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games whose anti-cheats makes them never works in Linux(even with wine/proton) aren't ended up in my Library for whatever reason

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Quoting: StellaIs that really worth doing though? I uploaded logs and gave really detailed information for 3 different games that have issues with Proton. The Witcher 3, Vampyr, Doom TDA. All 3 are Steam Deck Verified. In all 3 reports, i gave detailed repro steps along with proton logs, and the issue was 100% reproducible. In Vampyr, the report was specifically about a regression in Proton 8 or later on the Steam Deck. I have never heard back from Valve on any of these 3 reports. This effort feels like a waste of time now.😫

This. I have a plugin called decky-proton-pulse, and as soon as I started reading this I was excited to maybe work this in some native easy way, but I remembered that so many do these seem to be ignored. Maybe they are not though, and we just don't see what goes in in Valve's world. Perhaps they ingest these etc... for trends and fixes.

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If you're completely stuck, want to use Linux for gaming but need specific games

The simplest option is to have Windows on another SSD and then you just boot into it for few select competitive games while using Linux for all the rest. This is what I do.

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Is that really worth doing though? I uploaded logs and gave really detailed information for 3 different games that have issues with Proton. The Witcher 3, Vampyr, Doom TDA. All 3 are Steam Deck Verified. In all 3 reports, i gave detailed repro steps along with proton logs, and the issue was 100% reproducible. In Vampyr, the report was specifically about a regression in Proton 8 or later on the Steam Deck. I have never heard back from Valve on any of these 3 reports. This effort feels like a waste of time now.😫

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Ah, there must be a rule somewhere to state that a solution to a problem will show up when you don't need it anymore :D

I was facing an issue with a game last week, and ended up getting proton logs out this way. It was quite helpful. Ubuntu 24.04 have nvidia 595 drivers, but for some reason they didn't ship with the 32 bit builds of the various libraries. The proton logs showed that the game (a 32-bit windows executable) was just not seeing the GPU *at all* and moved to llvmpipe.

Still, a useful post; I'm sure there are issues that can't quite get fixed on our end.

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You can upload the log file, first I have heard of this. I've just been chopping them up and making dozens of posts per bug report.

/this is a joke, don't do this.

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I would welcome a post (or an edit) introducing https://modding-openmw.com/ and especially showing a setup that works well on Steam Deck.

Their scripts make modding really easy. But unfortunately the Total Overhaul seems to be too much for the Deck. Would be nice to see a configuration close to it which can be run on the Deck.

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Thanks so much!
Your trick work!

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Quoting: iliyalesanitried wine, wine-staging-tkg, proton experimental, proton-ge, proton-tkg, reinstalled battle.net multiple times on different prefixes even cleared appdata and programdata but still nothing. gave VPN and tethering mobile network a shot as well. the result was always the same:
"Battle.net Update Agent went to sleep. Attempting to wake it up... BLZBNTBNA00000005".

This happened to me as well. Looks like the latest Battle.net launcher update broke something. This is how I fixed it in Lutris.

Close Lutris, then

 
# pkill -9 Battle.net
# pkill -9 Agent
# pkill -9 Blizzard

# rm -rf ~/Games/battlenet/drive_c/ProgramData/Battle.net/Agent
# rm -rf ~/Games/battlenet/drive_c/ProgramData/Blizzard\ Entertainment
Open Lutris, start Battle.net. You will have to login again, but it should be working now. Hope this helps.

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tried wine, wine-staging-tkg, proton experimental, proton-ge, proton-tkg, reinstalled battle.net multiple times on different prefixes even cleared appdata and programdata but still nothing. gave VPN and tethering mobile network a shot as well. the result was always the same:
"Battle.net Update Agent went to sleep. Attempting to wake it up... BLZBNTBNA00000005".

same thing with lutris using different versions of wine runners. even tried starting up the agent before and after launching battle.net to no avail:
WINEFSYNC=1 WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2240255771/pfx/" "$HOME/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/Proton-Tkg-2634/files/bin/wine" "$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2240255771/pfx/drive_c/ProgramData/Battle.net/Agent/Agent.exe"

EDIT / FIX:
using bottles (AUR, not flatpak) with proton-ge 10-30 worked. bottles also applied this launch option:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="locationapi=d" WINE_SIMULATE_WRITECOPY=1 %command%

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Proton will also do however the default wine is ancient and does not work. I had to give this info in universal blue discord so many times I started to meme about "days since last Battle.net install failure on Lutris: 0". It is a pet peeve of mine😅

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Quoting: mr-victoryI forgot this guide existed lol. Option 1 (Lutris) does not work and hasn't for months unless the default Wine version is changed from Wine GE 8.26 to something newer. Other wine versions can be installed by clicking a tiny button that looks like an open box in the main page of Lutris, next to "Wine" button.

