Running Elite Dangerous on Linux Mint in 2024

[Van-Blurten]

Switched to Bazzite mid Feb and loving it. Joystick wise I use Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas-X and although it's detected by ED it refuses to work, it does however work perfectly being run as a generic joystick.

As a side note the other games I play run fine, WoW, SWToR, Football Manager, Stellaris, Civilization 5.
Linux really has came on since I last tried it about 8 yrs ago.

 

[Feitochan]

Switched to Bazzite mid Feb and loving it. Joystick wise I use Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas-X and although it's detected by ED it refuses to work, it does however work perfectly being run as a generic joystick.

As a side note the other games I play run fine, WoW, SWToR, Football Manager, Stellaris, Civilization 5.
Linux really has came on since I last tried it about 8 yrs ago.

Just as a little side note, Stellaris has a native linux version as do a lot of other games which is why it runs fine without the need for proton (although there are some games with native linux versions that don't work as well as the windows version).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Finally made the switch yesterday.

Had a moment of panic when the Windows install that i had turned into a VM imported but wouldn't boot and no amount of mucking around would get it to work. Fortunately, I had also kept the .vdi for the drive, so moved that onto the partition, created a VM for it, and it booted first time. Phew!

Strange issue with the Realtek network card - from a cold boot its fine, after a reboot though it always reports "No cable connected" - really bizarre. No amount of resetting the interface will resolve it, only power off then back on. I'll have to investigate that at some point.

ED launched first time just using winetricks, not even proton and gave me a smooth high quality 60FPS. Quite surprised didn't need proton. However, installed proton and will test that, but game is current undergoing an update, so will have to do it later. Might also give gloriouseggroll a go at some point, although seems like its not necessary.

Issue! - Wine detects joysticks just fine, but when i launched ED, the game couldn't see. Exited, went back to Lutris, and control panel sees the joysticks, if done from Lutris control panel settings, but when i looked at the control panel from the game settings, they weren''t visible! However, just looked again, and they are visible. Now just wait for the game to come back online and will try again.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Update:

Joysticks detected... ugh, now to configure controls.

Also got EDMC setup.

New issue!!!

Gamma, and also seems related problem with hovering over new messages on main menu. When trying to change gamma an overlay window seems to pop up, and i can't select the slider or even exit with the mouse. Guess this is because its a new window over the game and xinput or whatever is clicking through the gamma window to the layer below.

Anyone got any idea how to fix this?

EDIT: Fixed it in the config xml... actually probably too bright now

Still doesn't explain why the new messages thing doesn't open though, so still think there's something wonky there.

 

[EdzUp]

Made the switch last week but nothing on steam would start just launches and drops back to steam, turns out Linux doesn't like NTFS formatted drives (windows) so copied all me important data to a external reformatted it as a Linux drive and copied it all back now everything runs.

I would say 100% of everything I tried worked, some needed a few command like tweaks on steam others performance is in the single digits FPS (HumanitZ) but it all runs though. ED is running beautifully and I made my maiden voyage a couple of days ago from Barnard's to Bhritzameno and it was amazing and freeing.

Everything I need is currently working fine on Linux so over the coming months Windows will be relegated to the past as I move to a new chapter, it's nice to have a OS where you have the freedom to tinker and it doesn't block you with GUI elements at every turn.

Some games run better in Steam on Linux using the following in the command line (under properties for the game)

DXVK_FRAME_RATE=60 steamdeck=1 gamemoderun %command%

Dont get me wrong I am no Linux guru just different things I have tried on my exploring using Linux over the last few days

 

[Agony_Aunt]

All bindings done at last, things all working well except for the main menu new message box. EDMC working as a flatpack.

Here's a pic.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Made the switch last week but nothing on steam would start just launches and drops back to steam, turns out Linux doesn't like NTFS formatted drives (windows) so copied all me important data to a external reformatted it as a Linux drive and copied it all back now everything runs.

I would say 100% of everything I tried worked, some needed a few command like tweaks on steam others performance is in the single digits FPS (HumanitZ) but it all runs though. ED is running beautifully and I made my maiden voyage a couple of days ago from Barnard's to Bhritzameno and it was amazing and freeing.

Everything I need is currently working fine on Linux so over the coming months Windows will be relegated to the past as I move to a new chapter, it's nice to have a OS where you have the freedom to tinker and it doesn't block you with GUI elements at every turn.

