Fantasy Grounds in Ubuntu/Linux/WINE

[astruyan]

This tutorial worked very well. Thank you.

[skj310]

Update - nvidia released driver version 378. If you are using nvidia-375 then I recommend updating to 378. With 375 driver, it would not recognise my 2 monitors as being separate, which was a royal pain.
There are still some issues with 378, but it's a bug improvement over 375.

Don't ask me about any drivers older than 375, as i won't have an answer regarding them.

[Nylanfs]

Welcome to the forums and FG community Astruyan!

[astruyan]

Welcome to the forums and FG community Astruyan!

On my Dell Optiplex 960 running Linux Mint 18.1, I am having difficulties getting my app directory and the data correct. I have a full ultimate license which I am planning to use to learn to be a GM with some friends, but I can't seem to get my directories right so I can access the very stuff I have paid for. It keeps going to Desktop and even in the settings small window I can't seem to assign it how it needs to be.

Thank you for the welcome back on the 20th. I am just now getting back to this.

[Galach]

Well, let me ask some questions:

1. Did you installed FG through WINE, or through Play on Linux with the option "app not listed" (or something like that)? I never could install it properly through Play on Linux.
2. Are you placing your App Directory and Data folders inside the same WINE prefix as FG Installation? It won't work otherwise.
3. Is your WINE prefix 32-bit? A lot of apps won't work if installed on a 64-bit prefix because Ubuntu and Ubuntu derived distros don't have a full implemented multiarch architecture. If you have a 64-bit system, is highly recommended to install 32-bit libraries to use with WINE (WINE page have some directions on how to do it).
4. Did you tried to create a new WINE prefix and install FG again?

[skj310]

Hey there Astruyan

Galach has asked all the right questions ... are you able to answer them? Are you wine savvy? Do you know if you've installed the baseline wine (version 1.6) is the stable release on linuxmint 18.1 unless you're using the wineHQ ppa to install a newer release. As well the wine prefix question is important, if it's not clear what is meant by wine prefix, then chances are you've not installed FG within a separate prefix. Which means that within your "home" directory, you'll probably just have the one ".wine" folder.

In that case you ought to see that there are 2 important folders:

1. /home/username/.wine/drive_c/users/username/Application Data/Fantasy Grounds
2. /home/username/Documents/My Games/Fantasy Grounds/

If you did use a wine prefix, then there is a chance that there's another folder created, that is other than the ".wine" folder. For example I used a wine prefix on my install and called it ".wine_FG". I did this by executing the command:

export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine_FG

during the install of FG. Therefore my bullet 1 above changed from:

• /home/skj310/.wine/drive_c/users/skj310/Application Data/Fantasy Grounds

to:

• /home/skj310/.wine_FG/drive_c/users/skj310/Application Data/Fantasy Grounds

When you install FG using wine, the 2nd bullet above (/home/username/Documents/My Games/Fantasy Grounds/) is automatically created. Within this folder you'll find a lot of that "DATA" components of the FG install; similar to the "users/username/AppData/Roaming" folder under a windows install.

As well when Galach mentions did you install as 32b or 64bit ... this too relates to how you handled the install. As FG is a 32b application you need to make sure that you run the command:

export WINEARCH="win32"

as the 1st step in your install process. Hence for myself I executed the following:

export WINEARCH="win32"
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine_FG
./FGWebInstall.exe

After that FG was running fine, and i've not had any issues. I too am running mint 18.1, but I'm using the winehg-staging ppa, which means the version of wine installed on my PC is wine version 2.4.

Hope all that helps.

[astruyan]

I will reply in earnest this evening after work. However, I did just follow the instructions at the start of this thread only.

[Galach]

Good evening

Since there are some other people around who are trying Fantasy Grounds in Linux environments, and taking advantage that I just formated my disk and reinstalled my OS, I created this tutorial on how to install FG in Ubuntu and its forks.

When writing it, I was assuming my reader as a complete beginner in Linux, so if you already know your way in this OS, and want to check what I had done, just skip the explanations and read the commands

This guide is basically the same one provided by skj310, with a bit more explanation and some steps (which may not be necessary) to prevent rendering errors when showing applications fonts.


Installing Fantasy Grounds in Linux – Ubuntu Based Distros.


DISCLAIMER

This method was tested and successfully completed in April 4, 2017 using WINE version 2.4. The steps described here can or cannot work in the future, with new releases of Fantasy Grounds, WineHQ or Ubuntu ant its forks. The steps described in this tutorial were accomplished in a KDE environment, and Unity UI can behave differently as it is well known in Linux community.
-------------------------------------------------

1.Installing WineHQ

The first step is to install the newest version of Wine. Since Ubuntu did not update its repositories, the stable 2.0 version is not available to an easy install and this is why we will work right now with the development version. To do things right, we just need to follow some steps, describer below, all of them using the Terminal Console:


a. Adding Multiarch Compatibility (Mandatory for x64 users)

Ubuntu don’t have a good native support for multiarch (i.e. running 32 and 64 bits applications alongside each other), and installing the 32-bit libraries is mandatory to run 32-bit applications on Wine:

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

b. Adding Wine Repositories to your system

This step will configure your system to look into Wine repositories instead of Ubuntu repositories for the installation files. For some reason, even adding the Wine repository, the system cannot find the wine-stable packet, only the wine-devel and wine-staging (development and bleeding-edge packets, respectively).

