Developing on Ubuntu 16.04

[Dwarf King]

Soooooooooooo! I have this question. Are any of you using UE4 to develop games on Ubuntu/Linux? If so what are you experiences so far?

Any issues or show stoppers?

What IDE do you use for C++ scripting?

Is the Visual Blueprint stable to use in Ubuntu?

Is the Linux set up tutorial still up to date?

Please feel free to answer and share awesome links etc

Epic games staff are also welcome to add in their views on how stable solution this would be.

Note: I am thinking about moving most of my stuff to Ubuntu 16.04 as I find the system very neat and attractive as a daily work platform.

[qdelpeche]

I have cross-compiled from Windows to Linux using UE on Windows. Although I love Linux and I enjoy working on it, I would never consider moving my development over to Linux in its entirety.

From my experience the whole UE4 pipeline is geared towards Windows and/or Mac and using Linux full time would be a pain. Some of the processes that are painless and easy on Windows would require a lot more effort on Linux.

If I were you, develop on Windows and cross compile to Linux ... it works perfectly and had proven less strenuous and painful then when I first tried to do it on Linux.

[Dwarf King]

****... well then Windows will be the usual tool then(including all the annoying legal license stuff as usual as well...) and cross compiling when actual needed. I was hoping for a very smooth move by using something like CodeLite for C++ scripting and then BP when actual on Ubuntu 16.04.

I really like the whole environment in Ubuntu 16.04. Very clean and free as well. No huge privacy issues and very open down to the very last code as in Open Source.

Anyway thanks for replying

[qdelpeche]

Yeah ... I hear you about Ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, it is possible to do everything (almost everything) in Linux ... but the amount of effort it takes and when updates are released or when you need Plugins or Marketplace assets ... you would still need Windows.

Epic Launcher does not work on Linux, so you would still need a Windows system for that.

[thadkinsjr]

Yes I agree with most posters here. i built to CentOS. I don't trust building my project solely on Linux. But the great news is Linux can read Windows hard drive on dual boot. So I can copy whatever im working on and paste it directly there. So you get the best of both worlds. I also have Maya 2014 built to CentOS which runs flawlessly. Linux is so much more productive with developement process. As you don't have virus scans running, and updates, malware etc. You have all of your ram and hdd to yourself. Without distractions. No need for task managers, and blue screens. But something doesnt feel right to me with Linux, and UE4. Not sure what. Besides launcher not working. I just copy files from windows to Linux. Its good.

[Adynathos]

Note: I am thinking about moving most of my stuff to Ubuntu 16.04 as I find the system very neat and attractive as a daily work platform.

Well now there is Ubuntu 17.04
I also use Linux and UE is the only reason why I have a Windows installation too.
Even if UE was perfect on Linux, it is still often needed to be able to build a Windows release of the project.
I use UE on Linux to build and package for Linux.

Any issues or show stoppers?

Some inconveniences:
- need to build from source
- crashes a bit more often than on Windows
- when you compile for hot-reload, you don't see the error message from clang (to see it, compile from terminal)
- no launcher

But seems fine in general.

What IDE do you use for C++ scripting?

Codelite seemed to deal with autocompletion for UE - its faster than VS autocomplete but failed at TSharedPtr.
There is also KDevelop integration, I should try with current KDevelop.

Is the Linux set up tutorial still up to date?

It worked for me on 4.15

Please feel free to answer and share awesome links etc

Building on Linux

As was said here already, you can have a dual-boot installation and in Linux mount the ntfs partition containing your project. So you can edit the same project from both OS.

[thadkinsjr]

If you build to Linux. make sure Autosave is selected. When I had it working previous to installing 4.16. I didnt have crashes. The real problem with Linux is with main software development companies not wanting to develop to the system. Mainly Photoshop, Solidworks, and Autodesk. I think Linux will grow slowly until Google makes a distro. When google creates an OS. Not a chrome book. LOL. Linux will fly past windows, and mac within a year. 80% of devices in the world are running a Unix like kernel. Windows server has Linux components running, and Windows 10 has root, but it's extremely weak. As I can read everything on my windows hard drive through Linux. Windows can't access my Linux drive. Nor can mac, oran external Linux using external hard drive. Theres a distro called artist x thats full of graphics, and music programs. But its a huge distro based on ubuntu debian kernel.

[Dwarf King]

Well I thank you all for the very nice feedback. It seems that some actually can use UE4 to develop on Ubuntu after all. I have also found other engines that actually work on Linux/Ubuntu. I shall test out and play around with UE4 on Ubuntu and see how it turns out.

Cheers!