Linux Support :D

Guys. If it's a cost-benefit thing, it doesn't matter how fragmented it is, whether X or Y likes it, etc. It's the question of whether the money spent on porting it could result in a better ROI if it was put to improving performance or features to help compete with other engines and further proliferate on platforms it already exists on. Yes, I also think it would be super-cool to have it for linux (though my guess is if we have to wait for the easy-to-monetize-linux that has/will have a unified installbase in the big millions, we'll have to wait for MeeGo).

 

I believe there's hope still, if Union wants to sell games for set-top boxes, they'll most likely need a player for linux as that's what most of these boxes run. Maybe linux on ARM even.

 

That and Linux is the gateway to a lot of platforms now Meego, set top boxes, Desktop linux, etc

 

Some other sites for people looking for commercial Linux games:
http://lin-app.com/category/games
http://penguspy.com

Incidentally, I've been doing some independent market reasearch, and nearly everywhere I go the percentage of Linux game sales is around 8-20%, it can even outsell Mac games at times: http://linuxgamingnews.org/2009/11/25/interview-with-frictional-games-amnesia/

And yet, after all this, Unity claims one of the reasons they don't support Linux is due to lack of a market *sigh*.

 

The Unity development tool should be available to Linux, instant pool of usually good quality developers.

 

If Unity were available for Linux platform (at least to deploy on Linux... a cli only "compiler" would be enough imho) i'd buy it directly . Wouldn't even think twice. As it isn't, i'm thinking a lot before buying, and proably will end up sticking with the free version and waiting other engine like Shiva to become better (a matter of time to overreach unity graphical performance and optimizations imho).

So i'm basically using Unity while it's interesting to me, and as soon as other equivalent options arrive i'll be quitting Unity.

Mono is developed basically for Linux, Physx historically support Linux better than Mac (only recently they are supporting mac, but i don't know how the unity devs could compile that old version of physx on a Mac, also, imho, physx isn't necessary at all, while other engines like bullet are just as good, unless they are focusing "top games" market).

As an indie developer, i must say that unity is going on the opposite direction of that i expected. O'course it's the better engine this side of a million dollar, however, they should NOT focus on the "million dollar" market, because they will end up with an engine that is too much for indie developers, and too little for big companies, as i'm 100% sure that none of them care about spending more than a million dollars on an engine.

Shiva on the other hand, is going exactly on the direction I expect. It need some hard work though.

It's not bad to dream big, however, Unity need it's own identity, if i had a competent team of (indie) devs, i would not even use a "high-level" engine, i'd simply stick with Ogre+OpenAL+Bullet... I wonder if big companies at least analyze Unity as an option. And i wonder how many indie devs hear about Unity but doesn't use it, because of it's "enterprise" focus.

Linux community has some quality programmers, and it's very easy to group people together to do something great. They are much more persistent and they don't care about sharing knowledge with others.

That's my opinion.

Thanks.

 

All the games in the just released Humble Indie Bundle 2 run under Windows, Mac, and Linux. Another opportunity missed for Unity developers because we can't build for Linux.

 

Indie Bundle 2 does as well as the last one, then a big financial amount missed...

 

Check out avg Linux payment:

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Linux users pay more! support it.

 

Instead of looking at it like it's just a daunting task to support Linux, what it would cost, etc, JUST DO IT

 

apart from the humble bundle doing awesome for linux users. Is total F.U.D. that linux users dont support indie gamers. We do more than most, because we can relate to indies / "the little guy".

Also, Google showcased unity3d and they expect it to be available for the ChromeOS linux distro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKaJ6jEPXGE

so if its available for chromeOS then it would be available equally to linux (because is the same base), through the chrome browser. So i expect the Unity3d guys to not break their deal with google.

so is this true or not? or unity plans to back out from google?

 

Unity also publishes stand alone, allow that under Linux!

 

http://somethingmild.blogspot.com/2010/04/linux-users-do-buy-things-after-all.html

 

While I don't think this changes the argument too much, a lot of people are considering number of end users of a game as what Unity requires as incentive to make a Linux Version.

It's not.

Unity is interested in potential Pro users that would get the engine who wouldn't before due to adding Linux deployment support.

Showing that Linux games sell well, or that Linux Users are willing to spend more money per game doesn't strengthen or weaken your argument. You should be showing that people are holding off on buying Unity and going with Shiva instead due specifically to Linux support.

 

It hurts in some way to see that Shiva3D supports Linux and is even planning to make the integrated editor native for Linux. As seen above Linux users are alreay 1/3 of the market. That said: if you are an Indie developer without much money (except for licensing Unity Pro) you can only produce a game for Windows Mac, while Shiva3D licensees can produce a game for Windows/Mac/Linux and therefore make larger profit (which can be essential for financing the next project). At least a Linux player for Unity would be nice.

