How you runnin'? -Linux Setups-

EVE Technology and Research Center Linux
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Greetings fellow New Edens. Let’s discuss and compare the fastest Eve Online setups using Linux. Not necessarily the time it takes to get the game going on your fresh install, but gameplay.

Taking CPU/GPU/ETC into consideration. I attempted to transition back to wonkdoze after my OSX machine caught on fire. But it ain’t gonna happen. I am in the process of bring up a Ryzen 7 5800x box that I have decide to use Mint. I have been testing different O/S flavors on a ‘testbox’, and have blown through alot of ‘Eve setups’. Some were more quick than other configurations. With the new machine, I would like to install my configuration as clean as possible.

I’ve attempted; Steam, Lutris, now Bottles. Yes, I have successfully gotten them all to run, but I am still a linux noob. I only have a 2 gig GPU until this other box is up. I still get confused on Wine versions, Proton, etc, I guess the runners.

Please post your successful setups in this thread and lets compare!
THANKS!

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I probably made a very poor decision to install Eve through Steam last year. My account is about a year old and due to Steam’s June upgrade, it no longer allows you to reduce memory on the spyware they run in the background. Before the upgrade I ran the launcher in “no browser” mode. This ran very minimal Steam on my current HP desktop potato. Long story short, new install should be done with anything other than Steam. I am currently “locked” into using their launcher, as long as I cannot launch this account from the Eve Launcher.

Currently the memory on my machine is 8 GB of RAM and playing more than a few hours the game starts to lag due to the memory filling up. I have complete system lock up, if I force it to continue playing. I have no plans to buy a new PC while this one is working.

My current Linux OS is Xubuntu 22.04 LTS minimal. I also have Arch, Debian, and others. It is a 12 year old Intel(R) Core™ i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz, with 3 SSD installed. The GPU is Nvidia 2 GB GeForce and I get about 60 fps in potato mode, drops to 20 fps with shaders and medium and 10 fps (or less) with the 3D graphics in “gullible fool is dazzled by fireworks” mode. If I run without the 3D (Ctrl+shift+F9) I get +80 fps. I recently had to drop back to Photon 7.0 when I was having some issues with Photon 8.0.

I am currently researching avenues at WineHQ and Play on Linux, but I am not seeing much success. If I do abandon Steam, I will lose 3 characters with +3 million skill points each. Regrettable yes, but I dislike being held hostage by a game launcher even more. Oh and yes, I do know we can legally sell our characters but I am not interested in that avenue.

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Thanks John! This is a perfect response. Although I am in the process of upgrading my computer, I have been stuck in this environment as well. I was curious why the game slows down as I play. I will certainly try rolling back to 7. Keep me updated on your processes! Don’t loose your toons!

Anyone else?

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Earlier I found an article where you can create a username and password for your Steam account through Eve. Looks like I can drop Steam and keep playing here as John Rochard and company.

For others to reference this in the future;

  1. Go to the main Eve Online webpage and log into your account through Steam
  2. In the upper right corner it will have the user ID as STEAM::####… etc.
  3. In the drop down go to account management and log in again just for verification.
  4. Now on the right is “Change Password”

The next page explains you are using a Steam account and allows you to access this user profile by making a new user ID and password. Verify by e-mail and you are done. I tip my miner’s helmet to CCP for being so thoughtful here.

Back on topic; I do plan to do another test install on my system over this week end, I should be back on Monday with the results.

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Whoa! trying this now!
On your test installs, do you uninstall everything first? I normally end up crashing Linux and reinstalling the entire os. But now I am pretty much stuck on Mint because it so clean.

We are fighting the “good fight” John! I have your back!

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I have lots of room on my SSD for more than one OS. I have a multiboot menu (grub) asking me at each boot up which OS to use. Xubuntu is just a light weight version of Ubuntu and it comes from the Debian family of OS. Debian and Ubuntu are also the ancestor of Linux Mint and Debian was named after Deb and her husband Ian who designed the OS way back in 1993. Arch Linux is a different strain of Linux OS and is considered by most to be a bit “too geeky” for the average user.

I shouldn’t have to uninstall, as I am attempting to get the Windows installer to work on fresh OS on a new drive partition.

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@scotty_beam I am surprised this didn’t even take the whole weekend. I am very satisfied with my Eve Online game now that I ditched the Steam launcher.

At this point DO NOT uninstall anything. There are some configuration files you will want to grab out of the old setup.

  1. Open a terminal window and at the “$” prompt type the following;
    wine --version
    You will see either “wine-8.0.1” or it will tell you wine needs to be installed returning “wine: command not found”. Most distributions come with version 6 or higher available. Should you want the most recent you can follow the instructions at WineHQ for a stable build.
  2. After you verified you have Wine installed type;
    sudo apt install fonts-wine ttf-mscorefonts-installer

This line installs needed fonts owned by Microsoft, there will be a lengthy EULA attached to them and just use the TAB key to get to the OK button.

  1. Download the Eve installer for Windows, from the official EVE Online site.
  2. I will assume you are using the default Downloads folder, create a text file inside the downloads folder with the following lines;
export WINEPREFIX=/home/<user name>/.EVE
wine <exact name of the executable>

Line #1 will create a hidden folder for a new wine virtual drive for EVE to exist all by itself. If the game becomes broken beyond repair, all you need do is delete this hidden folder to uninstall it. < user name > will be the name you gave linux when you installed the OS.
Example: export WINEPREFIX=/home/rochard/.EVE

Line #2 runs wine and installs the files inside the virtual drive.

Save this file as run.sh

  1. Make this file executable.
    a) The simplest way is to right-click on file in the file manager, select Properties, choose Permissions, and click on (tick) the box saying Execute. Not all file managers are designed the same but there should be a method.
    b) From terminal make sure you are in the Downloads folder and type;
    sudo chmod +x run.sh

  2. During installation I had one or two popups that said there was an error, I chose ignore on all of these. At the 66% complete mark it crashed and I restarted using the run.sh The install took a bit of time and tolerance then went to the EVE Launcher settings “cog” and checked install full client. This took even longer but I think it was worth it. After it finishes, deselect the box as mine kept reinstalling each time ran the launcher, once is enough.

  3. Reboot

  4. You should now have a desktop icon to run the launcher.

I went ahead and edited the shell script run.sh to read;
export WINEPREFIX=/home/rochard/.EVE
cd /home/rochard/.EVE/drive_c/EVE
wine eve.exe

This little script can be ran from anywhere on the system. Line #2 changes the directory to the virtual drive folder where the game is stored.

Now a few words about the OS and how to make EVE run smoother. To make the system dedicate more resources to EVE there are two commands you can use; nice and renice are used to set the priority given to programs in Linux.

Nice is used to launch a program with a preset priority. I tend to use the renice command as it is for a process already running. For example; after launching EVE, I look for the EVE program running using the taskmanger. Once I find the process ID number I can enter the command.

renice -n -10 -p < Process ID Number >

Most programs run at 0, lowering the value give it more attention and raising the number less attention. Niceness value runs from -20 to +19, giving EVE a -10 is a little boost. You can read more about nice and renice commands in the terminal window by typing;

man nice
or
man renice

Testing the program and setup, I played the game for several hours without any noticeable lags or crashes. Finally I was about to shutdown and watch NetFlix in my browser, but instead I set a character to mining gas for an hour while I watched NetFlix. After the show the game was still running.

Fly safe o7

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