Unity Linux Editor in the works

Unity is working on bringing its Editor to Linux and hopes to release a test build to users soon.

Work on Linux support was revealed after the company opened up its Unity roadmap for the next six to nine months to the public. Support for the platform haslong been on the agenda of Unity developers, with 22,597 voting for a port on the company’s website.

The Editor is expected to run on 64-bit Linux, just like the Player, and official support will be provided for Ubuntu as it has the largest market share. The earlier version to be supported will be 12.04.

It is expected to export to the same platforms as the Mac OS X edition, except for iOS. Though this could change in future. The Editor will also support global illumination, occlusion culling and all other systems reliant on portable third-party middleware.

There will be limitations however. It will require modern, vendor-provided graphics drivers and some model importers that rely on external applications, such as 3ds Max, will not work.

Unity plans to offer an early “experimental” build for developers to test. The success of this will determine whether Unity sustains support for Linux alongside its Mac and Windows Editors.

You can find further details about the Linux Editor on the Unity website or on Na’Tosha Bard’s blog.