HOWTO: Run WoW in Linux

[Weslord]

Hi everyone,

I searched around, and couldn't really find any guides that show how to run World of Warcraft on Linux, so I thought I'd go ahead and post one. Though I couldn't find any, this may be a repost. If so, please delete, and accept my apologize.



First of all, we need to check to be sure that your graphics card and current drivers are able to run WoW with OpenGL. To do this, enter the following commands via command line:

glxinfo | grep rendering

this should spit out something similar to:

direct rendering: Yes

If it doesn't come back as a "yes", this means your current card and/or drivers will not be able to run WoW. You'll need to update them.

Next, you want to install WINE, which is a Windows emulator that will allow you to run Windows programs on your Linux machine. I personally use Fedora, so this is simple to do via the "yum" command, which is as simple as "yum install wine". For instructions on how to install WINE on other Linux distributions, you should check with your native distro support site.




Now comes the installation. There are three different ways to go about doing this:



Method 1. Install from CDs

If you're lucky you can properly run the installation from the cds, which require that you are able to change between them while the installation runs.
Simply put disc 1 in the CD or DVD drive, and do the following (replace /media/cdrom0 with wherever you mount your cds):

wine /media/WoWDisc1/Installer.exe

Some dialogs during installation may appear blank or garbled, and the installer may even hang for up to 5 minutes at 100% CPU, while appearing to be doing nothing. Simply wait and click next when possible.
Note: If the text is too small, and it annoys you: Please install msttcorefonts per instruction of your distribution.
If everything works like it should, then the installation will run for a while and then ask for disc 2, you change CDs and it should continue until it asks for the next one and so forth, if it doesn't work, however, you will continue to receive the "Please insert Disc 2" Warning repeatedly, you should first wait a minute to make sure the CD mounted and try again, and if it still doesn't work, skip to method two.
If you have problems ejecting CDs in wine try: Start winecfg, then select Drives, auto detect drives The you'll probably get a Drive Letter like L: /media/WoWDisc1/ Now you can use wine eject L: Then press the eject button on your CD/DVD drive. For the next CD you'll have to run wincfg again and substitute /media/WoWDisc1/ to ... WoWDisc2 and so on. So the wine eject will work without a Problem.

Method 2. Copy CDs to HD

Create a new folder on your computer. Copy all of the files from the first CD and all but the Installer.exe file from the rest to this directory on your hard drive (overwrite when prompted). Copying the Installer.exe from the other CD's will cause the install to fail with

Unrecognized key "options". (AttributeParser::Parse)

Then run:

cd /<path-to-directory>/

wine Installer.exe
Replace <path-to-directory> with the right path to the directory where you copied all the files. You should now have the installation running, but make sure the CD media is out of the drive or it will check there and you'll be stuck in it again.



Method 3. Copy or run from Win

You can also just install WoW in Windows and then copy the entire World of Warcraft folder over from your Windows installation.
Or if you've already got WoW installed on your Windows partition, you can just use Wine to launch WoW directly from this installation. There is an added benefit to doing this, if you actively multiboot between Linux and Windows, because you will only need to have one copy of WoW on your hard drive for it to run in both environments. Please keep in mind that you must have both read and write access to your Windows partition for this to work, and only the most recently released GNU/Linux distributions, are currently providing write access to NTFS (Windows XP) partitions out of the box. If you do not have write access to your NTFS partition, you will need to consult with your distributions documentation for directions on enabling the NTFS-3G driver, which adds this feature.
Note: Using this method results in there being no entries for WoW in Wine's registry, but this does not cause any issues at all with running WoW.




Now for the configuration:



Registry Tweak for FPS Boost

Open a terminal window, (konsole/terminal/x terminal etc..), type regedit and press enter. This will start the Wine equivalent of the windows registry editor. If you are familiar with using the registry editor under windows then this is pretty much the same.

1. Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\
2. Highlight the wine folder in the left hand pane by left clicking on it. The icon should change to an open folder.
3. Click right on the wine folder and select [NEW] then [KEY].
4. Replace the text "New Key #1" with OpenGL (CaSe Sensitive).
5. Right click in the right hand pane and select [NEW] then [String Value].
6. Replace "New Value #1" with "DisabledExtensions" (CaSe sensitive).
7. Then double click anywhere on the line, a dialog box will open.
8. In the value field type "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object" (without the quotes).

Note: If you are unable to rename the newly created key "New Key #1" to "OpenGL" then expand the left hand pane of the regedit window using the vertical divider bar. You should now be able to change it. A known bug in Wine is causing this unwanted behavior.
You should see a significant performance gain.




