Standardizing FlaxEngine's build distro

Platforms Linux
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Hello everyone!
Perhaps the title isn’t at all clear in what it specifically means, so here it goes…
After reading this section of the forum, it looks like, at least to me, that there is an inherent problem between the base distribution used for building Flax and what people here are using.

Now, my experience with using Flax on Linux has been flawless. Time ago, with Fedora, no problem at all. At the time of this writing, I’m on Alma Linux. The only thing that needed my intervention was installing .Net (dotnet) packages and Flax just worked. No errors, no crashes, just worked.

Both the distributions I used are RedHat downstreams. Fedora is directly under RH, like their testing bed for the future of RHEL, while Alma Linux is an exact clone of current RHEL, 1:1. The difference is that Alma Linux’s foundation is WAY more approachable and easy going than having to deal with Fedora’s, so much so that I myself have joined AL’ SIG (Special Interest Group) Media and Entertainment, made my contributions, and saw them integrated in a pretty short time. Not only that, but support with infrastructure and other issues is snappy.

One of the core goals of this Foundation is to make AL the go-to distro for the M&E industry, also for the “small guys”, providing a dedicated little app where we have curated a pretty nice list of software for use in the industry. It’s available here if you want to check it out.

Also, I personally really would like to not have Ubuntu involved with the creation of Flax. Canonical (the company that ships Ubuntu) is pretty much the Microsoft of the Linux world, and their commitment in turning good software into bad software is astounding. They don’t deserve to be recommended as the go-to platform for beginners or “default” Linux anymore.

This is a call to @mafiesto4 : Alma Linux is community driven, has devs ready to help and support, and they would be glad to support a project like Flax, not only in helping you sort things out, but also promoting Flax by including it as a recommended good software choice, and including an automated dependencies installation so that Flax just run with no user intervention.

I know, everyone would like to have their own favorite distro to be the base one for building Flax, so that “the best distro of all” has no issues out of the box. I’m just reporting what I’ve experienced with the devs at this specific distribution, and I feel like i can recommend it to everyone.

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One of the issues is that Linux support is almost always a secondary concern in building and maintaining a library/engine of this size and scope. In theory, the tools and libraries used are cross-platform, so Flax is also cross-platform, but in reality, someone has to keep these packages and builds tested and up to date, and that is always a challenge across multiple Linux platforms that are in various combinations of package versions at different times.

Defaulting to Ubuntu is just playing to the largest share of the pie, as Ubuntu or Ubuntu derivatives are a huge part of Linux gaming and even corporate Linux development environments. Now, if someone were to volunteer to maintain these different distro packages and make sure they are up to date to work with one simple installation command, then great, but I’m not sure the limited Flax dev time would or should focus on that.

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Yeah that’s true, we’re limited in resources and Ubuntu support is our minimal goal but we do have large community of Flax devs who use it on other Linux distros.

Upcoming Flax 1.12 update contains new SDL3 backend, which improves Flax Editor usage with Wayland backend and other stability improvements to Linux devs. Especially Vullkan backend got rendering fixes for better synchronization.

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Actually, what I was saying is about ditching Canonical (Ubuntu) ecosystem entirely. The reasons? The latest news and implementations shipped in the latest Ubuntu are simply BAD choices and decisions.

From imposing snapd (the whole Snaps ecosystem) and making it virtually impossible to remove them without breaking the system, to the decision to use the (subpar, buggy and insecure) rust rewritings of the GNU tools and finally their latest commitment to add (cram) AI within the OS itself, Canonical are set in the ways of being the Linux world’s Microsoft.

In the switch to Alma Linux, you’d also get access to the devs’ direct support if you need help with something, and your commitment to support Flax’s minimal goal in Linux would not change at all. As I reported in my earlier message, on my system Flax just works flawlessly. I only had to install dotnet packages. If you get in touch with the Alma Linux devs, they can add Flax to their recommended M&E application installer app and automate even the minimal steps, reducing friction for other users (as you can see from all the threads in the linux section).

Ubuntu is going down a route that is upsetting most Linux users and the widespread malcontent can be seen around on the web. Just saying.

BTW I can’t wait for the upcoming release

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Thanks. I’m glad to hear some insights from Linux community. To be fair, for us the most important things in this area are:

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