I'm not entirely sure when this went live but it appears that Epic Games have finally released a full proper download of Unreal Engine for Linux developers. Seems a lot of people noticed only today, although the page mentions the build was released Jul 12 - 2022, with GOL getting messages about it everywhere so it seems like a fair few find this quite exciting.
Previously, to use Unreal Engine on Linux you would need to compile it yourself from the source but now that's no longer the case. To get it you need to have accepted their EULA and be logged in with an Epic Account, once done it will offer up the ~20GB download to get you going but it mentions needing ~60GB for the full thing. Additionally, it seems their main supported Linux distribution is Ubuntu 22.04 although it appears to run just fine on Fedora 36:
You can see more of the Linux requirements here.
Considering all the issues with Unity lately from joining with ironSource, their CEO calling some game developers "fucking idiots" and when that made the news that same CEO said on Twitter it was "Clickbait" only to then later apologise, this might be a good time for Epic Games to push their way through to pull in even more developers into their ecosystem.
So much great news for Linux gaming and even Linux game development lately, it's nice to see so many moving parts.
I promised my self back in 2018 to never (compile, use or learn) UnrealEngine until they give us proper Linux support and a native build
Quoting: salomFinally!Godot still got your back anyways ;D
I promised my self back in 2018 to never (compile, use or learn) UnrealEngine until they give us proper Linux support and a native build
Quoting: salomFinally!Why? If you want to do anything reasonable with Unreal, you'll need to set up a build environment for C++ scripting anyhow (yes, there is Blueprint, but as soon as your project grows beyond "game jam" size, Blueprint scripts become so large and convoluted, that they are
I promised my self back in 2018 to never (compile, use or learn) UnrealEngine until they give us proper Linux support and a native build
(Edit: Please take this with a grain of salt. I'm currently working with Unreal professionally, and had enough opportunities to get frustrated by it.)
Last edited by soulsource on 20 July 2022 at 10:12 pm UTC
I think sometimes the more technically skilled developers (or Linux users for that matter) forget that even among developers, there are those who are certainly capable of writing a bit of code and running a python script or clicking compile in an IDE, but struggle with something like compiling a complex piece of software through a build system like cmake, resolving dependency issues, etc.
Having to compile Unreal Engine's Editor just to work on Linux was a real barrier for entry that potentially could have prevented many ports from indie devs as a result. Glad to see that resolved.
Quoting: gradyvuckovicI think sometimes the more technically skilled developers (or Linux users for that matter) forget that even among developers, there are those who are certainly capable of writing a bit of code and running a python script or clicking compile in an IDE, but struggle with something like compiling a complex piece of software through a build system like cmake, resolving dependency issues, etc.
worse, they forget that there is a magic thing called "learning curve"
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