[Guide] Warframe On Linux With Wine

[HACKhalo2]

Alright, so after much acclaim from the Subreddit, I decided to post my walkthrough on how to get this game running somewhat decently under the newest Wine (Development 1.5.29). The direct link to it is http://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/1dnnoj/warframe_on_linux/.

 

Alright, so first thing. I did this in Arch Linux, so your mileage will very depending on what distro you use. I've read good reports for Ubuntu working pretty easily, and other distros not so much. I would like feedback on what extra steps you would have to do to get it to work if mine didn't work for you.

 

Step one, Install Wine (I recommend Dev, but Stable may work) and, if your Package Manager doesn't package it together, winetricks. http://www.winehq.org/ for wine, and https://code.google.com/p/winetricks/ for winetricks. Optionally, create a prefix for Warframe so you don't clutter up the default one.

 

Step two, run winetricks d3dx9 xact (or /path/to/winetricks.sh d3dx9 xact if the package manager didn't install it). This will install the bare minimum DirectX9 and XAudio2 DLL's needed by most games. (You can omit d3dx9 for directx9, but that's usually overkill)

 

Step three, Download the Warframe.msi and put it somewhere you'll remember. I have mine on my Desktop.

 

Step four, open a terminal where the Warframe.msi file is at and run wine msiexec /i Warframe.msi. This will start the launcher. (You can optionally run wine msiexec /i /path/to/Warframe.msi)

 

After this step, the Launcher Window should open up. If it doesn't, try installing 'lib32-openal', 'lib32-libxml2', 'lib32-mpg123', 'lib32-giflib', 'lib32-libpng', and 'lib32-gnutls'. These are common compatibility libs most Wine programs need, so it wouldn't be to awful to install them all. These are also the names Arch Linux gives these packages, so you may need to Google around for the correct names for your Distro.

 

This is a (incomplete) list of Package names per DIstro. (Thanks Morcant!)

Arch             Ubuntulib32-openal     libopenal1lib32-libxml2    libxml2lib32-mpg123     libmpg123lib32-giflib     libgif4lib32-libpng     libpng12-0lib32-gnutls     libgnutls26

On a 64-bit system with multiarch, it may be necessary to use e.g. 'sudo apt-get install libgnutls26:i386' to install the 32-bit packages.

 

Step five, after the launcher opens up, DISABLE 64BIT IN THE LAUNCHER SETTINGS. It currently does NOT work right, and you're going to have a bad time.

 

Step six, Hopefully the launcher will be complaining about not being able to find Launcher.exe in your AppData path ($WINE_PREFIX/drive_c/users/<your username>/Local Settings/Application Data/Warframe/Downloaded/Public/Tools/Launcher.exe). It is there, but you need to move it over manually. CD into the directory and run mv Launcher.exe.tmp Launcher.exe. Click Retry on the launcher, and it should greet you with the login prompt. Enter your login information, and hopefully you will see the Licensing conditions. If so, congrats! Enjoy playing Warframe on a non-Microsoft system!

 

There is a chance that you will get the error that dreaded me for almost two weeks, the Could not log in: Could not find Server error. I have no clue why this error is there, but it fixed itself by compiling and installing https://github.com/madewokherd/wine-mono (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wine-mono/ for you Arch Linux users). It takes quite a bit of time to compile (I have an A10-5800K, and it took around 30 minutes to compile and install). MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A LOT OF SPACE IN /tmp, IT WILL TAKE A LOT JUST TO COMPILE IT!

 

If that doesn't fix it, Try compiling Wine from source. it's a long shot, but it may work (and it has worked for some people).

 

TIPS AND TRICKS

 

If your sound doesn't work (and it doesn't complain about not finding the XAudio2 Engine), try modprobing snd_seq. It may not of been loaded.

 

If your sound doesn't work (and it's complaining about not finding the XAudio2 Engine), run winetricks --force xact_jun2010. It may of not installed correctly the first time.

 

If the preprocess crashes when first starting the Launcher, run the launcher (or Warframe.msi) in the terminal. It fixes this error for me.

