Unity 4 Adds Linux Support 150
dartttt writes "After more than 14,000 votes by Linux users and efforts by Brian Fargo, Unity has added Linux support to their popular 3D game engine. Starting with Unity 4.0, Linux will be supported as a publishing platform allowing Unity games to be played natively on Linux. Only standalone desktop games will be supported initially. From the article: 'Unity Technologies, maker of a widely used video-game engine, today announced that its fourth-generation product will introduce new animation technology and extend its support for Adobe Systems' Flash Player, Linux, and Microsoft's DirectX 11.'"
Re:next: steam for linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this trend is being forced by proprietary OS vendors, Valve should be threatened by the Windows 8 Market that is locked (for Metro applications only, for now) and the prospect of a locked down OS X. If that future of entirely lock down stores arrive, Steam will be dead soon. That is the only reason they are looking for an exit on the Linux market.
Liberated s/w on unliberated OS, or vice versa? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, he very specifically did say that in one of his recent essays. He doesn't like this unliberated software, but he'd rather that it sleeps w/ his liberated OS, rather than an unliberated one.
I actually tend to believe that the opposite choices are the way to go. Had the FOSS movements (not talking about just the FSF, but everybody involved in having source code automatically available w/ binaries) actually started w/ useful apps and making those liberated or open-sourced - things like Office Suites, Image & video editing software, Publishing software, financial software like and so on - that would have been better for FOSS as a whole. People would have gotten used to the likes of Open Office, GIMP, VLC and so on ages ago, just like they're used to Firefox and Chrome, and those would have been ubiquitous on computers. This would also have given these platforms the opportunity to get feature rich and customizable, letting people install either just the features they need, or all the bells & whistles.
Once that was out there, it would have been relatively easier to migrate them to FOSS OSs, be it Linux, BSD, osFree, ReactOS, et al. The initial port may have been a bitch - all those API translations and so on - but once that was done & out of the way, making upgrades to say, Linux versions of FOSS titles would have accompanied the upgrades to Windows equivalents (incidentally, while on that subject, such software should not have to be re-written b/w different versions of glibc or GCC or GTK or Qt - once it's written in each library, it should automatically be supported by its successors). Only caveat I see - the business models behind these would have needed to be worked out, but aside from that, it would have ensured a much wider acceptance of FOSS. In other words, if these programs need to be sold, do it, so that the projects don't remain in the red.
In short, what keeps FOSS from being widely embraced is its focus on lower layer s/w like kernels and userland utilities, rather than actual programs that end-users need. Stop making 20 text editors, 10 music players (KDE, I'm looking @ YOU), and so on, and actually produce the type of software that people need - be it things like Quickbooks, Photoshop & so on (close the gaps b/w GNUcash & Quickbooks, GIMP & Photoshop, Calligra vs MS Office and so on). Once those are successful, it will be easier to talk people into installing BSD or Linux or other FOSS OSs, since these titles can be ported there, given the availability of the source.