Just like the title says, it would be more convenient to make the UE4 launcher/editor easily installable on Linux distros such as Ubuntu with a simple .deb file like you have an .msi and .dmg file for Win and Mac.
Bump.
I know that it can be a pain to account for the wide variety of packaging solutions all of the Linux distros out there offer, but it would be a huge Linux support milestone to have some sort of beta launcher support, even it were only for a single distro initially. Gotta start somewhere, right?
Given the many distros I have no problems compiling it myself. They could do like for ex. X-Plane, simply a zip with a compiled binary. To package is not really worth it… but a launcher would be cool.
Thanks for the great UE, using it for several weeks now without any problems on Ubuntu.
I also compile it myself right now.
I think that having a working launcher/binary download for Linux would help speed up Linux support. It would definitely reduce barriers to entry and expose more bugs due to wider adoption (within the Linux dev community).
Looks like Unity now has an experimental build out for linux:
They have both a .deb and a distro-agnostic installer. Obviously both are experimental and beta, but I’d love to see Unreal do something like this! Adoption is probably going to remain low so long as users have to compile the editor for themselves.
Side note: it also looks like their build exports to a wider range of runtime platforms from Linux than Unreal.
A big problem on Linux would be cross-compiling, something Unity doesn’t have to do. Ignoring Mac OS X and its own requirements, cross-compiling from Linux to Windows might not be up to the standards Epic would need.
They’ve said that currently the Linux version is not far enough along for that
Yes, you’re probably right about that. Additionally, cooked content isn’t currently in a universal Linux/Win/Mac format. That much is on the roadmap, though.
They’ve also said (perhaps even more recently) that the Linux editor is currently ready for early access testing. In my opinion, that’s the perfect time to start shipping binaries and including it in future iterations.
It is a bit of a catch 22: Linux support for the editor needs more attention to deserve a binary release, but it won’t get more attention without a binary release.
That all being said, the compiled editor does work pretty great on Linux right now. It is very usable, even with some deficiencies.
Well, i prefer optimized linux version, faster, stable, a very good working experience because now is a really patient test.
Is there any restriction in the license that prevent anyone to distribute unreal 4 binary packages?
You aren’t allowed to redistribute any part of the editor
That being said, it can’t be too hard to put an Unreal build on its own partition, take a LVM snapshot, run the build, and then do a diff to see all the generated files. Pipe that list (presumably filtering out intermediate .o files and such) into a script that generates a deb, and out comes something you could use.