 

TURN OFF ALL THE FANCY STUFF AND HAVE THE GAME IN FULL SCREEN MODE. It raised my FPS from 10 to 60+.

 

Hopefully this guide helps you!

Edited May 12, 2013 by HACKhalo2

[LadySerenaKitty]

Has anyone gotten 64-bit working?  I ask because my system is purely 64-bit.  Also, does this require the linux-mono package or would the native mono work?

[Racercowboy]

Has anyone gotten 64-bit working?  I ask because my system is purely 64-bit.  Also, does this require the linux-mono package or would the native mono work?

 

I personally have not gotten it working on a 64 bit wine, it's been awhile since I tried though. Someone several posts up reported that he did indeed get it working on a 64-bit wine though.

[4ce-X]

During my installation onto Distro: Ubuntu Version: 14.04 i ran into a few issues, i thought i would share them here in case anyone else had the same issues

 

I followed the basic steps in this artical however i had to install Wine 1.7

sudo apt-get install wine1.7

 

I also ran into some issues with my video card drivers. for some reason they wanted to use the Nouvea display Driver (it tells you this when you try to install warframe). So you will need to change to this driver, while changing into this driver my linux decided that it didnt want to boot with a black flashing cursor after you past Grub Loader.

To over come this, follow this

 

How To Remove NVidia Drivers.

1: Restart into grub, strart ubuntu with additional options.

2: Start Ubuntu with restore options

3: Drop down into Terminal (root)

4: sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

5: restart

 

How to change to the Nouvea Driver

1: Press the super key and type Additional Drivers. Click the application to launch it (Super key is the windows key, but this is linux not windows!!)

2: Change you NVidia driver to the X.Org.X Server - Nouvea Display Driver.

3: Restart your computer and attempt to install Warframe again.

 

Once this happened i could then launch the Warframe Loader and it would check for updates. however i was getting "Corrupt Installation" all the time. for this you need to

1: Run Warframe

2: Click Cog in upper right

3: Untick both download options (this takes a serious amount of time but the installation was not corrupted) 

OR. you can do what i did and get the installation files from a friend that runs windows and just copy the files into the same location as you installed yours

 

After all this happened i also had an issue with the sound as well. for that i just ran these commands

1: sudo apt-get autoremove pulseaudio

2: sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer

 

once all that was done i was having some frame rate issues. it seemed to lag every 4 seconds. skipping several frames. to fix this i did the following

1: Run Warframe

2: Click Cog in upper right

3: Untick Multithreaded rendering

 

Also once i got inside the game and it was all running fine, it would crash every now and then. for that.

1: Turn off full screen mode

2: Adjust the resolution to match your screen

 

All in all, it was a great mission to get this game working. Good luck

 

-- End of Line --

[4ce-X]

Great now it appears that direct x will not update.

This is beginning to be more trouble than its worth.

 

yes i have renamed the directx folder and it has created a new one. but yeah it doesnt want to work still

[sgtcarneiro]

First of all, great thread, really nice work!

 

I am just bumping this thread to say that I follow the video tutorial for linux on my Macbook Pro (with PlayOnMac) and its working:

 

Edited February 11, 2015 by sgtcarneiro

[EvilFrost]

Help pls. "checking for new content", wait 30 min

Linux ubuntu

Edited February 16, 2015 by EvilFrost

[Racercowboy]

Help pls. "checking for new content", wait 30 min

Linux ubuntu

 

Some people reported hitting the verify cache button fixed this.

 

I'm beginning to wonder just how many people are running this game on linux, seeing as this thread is still going.

 

Linux port. DE pls.

Edited February 16, 2015 by Racercowboy

[Windbow]

I have not been able to update. Verifying cache does not help.

[Racercowboy]

I have not been able to update. Verifying cache does not help.

 

Weird, mine still updates fine, granted it doesn't say it updating. It just sits there at "checking for updates" for a little while then it says "yay game is up to date etc."

 

Still though, I wonder how many people are actually playing this on linux or with a dual boot with windows solely for games. There must be a way to find out.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Racercowboy

[Ophiolith]

I'm a Mac user by nature, so I'm always keen to see if I can get games running through Wineskin or PlayOnMac.  I've not so far been able to get past the 'checking for updates' section, as the new frontend breaks when trying to update Directx.
Also, I can't currently get Warframe to generate the .tmp file as described in the video - I'm guessing DE changed the installation/update procedure up somewhat with the new UI.

