I will be building a new computer (spec 8GB, 64 Bit, AMD FX 6300, 1TB HDD, 128GB SSD, GeForceGTX1050) and will continue making games with Unity. Instead of installing Windows I wondered about using Ubuntu, simply because I heard they are free and much faster than using Windows.
Does anyone have another OS they would recommend?
I have Ubuntu Studio on disk to try when I’ve built the PC, but wondered which version of Ubuntu is the best for the current version of Unity?
Also will I still be able to build the game for use on Windows PCs and android devices?
I would also like to build for IOS, does anyone know anything about virtual machines if the main OS is Ubuntu.
However, if you’re going to build for Windows, you probably want to test it on Windows so you’d have to get a copy anyways. I’ve used virtual machines (Virtualbox on Windows, not Linux), but in my experience they are not suitable for serious development. The performance drop is very significant and you’ll be missing out on a lot of your new PC’s potential power. Since you’d like to build for iOS, you’d need a MacOS virtual machine (not sure how legal it is). On my PC (specs in signature), MacOS was very slow and buggy in Virtualbox and definitely not something I’d want to work for hours in. For a build it could work, but couldn’t enjoy writing code in it due to the severe performance drop.
Finally, I’ve used both Ubuntu and Mint, and I personally prefer Mint, even though I know many people who are die-hard fans of Ubuntu. The Unity Linux page doesn’t state that it won’t work with Mint, so it should work. The beauty of having a brand new PC is that you can install both and see which one you like more
Also, if you can’t decide, you can dual-boot Windows and Linux. I’ve done it on 2 computers and it’s pretty painless, especially since you’re starting with a clean machine.
Many thanks for the reply and very useful information. I did wonder about the speed of virtual machines.
I think I may try using Linux Mint and see how it goes.
