
Unity Editor for Linux - mariuz
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/05/30/announcing-the-unity-editor-for-linux/
======
mpartel
I've been using the "experimental" LTS 2017.4 Linux version at work for over a
year and the only platform-specific issue has been broken .NET 4.6 support,
which has long since been fixed in 2018.x. Other than that, I've found the
Linux builds to be in good shape since the 5.x series (platform-independent
Unity buggyness notwithstanding).

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paulcarroty
Linux gaming on the rise now, thankfully mostly to DXVK and D9VK projects.

Seems like one of big corporations funding the authors, probably Valve (old
Microsoft kind-of-enemy).

~~~
jandrese
Steamplay has been a huge influence in my household. Dunno about the bigger
picture. It's much less hassle than the Wine wrappers of old and for the most
part just works.

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Mbaqanga
Well the question is if Blizzard ports Hearthstone to Linux as a “hey, we have
a beta for you guys”, and bring some buzz. The annoying part is the battle.net
launcher.

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Liquid_Fire
The Battle.net launcher uses Qt, and they already have a macOS version of it,
so it shouldn't be too difficult to port.

Edit: That said, it's not like the lack of Unity Editor on Linux was stopping
them from having a Linux version of Hearthstone. It has been possible to
target Linux for years.

~~~
vbezhenar
One simple example: battle.net installs its own root certificate to the OS
trust store. How do you do that for Linux? There are plenty of distributions
with different rules. That would be some work.

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seba_dos1
Why would it do that in the first place?

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vbezhenar
I think that they're running webserver on localhost and they are connecting to
it from their website opened in browser, probably for some integration.

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jandrese
How is that going to work when most of the users are behind NAT/Firewalls?
That's a connection model that just doesn't work well on the modern Internet.

I'm also kind of baffled by the need to install a Blizzard root cert in the
cert store. That's normally only necessary for people who are too cheap to get
their certs signed (Blizzard makes enough money to do this) or who want to
MitM encrypted traffic from your host.

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vbezhenar
You're opening their website. JavaScript on their website connects to
[https://localhost:12345](https://localhost:12345) and uses that connection to
interact with battle.net software that runs on your PC. NAT/Firewall is not an
issue. But that client software have to present valid certificate for that
localhost website. To do so, they generate that self-signed certificate at
installation time and mark is as trusted, so browsers will accept it. There's
no other way to do that, really (well, there's a way actually, but it requires
to sign some very non-standard agreements with certificate authorities, I know
that Plex does that). Blizzard does not use that certificate to MitM your
connection, because they don't send it back, it's generated, stored and used
locally.

I don't like this practice too and I would opt-out of that "feature" having
the choice. I just used to develop similar software, so I understand why they
did that.

~~~
jandrese
Do you actually need a root cert for this? Can't you just install the server's
self-signed cert?

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vbezhenar
I think it's actually self-signed certificate for domain (localbattle.net)
which resolves to 127.0.0.1, not CA one, sorry for misinformation.

~~~
jandrese
That's much less troubling. It's much harder to engage in shenanigans in that
case.

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zachruss92
I love it! This really shows that game devs are starting to treat Linux as a
first-class citizen.

~~~
naikrovek
I think this is more about making it easier to run the Unity editor headless
in a docker container than it is about making lives easier for those extreme
few who actually want to use the editor within Linux. Linux users often choose
Linux because it is open. The Unity editor is definitely not open.

That's an educated guess, not something I know for a fact, and it makes sense
given what I know about how the tool has evolved.

Unity has been able to produce games that run on Linux for a long, long time,
so Linux is making some headway, you're right.

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yeoldeporkpie
That is a good reaction to Godot's growing popularity.

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binthere
Godot has caught my eye a bunch of times but I'm still not quite convinced to
use it yet. I guess I need to just try it.

~~~
sempron64
It is very intuitive! I picked it up in about 30 minutes, and I'm using it for
a small project for a friend. I've previously written games in Python/Pygame,
WebGL, and C++, and I've tried out Unity and was a bit overwhelmed. Godot is
way faster, simpler, and friendlier. Try this tutorial:
[https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/getting_started/step_by_...](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/getting_started/step_by_step/your_first_game.html)

I recommend using GDScript instead of messing with C#, which is supported but
much more difficult to set up. GDScript is really similar to Python, the
editor has Intellisense/autocomplete (even for strings!) and all the
documentation is built in under the Help menu. It's a very very pleasant
experience overall. It's also the first time I've been able to work fully
offline thanks to the extensive built in help, and this does wonders for
productivity.

~~~
sempron64
I'd also like to point out that Godot 3 has full 3d support with PBR support,
custom shaders, skeleton animation, and basically everything you'd expect in a
3d engine. It's way more fleshed out than when I last looked at it in Godot 2,
and ready for prime time.

