New launcher... new Linux error?

You won’t, because I can’t be bothered to change my gaming rig over (again). I used Linux full-time on my gaming rig and it was a hassle getting games to work. There’s notable exceptions, and Proton is great, but ultimately I no longer have the patience to chase down random crashes.

I do use Fedora on a $150 ThinkPad I bought off ebay, where I keep things as vanilla as possible and only run two specific programs for my dev work. It’s amazing how great Linux can be when a company officially supports it.

Linux is great for servers, yes, no one is arguing with you on that.

Don’t have one :slight_smile:

It is though. Android is a framework and virtualization environment running on top of the Linux kernel, which Google is working on replacing entirely within the next few years.

Thankfully, I don’t use Android.

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Howdo, I’m CCP Cemetery (Davy), and I’m the producer for our launcher team. If you’re unhappy with the recent update, or our messaging surrounding it then please accept my apologies.

To shed a little light on how our lack of advanced communication came to pass. While we knew that our latest update was not going to be compatible with Linux, with our available data we didn’t expect to inconvenience that many people at the time due to the majority of the Linux community making use of older launcher builds or Proton. This coupled with the fact that our Linux community are quite resilient and are often capable of adapting and solving issues when they arise, along with the fact that Linux is an unsupported platform, lead us to believe that messaging wouldn’t be required for this update. While this statement doesn’t necessarily excuse our lack of communication on this front, it should give some insight into how we came to the conclusion that advanced notification would not be required in this instance.

I do want to remind those still reading that at this time our development teams don’t officially develop for, test on or otherwise support Linux given that it’s an unsupported platform. As such teams may often not know that Linux users would be adversely affected by their work, and may not have a communication plan in place. However CCP does undergo public beta testing, such as our past and future Native Mac Client play tests, and everyone has the ability to try our beta launchers via the launcher settings menu under tools. As such I would encourage Linux users try out our beta releases since this is the only way to ensure some degree of testing on Linux, and may help the community to prepare in advance for upcoming changes.

In regards to this particular launcher security update, we have included backwards compatibility in our web UI for older launcher applications, such as the ones most Linux users are active on. However at some point we will need to deprecate this functionality in order to move forwards with planned improvements, harden security and to reduce our technical debt.

For those expressing security concerns, or those who feel the need to get in contact directly, simply file a support ticket and title it for the attention of CCP Cemetery, and I’ll be sure to read and respond where appropriate.

In closing, should our launcher team be aware of changes that may have serious repercussions to the greater Linux community, we will endeavour to communicate them in advance, and once again my apologies to those caught out by the lack of communication for our last release.

Have a good weekend and fly safe o7

Cheers,
CCP Cemetery (Davy)

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Thank you for the in-depth response and taking time to respond on a weekend.

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Thanks CCP Cemetery for the explanation!

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Not a steam user, but would you have any inclination on why steam users cannot log in?

I think this happens because updating the launcher feels like a roll of the dice whether you will be able to log in or if you have to fix something.

Myself, I prefer to keep things simple and use vanilla Wine and the Windows launcher. Normally I have been updating and everything was fine. When the last issue happened (not the latest one) I went to an older launcher to just get things working. I then didn’t update it for a long time because when I log in I just don’t feel like rolling the dice of having to redo everything just because I accept the update.

Then more recently I decided to roll the dice and low and behold, the new launcher was working again. I started accepting updates, always having in the back of my mind that kindof dread that it would happen again.

Fast forward to the other day, and here we are… I take the launcher update and without notice I can’t log in. So, I end up going back to the launcher from a year or so ago. Not because I want to, but because when I log in I want to play the game, not gamble on if I have spend several hours to reinstall the launcher, redo all my logins, redo all my profiles, etc.

I get it, we are an unsupported platform. But if you see a behavior, think about WHY that behavior exists. It isn’t like we want to use an old launcher, most of us would prefer to use the most up to date one. But with every update being a roll of the dice a user just sticks with what they know has been working rather than taking the risk. In EVE we talk about risk vs reward. As the launcher doesn’t provide anything useful except the button to launch the game (at least from the user perspective), there is no reward in risking wasting hours trying to figure out why the latest launcher isn’t working if an old one does that simple function just fine.

