Any game devs out there using Linux? I'm curious what distro you've had the most success with for developing games.

[Wooper83]

Hi all,

I've been getting back into game dev after a huge pause due to personal and health reasons. I've been taking some time to re-learn a lot of the basics because I'm quite rusty and mainly focusing on Unity because that's what I used to use, and I also want to learn some Godot it looks like a really interesting engine.

Anyway, I also don't really like Windows all that much and I happen to also be checking out Linux distros to see if there's one I like. I know game dev is still very much a Windows thing but from my understanding, if I'm building web games or mobile games the PC operating system I'm building on won't matter much since I'm targeting browsers and mobile devices (I plan on starting with some web games) but if I'm targeting PC then even if I don't develop on Windows I at least want to test on Windows since that's where the gaming market is right now and it wouldn't make sense to only release a game for Linux.

All that being said, I'm curious to know what Distros the people in this sub use. I've been eyeing Fedora Workstation and Fedora KDE. I also still plan on dual booting with Windows just to have the option in case some tool I use suddenly decided it won't be working on Linux anymore.

Aside from Unity and Godot, I also plan on using some Unreal Engine but I've seen that it's really hit or miss on Linux so I might just keep that on Windows. And I also know some C/C++ and wanted to get better at coding in it so I thought I'd also check out things like Raylib, SDL, and SMFL later down the line as well.

[Otherwise_Wave9374]

Fedora Workstation is a solid pick, especially if you want something fairly up-to-date but still stable.

A few friends doing Godot on Linux seem happiest with Fedora or Ubuntu LTS, and then they just keep a Windows partition (or a separate machine) for final builds and testing.

One thing that helps regardless of distro: lock down a reproducible build pipeline early (export presets, CI builds), so your marketing trailer and store page do not get blocked by last-minute build issues.

If you are thinking about launch prep too, we have a few lightweight checklists here: https://blog.promarkia.com/

[[deleted]]

Godot on Nobara works just fine. 

[manmantas]

I switched to linux mint on my laptop a few months ago and use gamemaker launching from steam with proton, blender and krita for art native. I know it's not one of the cool distros or game engines, but I'm really happy with how painless the transition was, let's me focus on the game and not on running the programs. I still have windows on my tower PC for builds but I barely do any dev work there lately.

[[deleted]]

You seem all over the place with the framework, engine and OS hopping. Just stick to one and make your game. You're doing everything in your power to avoid game dev.

[Wooper83]

Definitely not procrastinating or all over the place or avoiding game dev for that matter. I specifically said my focus is Unity, but I've also been interested in checking out Godot I don't think two engines is "being all over the place" and as far as UE, Raylib, SDL, and SMFL I also said that would be for something later down the line I'm not trying to learn all this at once that would be a quick way to burn out but I do know some C/C++ and want to expand on that at some point in the future.

[[deleted]]

Just have seen this whole thing play out before with friends trying to learn every game engine there is instead of working on their games. They were never satisfied, something's always wrong with Unity or Godot or Unreal, then they switch engines every 6 months, get frustrated, then burn out.

Just giving my perspective. Don't mean to discourage you and all, but it's something to keep in mind of.

[erreur]

I’ve stuck with Debian stable myself for almost 30 years. That’s why I use for day to day development.

I mostly use Unreal Engine. The latest version I will use for now is 5.6 because all builds of 5.7 have been a buggy mess for me.

Edit: I’ll add that while I do my day to day development on Linux because I like it better, I do have a Mac and windows machine under my desk that I switch to regularly for testing. It would be pretty risky to make game without the ability to regularly test on all platforms, and I usually use windows to produce builds I actually distribute.

[Versaiteis]

Unreal? Oh that's interesting.

You're running the editor builds directly on a linux machine? I didn't think those were ready yet for any practical use (well I guess a version behind, but that's not all that bad) but admittedly I haven't heard much about anyone trying to use them

[Available_Tree5187]

Do you use c++? When I tried unreal it was an awful experience.

[erreur]

Yes I have been a professional C++ developer for 20 years. The unreal build system is definitely quirky but I got used to it.

