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Unity Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available
- bobajeff 11y ago"Today’s build is what we call an experimental build; future support is not yet guaranteed. Your adoption and feedback will help us determine if this is something we can sustain alongside our Mac and Windows builds." I think we all know the future of this then.
- x5n1 11y agoyay!
- yarper 11y agoIt's an unfortunate title for this post since unity is something altogether different for a lot of linux users see: https://unity.ubuntu.com/about/ https://unity.ubuntu.com/about/ Though there is a certain appreciable irony in having two totally different things named unity.
- cm-t 11y agoYes, note: This is about Unity3D, not Unity Desktop
- wjoe 11y agoEven in terms of "Unity the game engine" it's confusing. Unity has supported building for Linux for a long time, and the majority of Unity games have been released for Linux. This is specifically the editor for creating games, which was not previously available.
- thearn4 11y agoRight, this is actually the part that confused me. I didn't realize that the editor was not previously available for Linux.
- jerrac 11y agoI still often think of the game engine, before I think of the gui when I hear "unity".
- aceperry 11y agoSame here. In fact, I use the standard Unity based Ubuntu on my desktop only. I prefer to use a more traditional desktop environment like XFCE on all of my other machines and laptops. The Unity desktop is tolerable and not too difficult to get used to and switch back and forth from XFCE, unlike windows 8. The Unity3D game engine announcement is awesome and they've been really changing the face of game dev.
- inversionOf 11y agoPeople who are aware of Ubuntu's Unity will also know that it obviously has long existed on Linux, so there is no confusion. Simple heuristics made abundantly clear more than any additional title clarification could. There are a lot of products in tech, and a huge number of name collisions. Context (such as the fact that the linked domain is unity3d) saves us all from having to add caveats and clarifications to every mention. Just as I can talk about Microsoft Windows without noting that I'm not talking about panes of glass.
- philtar 11y agoYou're a grade A anti-pedant. Please hang out on HN more.
- tsotha 11y agoThis is all true. The title could have had some more context, though, for people who have no interest in this particular Unity.
- cwyers 11y agoWell, the title has context -- the URL of the site hosting the title, Unity3D.com, is right next to the title, both on the main page of Hacker News and on the discussion page.
- outworlder 11y agoJust call it "Unity3D" and the confusion (mostly!) goes away.
- mmosta 11y agoI usually use unity3d to help narrow my google searches, however its important to note that almost all official literature refers to the platform as Unity, even more so given the recent emphasis on 2d games built w/ it.
- dysoco 11y agoActually, before Ubuntu's Unity we had the Unity distribution (http://unity-linux.org http://unity-linux.org). Granted it was never popular, and it definitively isn't now, but still.
- tempVariable 11y agoMy first thoughts were indeed of the Unity desktop. Then as I read the article, the confusion and realization set in.
- radicalbyte 11y agoAs it is for Windows people: it's an IoC container from Microsoft (and now "community supported").
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y agoYeah they ought to call them boring unity and exciting unity.
- andresmanz 11y agoNice, so Unity is finally an option for me. Now it would be nice if the Unreal editor had official Linux support as well. (I know there's Wine, but it didn't work too well for me.)
- wjoe 11y agoThe UE4 editor can be built for Linux, though they don't have official stable builds yet. https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Building_On_Linux https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Building_On_Linux
- solidpy 11y agoAre they comparable? I thought UE was geared towards FPS while Unity was more generalist.
- AimHere 11y agoBoth are general purpose engines and can be put towards a wide variety of game genres. Out of the box, UE4's editor comes with about half a dozen templates (FPS, top-down, side-scrolling platformer etc) for rudimentary intro projects. Unreal Engine is somewhat harder to use, but it's graphics engine is a bit closer to the cutting edge - it's the go-to engine for AAA devs these days. Unity's main user base (for people who use it to make games - some use it for academic ends, or for tech demos) tends to be the indie game scene. They do the same job, but differ in the technical aspects and ease-of-use, and business model (though both are aiming to lower the barriers to making games), and they tend to cater to different segments of the market.
- andresmanz 11y agoI think they are comparable, even if UE often gets presented with a first person view. Here's a large list of UE games that cover many different genres: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
- arca_vorago 11y ago
- pluma 11y agoI thought it already had Linux support? For example, Wasteland 2 was built with Unity and works on Linux. Or are there multiple game engines called Unity (on top of the existing confusion between the game engine and the Ubuntu thing)? EDIT: I think the announcement is about Linux support in the SDK, not the actual software developed with Unity?