Some games run better in Steam on Linux using the following in the command line (under properties for the game)

Dont get me wrong I am no Linux guru just different things I have tried on my exploring using Linux over the last few days

Nice.

Rgarding NTFS, the NTFS filesystem driver is stable enough for stuff like storing files, but yeah, you don't want to be running things from it. My external USB drive is still on NTFS which i use for films and other stuff. Easy to move it to a Windows laptop or another comp when wanting to move data around.

In theory, an NTFS drive could work, or be made to work... risky though.

Another thing you can do to share data between windows/linux is use xfat. Its basically Fat32 without the limitations of Fat32 and works well with both Windows and Linux.... but again, for storage is ok, for gaming or work, best use ext4 or similar.

 

[Feitochan]

Another thing you can do to share data between windows/linux is use xfat. Its basically Fat32 without the limitations of Fat32 and works well with both Windows and Linux.... but again, for storage is ok, for gaming or work, best use ext4 or similar.

If you don't want to use external drives to share files, there's a program called warpinator which allows files to be shared between computers over the network that has a windows variant called winpinator.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

If you don't want to use external drives to share files, there's a program called warpinator which allows files to be shared between computers over the network that has a windows variant called winpinator.

For sure, its just in this particular case i do have an external drive i use to store stuff on anyway

 

[BetaToaster]

turns out Linux doesn't like NTFS formatted drives

There's two possible problems with NTFS:
1) There's two NTFS drivers for Linux:

• ntfs-3g, a fuse driver which generally works fine.
• ntfs3, an in-kernel driver which still has a bunch of issues.

So you'd want to make sure you install and use the former.
2) Wine/Proton is picky about ownership of the wineprefix directory, see here for details and a workaround

My guess would be you ran into (2), but using a proper unix file system -the way you did it- is indeed the best solution either way.

I'll second Agony_Aunt's recommendation to use exfat if you need something Windows (or macOS, or whatever) can read. It doesn't support permissions, but that's usually not a problem if you want to share files.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'll second Agony_Aunt's recommendation to use exfat if you need something Windows (or macOS, or whatever) can read. It doesn't support permissions, but that's usually not a problem if you want to share files.

I like my filesystems to be promiscuous!

 

[Ameeleean2]

I was thinking of Linux Mint but eventually I have chosen ArchLinux. So far almost everything I need is running in it... with the exception of Elite Dangerous. I'm using Intel Arc A310 which has issue with ED on planet generation stage- each time driver updates it breaks 100% of the time with error box. On windows it looks like process is resumed/restarted by launcher or client itself and eventually manages to pass up to 100%, then I can play. On Linux it appears that regardless of what I do planet generation stage is non-passable- game closes down right after planet generation stage is shown and all I have is launcher screen.
I have spent several hours looking for solution and this looks like an issue related not only to my GPU model but all other owners of Intel cards. If You are intel GPU user linux is no-go to play Elite Dangerous regardless of distribution used. I open to suggestions how to fix it if someone knows a way around it in Linux.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I was thinking of Linux Mint but eventually I have chosen ArchLinux. So far almost everything I need is running in it... with the exception of Elite Dangerous. I'm using Intel Arc A310 which has issue with ED on planet generation stage- each time driver updates it breaks 100% of the time with error box. On windows it looks like process is resumed/restarted by launcher or client itself and eventually manages to pass up to 100%, then I can play. On Linux it appears that regardless of what I do planet generation stage is non-passable- game closes down right after planet generation stage is shown and all I have is launcher screen.
I have spent several hours looking for solution and this looks like an issue related not only to my GPU model but all other owners of Intel cards. If You are intel GPU user linux is no-go to play Elite Dangerous regardless of distribution used. I open to suggestions how to fix it if someone knows a way around it in Linux.

Intel graphic card support for Linux is weak, you have to go with one of the big 2 if you want to game well.

 

[Ameeleean2]

Intel graphic card support for Linux is weak, you have to go with one of the big 2 if you want to game well.

I do not have problem running other game I like, it even works better under linux than on windows. I think what is needed for ED to work under linux is either ability to disable planet generation stage (or make it happen in background while playing or make separate program for this) or replicate game behavior in linux from windows- which is (from what I can observe) ability to restart planet generation process if it fails and for some reason that doesn't work under Linux.
My usual choice of GPU was nVidia in the past but last time I was looking for something with 40-50W top power drain along with smallest transistor size available while the same wattage/transistor size combo was offered for mobile GPUs only. Intel happen to offer best viable choice for me and since I was satisfied with CPU integrated GPU in the past the choice was obvious.
I have also many other older games sometimes I play and right now both windows and linux are doing "translation" to newer interfaces to handle this and it looks like Linux does it better... most of the time.

