonna need a whole Walmart worth of lotion to sooth that burn!

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity3d-engine-to-linux.161635/#post-1107676

--Eric

 

Linux needs desktop acceptance to have a future in the same way that Windows needs OS X to have a future. The catch with people who like to throw around the word "FUD" is that they don't understand why their favorite platform is successful.

When someone buys a computer, they simply want it to work and run the applications/games they need. Until Linux has approached the degree of support for these that is found in Windows and OS X, it will have no future on the desktop.

You can cry "FUD", you can cry about privacy and trustworthy technology, etc all you want. It does not change anything because we need our computers to be useful and run the applications we need to run. Linux simply doesn't cut it at this time.

What makes Linux successful? It is a fantastic server platform due to the obscene amount of security you can achieve with a knowledgeable administrator and, most importantly, because it has been widely accepted by server applications. Offering these and being free is even better.

Mobile is largely the same as server. You have tons of applications and games available through the Android store.

 

Linux runs everything most normal people use. Many people just need a browser and office stuff. And all these people would get all they need with a base linux install, on windows they need much extra software (7zip, videolan, office, photoshop, nero, ...). And that stuff does not even update together with the OS, doh.

The main reason Windows is dominant is because in many countries you cannot buy a computer without it. If people had to pay for it separately, many more people would at least look at the alternatives.

I don't use Windows, but each computer I bought had it installed. So very shady contracts between MS and hardware sellers force me to pay for something I don't want. One should sue them!

Also, many Linux guys are the IT guy of their circles. I convert all young and smart people around me to Linux, the rest gets a Mac. My girlfriend uses Linux, her father will now get a Mac after he had to reinstall Windows for the 5th time in 5 years.

 

Reminds me of the joke "most people see a computer as a $2,000 facebook machine"

 

Our Android and iOS tablets run everything the average person needs as well. People are now moving towards mobile devices for their basic needs. If Linux had been at this state a decade ago it may have stood a very good chance.

As it is you don't need a normal computer system for most situations now.

A number of years ago Hewlett Packard tried to sell computers with Linux. I don't recall the distribution they tried to ship with the computers. It may have been Red Hat, but it has been too long now to recall precisely.

They weren't the only ones attempting it though. I also saw some really low cost computers, typically for sale at Sams Club or similar, that were shipping with Linux.

Why did they not catch on you might ask? When give the choice between Windows or Linux, people chose what they were familiar with. They picked Windows. A difference of $50 was not sufficient for most people.

Woe is us! Forced to buy OEM computers! Except for those of us who actually took the time to learn how to build and repair our own computers. Dell has stated in the past that their OEM licenses for Windows equates to $50. You would save more than that building your own systems.

The solution for your father was to give him an OS he couldn't break rather than teach him properly? My dad's computer is running Windows 7. It has been doing so for years with no re-installs because I taught him how to avoid viruses, malware, etc and programs to install that prevent such things.

My mother is much the same way. She has a tendency to state that she isn't very good at computers, but she never gets a virus on her system nor any form of malware. She knows how to avoid them because I've taught her how to.

 

Most OEMs did this, because they just wanted to get a better deal from MS.

It is my girlfriends father.
Windows get slower the longer it is installed. It is 2014, but this is still a fact. Lot of garbage piles up until it breaks. Pro users can prevent the worst of this, because they know how the system works and fix problem as they manifest. And they know which parts of a HP printer driver DVD are needed and which to avoid. Amateurs collect problems that influence each other to the state of being unfixable.
He has lots of toys, so many broken or aborted or unneeded driver installs. I have repaired this computer many times, but sometimes it is enough, then I let him reinstall it.

I have seen many Windows PCs where Windows installer service is corrupt. These don't get Windows updates anylonger. But no warning or anything for the poor amateurs. Same for many other classics of Windows problems. When you have all that classics at the same time, reinstall or switch to an OS without such problems. OS switch is a permanent solution, while reinstall is a temporary one.

[rant]
Things like DLL-hell can just be considered a joke if you come from a OS with a smart design.
[/rant]

 

Thus why I use CCleaner. It is free and easily strips out most of the cruft from the registery and various other locations.

Microsoft's anti-piracy measures are typically the source of my problems. I've started resorting to methods to prevent it from annoying me when I am using legit licenses yet it decides to randomly de-authenticate.

What makes the methods I use even more awesome is that Windows Update still functions perfectly.

Reinstalling for me is somewhat more common than my parents, but only because I try to semi-regularly move to newer hardware to keep pace with features both in games and engines.

Switching to Linux is simply not an option for me at this time though I have looked into it before. I have numerous games that are not supported in Wine, I regularly use Visual Studio, and neither Unity nor Unreal have officially supported Linux editors.

 

CCleaner ftw!

My computer de-authenticated last night. I called the hotline, a robot asked for my key, asked if this was the only machine using it, then re-authenticated and hung up. I wish it talked slightly faster... I also wished it asked for a reason that may have caused the de-auth, because my machine was rebuilt and I think the software noticed.

If they don't fix their stuff I'm gonna go for !non-pirateOS

 

I hate using a phone or I would probably use that method.

Though to answer your question, Windows ties the authentication process to the hardware. I believe specifically the motherboard configuration. I've seen it de-authenticate when I've enabled or disabled the onboard ethernet.

 

For us it is different. It depends what you develop. For most development things using Linux is just much more productive (I use QT for GUI and boost, so my stuff still runs on Windows). I use VMs for VC++ (for these crap projects where someone used MS C++ instead of real C++). Dualboot for games. But I hate each time I have to boot this crap OS :-(

But for amateurs, giving them a Mac solves many problems. It is much harder to break them. My friend had to help his girlfriend all the time, because she is new to computers. Now he switched her to Mac, all problems solved.