 

That said, I'll keep plugging away, and if I find a method that works, I'll be sure to report back with my findings and list steps necessary to reproduce how I did it.

 

Somewhat off-topic, but for any other Mac users, the game is *almost* playable in Parallels Desktop 11.  No graphical bugs, but it still hiccups pretty badly when caching stuff to RAM.  Disabling multithreaded rendering and turning texture memory down to low only marginally improves this.  I'd vastly prefer to use a WINE-based method though, as PD11 artificially limits the amount of memory you can assign to your VM, which means most newer games run horribly.  Ugh, anyway, will report back soon hopefully.

Edited February 23, 2015 by breaksequence

[Ophiolith]

Update:  Got it working.  Actually fairly simple all told.  Hopefully this method should be relatively foolproof, but do chime in if this doesn't work for you and / or I'm talking crap:

1)  Download and install PlayOnLinux or PlayOnMac

2)  Install Steam using the built-in downloader, using Wine build 1.7.33.  If PlayOnLinux installed a different Wine version, this can be changed later

3)  Once installed, select Steam in the PlayOnLinux menu and hit 'configure'

4)  Click the 'Install components' tab and install 'd3dx9' and 'xinput' (unsure if these were strictly necessary, seemed like a good idea)

5)  Run Steam from the PlayOnLinux menu, and download Warframe.  Be sure to disable Steam overlay in the settings

6)  Run Warframe from Steam.  It'll take a little while to go through the motions of updating first, but should work after that

 

What Works:
Game runs almost flawlessly.  Could connect to games, chat, relays.  Graphics mostly flawless with a few minor caveats (see below).  Keyboard and mouse control works perfectly.

 

What doesn't work:

DirectX10, DirectX11 and 64bit modes not available.  No joypad support because Xinput support is totally broken in Wine.  Motion blur does not behave correctly.

 

Problems and workarounds:
If the game occasionally 'stutters', disable multithreaded rendering in the launcher menu.

Some people have reported corrupted or weird looking textures.  The only reliable method I've found to alleviate this is to close down any other open programs such as your web browser before launching the game.
If you are getting in-game messages regarding strict NAT, try changing what UDP ports Warframe uses from the in-game options menu.

I'm sure there's probably a bit more to it than what I've posted, but so far it's been running pretty solidly on my system.

Edited February 24, 2015 by breaksequence

[PhantasmalWraith]

 Hi guys, A- love this post super helpful; B- i hit another road block with Warframe. I'm running Ubuntu 14.04, new to linux and wine pretty muc. anyway as earlier discussed i managed to get Warframe running last night via letting it run with "checking for new content" overnight then in the morning have it verify the cashe, and - Magic! i got in with only a few minor graphic errors. When it booted though the program complained that I did not have XAudio2 installed and i was indeed without sound in game. So today  i used winetricks to add the DDL component xact to try and solve this. Granted that may be unrelated to the problem, but now when I enter launcher update bar moves super fast and i get stuck with blank white loader and a retry button that only loops the same thing. not sure what went wrong between yesterday and today. Any ideas? Oh and note using direct launcher not thru steam.

Edited February 26, 2015 by PhantasmalWraith

[Num83rGuy]

 Hi guys, A- love this post super helpful; B- i hit another road block with Warframe. I'm running Ubuntu 14.04, new to linux and wine pretty muc. anyway as earlier discussed i managed to get Warframe running last night via letting it run with "checking for new content" overnight then in the morning have it verify the cashe, and - Magic! i got in with only a few minor graphic errors. When it booted though the program complained that I did not have XAudio2 installed and i was indeed without sound in game. So today  i used winetricks to add the DDL component xact to try and solve this. Granted that may be unrelated to the problem, but now when I enter launcher update bar moves super fast and i get stuck with blank white loader and a retry button that only loops the same thing. not sure what went wrong between yesterday and today. Any ideas? Oh and note using direct launcher not thru steam.