- LBarret 11y agoIt is about the Unity editor. Unity3d can compile a game for a linux target, but until now, you couldn't design/edit/build your game on a linux machine. This is great news and I hop they will support it.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoIt's really great news, particularly because their editor ran incredibly slowly in Wine with severe graphical issues (half the text won't render).
- JetSetWilly 11y agoThe end-products - games - do have linux support. But the support is not that great, for example the unity engine on linux doesn't seem to support vsync (it says it does, but it doesn't in practise) which results in horrific and annoying tearing. It has been like this for well over a year, with no sign of any urgency to fix it. It is nice that "linux support" is a bullet point that companies feel is worth having, but it isn't a significant enough part of their market for them to make it work without glaring issues, often.
- hacker_9 11y agoNot sure why you were downvoted as I've read similar reports that the Linux builds from Unity are not the best. Hopefully though now that their main product is expected to work 100% correctly on Linux, that this will lead to fixes in their Linux compiler.
- vanderZwan 11y ago
- jestinjoy1 11y agoThis came just in time when I was thinking of switching to Mac. Blender game engine has features but not upto the mark to compete with game engines like Unity. The python scripting in Blender is good.
- emsy 11y agoUnity has been available for Mac for quite some time.
- jarcane 11y agogrumbles something about developers saying "Linux" when they mean "only supported on Ubuntu"
- dozzie 11y agoThe same here. I've seen web applications that could be run on Ubuntu only.
- scrollaway 11y agoWhat would you have them do? Support it on every single distribution out there? They pick a mainstream one and run with it - I get it. It's normal. It's sad, but you can't blame them; you gotta blame the ecosystem we're in. I'm an Arch Linux guy. I strongly dislike both Ubuntu and Canonical, on technical, political and ethical grounds. But I get it. And you know, a huge part of the problem is that "we", as the Linux community, have no direct interest in pushing compatibility between distributions. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of political reach, and the distros will just run with their own thing a few months later anyway, nullifying the efforts. Besides... have you seen what happens when people are actually successful at pushing compatibility? Have you seen the shit people throw at Lennart/RH for Systemd? Why would anyone ever want to play that game? Anyway, not to detract from the topic - it's fantastic news. Unity3d is huge in the game development world and this is a big win.
- masklinn 11y ago> What would you have them do? Support it on every single distribution out there? No, say that Unity comes to Ubuntu.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- scrollaway 11y agoIt's supported on Ubuntu, but if it's available there, it's essentially compatible with Linux. You can't realistically not be compatible with Linux if you're available on Ubuntu.
- gpvos 11y agoIt seems to be some kind of game development platform.
- viewer5 11y agoYep, Unity is a 2d and 3d game engine. It's pretty nice. I used it in a couple of class group projects in college. It's often compared alongside the Unreal editor, which I unfortunately haven't taken for a spin yet.
- bloodorange 11y agoI have used both Unreal DK and Unity 3d. On any day, I'll pick Unreal based technology over Unity3d. Unity 3d was a total pain in the neck and is more suitable for art-heavy and relatively less programming kind of games. Unreal is far more mature as a platform and you can do a lot more with it. (The code of the internals sucks a bit though).
- rocky1138 11y agoI've been considering switching from Windows 8.1 on my main machine for a while but not being able to work on my game in Unity3d has held me back. This might finally put me over the edge.
- tracker1 11y agoWindows 10 is pushing me in that direction all by itself. ;-) It's been about 2 years since my last attempt at Linux for my main desktop OS... about time for another go at it. Been my HTPC OS for almost a year and a half (since switching to xbmc/kodi for most playback anyways).
- rocky1138 11y agoI use Linux full-time at work (Kubuntu ftw) and Ubuntu/Raspbian at home with the exception of my main desktop. I went Linux-only for a couple of years back in 2009. I came back to Windows because I got a job at a gaming startup, developing a game in Unity3d and using the .NET/Azure stack.
- shocks 11y agoExactly the same situation here. I jumped over to Fedora and have been pleasantly surprised to find out that SLI, multi monitor, and sleep work flawlessly. Zero problems so far.
- tripzilch 11y agoThe third time I switched from Windows to Linux stuck for me :-) It was always that I got a laptop or computer running Windows, after a year and a half or so I managed to crud it up badly, even while keeping everything as clean to the best of my abilities, it just got slower and slower, meaning to install Linux as a dual boot, until something breaks and I actually do it. Next computer will just start out with Linux, though.
