When will Linux become official?

I don't know if this is the correct place to ask this, if it's not, i'm terribly sorry.
When is searched for Unity3D on Linux i was pleasantly surprised that there actually IS
a Linux build of the engine. Before that i was planning to use Godot for a 2d project.
I've since downloaded the Linux port, and am very happy to report that it works quite wonderfuly on my Arch Linux laptop, using Wayland and bumblebee optimus... Quite an extreme environment for usual Windows/Mac software! But not a single problem so far, works great.

So my question is, since that this build seems to be running quite decent and it's been in development for over 2 years...when will Linux become officialy supported? Right now it's all tucked away in some forum post, and theres not a single mention of it on the site anywhere...
Are there any plans for this?

 

I'd love to know that too.

 

I'd love to know that three.

 

2017.1 would be great with Linux becoming official. I'd love to know that four.

 

Linux building/export is official, the unity *editor* is not official (out of beta?).
You guys posted this in the linux *editor* forums, just wanted to clarify if you meant the editor or actual platform support. Sorry wasn't clear from above posts....

 

So when the Unity Editor are going to be official? It works well and the 2017.x line is a good time to make it official.

 

I imagine it's more about available resources. If they support Linux officially, they'll need to release a Linux version along with every official version, and delay the others if they can't. That's a commitment, and given the current rate of Linux releases (one every 5+ other releases, generally), it's clear they aren't in that place yet.

I would expect to see releases in sync with main releases before the Linux editor becomes official. Of course, for our use, the Linux Editor was a large part of the decision to use Unity, so I'd love to see it happen ASAP. We have definitely run into issues with the Linux release lagging behind (e.g: the current build is broken for me, and previous versions are pre-4.5 support, which is a huge blocker right now).

 

Yes, you are probably right... If only more people used Linux, at least the same market share like that of Mc OS X.

 

I would love a world where Linux is the dominant OS, but until Linux natively runs Windows 10+ apps without flaw with no meaningful performance difference, it will not happen. So that needs solving.

 

Apps? Blender and Gimp run on Linux better. Blender is faster in general and Gimp at least starts faster. I can survive without Photoshop and do commercial jobs just like I don't use MS Office, only LibreOffice even if I'm forced to use Windows (our investors buy for us hardware with Windows). 90% people can live without those "Windows 10+ apps" but they don't know that and it IS a problem. And Linux developers/communities must get maturated. What we really need is a good Unity Editor for Linux, so it would be great to see the Linux Editor official.

The only problem I see is graphics drivers' support, especially I mean nvidia. Using openSUSE Tumbleweed is a true pain. Hope Intel will be much better, AMD will improve cooperation with Linux world and nvidia start to treat Linux seriously. The enterprise app I'm now working over will be on Vulkan only. Tested on a few platforms - works great.

By the way, in my country, 5% people use Linux (2017). It is a question of time I think.

 

5% people in total are using Linux but in programmers world its much different

According to stackoverflow survey 32.9 % are using Linux Desktop
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology-platforms

And 69.6% (top 1) are saying that Linux is most loved platform
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-platforms

I see all major programming platforms are supporting Linux because they know that its important

 

PL, you are right . I have always said, on the Unity forum too, that there is about 30% Linux users. I mean developers because developers are the people who can be interested in Unity3D. But the problem is that game developing is different and focused on M$ only. The graphics driver support must be much better for Linux, especially for rolling releases like openSUSE TW.

 

I would argue here. There's a huge piece of market that belongs to mobile and social nets. None of those market shares belongs to M$, and I doubt that it is really necessary to use M$ Windows to develop for that platforms.

 

When I switched to Linux in 2015 losing access to Windows apps was my top worry, too.

Turns out it couldn't matter less to me. Sublime Text, Blender, Firefox, Thunderbird, VirtualBox, Steam & Krita had native Linux versions. Unity and Unreal Engine, too. All it took in the end was a new Twitter client (Choqok) and a new IDE (JetBrains Rider).

But I expect few actual users will reach this point because the view that switching will be disruptive and inconvenient has historically been true and is hard to get past.