Config.wtf

WoW uses DirectX by default, but for most people it will not perform well in this mode. If this is the case for you, then you should change it to run in OpenGL mode instead. To do this you need to find the file wtf/Config.wtf in your WoW directory. By default it is found in /home/<username>/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/, where <username> is you computer login name. If the file does not exist, run the game and log into a character. The game should then create the file. Open it using a text editor, and add the following line to it:

SET gxApi "opengl"

The file is found in the wtf directory in your main WoW directory.
If you experience poor performance, graphical glitches, or the game doesn't run at all, then add the following options as well:

SET ffxDeath "0"

SET ffxGlow "0"

Note that disabling ffxGlow may also enable antialiasing for some users.
If you experience stuttering, bad sound or no sound what so ever, then add the following options as well:

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"

 SET SoundBufferSize "150"

winecfg

If you experience stuttering, bad sound or no sound what so ever, then you must try a few things in winecfg. Just type winecfg in a terminal, press enter, and the winecfg window should appear and you should go to the audio tab.
For most people OSS will work better than ALSA, so you should make sure that only OSS is ticked. But for some ALSA works better, so try that as a second solution, make sure you only have one ticked at a time.
Also, refer to the Voice chat section for information on getting multiple audio streams working with OSS and ALSA (more than one program using audio at once). It will save you grief should you ever want to listen to music and chat on Ventrilo or Teamspeak while playing, and similar.
You may also try ticking "Driver Emulation". Remove it again if it doesn't help.




Now with the installation done, it's time to play!



Start from the Desktop Icon

Double click the icon you find on your Desktop titled World of Warcraft, this will start the launcher. If you have never used something requiring HTML rendering with Wine you will be prompted to download and install the Gecko rendering engine, you should do this as it will enable the WoW Launcher to do display news.


Start from the Terminal

Starting from the terminal is simple, just enter:

wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Launcher.exe"

(install when prompted about the Gecko rendering engine)
Or, dive right into the game with:

wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WoW.exe"

Gnome menu icon

You can make a Gnome menu entry by doing the following commands in a terminal (you will need superuser/root rights):

wget http://kde-files.org/CONTENT/content...n-scalable.svg
mv 41569-wow-icon-scalable.svg /usr/share/icons/
gedit /usr/share/applications/wow.desktop

Add this to the text editor window, which should have appeared after the third command, change <username> in the Exec= line to your computer login username, and save:

[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=World of Warcraft Name[hr]=World of Warcraft Exec=wine /home/<username>/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/WoW.exe Icon=41569-wow-icon-scalable.svg Terminal=false Type=Application Categories=Application;Game; StartupNotify=false

Remember that you should also edit the Exec= line to reflect your WoW installation path, if you've installed to a special location.



Credit for this guide goes to the guys over at WoWWikki.com

If you have trouble with anything, you can check out the troubleshooting guide at Linux/Wine/Troubleshooting - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft.

[Weslord]

Oops, it appears that I may have posted this in the wrong section.

Sorry.

[illogic]

sry.. but wtf is linux?

[dvtjr13]

Its a OS like windows and mac thats all
+rep lol i just deleted mine not to long ago but guess ill need to redownload it now

[skillz noodles]

this seems similar to something i read on one of the distro's forums.

this is also something very similar to this on the ubuntu forums. i wouldn't be surprised if it was just copied from there(not accuseing you, just saying its very similar)

[Weslord]

Actually, it was pretty much copied over from the linux WoWWikki. I stated that at the end of the guide. However, I am proficient with most distros of Linux, and if anybody runs into trouble or needs help setting this up, just shoot me a PM and I"l be glad to help.

[illogic]

is linux better then windows?

[Weslord]

That's a very controversial topic. We could go on for hours about saying which is better.

Linux is far more stable and secure than Windows in almost all aspects, but Windows is far more widespread and most everything is compatible with Windows straight out of the box. Whereas, with Linux, sometimes you have to do a lot of stuff to get something working. Just like getting WoW to run.

Do some research on the web about UNIX/Linux. You might find a lot of what you find is very interesting.

[Stew]

awesome. was going to make figuring this out my christmas project, but you seem to have got it all worked out already :-)
+rep

p.s. openGL rendering on windows didnt seem to harm my frame rate, but it did leave the window responsive during loading etc when DX would just not touch it, and it would sort of stick in the middle of the screen while trying to do other things

[riizu]

Great guide. +rep. I don't have linux right now, though im thinking about installing it as a second boot option. (1st being windows vista) Im probably going to use Ubuntu, seeing as how I have install disks for it.

[Weslord]

Thanks for the rep, guys! Riizu, if you're new to Linux, I would suggest going with the Fedora distro of Linux. It's much easier to pick up and learn. Fedora Project is the site.

Stew, you may see an even bigger boost (maybe even 10-15 frames) if you use the registry tweak that is listed in the guide for OpenGL.

[zoidberg891]

Ima try this on my ubuntu...BTW linux has free software...and great server programs illogic.

[Stew]

Thanks for the rep, guys! Riizu, if you're new to Linux, I would suggest going with the Fedora distro of Linux. It's much easier to pick up and learn. Fedora Project is the site.

Stew, you may see an even bigger boost (maybe even 10-15 frames) if you use the registry tweak that is listed in the guide for OpenGL.

bit tricky to edit wine's registry entries on windows

[Weslord]

Sorry, I read your post wrong. I thought you were running it in Linux already. I didn't see that you were testing OpenGL in Windows.

[Avara]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft
also here :P