- rrhyne 11y agoPersonally, I'd rather they spend time making webgl production ready to ensure Chrome player support.
- penetrarthur 11y agoBut the news say that this is Unity3d editor - program you make games in, not the game.
- kleiba 11y agoS/he's talking about the HTML exporter.
- amyjess 11y agoMisleading title: should be "Unity Editor Comes to Linux". Unity games have been running on Linux for a while.
- tracker1 11y agoMinor tweak.. "Unity3D Editor Comes to Linux"
- QuantumRoar 11y agoHooray for Linux! But there's something that has been bothering me for a while about games for Linux compiled with the Unity SDK. Does anybody know what kind of dependencies a game written with the Unity SDK has? I'm pretty clueless about that stuff but I'd still like to know what it would take to get a game running on a minimal Linux install (like a naked Arch or Gentoo). Ubuntu obviously comes well equipped for the task but I don't really care about that. So where do the graphics come from? Does it need some special libraries apart from OpenGL? Where do fonts come from? How does it interface with hardware, i.e. does it need X, or does it come with its own drivers for keyboard, mouse, gamepad? I fear that it is necessary to install half of Ubuntu to get the games running but - as I said - I don't really know anything about that.
- beberlei 11y agoI am not sure this is the solution, but you could call "ldd <file>" on a unity generated binary to see system dependencies. If they statically compile stuff into the game, that's another question.
- QuantumRoar 11y agoGood point. Though, I don't have such a binary.
- azernik 11y agoGet Kerbal Space Program! And then play it after checking its library dependencies!
- yellowapple 11y agoOr Cities: Skylines, another excellent game that uses Unity. Between those two, I've probably sunk whole weeks of my lifetime. If someone were to make a game that combined the two into some kind of orbital city builder, I'd be set.
- 11y ago
- werber 11y agoI got excited and thought Canonical was finally getting close to making Unity a pleasant experience, but I guess this is cool too.
- gcb0 11y agoproblem with games is that they are only good if multiplayer. and it's only good multiplayer if you can't cheat. that means every dumb game system rush to try to run as root. as you can see with steam. then after they have that excuse they also use that new power to enforce DRM. as you can see with steam. and cheaters continue to cheat. but now you have malware. running games in Linux is easy. heck you've done it on windows, you can make it on Linux with better docs and apis. the problem with Linux gaming is catering to users that don't have their heads up their buts. that is the real problem, and nobody sees the monetary incentive. that said, true Linux gaming holy grail will be achieved when you can run a windows vm with full 3d support. period.
- shitsandwich 11y agoHaha, you're pretty funny for an idiot
- simoncion 11y ago> that means every dumb game system rush to try to run as root. as you can see with steam. You are tragically misinformed: user@host:~$ find ~/.local/share/Steam/ -perm -4000 user@host:~$ find ~/.local/share/Steam/ -user root user@host:~$ find /bin -perm -4000 /bin/ping6 /bin/ping /bin/su /bin/fusermount /bin/ntfs-3g /bin/umount /bin/mount user@host:~$ find /bin -user root | wc -l 201 user@host:~$ ps aux | grep -i steam | grep root | wc -l 0
- johnny22 11y agoFTFY: problem with games is that I only like games that are multiplayer
- billconan 11y agofor me, Unity is too expensive. I hope Unreal can do the same. there is an unofficial build instruction for unreal.
- solidpy 11y agoI thought it was free until you started making an amount of money that made buying a license a non-issue.
- AimHere 11y agoThat sounds like Unreal. Unity has a free version and a pro version, the latter is either a subscription-based one, or a one-off payment of $1500 or similar, which does sound awfully cheap to me.
- unsignedint 11y agoThey've had a bit of capability difference before. From the version 5, they've changed their model so aside from mandatory Personal Edition splash screen, the engine is identical but they do offer support and external feature for their paid version. (And they have $100000 revenue/funding limit to license Personal Edition.[1]) [1] http://unity3d.com/legal/eula http://unity3d.com/legal/eula
- yellowapple 11y agoYay. Nore more having to run it in Wine :)
- pdknsk 11y agoI am dissapointed in it still requiring 32-bit libraries, like Steam. $ gdebi unity-editor-5.1.0f3+2015082501_amd64.deb ... Requires the installation of the following packages: lib32gcc1 lib32stdc++6 libc6-i386