 

Well maybe this may be an incentive to port it to linux, or at least make a plugin linux compiler.

Commodore is back and are about to release an onslaught of mega powerful computers, including the Amiga with Workbench 5 OS, which runs on a linux kernel. So this may be a viable platform for new blood.

 

that wouldn't really be favorable cause that would require another platform.
"basing on" does not make the player run as you can trivialy see with Android "which is basing on a linux kernel" too but thats basically about it

 

I'm surprised nobody else picked this up, but last night, one Tom Higgins, or @higgyb, posted on Twitter these words:

So the question is, why is the Product Evangelist for Unity installing Linux? Well, maybe he's installing Apache on it and running a web server, but I know I'm totally reading into this.

 

Unity should allow the publication to Linux.

We are starting production of educational games. Here in Brazil the federal government is distributing free Linux notebooks for school children.

Automatically lost a great market to work. If only the Webplayer to run on Linux, would be a great help.

Linux can not reach a lot of common users. However, he affects the niche very interesting.

 

One of the misconceptions of Linux users is that they are only interested in using software that they didn't have to pay for, whether it's legal or not. The non-Enterprise Linux community is often perceived as a cesspool of digital pirates and thieves, and promoting such a community by writing software for it is somehow supporting illegal software acquisition. I won't pretend to put words in Unity3d's mouth, but unless they are (or have someone on staff) that is an avid Linux user, it is difficult to battle preconceptions like these.

Let's hope that Tom Higgins falls in love with Linux, and decides he wants to personally run his software on his new Ubuntu box. I think that's the only way we'll ever see a Linux Port in the next year or two.

 

We mainly program for Linux it's just for games when we decide that we will stick with Unity and on market status there are 30 Million Linux users at the date of 2006 and the software center in Ubuntu Linux gets quite a tone of traffic plus the just opened a section for paid apps.

 

http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/...rms-linux-player-web-player-support?ref=title

Coming up on 3,000 votes, way more than double the second most requested feature.

 

Ive been working with Crossover Games(WINE) to get Unity 3 compatible,
at the moment we have Bronze Status, and as you can see from the screenshot its working pretty well

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=7152

There are still some issues with it, so if anyones interested, please goto that link and vote so we can get 100% compatibility,

I have also made a $500 pledge to get things serious.

 

But WINE support shouldn't be nessary, Linux is the most requested feature for Unity.

 

I've been able to run it under linux with plain wine: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=21585

I wouldn't call it usable, but it is an encouraging start.

Unity on linux would be great for Kiosk-like devices, which usually run an embedded version of linux and most of the time some some in-house solution from their builders for the GUI. As a graphic designer I found such solutions nightmarish, and the developers usually share the same feeling.

 

I'd like to play these games without rebooting my machine into windurrs.
Sort it out mate.

x

 

^ This. Seriously. Linux has a much bigger market than you know. It just so happens that many of us Linux users also have Windows PCs or Macs, but only because /we have to if we want to play PC games/. You can help to fix that!

I'm also a software developer and developing on Linux is so much better than Windows. Visual Studio is garbage and the entire Windows system makes me want to pull my hair out. Everything is borked. So no, competent developers do not prefer Windows or Mac. They settle for them because that's where the "market" is, but that is changing fast.

Yesterday I learned of Interstellar Marines by Zero Point Software. I had been playing Minecraft all day in Linux, but had to reboot into Windows for an hour just to play through Interstellar Marines' available previews. THEN, as soon as I finished, I had to reboot back into Linux (for my own sanity; Windows is SOOO SLOW). So yes, I think that there's a lot of potential for Unity to be ported to Linux and I would suggest it is made somewhat of a medium-to-high priority.

** APPEND **

Note that deciding that I'm in the mood for most games means I have to reboot and stop all of the other things I'm doing: browsing mailing lists and Web forums, writing code, listening to music, watching funny videos. I have to kill all of that, wait 10 minutes for Windows 7 to boot to a point where it will actually run something I ask it to... I don't want to wait that long to play the game, nor do I want to wait another 10 minutes for Windows to shutdown properly so that I can boot back into Linux to continue doing what I was before I decided I wanted to play a game. FIX THIS.

 

Thats an opinion you should keep to yourself.

 

He has every right to express his own opinions, very much like you do.

 

Not when it is insulting everyone who dislikes Linux.

 

"wait 10 minutes for Windows 7 to boot to a point where it will actually run something I ask it to... I don't want to wait that long to play the game, nor do I want to wait another 10 minutes for Windows to shutdown properly so that I can boot back into Linux to continue doing what I was before I decided I wanted to play a game. FIX THIS."

Actually that's a good idea - you should fix that.

