Deus Ex Game of the Year Edition: Installation Guide

Unfortunately, because Windows has such a huge dominance over the OS marketshare, developers have not bothered to port their software to Linux. There are many distros, many configurations, and the underlying systems that make up Windows are far different from Linux. This has turned down many and caused them to release their games exclusively on Microsoft’s platform.

This means us Linux enthusiasts have to resort to other means in order to play our games without needing to dualboot and sell our souls to the big bad Microsoft.

Don’t worry! Whether you’re using Debian, Kali, Arch, or in my case, Ubuntu–this guide will help you play Deus Ex on your Linux OS of choice!

You will need to first install:

• Wine[winehq.org] Compatibility Layer
• Lutris[lutris.net] Launcher

If you haven’t already, you will need to install the latest version of WINE.

WINE is a translator that allows you to run any 16 bit, 32 or even 64 bit Windows program. Despite this, it IS NOT an emulator.

WINE will allow us to take the Windows version of Deus Ex and simply run its executable. WINE works quite well with older applications. While newer games like Apex or Titanfall struggle on WINE, older games like Worlds.com or Deus EX tend to run flawlessly with a “platinum” rating or higher.

First, download WINE from winehq.org.

On the right side, click Download. Then, you will see a list of different systems that WINE supports. Select your system. In my case I am using Ubuntu.

Follow the instructions given to you on the next page. You will be allowed to choose between either the default, developer, or staging editions of WINE. I recommed choosing the staging version, but you are free to choose.

After that is done. You may optionally want to install Winetricks. On Ubuntu you can do this with “sudo apt install winetricks” but it may vary from each OS.

Next, lets move on to installing Lutris.

Now that we have WINE set up, there’s one more problem we need to address.

Steam will not allow us to install games that aren’t natively supported on our OS, unless Valve releases official Proton support for that game. (Proton is Steam’s custom version of WINE that is maintained by Valve, which is used to run games like Doom.)

Therefore, in order to actually launch the game, we need Lutris. Lutris will allow us to download the game from steam and run it within WINE, by acting as a frontend for the Windows version of Steam. Lutris also supports many other distributors like GOG, Origin, and more. It even can be used as a launcher for emulators like Dolphin and Citra.

First, visit Lutris.net.

Before we can use Lutris, we need to make an account. Make an account using your email, and a username. Then you will receive a verification email in your inbox. Click the link in the email to activate your account.

Next, open up your account settings by clicking your avatar in the top right corner. Then, click “Sign in with Steam” and sign into your steam account. This will allow Lutris to see what games you have and verify ownership of them.

Now you may install Lutris.

Now, go to https://lutris.net/downloads/. Here you will find instructions for installing Lutris through the command line. Alternatively, if you are using Ubuntu or Debian, you can download a .deb package[launchpad.net] from Launchpad and import it using your package manager of choice, like GDebi.

Once Lutris is installed, click the icon in the top right corner, and click Login. Then type your username and password you used to make your Lutris account.

Next, open up the settings by clicking Preferences in the menu.

In the System Options tab, turn on “Restore gamma” and “Restore resolution”. This will make sure the game does not break your display settings if it crashes.

Now that you are finished, click “All” on the left side of the main window, and all of your Steam games should appear.

Select Deus Ex. On the right side, click Install.

It will ask you what version you want to install. Select Steam.

When the installation is finished, run the game. Lutris may ask you to install DXVK. If it does, install it, however this should not be neccessary since we are going to be using OpenGL anyway.

If you’ve done everything correctly, you will see Steam for Windows begin to load. Once Steam is ready, you will see the Deus Ex Setup window appear.

When it asks what device you want to use, click Show all devices, then click OpenGL Support

The game should run normally. However, you may run into an error message shortly after startup:

This sometimes happens due to issues with the game’s settings. To fix this we will need to use a workaround created by Morgawr.

If you somehow got an error message at startup, then you may need to run a custom Bash script in order to fix the game settings.

First of all, make sure that you selected OpenGL as the rendering backend for the game. If you didn’t, select OpenGL and try again. If it still does not work, follow these instructions:

Open up a blank document in your text editor.

Now, copy and paste the following code:

Save the file as a .sh file and run it in the terminal. Wait for the script to finish running. You may see a dialog box appear that says WINE is updating prefixes. If you see this message, wait for it to disappear. Then try running the game again.

I hoped this guide is able to help anyone new to gaming on Linux. Linux based OSes are very different from Windows and to some people it can be scary, but with enough practice you can get used to Linux very quickly and have a lot of fun with it.

If you need additional help, Wine’s AppDB and the Lutris website are good places to do some research. Or you can ask me in the comments. If I missed anything important let me know.

• Game does not resize when in windowed mode, and only shows the bottom left part. Alt-tabbing will cause the game to get stuck in windowed mode.
• Excessive mouse sensitivity in menus.
• Can’t change screen resolution when using Intel graphics cards. This happens in other apps outside of WINE and seems to be a driver issue.

By [APM] Sakamoto | unusual.tf