You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.
Update: Unity updated the blog post to say it won't, sadly it was poor wording on their part.

The Linux editor of Unity has been in beta for quite a while, over a year in fact, so it's really pleasing to see it getting bumped up to an official status.

Writing in this blog post on the official Unity site, the developers explained that they are dropping 32bit Windows support. This will free up time for the Linux editor, which they call an " exciting new offering". I do love that wording:
QuoteAnd with the Linux Editor now in experimental build and also slated to launch in 5.6, dropping the 32-bit editor frees up time and resources that will help us to make this exciting new offering a success.


I hope this will help more developers do more on Linux directly. Being able to fix bugs in a Linux build of a game, directly on Linux, now that's going to be useful I hope.

Who knows, maybe it's what a few developers have been waiting for to switch over to Linux. I can dream right?

I'm not surprised they are dropping 32bit support anyway, even on Linux 32bit use is very low. With our last survey we counted 2/1174 people using 32bit.

Great stuff, Unity team! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Unity
10 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
15 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

z3ntu Nov 15, 2016
That's REALLY great to hear as I am using Unity in school of course on Linux :)
Sslaxx Nov 15, 2016
Death to 32-bit! This goes for everything - Godot, Unreal, Unigine, whatever - 32-bit support needs to end.


Last edited by Sslaxx on 15 November 2016 at 3:15 pm UTC
Alloc Nov 15, 2016
QuoteBeing able to fix bugs in a Linux build of a game, directly on Linux, now that's going to be useful I hope.
Thing is ... in our experience bugs on Linux were almost never code related (besides the nasty locale-usage on e.g. float-parsing that only happens on Linux players) but mostly graphics/shader stuff. So unless we get better debug tools for shaders I don't see much of an improvement here besides being able to build a player directly on the platform. But having another PC on the same network is almost the same speed anyway.

This is just about it improving debugging on Linux, of course having an officially supported editor on Linux in general is really nice :)
micha Nov 15, 2016
Quoting: Alloc
QuoteBeing able to fix bugs in a Linux build of a game, directly on Linux, now that's going to be useful I hope.
Thing is ... in our experience bugs on Linux were almost never code related (besides the nasty locale-usage on e.g. float-parsing that only happens on Linux players) but mostly graphics/shader stuff. So unless we get better debug tools for shaders I don't see much of an improvement here besides being able to build a player directly on the platform. But having another PC on the same network is almost the same speed anyway.

This is just about it improving debugging on Linux, of course having an officially supported editor on Linux in general is really nice :)

Well, in my experience the editor on a test platform helps a lot. For example for Albion Online we had a hard time to figure out a visual bug with the achievement board which turned out to be an NVIDIA driver issue but making a temporary workaround without would have been almost impossible. Without the experimental Linux editor we wouldn't have even bothered much to look into the issue really.


Last edited by micha on 15 November 2016 at 7:44 pm UTC
StraToN Nov 15, 2016
While this is indeed pretty cool for Game Developers using Linux (and Linux gaming in general), my heart goes to FLOSS softwares. The best alternative I could find is Godot Engine, which is currently evolving at a VERY fast pace.
veccher Nov 15, 2016
that's great, also i want to mention, unreal engine just released version 4.14 today, and now should support packaging from linux to android (until now the only target platform from the linux editor was linux), i've not tested it, but it's great too.
MayeulC Nov 15, 2016
That's an interesting move. I hope it won't hinder testing on 32bits operating system, although those need to die off too.

I still have a 32bits-only laptop (mini notebook from ~2008 I think) around, and I regularly use it to play *small* games and not too demanding ones as a general rule. I might get around buying a chromebook (maybe for a better screen/performance - hopefully enough to stream a game - in LAN parties when I can't really move my desktop around), but in my (personal) opinion, laptops need to be portable, and have a good battery life. For other uses, I have my desktop. But I digress.

Small feature request, Liam: Would it be possible to indicate the developer position on hovering the badge (for example: "Unity dev", or "XYZ lead dev/PR head/whatever"? Could be of some use, sometimes :)
ElectricPrism Nov 15, 2016
my brother & friend both use unity exclusively on linux.

im also thinking of taking it up if i can get a idea of what project i want to create as im exclusively on linux myself.
Zaxth Nov 15, 2016
Check it again.
"Edit: A previous version of this post mistakenly suggested the Linux Editor would be in the official 5.6 release."
Liam Dawe Nov 15, 2016
Article was updated for those that didn't see, their wording was wrong.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.