~~~
rijoja
They have quite a good as on system as well don't they? A good ecosystem
around a slick and open core might very well be a winning concept.

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vectorEQ
hope it's better than UE4 support for it, which is basically 'here's a bunch
of code, good luck'. it has such crippling bugs its utterly unusable. Good
luck unity to do better! I hope they make it awsome.

~~~
de_watcher
Well, the UE people don't support Linux in their own games...

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jchw
They used to :( R.I.P. years of Unreal Tournament on Linux. I remember
distinctly that 2004 ran _faster_ when I booted into Linux.

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mont
They even used to (somewhat) recently. Rocket League (UE3) ran in linux.

~~~
jchw
I didn’t know this, I was hoping for it long ago when I used to play. Maybe
worth installing to see if it’s good.

If it stays on Steam, anyways. Epic’s store probably won’t ever support Linux
I’d imagine :(

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sabujp
Dear Unity: please get a floating license server that runs on Linux!

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naikrovek
They have the ability to sell floating licenses, but you must work with a
sales rep to get them, and purchase through one of their resellers, if I
recall.

I do not know if they roll their own license server or if they can use
commercial license servers that may already be in place in an organization.

~~~
sabujp
their license server is still under development

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naikrovek
Things like this make me scratch my head.

License servers exist. Surely it is cheaper for them to license from someone
who does license servers, or use a client's existing license servers than it
is for them to develop and support their own server.

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blackbrokkoli
This is great!

I have high hopes for it, since the experimental version already worked quite
well for some time. Still, Unity was one of the reasons I got Win10 on an
external hard drive...

It's quite a dead meme, but with things like photopea, Blender, smooth Linux
VsCode version, stepping stone distros like Mint and now Unity the year of the
Linux desktop might come!

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734129837261
I am interested in a switch to Linux (web developer, I use OSX, I need the
terminal for all my tasks) but had not looked at Mint yet. The website looks
like it was made 15 years ago, are they more modern than the website seems?

~~~
joshklein
For "most MacOS-like experience" and "willing to compromise on FOSS philosophy
for practical convenience in GPU-related work", I recommend taking a look at
Pop!_OS. It's System76's take on Ubuntu with Mac-like UI tweaks and
proprietary Nvidia drivers built in.

~~~
cr0sh
I've personally found Budgie Linux to be the most "MacOS-like" distro. It is
also based on Ubuntu.

Earlier this year I was forced to do an OS refresh on my home system, and I
decided I wanted something closer to MacOS; before I had a hacked together
system that approximated (virtually identical) Crunchbang (#!) - but was based
on Ubuntu Minimal (14.04 LTS) and built up from there.

I wanted something that was still "lightweight" in the sense that it did what
you wanted and no more; something with a fairly MacOS-like "intuitive"
interface. I wanted something that could be configured easily without needing
to hack on config files (as I had to do with my mess - updating OpenBox, etc).
But I still wanted to be able to easily modify it to make it mine (unlike
MacOS which is pretty locked down in the modding department).

I looked at PopOS, I looked at Mint, I looked at straight Ubuntu, and I tried
BunsenLabs (what evolved out of #!); it wasn't until I tried Solus that I
found the interface I liked - Budgie Desktop.

Unfortunately, I hated the Solus package management system; I wanted my Debian
archive files, and Ubuntu repos, etc! But a quick search found me Budgie
Ubuntu - I tried it, and loved it.

Ultimately, to each their own; Budgie Linux may not meet your definition of
"MacOS-like" \- but it met mine, and is certainly worth a look I think. I
don't regret choosing it (my only "regret" \- which is minor - is choosing the
18.04 LTS - so I couldn't get the latest version of Budgie, and won't until
the next LTS release; currently Budgie is on 19.x (x.10 and x.04) - and that
version has the latest version of Budgie, but LTS won't get it until 20.x).

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I liked Budgie, which is an "official flavor" of Ubuntu these days[1] like
Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc. Personally I didn't find Budgie to be a lot nicer than
stock Gnome, but it has some visual flair for sure.

1: [https://ubuntubudgie.org/](https://ubuntubudgie.org/)

