Difference between revisions of "Install EVE on Linux with Wine"

Revision as of 18:21, 19 January 2009

How to install EVE Online on Linux with Wine

What is Wine?

Wine is free and open source software that allows Linux and other UNIX-like operating system to run windows executables. Wine is compatibility layer (yet another WINE transcript: Wine Is Not an Emulator), it uses native UNIX substitutes for Windows components which results in fast translation from Windows to UNIX 'language', accompanying neglectable performance loss.

The Wine FAQ on this question.

Why use Wine instead of the official EVE Linux client?

EVE Online played through Wine has less bugs, better stability and better performance than the official EVE Linux client. It can also support premium graphics with the proper hardware, which isn't supported by the official EVE Linux client.

Downloading and installing Wine

Most distributions have Wine in their default software repositories. Therefore, you can install Wine with your package manager (Synaptic, RPM Package Manager, etc). If you cannot find Wine in your package manger or would like to build Wine from source, you can download and install Wine from the official webpage. You are encouraged to install one of the latest Wine development versions as older ones may be unable to launch EVE at all.

You can install Wine in Ubuntu by launching Add/Remove Applications, selecting show "All Open Source Applications", typing "wine" into the search bar, clicking the check box next to "Wine Microsoft Compatibility Layer" and then pressing the "Apply Changes" button.

Downloading, compiling and installing Wine (Alternative)

Wine is one piece of software that is rapidly evolving, therefore it's advantageous to be up-to-date with the latest unstable release. For those of us that are not blessed with a repository containing the latest binary builds there is the option of compiling it ourselves.

The Wine project is exceptionally well maintained. Anyone confident at using package managers for adding new software will be able to complete a fresh build of Wine from it's original sources with surprising ease.

• Step one is download the source archive at the bottom of above downloads page.

• Step two is read the short User Guide entry on compiling Wine.

• Step three is use "configure" to identify and your package manager to install all the headers and dev packages that are needed to make Wine compile happily. This is where Wine's polish really shines.

Of particular importance is the OpenGL libs, font libs and screen-mode libs.

The rest is straight forward. Compiling takes some time.

Downloading and installing EVE

Download the Windows premium client. It's important to use premium. Premium has now evolved to a faster performing product. Classic has been problematic and is about to be discontinued anyway.

Once it is done downloading, double click on the "EVE_Premium_Setup_*.exe" file you downloaded and follow the instructions on screen. The default options in the EVE installer are acceptable.

Configuring Wine to work with EVE

Open winecfg (usually found in Applications > Wine > Configure Wine), click on the graphics tab, and click "emulate a virtual desktop".

You will also need to install arial.ttf. To do this, install the package "msttcorefonts". After the package is installed, copy /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/* to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts.

If your hardware is not SM3 capable then in Eve's graphics preferences you will need to uncheck the "Premium Graphics Content Enabled" option.

Running multiple clients from the same EVE directory

Create two launchers, and set the first launcher's command to wine explorer /desktop=EVE,800x600 "C:\Program Files\CCP\EVE\eve.exe" and the second launcher's command to wine explorer /desktop=EVE2,800x600 "C:\Program Files\CCP\EVE\eve.exe". Set 800x600 to whatever resolution you are using. If you need more than 2 clients, don't forget to change the name (ie /desktop=EVE3, /desktop=EVE4, etc).