 

Haha... that's a bit much. Is the MAC not enough?

 

Eh, it's not that bad on win7 as it was on xp or 98.

MAC can be changed with special software. Though I agree that authentication should be linked to things that you change extremely rarely like MB make and model and maybe processor. RAM/GPU change shouldn't trigger it.

Though if I'd be in charge of M$ I'd probably make authentication not used in any way. Your software will be pirated, no matter what drm you'll make. Sooner you'll accept that fact, the better for you.

Getting back to topic, as I've previously stated that porting would be relatively easy and cheap. If companies such as Epic and Crytek could port their tools to Linux, why Unity can't? And 10-20% of users of UE4 are using Linux, so I'd say with marketshare Unity has it'd change into 15-25% of users after port is made available.

 

It is likely the fault of the middle-ware. Unreal 4 is completely devoid of embedded middle-ware. Yes, you can use middle-ware with it using their plugin system, but the core engine itself does not depend on it.

 

Except Unity either own or have access to sources of their middleware (beast, shuriken, mono)

 

I'd expect it to be done by a team of 4. 2 Linux gurus, 1 unity admin to oversee the project and the original developer of the middleware. Oh and also...

you know you want to.

 

I am going to say my 2 cents here -
I think that Linux is the future.

Here is why I say that -

Big companies are embracing Linux. Companies such as Microsoft, Valve , Facebook/Oculus, and Google.

Give it a few years time and Linux will be a main stay on Desktops. Not to mention that companies like CD Projekt Red and Valve have started to support Linux versions of their games.

However I think Linux needs to be useable by the average user.

I thought Unity Tech already supported Linux as a targeted platform?

Or are we talking about a Linux version of the Unity editor?

 

I can see Valve backing steam, but why Microsoft?

 

Yeah, seems like bs to me as well.

 

They ignored it too long.
Customers were lost. Windows Servers not compatible with standards other servers of a company use, so Windows Servers got replaced. Same for cloud, many people that need cloud don't want a Windows Server, so to sell your cloud you have to adapt.

 

Haha right, I totally forgot about that and I had to do a paper on this a semester or two ago... there's an entire business dedicated to making windows and linux server machines interoperate. I forgot about that. I was stunned momentarily by the thought of microsoft embracing a competitor.

Maybe that'll change if steamOS goes anywhere and releases that damned controller already!

 

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." - Linus Torvalds.

Same will happen to Unity if they continue to ignore Linux market. They'll fade into obscurity just like Windows Server did and people will move onto UE4 and CryENGINE despite some royalties attached.

I'd say they're pushing their luck already. If they start real work on the port (and not once a year like ninja camp), I think they'll be fine. Due to UE4 and CryENGINE chipping into Unity market space with easy subscription model (and cheaper than Pro subscription as well) already less people bought Unity5. I personally know 10 different people from 2 different studios who instead of upgrading to U5 "upgraded" either to Crytek's or Epic's solution. I bet there are more people like that.

Unless Unity does something radical, there may not be enough people for Unity 6 ever being real. Though porting editor to Linux when all other engines either AAA or indie have Linux SDKs/editors already is hardly radical at this point.

 

Windows will vanish, but it will take very long. So no short term problem for Unity. And the games run on Linux, so even less of a problem.

But the best devs I know are all Linux die-hards. They would never dual boot. So Unity does not have them as customers. They would probably do awesome games.

But Unity has to give access to the source. And that will also solve the Linux editor problem without costing them money.

They have to open the source because not doing it is bad for business. They get money for the source atm. But look at UE4, I bet the work the community would do for them for free in new exciting features and bug fixes would be much more valuable then the money for source access they currently make.

Always argue with money if you want to convince a company ;-)

 

It's hard to comment on the last few things said. Those engines are certainly cheaper, and for people like me who are hobbyists and not likely to sell anything, $1500 for entry and $600 for maintenance is a bit much. Royalties is a silly argument, their presence isn't a factor until you're making money, and it'll never be a cost to you since it's a percentage of the sales. If you have to deal with royalties, you're a success. In unity, however, I'm just having fun with an easy to use 3D engine that supports C#. To match the investment ($2100) in UE4 would take how many months? And if you made no money by then, it might be best to stop there.

An indie license would be nice. Can I downgrade my upgrade costs until I'm making a few thousand dollars off of it? That'd be nice

 

Windows may vanish, but Microsoft won't. They have enough customers for their other products that they could likely abandon their OS and not be too adversely affected.

I could imagine them producing their own Linux distribution for enterprise customers and marketing it in the same way that Red Hat does. Support options are already a good source of their income.

I bet they would make a lot of people happy if they ported Visual Studio to Linux too.

 

Heh, VS 2013 Community is the sole reason I even looked at the Win10 Tech Preview. If they ported it to Linux, that'd be fantastic (even better if they used Clang as the compiler).

 

Something that I don't think has been touched on yet but really should be is the price of Windows. I do think in a worst case scenario Microsoft would likely begin giving away licenses for their OS.

Microsoft's income from their OS is after all not primarily from selling it but from selling support. It was enough of an income to justify supporting Windows XP, which is pretty ancient as computer OSes go, up until April 2014.

That's almost thirteen years of support and more than enough time for businesses to prepare for migration to newer versions.

 

Is QT not an option for you? It's available on linux and it's probably the most light weight environment I've ever used. It's got code completion for C! It also uses Clang

I wouldn't mind a free barebones version of windows that didn't come with so much bloatware and programs like office that I'm never going to use. It'd also be nice if I could kick internet explorer off there.