 

 

This is because your launcher has updated and wants to delete the old version which is running and replace it with the new one.

For some reason WINE doesn't want to or can't delete the old running one.  This is fixed by manually doing it.

 

The launcher is stored in  ~/.wine/drive_c/users/<user_name>/Local Settings/Application Data/Warframe/Downloaded/Public/Tools/

 

The "~" is short for the current users home folder and <user_name> should be replaced with your computer username..

 

You should see a "Launcher.exe" and a "Launcher.exe.tmp" trash the "Launcher.exe" and rename the other to remove the ".tmp" at the end. (note the period/dot before the "tmp" get rid of it too.)

 

You should now have only a "Launcher.exe" 

 

Relaunch the game and it should work.

 

You could also just type this into a terminal. (Be sure to replace <user_name> with your computer username.)

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/users/<user_name>/Local Settings/Application Data/Warframe/Downloaded/Public/Tools/ then hit enter.

This changes to the folder the launcher is in.

 

Then type mv Launcher.exe.tmp Launcher.exe and hit enter again.

This moves Launcher.exe.tmp to Launcher.exe effectively renaming the former and overwriting the latter.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Num83rGuy

[Willdrick]

Has anybody figured out a fix (or at least the reason) of the black textures issue?

[liketicktick1020]

alright guys so i'm running arch just like the op and i can't even get the launcher to open... I'm getting this error

 

:winediag:SECUR32_initNTLMSP ntlm_auth was not found or is outdated. Make sure that ntlm_auth >= 3.0.25 is in your path. Usually, you can find it in the winbind package of your distribution.

 

I have the winbind support package installed... but i don't see how this has anything to do with warframe working since this is just samba support... It doen't make any sense...

 

I also tried to run it in virtual box cause i have windows 7 installed and i have direct x 9 installed and i've played a few games in 3d and they work fine but i get an error from the launcher there also saying that my graphics card isn't supported....

 

I just really want to be able to play warframe when i'm traveling and this is really starting to drive me crazy... I'm seriously considering reinstalling windows and dual-booting with arch... but i would have to reinstall arch as well and i have way tooooo much stuff into this build of arch. I would hate to loose it...

[DreManX23]

Yes the first guys explanation does work. Although all that I had to do is download wine then, download the Warframe.msi file put it on my desktop and I could run it. But now I get this page that pops up instead of the game. It says something but it is cut off. Does anyone know what is happening?

[Racercowboy]

alright guys so i'm running arch just like the op and i can't even get the launcher to open... I'm getting this error

 

:winediag:SECUR32_initNTLMSP ntlm_auth was not found or is outdated. Make sure that ntlm_auth >= 3.0.25 is in your path. Usually, you can find it in the winbind package of your distribution.

 

I have the winbind support package installed... but i don't see how this has anything to do with warframe working since this is just samba support... It doen't make any sense...

 

I also tried to run it in virtual box cause i have windows 7 installed and i have direct x 9 installed and i've played a few games in 3d and they work fine but i get an error from the launcher there also saying that my graphics card isn't supported....

 

I just really want to be able to play warframe when i'm traveling and this is really starting to drive me crazy... I'm seriously considering reinstalling windows and dual-booting with arch... but i would have to reinstall arch as well and i have way tooooo much stuff into this build of arch. I would hate to loose it...

I dun have much experience with archlinux, but since the OP an easier way to install has been found using playonlinux if you use steam. You could try it and see if it works for you.

 

1. download playonlinux, then install steam download warframe through steam.

2. the launcher will come up and either download or give this error about can't find something.

   2a. If the error comes up, go to game properties and browse local files. Navigate to the tools folder and delete "Launcher.exe". rename "Launcher.exe.temp" to "Launcher.exe". close the file browser and launch warframe again. It should work.

 

The game has problems with constant pauses when running, to solve this either use wine version 1.7.13 or earlier or disable multithreaded rendering in the launcher. There was another fix in an earlier post although ti required compiling wine. Here's the post: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/41660-guide-warframe-on-linux-with-wine/page-11#entry3742286

 

Hopefully this works for you if you don't mind using steam.