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wine/wine-builds

$ sudo apt-get update

c. Installing Wine

This step will install Wine and Winetricks, a too, used to manage more easily some aspects of Wine:

$ sudo apt-get install winehq-devel winetricks

-------------------------------------------------

2. Configuring Wine

Here, we will be configuring Wine so we can install Fantasy Grounds. Since Wine will always install things in the same default folder, and installing different softwares in the same place can mess things, it is a good practice to create different folders (also knows as bottles or prefixes) for each different software we are installing.
The first step is to create a subfolder inside your home folder were wine prefixes will be stored. For example, mine is .wine-prefixes (the “dot” as first character in the folder name will make it a hidden folder – if you do not want it to be hidden, create your folder without it).

Inside this folder, each Wine prefix will be stored in a subfolder, created as part of the process of setting up that prefix. Since Fantasy Grounds is a 32-bit application, we will create a 32-bit prefix, using the following command:

$ WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-prefixes/Fantasy-Grounds” WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot

The first time you do that in your machine, some new windows will pop-up asking to install mono and a bunch of other things required to Wine work properly. Accept them all and wait a bit until they are installed.

After that, we will make sure the system will configure the right Wine prefix by using the following command:

$ export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-prefixes/Fantasy-Grounds”

Then, we will configure Wine to be seen by the application as if it was a windows 10 machine:

$ winecfg

Another window will pop-up. There you will change the Windows 7 under “Windows Version” to Windows 10, hit apply and then ok. Next step is install the Microsoft Core Fonts, to be sure everything will be displayed correctly in your Fantasy Grounds:

$ winetricks

Another window will be displayed, with the option “select default wine-prefix” already selected. Leave it that way and hit OK. Select the option “install a font”, hit OK , select the option “corefonts” and “tahoma” and then OK again. Wait the download and installation process finish , and close winetricks window.
-------------------------------------------------

3. Installing Fantasy Grounds

Download the FG web installer from Fantasy Grounds page. Inside the console, go to the folder were you saved the file (I will be assuming it is in the Downloads folder):

$ cd ~/Downloads

And then, use Wine to install it:

$ wine FGWebInstall.exe

The install window of Fantasy Grounds will pop-up. In this window, you will need to:

- Fill your license key in the corresponding field;
- Check the “Cross-platform compatibility mode for Linux and Mac” selection box;
- Enter your Fantasy Grounds account username and password.

For purposes of easier backup process, I also recommend you change the default folders path to a shorter one. Mine are loke this:

App Directory: C:\Fantasy Grounds\App
Data Directory: C:\Fantasy Grounds\Data

Hit OK and wait until it finishes downloading everything. Here, everything worked just fine; except for a minor glitch on library selection – when rolling up and down through the window, the module icons look like they are “going out/off” the window.
-------------------------------------------------

A final comment

Just remember that purchases made through Steam will not be downloaded, even if you install the Windows version of Stem in the same prefix as Fantasy Grounds. FG relies on the Steam background service to work with it, but this service do not run in a Wine install.

If you have purchased modules on Steam, take some screenshots of your Steam Library as well as from your order confirmations and send it to the support emal address of Fantasy Grounds, asking to add those products to your account.

As far as I know, they will do it gladly,asking only the proof of purchase and some time to get the work done.

Hope this helps.

[skj310]

So why did you elect to use winehq-devel over winehq-staging?

[Galach]

So why did you elect to use winehq-devel over winehq-staging?

To give you a sincere answer, I am not sure myself. Before deciding between any of them, I made a quick research to try to understand the differences, pros and cons of each one, but did not found any clear information.

As far I as understood, Wine Devel is the version were features almost ready to be implemented on the Stable version are tested in production, a sort of “beta” or “pre-release” version.

Wine Staging, for instance, is a version with a lot more features provided by third parties, but which are not yet accepted by the main Wine development team. It can offer better support (specially for games, or at least is what people were saying), but this features are being constantly changed and updated, and I think this can make it more prone to mess things up.

This is why I described it as a more “bleeding-edge”, a sort of “alfa” test for people who can afford to make an update and suddenly find things are not working anymore. All in all, I may be wrong in those assumptions, and picking Devel over Staging was a decision made having in mind what I think is more stable.

Same is true for installing Corefonts and Tahoma – I really think it is no necessary in the case of Fantasy Grounds, but is a sort of “safety practice”, because many older apps won’t work properly without them.