ELDEN RING: How to Run on Linux with EAC

This guide is only as the game currently works as of 2/26/22, and is not intended for all distros. For a good portion of users, you may be able to simply click install and play and the game could work, please try that before attempting anything in this guide. For many of us though the game does not currently work, so these are the steps I had to take to get it working.

Please take caution before blindly running any commands or changing configuration files, always back up configurations before modifying!

If when you start the game you’re met with an error that the EAC module could not be loaded, these steps may help you. You do not need to do them all, if it works you may not need to continue to further steps.

1. Use the flatpak version of steam, while not ideal to have two steam installs, especially since this can cause other issues with other games, EAC does seem to run more reliably on the flatpak install. (only run these as USER)

flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam 
flatpak override --user --filesystem=/path/to/directory com.valvesoftware.Steam
flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam

*           -          nice          -20
*           -          nofile        2097152

CONFIG_BPF_JIT
CONFIG_BPF_JIT_DEFAULT_ON
CONFIG_INPUT_UINPUT

zgrep CONFIG_BPF_JIT /proc/config.gz

CONFIG_BPF_JIT=y

Controller support doesn’t seem to be working correctly even on windows right now, but the same workaround many are using does work on linux as well

1. Make sure steam input is enabled for elden ring
2. Make sure the steam overlay is turned on (steam input will NOT work without the overlay)
if these two alone don’t work
3. under settings->controller change the desktop profile to “gamepad” (it’s available in the templates at the left)

There are plenty of known issues with the game still at the time of writing this guide.

1. Heavy IO load, different lower latency schedulers might help a little, but the game is definitely bugged even for windows users, highly recommend installing on the fastest drive you have available, you WILL still stutter on loads but it will reduce it greatly.

2. crashes on launch, I’ve personally had about a 70% success in launching the game, sometimes it just doesn’t make it to the menu and locks up, if you get a black or white screen for more than 5-10 seconds kill the process and re-launch it

3. wrong button prompts, even on a playstation controller the game will show xbox prompts, annoying but not the end of the world, just have to remember to press the “right” x button.

4. poor mouse/keyboard support, some controls just don’t work correctly, even after changing the bizarre mapping you WILL have input lag on mouse, this is again a game issue, it’s reported happening on windows as well.