Future Plans?

Hi!

As a Linux user (and Unity Pro customer since 3.x if that's worth anything) I'm incredibly happy about having a native port of Unity that I can get actual work done with. I'd even say it's working better than my Linux build of UE4.9 right now.

However, I also encountered a showstopper issue, so to ship anything, I'll have to either install Windows as a dual-boot option or hope for a future build to fix it. From experience, Unity games also tend to have some issues here and there that players will ask to be fixed, so...

Has there been any statement on future plans for Unity's Linux port yet?

• Will it remain just a free time or hacking week project of a few developers in the team and the best we can hope for is getting the one-off build every now and then?

• Is it a pilot project to judge interest / value in a Linux port and is there an upcoming date when a decision will be made?

• Or is it already decided and UT is merely lacking some team members that could be dedicated to supporting the Linux port?

 

I dont use Unity because of that. I only use linux and im afraid that unity for linux is just a test or something like that

 

This is a very good question. I eagerly await an answer to this post.

 

I also would like to know what's going on.

I had refused to use Unity before the Linux Editor was available. After the release, I tried the Linux Editor and was very pleased. So, I decided to purchase Unity Professional solely because the Linux Editor was working well for me.

Therefore, I'm also very interested in hearing the answers to Cygon4's questions. Linux users would like to have the predictability which is now shipped with all other releases via the roadmap.

I'm just hoping I didn't waste my money buying the professional edition. As it is now, it seems like there are only 2 people at Unity who are working on the linux version (Natosha and Levi).

Can we please get a better sense of the roadmap for linux please? We know it is "experimental," but what exactly does that mean? How long will the experiment last? How will the experiment be validated? How often will updates be made?

 

Good question...

Same here, I ran into a couple of bugs with the login screen not working, but after I got around those, the editor worked perfectly. (Well, with a couple of odd quirks... I'll be doing a write-up soon that will address them)

 

Hello again!

Question is always one and the same: Is that really so difficult to provide us with a good quality software for Linux? I mean not only Unity Technologies, but for example Adobe with their Photoshop. The most important arguments I hear are: too many distros and a tiny market share.

It seems the first argument doesn't exist in UT, but still the problem is the Linux market share. Nobody knows how many Linux OSes are used in the world on desktops. For example, I use two Linux OSes and soon I will get at least one more. In other words, it will be at least three openSUSEs on my desktop computers. Will my operating systems be in the official statistics? And those I installed for other people? I see on forums many people going to Linux (especially Mint) after bad experiences with Windows 10. Even people who didn't like or were afraid of Linux start to install this OS. And I'm not surprised because it's common sense. And still the famous 2%? Could we get any internal UT stats?

 

Then again... The "2% install base" could easily be a million people. (That's actually something I like seeing! )

And as for the "too many distros" issue, I guess they could give the engine some standard cross-distro dependencies (such as... XOrg, LibGL, blah, blah blah is requirtred on your distro to run Unity, use ldd to check your dependencies) or something like that, that way they cater to the majority. (Well, unless you're running something like tiny core or puppy linux, of which both have major issues with OpenGL drivers!)

And actually, in the past, OpenGL support was one of the main reasons for staying away from linux. These days, it's almost guaranteed something OpenGL will run 10x better on Linux than on Windows! (That also includes a few odd instances where Mesa3D has decided "let's software emulate xxx extension for you..." and that was how I got burned by my mini laptop, thinking it supported GLSL... ) And likewise, there's no excuse in that department anymore to not support Linux.

As for internal UT stats, we would have to wait for a UT member to answer that one. Still, would be interesting to see the user split. (It's probably something like "90% windows, 7% mac, 3% linux..." )

 

I know, I know. But thank you for your post that is trying to answer to my questions/doubts. The internal UT stats can be revealed or not. Who knows maybe Unity3D on Linux is so popular that it's not good for a big company such as Unity Technologies to show it in public. Unity Technologies and other big companies have unclear connections with Microsoft. There's a big money involved. I saw Windows 10 promotion many times on the Unity forum. You see
Unity Game Developer Contest 2016
that helps Microsoft with promotion their horrible product. Many people are wise enough not to upgrade their OSes, so Microsoft seek ways to force users to do that. It's dictatorship I cannot accept.

I'm waiting for Vulkan API to eliminate Windows as the only platform for gaming.

Only 2 people work over Unity 3D Editor for Linux? For sure, UT still don't treat us, Linux users, seriously!

 

I am very interested to hear from Unity what their plans with the Linux Editor are.

I know that Linux discussions have a strong tendency to get political. I know, it is very popular to have this discussion, but in this case I don't see how it can help in any way to get answers for those questions if the discussion drifts away.

 

Right! We want to get answers for those questions. Now I use UE4 because it's more suitable for me complex app, but having Unity 3D on Linux natively is important for many other users. I just support them. We want to be treated equally. Period.

 

I am interested in knowing the answers to some of these questions myself.