 

Windows apps aren't problems on Linux. The worst thing is that if you do something much more serious than games for children and some day Unity Technologies stops supporting Linux Editor, you will be left with nothing. That's why, Linux Editor should be officially supported by Unity Technologies and and should be equal to Windows and Mac Editors.

 

Why with nothing? With UE4.

 

Why? If you have been working over project for example two years and you will be in the future, you will know why. So if UE4, only from beginning. Converting my project from Unity to UE4 is a huge work because it is nto a simple game for kids. And is UE4 better for supporting Linux?

 

But it's better than nothing, isn't it?

There are some issues with UE4, but it has strong advantage: open and almost free source code. Actually, I can name main disadvantage of UE4 on linux: missing official Epic Launcher with Marketplace.

 

the problem about people switching to linux is that virtually no game is supported in linux.... im looking im my Steam Library of over 300 games, im looking on my Linux boot and i see maybe 10.... 15 games tops that have an install button for Linux, and these arent just random games, most of them are pretty popular and wellknown games, both AAA and Indie....

if games ran on Linux more often, more people would convert

heck, if all games started supporting Linux most of the PC world would probably convert... but that there is the issue, games DONT support Linux, thats why the only real people with linux are programmers

 

I haven't had any trouble with graphics drivers on Linux so far. Bought a GTX 1080 within a month of its release and it ran just fine with the proprietary nvidia drivers, on a multi-monitor setup no less.

Going by SteamDB, 2500 out of 15000 games have Linux support. I've been pretty lucky with my own library, most of the games I have work on Linux.



I am a bit surprised that Microsoft can publish a new OS that does heavy surveillance, shows people ads, and downloads whatever change/upgrade Microsoft wants it to - and users just shrug and accept it.

But it's good that Valve at least put an alternative out there that users can move to and that Valve can push if Microsoft threatens their market with a mandatory Windows Store. As a developer I try side with open distribution channels.

 

Getting a little off-topic here, folks...

 

I want to also lend support for the Linux editor becoming official. I would likely encourage more devs at our studio to use it were it officially supported, same as F#. So far it's not without its issues but it allows me to work from linux which makes me really happy. This would also mean that more Unity3D devs can and should be assigned to this part of the editor (and IL2CPP support for F# ), which would be great. Also, I'd be careful about using statistics about the current linux user-base. It may or may not be representative, because maybe people could be avoiding it simply because it lacks official support, or maybe they didn't even know it existed. So the numbers may be biased.

 

This was my primary reason about 8 months ago to chose another environment -- I've used quite a few "Linux betas" that were more or less a passionate pet project of 1-2 developers in a company, only to have the work get canned once those developers left for greener pastures. This of course always left me in an awkward situation if I hadn't shipped the final product at the time.

On that note, as my current game is getting close to shipping, I've come back to re-evaluate things.

Let's bring it back on topic, then. If you get hit by a bus, what happens to the Linux editor beta?

 

I'd like to say that I'm interested, too. Windows gives me nightmares atm.

 

then is there an official response from the developers?

 

Hi, folks.
Thanks for the support!
There's no news yet - we'll keep you posted.

 

Also curious about this. Will linux builds silently stop shipping when one or two key devs leave Unity?

 

I really hoped for a fix release in 2017 but it looks like we have to wait and keep the voice up that there are users out there who love the platform-independence - not only for the player. I mean we are near to a suitable release, aren't we?

 

That's another very important question. Would be unfortunate. I've been testing the linux editor off and on and it's definitely come a long way. I'll be very excited when it becomes official and I can get the linux version from the main downloads page with the others.

 

Can Unity provide the Linux Editor in a Docker container please.
It would also be good if we could have the latest 10xx Nivdia Docker container with the Linux Editor.

Installing software and keeping your system clean and lean is a breeze with containers.

 

Any news about this?

Is Linux supported in Unity game engine and editors?

Will it be supported this year 2018 or ever?

How can one start exploring Unity gsmes development in Linux/Ubuntu16.04/17.04 onwards?

