How you runnin'? -Linux Setups-

@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