For most games you'll want to select "GE-Proton (Latest)" instead. No need to download anything manually. Lutris (UMU) will automatically download and manage the latest Proton version for you.

Lutris really needs to cut a new release at some point and make this the default.

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I forgot this guide existed lol. Option 1 (Lutris) does not work and hasn't for months unless the default Wine version is changed from Wine GE 8.26 to something newer. Other wine versions can be installed by clicking a tiny button that looks like an open box in the main page of Lutris, next to "Wine" button.

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I did install Steam thru Flatpak (K)ubuntu 25.10;
Proton 9 did not work, but Proton 10 did. It got stuck on "agent went to sleep attempting to wake it up steam".

The location for the directory is here: `~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/`

Hope this helps someone.

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I've added the Steam Snap path into the guide now, thanks.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: jurquizoFirst of all, great guide. I tried following the steam method and I couldn't find the folder of the Steam installation folder to change the shortcut, I think it is because I installed Steam via snap and I can't find similar paths inside the .snap folder. Could you help me?

Ah, that's an interesting one. Snap is a whole different can of worms.

Could you try looking in: ~/snap/steam/common/.local/share/Steam/steamapps

See if the compatdata folder is there? Once we find the correct path, I'll add it to the guide.

Thanks for the quick reply. The folder compatdata is in ~/snap/steam/common/.local/share/Steam/steamapps, and there are a two folders with random numbers as names with the same created/modified date. In my case it was easy to find the correct because there were only 2 candidate folders.

*mod snip: we prefer note to have user scripts here, especially from an AI*

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Quoting: jurquizoFirst of all, great guide. I tried following the steam method and I couldn't find the folder of the Steam installation folder to change the shortcut, I think it is because I installed Steam via snap and I can't find similar paths inside the .snap folder. Could you help me?

Ah, that's an interesting one. Snap is a whole different can of worms.

Could you try looking in: ~/snap/steam/common/.local/share/Steam/steamapps

See if the compatdata folder is there? Once we find the correct path, I'll add it to the guide.

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First of all, great guide. I tried following the steam method and I couldn't find the folder of the Steam installation folder to change the shortcut, I think it is because I installed Steam via snap and I can't find similar paths inside the .snap folder. Could you help me?

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This is for those looking for a solution that doesn't involve Flatpak. It is primarily intended for desktop Linux users. Although, I imagine with a little tweaking, It might work for Steam Deck as well.

Spoiler, click me

There are many ways to install OpenMW. There is even an unofficial AppImage available. The distro repositories almost always offer an out-of-date version. In the past, I used to install via the LaunchPad PPA (only works for Ubuntu derivatives). The problem with PPAs is that they have to be reinstalled with every major version upgrade of your distro. If you are slow to upgrade, the PPA will eventually update to a version of OpenMW that will not run on your outdated distro. Updating uninstalls the version that currently works and then fails on installing the new version.

Option 3) Direct Download

https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/manuals/installation/install-openmw.html#direct-download

Recently, I discovered that OpenMW offers a Direct Download "installer" on their GitHub site. This archive acts just like the Windows installer, allowing you to keep multiple versions of OpenMW installed in Linux.

Spoiler, click me

NOTE: By default, all installations share the same saves and configuration. There is a feature that was introduced with version 0.48 that allows you to set up a "portable install", which allows you to isolate a particular version with its own configuration and save files.

https://modding-openmw.com/tips/portable-install/

The problem is that the installation instructions from the online guide are written very poorly. All they say is "run the install package once downloaded. It’s now installed!". It is not that easy. For one, the "installer" is an archive, not an executable. For two, they assume that you know what file to run once the archive is extracted. Here are my expanded instructions:

1) Download the latest Direct Download archive from the GitHub Releases page.

2) Extract the archive to the folder/location of your choice.

Spoiler, click me

NOTE: If you want to maintain multiple versions, keep in mind that only one of them can be in your default PATH. In fact, it would probably be better to keep the lot of them out of your PATH altogether. Instead of treating the executable/script like a system command, you will just have to provide the entire folder address to launch the game.

This, however, also makes the installation somewhat portable since you can place folder wherever you want. Combined with the "portable install" feature described above, this means you won't even have to have the game installed in your File System partition at all.

3) Launch the "openmw-launcher" script from within the folder.
.... a) If you are simply upgrading, it will use your existing configuration. You are good to go.
.... b) If this is a fresh installation, the launcher will offer to run the OpenMW Wizard to help you set everything up (see Option 1 of Liam's guide above for the rest of the steps).

