Gaming on Linux has never been easier. But if the Linux gaming experience has always been crap, that’s not saying much. What I should say is, “Gaming on Linux is pretty easy now!” Believe it or not, it’s now possible to get a lot of popular game titles running on Linux. For this community, I thought it appropriate to try out Star Trek Online.
I tried a few different methods on two different Linux distributions on two different computers. I’ll walk through the better performing and easier approach first. For those who hate Steam for whatever reason, I’ll also go through getting STO to work through the Arc Launcher. The Steam method gave me an easier path to installation and better game performance (especially at higher resolution) so I encourage you to use that route if possible.
I am using the Manjaro distribution of Linux for this guide but I also tested on Opensuse Tumbleweed. My thinking is that if STO worked on two rolling-release distros, it should work on any of the mainstream flavors of Linux out there. This guide isn’t a how-to for getting Linux up and running. I do encourage you to have a good understanding of installing applications and be comfortable using the console although you won’t have to do much with it.
Steam Method
You’ll need to get Steam working on your distro. I found that Manjaro came bundled with a Steam installer so that was super easy for me. For those without the bloatware preloaded, I recommend Googling “install steam <your distro here>.” You’ll usually find some easy to follow console commands. For example, if I were using Ubuntu, I’d do something like:
Code:
$ sudo add-apt-repository multiverse $ sudo apt install steam[
I’ll assume you’ve already added Star Trek Online to your Steam library. We need to make a quick change to Steam settings so we can install it on Linux. So open Steam settings, then click on Steam Play. Check “Enable Steam Play on supported devices” and then check “Enable Steam Play for all other titles.” You can change “Run other titles with” to another version of Proton but I left mine on experimental.
Save those settings, restart Steam, and you should now be able to install Star Trek Online to that machine. Once installed, click Play and it will open the patching dialogue. Depending on your computer and internet connection, this may take a while. So watch “First Contact” for the hundredth time while you wait. Another thing you can do in the meantime is turn off on-demand patching.
This is actually really important. When I tried to play with “On-demand patching” turned on, its default setting, I had incredibly long waits in between maps. Transferring from ground to space would take minutes, sometimes over five minutes. So before you start, click “Options” in the STO launcher and uncheck “On-demand patching.”
You’ve finished “First Contact” and STO has fully patched so it should be ready to play, right? Not quite. I found that there is more patching the needs to be done. Close the launcher and reopen. It’ll do another much quicker round of patching.
Once that finishes, you’re now ready to play. Let the game load and you’ll probably see a dialogue about updating your graphics settings, another one for brightness settings, and one for the Cryptic login code. If you find you can’t click anything, press enter or esc a few times and you should be able to enter your login code.
And that’s it! You’re now playing Star Trek Online on Linux. You’ve reached a higher level of Nerd. But what if you don’t want to use Steam? No worries, you can use the Arc Launcher. When I tested, it didn’t perform quite as well as the Steam method but it did work well enough for me.
Arc Launcher Method
Again, I’m assuming you have Linux installed. For this method, we won’t be installing Steam obviously. But we’ll need to install an emulation layer. The popular app for that is called Wine (WINdows Emulator). If you don’t know how to on your distro, remember to Google “install wine <your distro here>.” For me, I ran this in the console:
Code:
$ sudo pacman -Syu $ sudo pacman -S wine winetricks wine-mono wine_gecko
That’s really the hard part. With Wine installed, many Windows applications will just run in Linux. Head to the Arc website and download the launcher (https://www.arcgames.com/en/about/client). Once downloaded, I was able to just open the launcher exe and things started going. I opened the installed launcher and clicked to install Star Trek. Everything else following is identical to Steam.
Open the STO launcher, let it patch, make sure to uncheck “On-demand patching,” close the launcher once the first patching is done, reopen and let patch once again, and you’re done.
There you have it! Two ways to install and play Star Trek Online on Linux. I was impressed with how well the game played on my Manjaro machine. I used the Nvidia proprietary drivers which may rub some Linux enthusiasts the wrong way but I like that I saw similar performance with STO on Linux as I get with Windows. Once I’m able to get my parsing software installed, I’ll happily be playing Star Trek Online full-time on Linux.
Do games on Linux offer more flexibility? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below?
WRITTEN BY Pedigo
EDITED BY Pedigo