Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

natoshabard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 114 posts

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#91

Post by isaacremuant »

jebblue wrote: post #36
JupiterMoon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious. Why not go for QT for the whole GUI on all platforms?

It seems Gtk has won, why don't the QT developers and supporters move to the Gtk camp and work to make it better rather then keep QT alive which just wastes efforts.

Won what? Qt is widely used and has a big community. Qt now supports mobile devices as well and the framework development is very tidy and fast.

Besides, the whole "wasted effort because there's 2 projects that 2 similar things" is a fallacy.

As a Qt developer let me give you a big resounding no and ask you a question: Have YOU developed with Gtk in Windows?

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#92

Post by rhodysurf »

rdsnsca wrote: post #46
throwaway24242 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think native UIs are overrated and just cause headaches for developers. E.g. take the most popular UI system: HTML/CSS/JS: users have no problem with the fact that all their favourite websites look different. IMHO it is a better idea when the application enforces the same UI across platforms (like QT) than the platform expecting the same UI for all programs. On top of that QT does support native look&feel.

The truth is Mac user expect a Ui to look and feel native, otherwise you will be savaged in reviews, no matter how good your feature set. You last sentence tells me you have never used a QT app on a Mac, because it does not look and feel native.

Its not nearly as bad as you make it seem. Also you can embed objective c and native cocoa widgets in Qt apps so you cam make it as native as you want.

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#93

Post by rhodysurf »

adrusi wrote: post #84
seba_dos1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gtk has won" [citation needed]

It has essentially won on linux, where Qt is limitted to the KDE subculture and cross platform apps for which linux is not a priority. GNOME, Unity, Pantheon, XFCE, LXDE, Mate, Cinnamon, etc. all work best with GTK. With some of the heavier weight desktops, Qt apps look quite out of place, kind of like how cross platform UI apps look on Mac and Windows. Since most Qt apps on linux come from the KDE ecosystem, they of…

You can use gtk styling in Qt apps and it looks just like GTK. Also Ubuntu Unity is switching to Qt for unity 8. As for dependencies, there are definitely more Qt apps on linux than just KDE apps.

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#94

Post by isaacremuant »

adrusi wrote: post #84
seba_dos1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gtk has won" [citation needed]

It has essentially won on linux, where Qt is limitted to the KDE subculture and cross platform apps for which linux is not a priority. GNOME, Unity, Pantheon, XFCE, LXDE, Mate, Cinnamon, etc. all work best with GTK. With some of the heavier weight desktops, Qt apps look quite out of place, kind of like how cross platform UI apps look on Mac and Windows. Since most Qt apps on linux come from the KDE ecosystem, they of…

Interesting answer. You left out that Ubuntu's recent SDK has a strong relation with Qt.

https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/apps/

The "out of place" argument is one I commonly used by Mac and Linux users because they want everything to look native in their OS of choice and disregard dev time (to use a different window framework for each OS) and look in every other OS.

No one can win that argument to favor THEIR own OS look over another.

Qt apps are pretty reliable across platforms and are speedy to develop so that's what should be important instead of getting an impossible native look.

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#95

Post by panic »

zanny wrote: post #33
cwyers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because native GUI on Windows and OSX is better for those users and already exists?

There is some insane technical debt maintaining three versions of your application with platform specific plumbing. It almost never is worth the investment to become portable after the fact, but when you start out it always strikes me as incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into a native toolkit in the first place when Qt is so good nowadays.

You could also make this argument in the other direction: it's incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into Qt when there are some things you can do only with a native toolkit. Using native libraries on each platform gives you flexibility and intra-platform consistency at the expense of lots of extra effort. It really just comes down to whether you're willing to expend this effort or not.

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#96

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

tormeh wrote: post #81
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't been asked to support every distribution, just Debian, and possibly Ubuntu. Please pay attention to this advice. Supporting Debian practically gets you Ubuntu support for free, as well as a number of other popular distributions.

Steam and most Linux games can be run on any distribution with a bit of work on the user's part. The problem with officially supporting something is that suddenly the vendor is responsible for the game not working. That shit costs time and money. You say Debian, but sooner or later someone will demand support for Damn Small Linux. It's better to just stop at Ubuntu and let users of other distros install the right dep…

Perhaps you're new to Linux. Let me assure you that Debian is a very popular distribution upon which many other distributions are based, and is in no way equivalent to suggesting support for one or a number of niche or less popular distros. I don't even use Debian myself, but I suggest it because I know that if Debian is supported then getting support for my preferred distribution will be effortless; the same is true for Ubuntu.

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#97

Post by throwaway24242 »

yoz-y wrote: post #82
throwaway24242 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do the users care? I do not think so. Otherwise a lot of famous websites would have native UI clients.

The iOS AppStore is exactly that. A bunch of native UIs for famous websites. E.g.: Facebook, Twitter, Google Apps... Precisely because users (at least iOS and Mac users) do care.

Yeah, but mostly because these applications do not work properly on mobile devices (smaller screen size, too slow, etc.) and a native (in the sense of NOT browser-based) application makes sense. However my hypothesis is just, that the LOOK does not have to fit into the OS.

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#98

Post by throwaway24242 »

panic wrote: post #95
zanny wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some insane technical debt maintaining three versions of your application with platform specific plumbing. It almost never is worth the investment to become portable after the fact, but when you start out it always strikes me as incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into a native toolkit in the first place when Qt is so good nowadays.

You could also make this argument in the other direction: it's incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into Qt when there are some things you can do only with a native toolkit. Using native libraries on each platform gives you flexibility and intra-platform consistency at the expense of lots of extra effort. It really just comes down to whether you're willing to expend this effort or not.

What are examples that you can just do with a native toolkit?

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#99

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

jebblue wrote: post #28
reitzensteinm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hoping for a switch to Microsoft's .Net, which would enable use of Arcadia (Clojure in Unity3D) for serious/big tasks. Right now, the GC performance of Unity is horrible relative to what you'd get on the JVM and there's no reason to believe IL2CPP is going to be any better. When you don't have a generational collector, you have to seriously constrain your allocations, crimping your immutable style. The Unity ro…

I helped build a web service product that ran on Mono in the early 2000's back when I was still also a Windows dev but with the significant improvements over the mid to latter 2000's to the speed and stability of the JVM I dare say (and consider Mojang's success) the JVM would be a better choice for future game engines than Mono. With so much work having gone into using Mono I doubt it would be changed to the JVM but…

That blog post is correct tho?

Re: Porting the Unity Editor to Linux: Stuff I Wish We’d Done Then

#100

Post by seba_dos1 »

rhodysurf wrote: post #93
adrusi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has essentially won on linux, where Qt is limitted to the KDE subculture and cross platform apps for which linux is not a priority. GNOME, Unity, Pantheon, XFCE, LXDE, Mate, Cinnamon, etc. all work best with GTK. With some of the heavier weight desktops, Qt apps look quite out of place, kind of like how cross platform UI apps look on Mac and Windows. Since most Qt apps on linux come from the KDE ecosystem, they of…

You can use gtk styling in Qt apps and it looks just like GTK. Also Ubuntu Unity is switching to Qt for unity 8. As for dependencies, there are definitely more Qt apps on linux than just KDE apps.

Plus "KDE apps pull a lot of deps" claim is already outdated, as recent releases of KDE Frameworks are highly modularized.
Post reply on HN