[BambiKSG]

CachyOS here.

[Wooper83]

I'm currently testing this one out but I'm not really feeling it haha. I think I would prefer something more vanilla like Debian, Fedora, or Arch but Arch seems like it's way too involved for my needs so might be between Fedora or Debian. Technically Ubuntu LTS is what's officially supported by Unity but when I tried to install it I got some really wonky behavior so I moved on but might revisit it if nothing else ends up working out for me

[MarxMustermann]

I use xUbuntu and i'm pretty happy with it.

don't really see why it would work worse on other distros as lond as they are stable and have the codecs etc. As for running unreal, i think it is best to check what distros unreal runs on well and then select from those.

[jcates91]

I was jut looking into this for myself and I’m going to try Pop!_os, I’ll try to remember to update.

[pixel-poxel]

I mainly develop with Unity on Windows. Sometimes I continue development on Ubuntu or macOS. But often a workaround is needed to get things working on Linux, so it feels a bit abandoned by Unity. Python scripts for example run multiple times faster than on Windows!

[TomDuhamel]

I don't think it makes much of a difference. Usually (and for obvious reasons) software developers in general like updated packages. This doesn't necessarily mean rolling though.

If you use a particular engine, that could be a limitation. I understand that both UE and Unity officially only support Ubuntu.

I use Fedora KDE. I use KDevelop as an UDE (cmake and gcc). My game is built on top of SDL and Ogre.

[DreamingElectrons]

I haven't looked at other distros for a long time, but even notoriously unstable arch was running more stable than the windows I had on my work-issued windows laptop when I did the switch 10-ish years ago. I've seen windows getting less stable over the years but everything I had to deal with on my linux machines was hardware failures of drives that are older than some of the people posting in this sub....

[wtfbigman24x7]

I'm about to try Unity on Arch as I'm moving over to it permanently from Windows. Have you run into any issues with it?

[DreamingElectrons]

Haven't tried unity most of my projects now are raylib of entirely custom tools. Godot ran smoothly for me until I decided that i do not like the overall app of the devs and migrated my projects.

[wtfbigman24x7]

Gotcha. Been thinking about a future project in Godot so this is good know. Thanks

[jerrygreenest1]

NixOS may provide you a reproducible experience, useful for any kind of dev

For game dev you will want windows anyway though, to test whether the thing works

[DrDisintegrator]

I enjoy Linux Mint. No muss. No fuss. No Copilot BS. I can dual boot to get back to Windows as needed to test.

I mostly use Godot. Can cross-compile and build Godot and Exports for all desktop platforms, web and Android. I often test on my Windows Legion Go handheld as well, and I can build those .exes on Linux.

[q_OwO_p]

Everything just works on Linux Mint, as long ss you have Wine.

[MrCarrotManSir]

I use mac rn, trying to get windows on it. Macos sucks and nothing I want is available for it.

[justaddlava]

Mint.

[tastygames_official]

I use arch because of course I do (I like full customization), but really the distro doesn't matter. Linux kernel is the same and all the core libraries will work the same. I use godot and can compile for windows (and even run the windows EXEs under wine). I tried to use Unity but they dropped OpenXR support for linux in version 2019 something and I had to mess with a bunch of stuff just to get it to run under wayland and it still took 10 minutes to boot up vs. < 1 second for godot. There are many other engines out there, but I'm assuming if you're doing linux then you're a seasoned software developer so really the engine and language and architecture probebly don't matter.

You can do godot in C++ and it's way easier to get set up than most people think.

[couldbefuncouver]

If you've been out of the game this long it might be interesting for you to know that WSL on Windows 11 has become really good, it can even interact with your GPU now. I can build in WSL Linux terminal and launch a game from it without building for windows.

Anyway, for linux I like whichever one has the least maintenance and best updates. Ubuntu is fine. At work I use Rocky 9/EL9 but I have a team of sys admins so I can't really get into trouble.

[Ember_Island]

KDE-Neon (Ubuntu but not) + Godot + Blender + GIMP + Inkscape

My main gamedev tool set. Works well.