4) If the launcher script will not start, then you have very likely encountered the rather infamous glibc issue (you can verify this by trying to launching the script in a terminal).

Spoiler, click me

GLIBC Compatibility Issues

One of the big concerns that I have with the OpenMW project is that they don't clearly notify Linux users of a change in system requirements (which they could include with the text for each release on GitHub). The OpenMW Team occasionally increases the version of the glibc library required without clearly advising their Linux users of this change.

For example, the latest version of OpenMW (0.50.0) requires glibc 2.38. This is only available on Ubuntu 24.04 (Mint 22) or higher. (Still running an earlier distro version? Surprise!)

The solution is quite simple. You need to integrate the game into the Steam Client and set the compatibility to Steam Linux Runtime 4, which is based on Debian 13.2 Trixie (and supports glibc 2.38).

5) Make sure to download the latest version of the Steam Linux Runtime (currently Steam Linux Runtime 4).

6) To add OpenMW to the Steam client, choose the option "Add a Non-Steam Game ...". You may have to manually point Steam at the location of the openmw-launcher script (I did).

7) Go to the Properties menu for openmw-launcher and select "Install Compatibility Tool". Choose the latest Steam Linux Runtime, which you downloaded in Step 5.

8) Update and customize the Steam Library entry to your preferences. You should now be good to go.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: subzeroThis doesnt seem to be working for me, i am on the official steam version of the game and i followed all the steps but for some reason the browser menu doesnt seem to detect the EA app on my computer that's already open, i am on fedora cinnamon

Since the guide covers two games, which game are we talking about? Battlefield 3?

yes im trying to play battlefield 3, apologies

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Quoting: subzeroThis doesnt seem to be working for me, i am on the official steam version of the game and i followed all the steps but for some reason the browser menu doesnt seem to detect the EA app on my computer that's already open, i am on fedora cinnamon

Since the guide covers two games, which game are we talking about? Battlefield 3?

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This doesnt seem to be working for me, i am on the official steam version of the game and i followed all the steps but for some reason the browser menu doesnt seem to detect the EA app on my computer that's already open, i am on fedora cinnamon

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On CachyOS:

I was not able to get the Lutris method to work. The installer kept complaining about a file system error and the Battle.net installer would freeze. I attempted this installation many times (~10) and eventually managed to install it without a file system error appearing, but even then, Battle.net would give either the "Battle.net Agent Went to Sleep" error or the "An error occurred while loading game information" error. I tried changing the Runner configuration to many other options than the default, but they all resulted in Battle.net freezing immediately after launch. I didn't try Jiloup's suggestion of using Proton Plus, though, so look at that if you insist on Lutris.

I was able to get the Steam method to work. Use Steam to run the Battle.net setup exe, and then re-target it to the launcher exe that is installed. However, the suggested Compability setting of Proton 9.0-4 still lead to the "Battle.net Agent Went to Sleep". Once I switched it to proton-cachyos-10.0-20251120, that error went away, Battle.net started normally, and I was able to install games. I then tried Proton 10.0-3, which also worked.

TL;DR: I'd recommend the Steam method, and Proton 10.0+

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Realise this is a bit old now, but I've been playing with BF4 for a year or so and one thing is really annoying - no steam overlay. Which also means no steam recorder.

Do you or anyone have any experience with getting the steam overlay to work with this?

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Added some notes for Debian.

Our wiki is bad.

Installing nvidia-drivers on Debian is basically
> apt install nvidia-driver

I made I video talking way too long for the easy task of installing Steam plus Nvidia drivers on a virgin Debian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6mXW7KPoU

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Added some notes for Debian.

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Great write up, very useful for new users. It could be worth adding [proton-cachyos](https://github.com/CachyOS/proton-cachyos) given how popular CachyOS is now.

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Thank you, I just setup the Steam Deck using this guide and now my kid and I can play together on my own server! <3

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I think you missed a huge part of playing a TES game by leaving out modding. I know modding on Linux tends to be difficult but the website modding-openmw makes it so easy.

I followed their Automatic Installation guide for the Total Overhaul of 589 mods on Linhx Mint and it worked flawlessly with no crashing after a few hours of playing. It downloads mods from Nexus through your terminal into your game install. If you pay for Nexus it'll be quicker and smoother, otherwise you have to acknowledge all 589 mods so it can take a few hours.

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The next release is focused around their new gamepad UI feature.

https://openmw.org/2025/openmw-0-50-0-is-now-in-rc-phase/

It's not officially released, but the RC releases of OMW are very stable.

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