 

Yes. To both. You can find the links to the editor in the link below. Additionally though the editor for the platform may be in a beta state the ability to release games for the platform has been stable now for years (at least as long as I've used Unity).

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-on-linux-release-notes-and-known-issues.350256/

 

Thanks for your replies, I'm still confused about the Linux support cause in this page it says "Unity can be downloaded [is supported only in] Windows and MacOS: https://unity3d.com/get-unity/update, nothing said about #Linux download or support options..?

If beta is available for Linux, why doesn't the page say so?

 

Well... Linux is used MOSTLY by developers and something used for creating video games should have linux version. I know that cca 80% of computers use Windows and only cca 2% use linux. On other hand, cca 90% of linux users are developers meanwhile only 12% of Windows users have minimal programming experience.What is interesting is cca 75% of Windows user have no idea what is difference between interpreted and compiled language. Even more interesting is that 25% of Windows users have no idea about code in general and are happy with "It works, have no idea how".

 

To me this seems like an apparent paradox since only a few serious developers would take a leap of faith to actually use an unofficial editor in production and while the official support for the editor won't happen till developers use it in production. I could be wrong though.

 

> To me this seems like an apparent paradox since only a few serious developers would take a leap of faith to actually use an unofficial editor in production and while the official support for the editor won't happen till developers use it in production. I could be wrong though.

I don't think you're wrong. I no longer use Unity on my Linux machines, but I first began using Unity it under Linux.

 

The Unity editor is actually the only part of my workflow which still requires Windows. I'm not the type to engage in ad-hominem against that OS; but I can say that Linux is by-and-large more efficient for multimedia stuff, and even better, more configurable.
I understand the difficulty in porting the editor to an additional OS (I'm sure Mac was painful enough), but the fact that Unity has the courage and technical skill to do it is a large part of what convinced me to use it to begin. Let's be cautious about presuming that the editor "works great" at this point, though; as devs, we all know that the fact that one user doesn't see it does not meant that the problem isn't there.

 

Nope, Mac was the original. There wasn't a Windows version until Unity 2.5.

--Eric

 

Wow, really? I honestly had no idea.

I guess Windows was the painful part then.

Still, this implies plenty of familiarity and experience with *nix kernels (BSD in Mac's case), so here's hoping for the best.

 

I'm also curious when it will be officially supported. When I started using it a couple of years ago it had a number of bugs that made it difficult to use, but I still got stuff done. Like several others here, unity is the one and only productivity application I use, want to use, and isn't officially supported on linux. The only other linux incompatible software I actually want to use is a handful of games.

Also noted is that I use Windows, OSX, and Ubuntu on a regular basis, and I prefer Ubuntu to both of the other operating systems in every single last way except for application compatibility. That said, the beta version of the untiy editor works pretty well for me now, and I'm happily building games with it. Many thanks to the devs at Unity that have been pushing it forward, I may have switched to Unreal by now if not for you.

 

I am new to all this Unity game development. And although I am not a developer and don't have much time for gaming (too many other chores at home), I am interested in understanding more about this environment. As there is a "beta" version of this Unity, where can I find this ? I would install it on my Linux powerful desktop at home. Thanks

 

It'll be in the very last post on this blog: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-on-linux-release-notes-and-known-issues.350256/
I have historically had very little trouble with it; but remember that it's technically still in beta, and there's usually a reason.

 

Is HDRP working in the Linux Unity Editor? I started a project using HDRP (2018.3) and didn't see any models in the viewport when loading the sample scene.

 

I believe HDRP is a WIP with Vulkan support.

 

Is there something for me to set to get it to work? I'm using an nvidia 1080 with the nvidia drivers on a Linux Mint 19 machine.

 

Nvidia drivers with the support of Vulkan, i suppose version 415

 

Oh I see.. thank you! I'm just getting back into Linux (spent half a lifetime there in the film industry). I had forgotten how crazy fast it is... now I don't want to go back to Windows... but I have a little project going in Unity.. let's see if I can make this work.