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Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and explain!

I don’t know of any case where wine has been able to handle a web launcher format like the one with enhanced security.

I haven’t scrutinized this update, but my gut feeling is that it’s critical.

Combined with the above, it’s a death sentence.

Very depressing!

What are the chances that the wine update will fix this?

I need to hear from a technical point of view, not wishful thinking, to be reassured.

If it helps, I’ll test it in a beta release, but hmmm

I hope we can communicate well.

Thank you @CCP_Cemetery for your openness to listen to issues of your Linux community. This renewed my faith into CCP. What I understood is, that while you will still not be officially supporting the Linux community of EVE, you will at least not deliberately sabotage it.

This is enough for me to cancel the cancellation of my subscription, so that my renewal will happen as scheduled.

I like also to say thank you to those who are deep enough in development to create proper WINE tickets.

To help others to deal with current launcher issues I have posted this threat:

EVE has currently a hard time, but we all love the game, let us work together to transit it into a new and hopefully bright future.

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Thank you for taking time out of your weekend to explain. Now, I feel, this discussion is in line with the above average standard I have come to know and expect from CCP, and I’m feeling a little less dejected. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks also to everyone who is trying to figure this out behind the scenes. I’m a linux rookie and I only know just about enough to be dangerous.

I’ll probably look into reverting to an older launcher next weekend. Until then, fly safe everyone o/

Right now I get around this by installing the functioning launcher from Lutris, then ignoring the update.

Why not add one simple toggle to the launcher such as ‘do not auto-download launcher updates’ or something like this? That way at least we could continue using a launcher that works, without being prompted to update it every time it is launched.

You understood wrong unfortunately. They are indeed sabotaging the linux users quite literally, it will just take a few weeks/months is all. Read his messages again please.

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Time will tell, for the moment EVE is working with the old launcher, that what counts. I hope that WINE will provide a solution for the issue like in the past. A ticket is already open… if you are Amarr please start praying now!

I know they don’t “officially” support Linux, but the fact that there’s a Linux section of official forums and a Linux native launcher (albeit now retired), I think they are obligated to keep it working on Linux. I’ve been running Eve on Linux for years (9 accts), almost every day without much issue. I will not be going back to Windows, and I believe most Linux users would feel the same way. If they really want us to win Eve, then that is their call.

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I just came here as well to say that i have 3 omega accounts and haven’t been playing for a week now, still trying to find a workaround for new launcher error and issue i have. And honestly this happens too often, that i stopped caring for a bit, i can definitely say 4-5 times this year i was not able to play because of launcher breaking changes.

Since there are so many of us trying still to play on linux, i just can’t believe that they couldn’t put together a QA process around wine setup and support, at least to support few latest wine versions.

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I got the Windows launcher working on Wine 6.12 with some patches to cryptopp. Will update the thread with details later on once I make sure I’m not breaking any TOS :slight_smile:

tl;dr, it’s essentially a bug in cryptopp, but the wine devs also said there are some things that could be done about it on the Wine side. I’ve asked for guidance from the Wine devs about whether we should upstream a patch to cryptopp or link to msvcrt in wine.

Link to winehq thread: WineHQ Bugzilla – Bug 51465 – EVE Online launcher crashes

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Just a note, I did have to install the game in a new prefix or I ran into a different crash from earlier (something about a stack overflow)

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Thanks for your work and effort on this :slight_smile:

I was going to start trying to debug but compiling wine and applying patches takes a fair bit of time and with both 64bit and 32bit :confused: makes the laptop sound like a jet engine :smiley:

Can I add the details of your fix over on my blog of running eve online in wine?

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Thankfully no patches to wine were required, I’m just running the stock version of wine-staging. You do have to build cryptopp yourself on Windows for now, but I’m going to try to submit a patch to get it fixed up there. If it gets accepted then we’d just have to ask CCP to upgrade to cryptopp 8.6.0 when it is released.

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Very nice work man! :+1:

hackerman

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Sorry completely misread, really hope the fix goes through on the lib and CCP upgrade it …

My new laptop doesn’t have dual boot so finding it very hard to play anymore …