Unity Hub on Linux

Unity Engine
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Access the Unity Hub on Linux

The Unity Hub is a desktop app that streamlines the way you find, download, and manage your Unity projects and Editor installations. In our latest release, we’ve introduced workflow improvements and new feature support designed to improve our users’ productivity and quality of life.
This release improves the experience for Linux users by installing the Unity Hub and accessing its resources and features.

How to get started

The Unity Hub is now supported on machines running CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04 operating systems. In order to install the Unity Hub, follow the instructions outlined in our documentation.

Please note that the previous ‘download Hub for Linux’ link is no longer supported. As of today, users will need to install the Unity Hub through the steps described in the installation documentation.

If you experience any issues, please file a bug report directly in the Hub by selecting your profile icon > Troubleshooting > Report a bug.

Stay tuned for what’s next

Find out what we are working on and share your ideas with us by viewing the Unity Hub roadmap.

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Perfect!

No problem with installation and configuration ; it even located my projects automatically. Thanks a lot! :smile:

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GOD NO!!!

Why Unity? Why did you make it a package? This is going to make it pointlessly difficult to install it on non officially supported distributions and adding an extra repo to the package system always has the potential to wreck the whole system. This is not how we should be distributing applications in 2022.

The AppImage worked just fine. Why did you ditch it?

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Why!??? :face_with_spiral_eyes:
Now all arch users got f****. thanks a lot unity!
“quality of life” of who? this is worse than before.

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Exactly. But it’s not just that. It is much much worse than just that. Please allow me to explain.

Issue #1: Reliability
Unity is now forcing us to add a package repository to our system in order to install UnityHub. The problem is a package repository has the power to replace ANY package on the system! If Unity’s repository is badly configured (either by mistake or malice) then it has the power to destroy the entire system. Now, any time I will update my system, I will have to blindly trust that Unity didn’t made any mistake and didn’t get hacked. This is the same reason why Ubuntu’s PPA suck and why Canonical developed Snap to replace them.

When UnityHub was distributed as an AppImage there was no such problem. Installing it couldn’t harm the system.

Issue #2: Easiness
When UnityHub was distributed as an AppImage, all you had to do to install it was downloading it, right click on it and install it. That’s it, no extra step required. And yes, that takes care of the integration with the rest of the system (ie put it in the app menu and such). This is how I installed Unity on Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Kubuntu and Neon. It always worked right out of the box.

Now that UnityHub is distributed as a package I have to open a terminal, become root, edit a system config file (which is different depending on the distribution I’m using), add a new line (which is different depending on the distribution I’m using), and type a bunch of commands (which are different depending on the distribution I’m using). If I make a mistake while doing it, I can screw up my whole system! How is this quality of life?

Issue #3: Other distributions and future versions of supported distributions
I know that Unity only officially support Ubuntu and CentOS and I approve of that decision. But if I want to install it on a non supported distribution that’s my problem. AppImage is a distribution agnostic method to distribute applications, it works the same everywhere. I managed to install and use Unity on a whole bunch on distributions without issue.

Now that UnityHub is distributed via a package repository there is no way to install it on a non officially supported distribution. There is also no telling if this is going to work on future versions of Ubuntu and CentOS. Package are tied to one specific version of one distribution. If Ubuntu or CentOS decided to rename some package or to change the version numbers and UnityHub depends on those package, then it won’t install anymore. Unity devs will have to constantly keep their packages up to date with the changes in their supported distribution. This is extra work for no benefit.

Packages are yesterday!
I know that packages used to be the way to distribute applications for Linux, but this is not true any more. Packages never were a good way to distribute applications to begin with. Linux developers know this. This is why they came up with new and better ways to distribute applications for Linux, namely AppImage, Flatpak and Snap. Unity devs don’t have to support them all, they only have to choose the one that fit their needs best.

AppImage was a fine choice. If, for any reason, Unity devs were not satisfied with it, they could just have picked Flatpak on Snap instead (I know that many people dislike Snap for various reasons but it works and that’s all that matter here). Distributing UnityHub via a package repository is a HUGE step back. This is not quality of life, it’s trouble for everybody, including Unity.

Please Unity, reconsider your decision.

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why not have both methods? Have it as a package and as an AppImage for non-supported distros

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The appimage is still available; you can use it until you sort out your problems with the new version: Unity Hub v2.0.0 Release

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Problems with the new system will never be sorted out because they are inherent to that system.
Packages shall not be used to distribute third party applications. That’s not what they’re for.

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How is the Hub a third party application?

