I notice a weird attitude from most of the linux users in this topic on this forum and I feel a little weird. This is not the FOSS spirit and please pay attention to this. You should all respect the fact that free open source software is not only free by all means, but it is also free to have, which maybe is actually the only thing you care but simultaneously forget. You should appreciate it and welcome it to the linux world. Get mature with linux and a good start is to appreciate what you have been given.
Now I am personally against the âlauncherâ idea, I consider all kinds of launchers completely useless and one of the reasons is because I only see them as a temporary solution from a development team. There are much more wise ways to get content than having to run multiple things. In the case of linux especially, if the UE developers would like to do something right, they would approach the repositories and completely change the way the website is locked to a launcher and idiotic (pardon me for the word but if you were Greek you would know what it means and not consider it a bad word) approaches. So free it if you want to free it. Do not hold it from one wing and think you have it out free.
A last thing to mention is the obvious, not because all my systems run linux, from servers to desktops, but because most of the people that do real hard work and development already know that linux is not only the future of gaming, but the future of computing. The more you understand it the more you know why you should trash windows.
congratulations to the EU team, keep up and enjoy the summer,
George
You can compile and run UE Server, Game, Client and the Editor natively in Linux. You can also cross-compile content for Linux on Windows ie. cook and package your projects for Linux platform. Presently thereâs no way to cross-compile content for Windows on Linux.
Hi, there is a way to cross compile Windows content from Linux, I actually co-authored a toolchain for cross compiling Windows program (32 bit and 64bit) from Linux 64bit. We employed MinGW for that but I dont know how well it works for games, I would not recommend it either, but hey, its just shows its possible to compile Windows apps in Linux.
If you canât port the Launcher to Linux, at least give the possibility to download pre-built binaries for UE and UTâŚ
But, if you canât do that, how is UE able to produce Linux builds of games ?
But again, if UE is able to produce Linux builds of games, how canât you build the Launcher in the same way?
Anyway, given the latest words of distrust about UWP and Microsoft, shouldnât you push (open) alternatives more?
Thanks
, you told me that there were too many Linux packaging formats to make the binary UE4 on Linux, but now we have Snappy/Flatpak that should be implemented in most Linux distros. The problem has been solved I think.
Anybody can just compile UE4 and have the binary, I even compiled UE4 on Ubuntu once and copied the binary I built and it still ran on a Fedora box.
Linux culture isnât the same as Windows culture, Linux users usually arenât afraid to compile from the source and there are workarounds for most of the problems discussed here.
What UE4-Linux really needs right now is people using it, building games with it and saying âI made this on Linuxâ. I tested UE4-Linux for a few hours and had no problems with it, but thatâs not the same as a smaller developer actually making professional games talking about how they leveraged their costs by integrating UE4-Linux developer workstations into their workspace. The launcher doesnât really do anything either, a bug fix on the launcher wonât affect a bug in the UE4, I think the elephant in the room here is that people just arenât as confident in using UE4-Linux as they could be and a UE4-Linux-Launcher would give them more (superficial) confidence in doing so.
Right now itâs up to the community and individual developers to use UE4-Linux so that they can trigger the bugs that the developers can fix.
yes, maybe the Launcher and the binary version isnât SO big problem for most Linux users. However, I have one question to you: Could I build my game for different OSes than Linux using UE4 on Linux?
Yes, but you need to be in the appropriate OS when building most games, such as being on a mac to build for a mac. As far as blueprints and most game content is concerned it is as easy as copying those files. C++ can be tricky on Linux but itâs not impossible, although I wouldnât say itâs feasible to code C++ on linux for most developers unless they are already have a really good understanding of linux, unlike a level-designer who wouldnât really notice a difference based on the OS.
Yes, youâll work it out and like most problems in linux the fastest way to get an answer is to google a few tutorials, go on freenode IRC, and try the relevant channel (such as: #UE4Linux). Compiling UE4 on linux is no different to most of the problems people have on linux, quite regularly, if you are new to linux you should see this is a good exercise.
Unreal has a different architecture (one that gives you more access to the engine). When you build your game, itâs built with the engine as one executable, so you would need to be able to build Windows, Mac executables on Linux, or the other way around. Itâs not easy to do.
I canât speak for Unity, but I strongly doubt that itâs cross compile features would work as smoothly at scale or with C++.
As for, Is it possible? As James Guana said:
There is a difference between something being possible, and something being feasible. Personally I never managed to get C++ projects working in linux, although others have. If you already have a good understanding of C++ and Linux you might be able to get it working, but you would not be able to ask a developer without Linux experience to operate on that workstation. In contrast an artist who already uses FOSS programs like gimp and krita isnât going to notice any major differences by transitioning to a Linux computer. In my experience most new people who want to code C++ in UE4 vastly underestimate the power and capability of blueprints, but thatâs another story for another thread.
This guy got codelite on Linux with auto-complete working: v=vRKEIUoQBYw .
OMG, always problems! Why canât we just run software on Linux and enjoy it? Linux is a powerful platform without Windows or OS X bloatware. UE4 is the only software I will be forced to run on Windows. Itâs a disaster!
Cross-Compiling C++ code is seldom an easy task and it includes both legal and technical challenges, which is part of the reason why languages like Java exist. I havenât tried it, although You might even be able to package your UE4 game within a Windows Virtual Machine using the the command line: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/How_to_package_your_game_with_commands.
Itâs not a disaster, itâs pretty bloody good actually. You can create your games as you normally would and when you are ready to package your project (to windows), put it in your dropbox and get someone on windows to package it and send it back to you so you can distribute to windows clients. Prior to UE4âs Linux support there was no way to make a decent 3D game on Linux, weâve come a long way with Leadwerks, Unity3d and UE4 being available.
All these things are superficial or have simple workarounds, we really just need people using UE4-Linux, reporting bugs and helping to improve the core UE4-Linux-Editor, I found a bug on Linux whereby it would crash when trying to auto-generate collision meshes, I reported it and in the next release it was fixed. Software development at this level is a collaboration between the user and the developer, and we need users finding and reporting bugs similar to fore-mentioned bug I found.
Itâs a catch-22. Itâs not a priority for developers to make the launcher because of seeming lack of people that want to use Linux, and people arenât hurry up to use Linux due to the topic. So developers are the only ones who can break this catch. Even Allegorithmic has released their Substance products for Linux that are fully usable. Although they are packaged for Red Hat, they run on Kubuntu without any problems.
Not reallyâthe software isnât like say a game console, where games drive console sales where console sales drive games. The number of overall Linux users isnât going to change because UE4 is available for it, so they have to weigh the value of supporting a small community. They have people dedicated to supporting Linux so a Linux launcher will happen at some point.
Iâm a 20-year developer with a history of web programming, office software, and gaming; and Iâm getting into gaming and VR now. I would very much like to use UE4 for this; however, literally all of my dev tools are on Kubuntu. I wonât be moving them to Windows for this, as I have learned to neither trust nor use Windows for cross platform development.
Not wanting to spend a lot of time on Linux, I understand. Itâs increasingly popular, but it isnât at the mark yet for gaming. However, is it at least possible to create a web API? Jumping back and forth between OSes for the sake of getting material from the Marketplace is bad enough as it is; and if it gets much worse than that, it will be a complete deal-breaker for me. Please address this, thereâs no reason for UE4 to be tightly bound to a single operating system.
