Running FFXI On Linux

So I've made the move to Linux, coming from Windows 7 (10 can die like the dumpster fire that it is.) I can normally troubleshoot very well, but I can't for the life of me get this working.

I was able to find two guides for running the game on WINE, one saying do nothing and it works fine with a default install, and another that says to make several configuration changes in WINE, and neither worked. I even found a Lutris self-installer and that didn't work either. POL will boot, then hang, and finally crash after several seconds. I'm using MX Linux, which is a branch of Debian, which I read was able to run it fine.

As of right now I'm downloading the installer onto a W7 VM just so I can at least get it playing, but I would prefer to do it through WINE and move away from Windows for good. Is anyone able to help me?

Try steam + proton?

I've never been a fan of steam, or similar programs. Even then with my luck it would still crash for some reason.

Have you tried this guide? https://old.reddit.com/r/wine_gaming/comments/9bqyp4/ffxiashitawine/eaooiry/

It's similar to an updated one I read. I've been trying to do it as vanilla, as that was suppose to be just install and play. I've considered using Windower or Ashita, but there was suppose to be some more hoops to jump through, so I'll do more research on that side of it.

Currently got it updating on a VM, and I've been messing with this upgrade since 2AM, I'm going to crash while it updates so at least I can wake up and can play.

Thanks for the help thus far. Tiredness is a real pain to work through.

You may need to install a second, older version of wine. Google it to figure out how, as it requires either some third party apps or some variable changes depending on your distribution and version the steps may be different.
I specifically run ffxi under wine 3.21, because I had issues in later versions. (Not running on Debian however)

Hey it's the answer to literally every Amazon question!

So you left windows for Linux just to put virtual machine of windows on Linux?

After more troubleshooting I've figured it out. Lesson learned, repo's are not always the best source to download. Found WINE v5, managed to install it, and the game is running for me.

Now I just have to do tweaks and it will be just like old times, and just in time to get daily DI points done! (*** you SE, make them weekly.)

And this is why people use Windows to play games.

Linux is still a PITA for most things outside of the primary repositories. Too many different competing standards and ideologies that make it all but impossible to simplify stuff.

Wanted to step in here and ask how you were progressing, Loynis? Recently started trying to pull away from Windows 10 myself and can get the game installed and running without really any issues in Wine 5.1 on Ubuntu 19.10. The problem I'm having is when I fire up XI through Windower, plugins seem to load, get in game without much issue aside from half the keys on my keyboard don't work(Enter key, Backspace, Esc, Numpad, etc). Trying to avoid having to shift everything over to Ashita(which I hear works as well), so was curious if you had encountered this and if so, did you find a workaround?

I run vanilla, so I can't answer any questions regarding windower, although I did read somewhere about having to use winetricks and, I think it was DGVoodoo to run it with windower/ashita, but it was possible.

Have you reached out to the windower folks? They might have run into this issue before, or have a better idea of what's breaking and can help you troubleshoot the problem more efficiently.

Alright, thank you for responding. I have dgvoodoo installed and I am using winetricks which allows me to start up the game through windower. Just that when I get to the blue screen where you accept or decline SE's user agreement, half my keyboard stops working. Until then, everything's gravy. Will prob jump over to the windower forums and see if they have encountered the issue, like you suggest.

Use their discord instead: https://discord.gg/v6pk6uy

FFXI runs just fine on linux. Make sure to make 32-bit prefix, it won't run in a 64-bit one.

Just going to throw a few pointers: performance on a VM is kind of *** (may be my settings/lack of a forwarded gpu), but a raw VMware VM doesn't handle certain content well (fps drops to total ***).

Granted I did just (finally) do the regfix for the games thing, haven't used them since to determine if it helped performance or not).

If you're using vmware, at least on an older vm version sometimes the temp files would span greatly, so I upped the vhd sizes to reduce the amount of times I had to clean it (can't recall if I ever fixed the root cause on that or not). It is handy though, because you can keep a controller assigned to the VM and use a controller for other games on the host.

As for the bugging question: Windower on wine, somebody recently got v4 mostly working (you'd probably have to search the discord for details) but in general v4 isn't supported on linux, v5 is supposed to be, but obviously it's still in development.