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The Unity Hub doesn’t ship as part as your Linux distribution (Ubuntu, Mint, Arch… whatever you’re using). That’s why (from your system’s point of view) it is a third party application.

Packages are great for things that come with your distribution: kernels, libraries, services, command line tools, desktop environment and basic applications (like the terminal or the file explorer). These things need to be in sync with each others, they need to be updated together. That’s exactly what the package system is for.

For third party applications (web browsers, office suits, media players, development tools…), package sucks. You can’t expect your Linux distribution to package every applications you will ever need. It isn’t Canonical or Red Hat job to package Unity for their distribution. It is Unity’s job to distribute Unity to us so that we can install it on our system. That’s what AppImage, Flatpak and Snap are for, and that’s what Unity should be using.

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I don’t know what Linux distribution you are using but third party packages have never been a problem for me, using Linux mint. Maybe you should try it?
And I’m very happy Unity Technologies didn’t abandon their baby to Flatpak!

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Welp now I can’t use the new hub. Why can’t the appimage and flatpak versions continue? This limits unity to Ubuntu and CentOS based distros.

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Neon. It’s just plain Ubuntu with KDE. Nothing fancy.

They’ve been for me each and every time I installed something with a PPA. The pattern is always the same:

  1. I need an application that isn’t packaged by Ubuntu, or a version that is newer than the one packaged by Ubuntu.
  2. The devs of the application provide it via a PPA because they don’t know better solutions exist.
  3. I add the PPA to my system and install the application.
  4. Sooner or later, one of the package offered by the PPA conflict with one of the package on Ubuntu and then I get error when I try to update my system. Best case scenario I manage to purge the PPA (but then the app is no longer installed). Worst case scenario I get a non bootable system.

PPA are just Ubuntu’s way of adding new package repository to the system. This is exactly the same thing Unity is telling us to do to install the Unity Hub. I can already predict what’s going to happen to Unity Linux users sooner or later. One day one of the package provided by Unity’s repository is going to conflict with one Ubuntu package and then they will screw up their system.

PPA and additional package repository (functionally the same thing) are the shittiest way to distribute Linux applications. Nobody should use that.

Yeah. It wouldn’t be fun If we could just install Unity on any distro without having to edit system config files and risking screwing up the entire system.

Because it wouldn’t be enough “quality of life” if we could just install Unity with Flatpak like this:

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It wouldn’t be enough “quality of life” if we could continue installing Unity with AppImage like this:
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No, now we have to do it like this:

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Hourra for quality of life!

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@MadWatch Best part is I tried to add the signing key but… its a 443 so the work around to get the public key, is to go to the https://hub.unity3d.com/linux/keys/public and download the pub file. After that open a terminal wherever its downloaded and do sudo apt-key add thepublickey.pub. I do admit though the hub is much better than it use to be it recognizes the project files without having to create a new project then add the existing ones in. Yes it would be nice to open a software manager and install the application, and they are probably working on it.

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Worst part for me was that I’d just finished with ricing my arch yesterday and noticed that hub told me that updates are no longer given through appimage and I’ve to use ubuntu or centos based distros, which led to me spending another week of my life in dual-booting mint and getting my dotfiles back, and you know that many software like htop, lolcat now don’t even get updated on there distro specific repos. Appimages version was so great. also having distro based packages makes unity provide distro specific binaries which means twice as much time spent compiling. distro based packages are not terrible (most probably coz I’ve never updated and non rolling distro like mint or ubuntu so I haven’t got any conflicts).

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I really appreciate that there’s an official non-beta version of Unity for Linux now, but why is it so hard to install Unity from the terminal? I’m trying to set up a Jenkins build environment but all the old ways of installing Unity no longer work. Attempting direct downloading from https://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/7298b473bc1a/ (version 2020.3.26f1) gives a 403 Forbidden error. UnityHub does not support running from the terminal either, attempting to do this just gives some X11 error.

So please, can we have proper Linux terminal support for CI/CD integration? And no, I’m not going to use Unity Cloud Build.

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Agree.I really appreciate that there’s an official non-beta version of Unity for Linux now, but I agree more with
MadWatch. Why not just use Flatpak or AppImage?

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There is a Flatpak package already for Unity Hub but it’s not supported by Unity Technologies and it’s not up to date either.

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There is a limit to what a company can do to maintain their product; it’s normal that Unity Technologies concentrates on a couple of versions instead of spreading themselves. I really find weird that people cannot understand that, or do not want to.

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Exactly. When the Hub was distributed as a AppImage the Unity devs only had the AppImage to do and nothing else. Now they have to maintain one package for Ubuntu and one package for CentOS, plus one package repository for each. That’s more work for them.

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