If you are a designer, developer or an artist, you might have been using the experimental Unity Editor that was made available for Linux. However, the experimental version wasn’t going to cut it forever – developers need a full stable experience to work.
So, they recently announced that you can access the full-fledged Unity Editor on Linux.
While this is an exciting news, what Linux distro does it officially support? Let us talk about a few more details…
Non-FOSS Alert
Unity Editor on Linux (or any other platform for that matter) is not an open source software. We have covered it here because
Official Support for Ubuntu and CentOS 7
No matter whether you have a personal or a professional license, you can access the editor if you have Unity 2019.1 installed or later.
In addition, they are prioritizing the support for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and CentOS 7.
In their announcement post, they also mentioned the configurations supported:
- x86-64 architecture
- Gnome desktop environment running on top of X11 windowing system
- Nvidia official proprietary graphics driver and AMD Mesa graphics driver
- Desktop form factors, running on device/hardware without emulation or compatibility layer
You can always try on anything else – but it’s better to stick with the official requirements for the best experience.
A Note on 3rd Party Tools
If you happen to utilize any 3rd party tool on any of your projects, you will have to separately check whether they support it or not.
How to install Unity Editor on Linux
Now that you know about it – how do you install it?
To install Unity, you will have to download and install the Unity Hub.
Let’s walk you through the steps:
- Download Unity Hub for Linux from the official forum page.
- It will download an AppImage file. Simply, make it executable and run it. In case you are not aware of it, you should check out our guide on how to use AppImage on Linux.
- Once you launch the Unity Hub, it will ask you to sign in (or sign up) using your Unity ID to activate the licenses. For more info on how the licenses work, do refer to their FAQ page.
- After you sign in using your Unity ID, go to the “Installs” option (as shown in the image above) and add the version/components you want.
That’s it! This is the best way to get all the latest builds and get it installed in a jiffy.
Wrapping Up
Even though it is an exciting news, the official configuration support does not seem to be an extensive list. If you use it on Linux, do share your feedback and opinion on their Linux forum thread.
What do you think about that? Also, do you use Unity Hub to install it or did we miss a better method to get it installed?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
I was expecting this to get to linux. Finally.
2019.3+ will indeed be something to look forward to but not currently. The “a” that you see in the pic at 2019.3.0a4 means is the alpha version, “b” meaning beta. So it’s still a few months away from something stable that you can make some serious projects in.
But looking forward to it.
Wow! Now I can switch back to Linux
MX Linux
Great news! However, I still think that Godot is the best suited engine for the linux environment. Unity wins when it comes to support and the quantity/quality of assets.
Godot is years behind unity , 3D wise. And 2D wise you have a lot more resources/assets even free on Unity that will help make your life a lot easier especially since most game devs are in small teams 1-3 people and you need all the help you can.
After using Godot for about 2 months i can say that it’s harder to use , somewhat unstable/buggy in certain situations (encountered problems with collisions,physics and even crashes) and also the vulkan api (which is the future IMO) is….
I don’t see Godot as a threat for Unity/Unreal in the next 5 years or so.