 

Oh, forgot to quote this. Yeah, maybe if you don't have 900 applications start at start up, this won't happen... or its your computer being very crappy. If your computer takes 10 minutes to shutdown with windows 7, then its either a virus, or its your computer being a very VERY crappy computer

 

This thread has turned into more of an OS war. killer1390, if you don't like linux, then leave. If they do or don't support linux shouldn't even effect you, you're just raging at this point.

Seeing as there are 3 subjects on the topic of linux support in the wish list alone, and this thread is the most posted on thread in the wish list. I really think the developers should see that many of its users are very interested in Linux support.

 

I do like Linux. Its a great OS, I didn't mean to rage, but he called quite a lot of developers in this forum, incompetent, so I probably raged a little. Sorry about that bamccaig.

Well, seeing how its the most requested features ever for Unity, I am pretty sure there will be support for Linux sometime soon, but I doubt there are any plans as of yet.

 

Linux support is the only advantage of Shiva3D compared with Unity. :/

If games of Unity execute with Wine already help a lot.

 

Okay, I've been following this thread for a long time, but I've been procrastinating as to actually creating an account to reply to it, I figured I'd just wait it out since so many others had already voiced their opinions. But now I realize nothing is going to get done if I simply wait for everyone else to do it.

First of all, I'd like to start by replying to a few specific posts, so allow me to begin.

While I wouldn't word it quite as strongly as you, I agree to an extent. Programming Windows is pretty close to a nightmare. And I'm sure anyone who really gave it a try on Linux (And I don't mean dicking around for 5 minutes and going back to Windows because you have it already setup there), would agree that programming is much nicer on Linux. Libraries are easier to install, because they're all in the repositories, along with everything else you'll need. Debugging is also easier with the terminal (Don't try to argue that you can use the Command Prompt on Windows. The Command Prompt is a joke). Almost all Windows IDEs are also available on Linux, except for Visual Studio and Dev C++, and Dev C++ is 11 years outdated.

Now I'm sure there are still some people who like Windows better for programming, but opinions will differ on anything.

If everyone kept their opinions to themselves, nothing would be done about anything, and there would be no progress in anything. It's not wrong to disagree with an opinion, but it is wrong to say people should keep their opinions to themselves. I agree he shouldn't have forced the statement the way he did saying anyone that didn't agree is incompetent, but that doesn't stop his right to express his opinion.


And now I'd just like to say, as someone who's been a Linux user for about 2 years, and has been 100% Windows free for a month, I'd love to see Linux support for Unity3D. Since Unity3D is available for both Windows and Mac, I'm assuming some sort of cross-platform widget toolkit (wxwidgets for example) is being used for the developer UI, whether or not the particular widget toolkit you're using is compatable with Linux, I don't know (wxwidgets is), but if not, it doesn't demand an entire rewrite to port to a different toolkit (wxwidgets, Qt, or GTK+, for example, all of which will work on Windows Linux, and Mac (though GTK+ looks a little ugly and out of place on Windows)).

As for the player, which I assume is the main part people are requesting, it's written with OpenGL, and I don't know what libraries are being used in Unity3D, but I assume since they're all Mac and Windows compatable, most if not all of them are also written for or compatable with Linux, (Mac and Linux programs are often more similar than Linux and Windows programs, because Mac and Linux are both Unix-based, Mac being built directly on top of Unix, and Linux being a kernel based on Minix, which is very similar to Unix). But anyway, that leaves my understanding to be the problem is that you don't know how to effectively distribute it, since there are so many packaging formats.

A tarball will work for everyone, but they're difficult to install, and the average user many not know how to do it without a step-by-step tutorial, and even then may fail at manually finding and installing the dependancies. Or you could make a .deb package, which will reach Debian, Ubuntu, and all Debian/Ubuntu based distros. Then there's .rpm, which would reach Fedora, OpenSUSE, and many other distros.

Now there's an easier way. If you simply release the tarball, package maintainers for each distro will make the packages for you, and have them put in the distro's repositories, making installation a breeze.


On to the part that matters to Unity3D developers. The money.
Now I'm sure your marketing team (or your common sense) has already told you this, but more market = more sales. Right now you have a competitor in Shiva3D, which is almost blatantly inferior to Unity3D, and yet they're making sales. People are buying Shiva3D licenses, because developers want to be able to release Cross-Platform games that work on all systems.

Game Developers want to make money just as much as Unity3D wants to make money. Developers know if they write their games in Shiva3D, it will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. They know if they write their game in Unity3D, their game will only run on Windows and Linux.

So for them the decision is easy, they can make a game and make it available to 95% of the market share, or they can make the same game, and make it available to 100% of the market share. Which will they choose?

I'm not going to go starting on about some Linux is the future rant, because nobody knows what will happen between now and the future. What I'm saying is, Linux is a (even if small) part of the current market share, and market share = profit.

