Question Building for Linux ARM

Hi!

I do appreciate everyone's feedback here.

I would like to point out that Linux ARM is available and supported for every LTS version since 2020 LTS via the Unity Embedded Linux build that is part of the premium runtimes.

If an engine/runtime/framework is available publicly for compilation for ARM linux, that doesn't mean that it's supported. Support means that if you have an issue with what you want to do or how the software performs on your platform, we'll help you fix it, defined turnaround times etc. We don't refuse to support ARM64. The contrary. Instead of throwing it out there for anyone to grab (and potentially have problems with, due to the complexity of different systems), we do actually support it, via support contracts that meet the needs of the particular customer and the platform they use. We also support various other platforms (iOS, Android...) that are ARM64 based. But these ecosystems are more defined (like the Android HAL) than Linux which is more of a wild west of window systems, graphics drivers, input etc. There are some patterns we are seeing, though, and the more we learn about our customers' ARM Linux systems, the easier it will become in the future to define a lowest common denominator and widen the availability.

With ARM Linux being available through our enterprise offerings, we can ensure that we support customers in some capacity when they decide to use an ARM Linux platform. These customers are mostly enterprise customers that build embedded systems or server applications that are unique and require custom tweaks and long term support.

I do understand the need to access and get started with Linux ARM without necessarily signing up for a multi-year enterprise support contract. I'm a tinkerer myself and I love prototyping with Unity and things like a Raspberry Pi. We're working on making it easier/faster to access the ARM linux build, but as of today it's not considered an out-of-the-box type product.

If you're interested in accessing it, please contact us. A simple first step is to discuss your platform details and for us to create a sample build of your Unity project (or a demo that we can provide). This helps us decide what the support effort would be to support your custom platform. We are working with embedded Linux/ARM64 customers that range from prototypical devices and applications to large car manufacturers that use Unity as the HMI runtime in millions of vehicles.

We'd encourage you to not be discouraged by the "wall" that we currently have for access to ARM Linux. Feel free to contact us. We'd love to learn about your ARM Linux project, provide a package that works for you and also learn more about the market for ARM Linux so we can make our products more accessible and readily available in the future.

 

It is "under consideration", as in, we put that there to collect feedback from users to see how big the interest is, what devices it would run on etc. Under consideration doesn't mean that it's planned.

Other than that, the ARM linux build is available for embedded systems as described above. This can do everything the desktop Linux Player can do and more.