this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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I would love to finally switch to Linux, but it's basically unusable for any kind of gamedev...
I suppose that's gonna be engine dependent, but godot works fine. ...assuming your project is a fit for godot!
Ah how come? I've had to build simple stuff in unity for university, I've not run into issues.
I've tried switching to Fedora several times, but I never managed to get it to working conditions. Unity Hub was regularly crashing, I got a bazillion of errors related to unsupported type of media files we're using for ingame videos, and only during the time I was trying to troubleshoot the issue, Unity has crashed several times.
I suppose that if I was starting a new project, I would just go with Godot and on Linux, but a project that has been build for the last few years on Windows, and is planned to only be build for Windows for now, it adds unneccessary risk to the whole development. Just the fact that I would have to dualboot just to test whether builds work as expected is additional bother, and I suppose you will eventually run into issues with something not working the same on Windows as it did on Linux.
Also, isn't there the whole issue of DirectX not being supported on Linux?
And since gamedev is usually a lot more resource-intensive compared to other development, you can't really containerize it.
Nonsense
From my experience, just getting Unity to run on Linux has a plethora of issues. When I tried running our project we've been developing on Windows for the past few years, I couldn't even compile it. Apparently, Unity on Linux doesn't support some kind of media file formats we use for cutscenes. While I was trying to resolve it, Unity crashed few times.
And then there's the hug problem with "works on my machines". We're targeting Windows, Windows is still major market share for gaming, and me being the lead programmer, I can't afford not being able to build and test a build on the OS we're targeting.
Even if the differences between build targets are minor, there's still a posibility that something will just work differently on Linux than in does on Windows. And then you have the whole DirectX issue - IIRC, you can't use DirectX on Linux, so we would have to develop the game for Vulkan or something else, which adds another problems to deal with for other programmers in our team, who don't use Linux.
And then you have consoles. Do the SDKs for Sony, Switch or XDK even support running on Linux?
You said: (Linux) "unusable for any kind of gamedev...".
That's nonsense.
You raise valid points, but they do not support your conclusion that: (Linux) "unusable for ANY kind of gamedev...".
You know that, though. You were hyperbolic, I know that, too.
By the way, you should try Godot. You'll be surprised.
Oh, you are right, now I got your point. Sorry for that, I honestly didn't realize that I was making such a hyperbole.
I definitely plan to switch to Godot once I'm finally done with the school-project turned indie, that we're struggling with for the past 5 years and it's mostly holding on sunken cost fallacy. Unfortunately, since at work we mostly work on ports for other studios, I doubt I'll ever get to work on Godot there. But maybe at least the Unreal experience is better on Linux, never really checked that out.