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Old 08-09-2010, 08:40 PM
mgellan mgellan is offline
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Default Running EQ under LINUX

UPDATED FOR LATEST VERSIONS OF LINUX WINE 08/29/2013

This is a guide to show you how to install Everquest under LINUX and getting it working under WINE. WINE is a Windows execution environment under LINUX, Unix, MacOS etc. While some new games don't run well under WINE, EQ certainly does - previously you had to make one minor change to the WINE code, but now the standard wine that can be installed in Ubuntu can be run with the right settings in eqclient.ini. I prefer run EQ under LINUX, and it was the LAST application that tied me to Windows so I was pretty happy when the day came I could completely delete my Windows partition and go 100% LINUX, on my main system anyways!

The assumption in this guide is you're already running Ubuntu Linux Desktop 12.04 on a multicore PC. If you're running on a different OS or a Mac, you may need to make some adjustments but since I don't have either of those you're on your own. LINUX really runs better on NVidia graphics cards, since there are both Open Source and proprietary drivers available that seem to work well. With ATI cards YMMV so if you have a choice go NVidia. The Noveau open source drivers for Nvidia cards under LINUX didn't work well for on 3D, so install the proprietary drivers via the System Settings/Additional Drivers icon. Note: There is a separate post for anyone running Fedora / Red Hat / Centos here.

Installing WINE

When you first install LINUX WINE is not generally installed, but can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt-get install wine

WINE Configuration

Once you have WINE compiled and installed run

winecfg

And make sure the sound and everything are working properly. Generally I don't even bother doing this on a new LINUX machine unless I have issues.

Installing EQ

Next, you need to install EQ. The absolute easiest thing to do is copy an already installed version of EQ over to LINUX - just take the whole Everquest folder from a Windows install and drop it into the WINE folder - we'll assume this is /home/<user>/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Sony/Everquest/ from hereon in. If you open up the Home Folder icon on your Ubuntu Desktop, you'll see a Devices section at the top of the left hand menu, one of these will be your Windows partition, so navigate to your EQ folder and cut and paste it to /home/<user>/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Sony/Everquest/. If you can't see the .wine folder in your home directory hit Control-H to show hidden files since LINUX hides files with a leading period.

Otherwise if you want to install from CD it works fine - if you insert your CD1 in the Titanium set into the drive it'll pop up as a CD icon on the desktop. Doubleclick that to open, then doubleclick on setup.exe to run setup. It gets invoked via WINE automatically. The setup will proceed as normal, with the only wrinkle being you need to type

wine eject d:

from a terminal window (Ctl-Alt-T to pop one up) to get a disk out in the multidisk installer. This is because LINUX tends to want to mount Cds as filesystems and resists unmounting them if they're in use to avoid various problems. Wine eject gets around this.

Once the install is complete you'll get a wineglass icon on your desktop to run EQ. I had some problems getting the Options window to work properly but copying the ini file from an existing eq install worked great, if you have these issues. If you have problems use this ini file (hosted by cadiz thanks man!)

Obviously you need to edit it to not patch, but there's a few other things to add, so the command string (right click on the icon, Properties, Command: ) should be (all on one line!) with <user> replaced by your userid.

env WINEPREFIX="/home/<user>/.wine" taskset -c 0 padsp wine C:\\Program\ Files\\Sony\\EverQuest\\eqgame patchme

You need to proceed with the normal P1999 setup from hereon in, just do it into the folder where WINE installed EQ which is typically

/home/<user>/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Sony/Everquest/

Again, note that since .wine has a dot in front of it LINUX won't show it in the File Browser unless you select View/Show Hidden Files (Ctl-H toggles).

Another way to set everything up for EQ and run it is in a script (batch) file. This also lets you do other things that I don't mention here but I do on my own system, like playing with Soundfonts and so on. Run Gedit then cut and paste the following into it:

#!/bin/sh
# if you don't have the script's cwd set, you get XML errors
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine/
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Sony/EverQuest

# Bind to one core of the processor and launch.
# The client will spew a lot of errors, especially every time
# you target a mob, hence the stdout/stderr redirect.
# You probably want to leave off the 2>/dev/null until you're satisfied
# everything is working.
taskset -c 0 padsp wine eqgame.exe patchme 2>/dev/null

Props to Zallarenya for the script! Once you have the script working (it's always a good idea to try it via command line until you work out all the issues) you can stick it in an icon. Under the new Unity desktop this is a little harder than in older versions but you can install a few things and achieve the objective.

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel

Will install some tools, then every time you want a new icon run:

gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop

A dialog pops up where you can point it to the EQ shell script. And thats it!

Enjoy EQ on LINUX!
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Last edited by mgellan; 08-30-2013 at 03:32 PM.. Reason: Updated for Ubuntu 12.04 Wine 1.4
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