Install EVE on Linux with Wine

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.

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 here. 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 is advantageous for us to be up-to-date with the latest unstable release. For those of us that are not blessed with a repository with the latest binary builds there is the option of compiling it yourself.

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 screenmode libs.

The rest is straight forward. Compiling takes some time.

Downloading and installing EVE

Download the Windows premium client here. 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 need to download d3dx9_35 and place it in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32. Once that is done, open winecfg again and click the libraries tab. Find d3dx9_35 in the drop down list and add it. Click on d3dx9_35 in the existing overrides window and click edit, then click "Native then builtin".

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

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).