 

[Darth Ender]

I'd sooner run a modern amd apu than an intel gpu if you care about power usage.

 

[Van-Blurten]

I was thinking of Linux Mint but eventually I have chosen ArchLinux. So far almost everything I need is running in it... with the exception of Elite Dangerous. I'm using Intel Arc A310 which has issue with ED on planet generation stage- each time driver updates it breaks 100% of the time with error box. On windows it looks like process is resumed/restarted by launcher or client itself and eventually manages to pass up to 100%, then I can play. On Linux it appears that regardless of what I do planet generation stage is non-passable- game closes down right after planet generation stage is shown and all I have is launcher screen.
I have spent several hours looking for solution and this looks like an issue related not only to my GPU model but all other owners of Intel cards. If You are intel GPU user linux is no-go to play Elite Dangerous regardless of distribution used. I open to suggestions how to fix it if someone knows a way around it in Linux.

What are you using to launch ED? I'd try switching that, but tbh I'd be fully expecting it to be GPU driver related, maybe try another Linux os if you can (some will run from usb stick so no need to do a full install) but I fully expect the only solution is a diff GPU, in which case I'd only use AMD, Nvidia can and do work but mileage varies and who needs added hassle.

 

[Lysander666]

I've been playing Elite on Ubuntu since I bought the game in 2023. I've never had any problems, but then I have an AMD GPU.

Well, there WERE the thermal shutdowns that only happened in Elite, but that was because my stock cooler for my FX 8350 [yeah, I know] couldn't handle the game. A CPU cooler change fixed that.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I think what is needed for ED to work under linux is ...

But that's not likely to happen.

 

[Ameeleean2]

What are you using to launch ED? I'd try switching that, but tbh I'd be fully expecting it to be GPU driver related, maybe try another Linux os if you can (some will run from usb stick so no need to do a full install) but I fully expect the only solution is a diff GPU, in which case I'd only use AMD, Nvidia can and do work but mileage varies and who needs added hassle.

Proton hotfix, proton experimental, stable latest proton version, even one older stable proton version. The thing is I have the same issue on windows- each time driver updates planet generation kicks in and then crashes. The main difference is that on windows process seems to be able to restart (or continue from break point) while on Linux I get back to launcher almost immediately when Planet Generation stage starts (to be more specific it crashes at 0%).
I have also experimented with various steam run commands I have found on internet but I think it is something related specifically to Intel GPUs as many other Intel GPU owners are also experiencing the same issue (both in windows and in linux). It happens also for Epic version of the game.
I have managed to solve fps drop issue during my research in other game that way but for ED so far nothing works.
I want to stick to ArchLinux for now. It is more challenging than Mint but that way I can learn it better. Inability to run one or two games is not that serious issue for me but I would like someday to make 100% transition to Linux- what holds me off to do it right now is that I need MS Excel to run certain official documents with macros that fail to run under LibreOffice or Aparche Open Office.

 

[Lysander666]

The thing is I have the same issue on windows- each time driver updates planet generation kicks in and then crashes. The main difference is that on windows process seems to be able to restart (or continue from break point) while on Linux I get back to launcher almost immediately when Planet Generation stage starts (to be more specific it crashes at 0%).

If a similar thing happens on Windows too, this suggests a firmware bug in the card related specifically to Elite. I had such a situation with Skyrim and my old Sapphire HD5870: it would repeatedly crash in Skyrim but no other game. It was later confirmed to be a firmware issue with that particular card model.

I want to stick to ArchLinux for now. It is more challenging than Mint but that way I can learn it better. Inability to run one or two games is not that serious issue for me but I would like someday to make 100% transition to Linux- what holds me off to do it right now is that I need MS Excel to run certain official documents with macros that fail to run under LibreOffice or Aparche Open Office.

That's a good reason to hold off. MS do their damnedest to retain their place as world leaders of office software and whether one likes it or not, MS Office is the world standard. From a compatibility standpoint, it's good to hold on to Windows for this reason.

If you get to a point where you don't need it anymore, you could 100% transition. I mean, you could always use the web version of MS Office now, but I don't know what it's like.