 

I simply meant that what he said is an insult to many people on the forum. An opinion is one thing, but what he said is more like an insult, and less like an opinion. But like I said, I am sorry for raging, I should have said what I meant differently.

I am %100 positive that if that was the problem, we would have linux distributions out already.

Seems like there is a pretty big community here to me!

The problem is whether or not its enough of a profit to make the port worthwhile.

 

Look at the sales stats for this: http://www.wolfire.com/humble, http://www.humblebundle.com/ . The Linux sales were a large portion of the profit.
And look at the fourth update for this http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/ .
People DO want games for linux. There IS a market.

I think that Unity on linux could earn enough to make a profit, but I don't think that is the most important thing.

The Linux platform is waiting for support. When an app gives it support users will want to use that app, and this can bring it above its competitors. A large portion of developers use Linux, much moreso than normal users. People also don't like booting between OS's. If Unity comes to linux it will have an edge over games that aren't on linux, and development tools that aren't on linux.

This will give in a greater market share and more developers, and thus eventually more profits. I really think this would be worthwhile.

 

I do believe it would be worthwhile myself. But I am pretty sure that its still the reason Unity doesn't port.

 

... and whats with all of these people making an account to post ONE thing and then never posting again?

 

I've already taken appart the world of goo incorrectness: Thats just their sales!
Those sales don't include steam, big fish games, impulse and mac games store (pretty obivously as already steam on its own sold magnitudes more than their collective sales there and on big fish it was in the top 10 for quite some time too which from what I recall means a 5+ figure sales range weekly)

Its pretty clear that their page is primarily visited by linux users cause they simply have no other way, but windows - osx users are rather uncommon to buy it there cause they have their standard channels and thats not the "5 million distinct platforms" path forced upon linux users at that time or on platforms without ubuntu store.


perhaps UT should make a vote: "Would you pay $399 for non pro, $1499 for pro addon to get Linux platform deployment" and then use this to evaluate the real desire to get it among the userbase (with some form of binding votes like preorder selling and refunding if it becomes clear that it won't work out), a reasonable approach as linux has an even smaller target userbase than iOS and Android and by the end of this year potentially also a smaller install base than android (compared to iOS its definitely the case due to the fragmentation on incompatible kernel versions, 64bit users without 32bit libs and different distros)

 

Why would it be expensive to port it in the first place?
Isn't unity almost if not completely based on cross platform and open source technology?
Mac OSX is UNIX, Linux is UNIX, shouldn't it be fairly easy?
Popular distributions such as Ubuntu are even starting to have a Propriety "For Sale" Sections.
I don't see why Unity couldn't be easily sold there.
Flash works on Linux, HTML5 works on Linux, why doesn't Unity?
Am I missing something here?

 

No.

There are similarities but it's not that easy; sharing elements of Unix isn't the whole story by any means. Unity isn't a simple command-line utility.

Because they haven't programmed it to run on Linux.

--Eric

 

No?
Isn't it using Mono and OpenGL?
And whatever else its using is at least cross platform with Win and Mac, and then somewhat likely Linux aswell.

 

A large part of Unity's functionality comes from our own code and commercial middleware (eg, the PhysX physics system is a commercial product, not open source). All of this is potentially portable, licences permitting, but a Linux port would be a substantial undertaking.

 

Linux support would make unity the best affordable engine ever. Ability to deploy on all popular platforms would be a huge bonus.

 

Hello

First i wish to say , good job for this cool Game engine.

I am working on Unity since the release of Unity 3.
And i am A BIG BIG Ubuntu user , when i boot on windows its just for working on Unity.
(Buy the way , stop saying Linux because MacOs is made with GNU/Linux too)

I readed all reply's of this thrad.
And a question of someone is very interesting.
Some one asked where is GNU/Linux most popular in Europe or in America.
Ubuntu is very popular in Europe.
And the most free/opensource OS made with GNU/Linux is Debian.
Debian is popular all over the world , but not more popular than Microsoft.

And the statistic's who some pepole post in this thread are false.
You will never find exactly statistic's of Ubuntu or Debian users.
So the pepole who are posting statistic's find on the web , just stop that.

I wish to see Unity for Ubuntu too.
But guys give the Developers a chance to do it .

And a little tip for the Unity Developers ,
If you wannt to make unity for Ubuntu , just ask some help to independent Ubuntu Developers.
I am sure they will help you.
Sorry for my poor english.

Good luck to all.

 

It is not.

--Eric

 

you mean the first ever.
No commercial middleware has official linux support if any at all.

The last commercial one with community backed linux support was TGE over half a decade ago wasn't it.

Also unity already deploys to all popular platforms from a non-server point of view as far as I'm aware: Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, Wii, PS3, XBox 360

 

I thought Shiva3d supported linux.