 

 

Yes the first guys explanation does work. Although all that I had to do is download wine then, download the Warframe.msi file put it on my desktop and I could run it. But now I get this page that pops up instead of the game. It says something but it is cut off. Does anyone know what is happening?

Is it the launcher? A screenie would be nice.

[Keboose]

Update:  Got it working.  Actually fairly simple all told.  Hopefully this method should be relatively foolproof, but do chime in if this doesn't work for you and / or I'm talking crap:

1)  Download and install PlayOnLinux or PlayOnMac

2)  Install Steam using the built-in downloader, using Wine build 1.7.33.  If PlayOnLinux installed a different Wine version, this can be changed later

3)  Once installed, select Steam in the PlayOnLinux menu and hit 'configure'

4)  Click the 'Install components' tab and install 'd3dx9' and 'xinput' (unsure if these were strictly necessary, seemed like a good idea)

5)  Run Steam from the PlayOnLinux menu, and download Warframe.  Be sure to disable Steam overlay in the settings

6)  Run Warframe from Steam.  It'll take a little while to go through the motions of updating first, but should work after that

 

Hi! I just tried installing this way (I'm running Ubuntu 14) and I get right up to part 6 before I get an error. The launcher throws an error on "updating directx components." I made sure to install the two components from step 4, and went ahead and installed the d3d9 pack from winetricks, but they didn't help. Do you have a guess as to what might cause this, or how to fix it? I'd like to tell you what the error is exactly, but this is all I see:

 

Edited March 31, 2015 by Keboose

[(PSN)Matoro1992]

Hi! I just tried installing this way (I'm running Ubuntu 14) and I get right up to part 6 before I get an error. The launcher throws an error on "updating directx components." I made sure to install the two components from step 4, and went ahead and installed the d3d9 pack from winetricks, but they didn't help. Do you have a guess as to what might cause this, or how to fix it? I'd like to tell you what the error is exactly, but this is all I see:

 

 

Hey at least you were able to get to the Steam Store page, so you can download the game. When I tried running Steam (Windows version), I can't seem to access the STORE tab (I was only able to access my LIBRARY tab). I'm running Linux Mint 17. 

Yes, I do play Warframe on PS4. But would really interested in playing it on PC. It is difficult to find competitive matches on PS4. :/ Also I rather drop my money to DE if they made it Linux/SteamOS compatible. No tux, no bux. 

Edited April 1, 2015 by (PS4)Matoro1992

[DreManX23]

That is the same error I get KeBoose. I installed the playonlinux installed steam and then installed the warframe game. But I am getting an error saying exactly this: Failed to Update!

C:Program FileSteamsteam

Does anyone know what is causing this? Is it just the server or is this an internal glitch?

Help would be appreciated Thx.

[Keboose]

That is the same error I get KeBoose. I installed the playonlinux installed steam and then installed the warframe game. But I am getting an error saying exactly this: Failed to Update!

C:Program FileSteamsteam

Does anyone know what is causing this? Is it just the server or is this an internal glitch?

Help would be appreciated Thx.

Since the error happened when the updater got to "updating directx components," my guess would be that, either directx isn't installed where it's supposed to be, or the launcher for some reason can't write to the virtual disk. I think the most likely problem is that we somehow f'd up our installs of dx9, and I don't know how we would go about fixing that.

[DreManX23]

Hmmm that would make sense if you are a techy so let me try to figure it out.

[GodLliam]

[Deleted]

Edited April 7, 2015 by GodLliam

[DreManX23]

Since the error happened when the updater got to "updating directx components," my guess would be that, either directx isn't installed where it's supposed to be, or the launcher for some reason can't write to the virtual disk. I think the most likely problem is that we somehow f'd up our installs of dx9, and I don't know how we would go about fixing that.

I just took this pic. This morning if any of you know what it means than you are amazing. This is what I am seeing now.

 

Edited April 2, 2015 by DreManX23

[tmtke]

Is there a way to make it work on a dualboot system, like mine? I have already installed warframe on win7, to an other hdd, so I don't really wan to reinstall it again. Nowadays I only keep windows for playing warframe :)