I’ve finally started having some free time lately and have been working through my Steam library, most of which is Windows games I’m playing with Proton.
I wanted to install some mods, and wanted a mod manager for this. Nexus Mods has Vortex, which is not available for Linux. In any case, running Windows games on Linux through Proton on Steam is fairly specific; the game files will be at certain locations on a Linux filesystem, not at the same locations as they would be on a Windows filesystem. So I think I would need software that has specifically been designed for this use-case (Windows games from Steam running on Proton).
Are there any such mod managers out there? What do other people do when playing games on Linux? I can’t be the only person who wants to play video games with mods.
I’ve built my own folder based mod-manager: https://github.com/Lucki/mod-manager
It’s using OverlayFs to lay mods on top of the game files which allows for easy switch-arounds of mod sets while keeping each mod separated in their own folder. It’s based upon config files and allows to freely collect mods in sets, even nested.
It’s probably full of unnoticed bugs because I’m the only one using it, but it works 🤷 I do have a bunch of convenience stuff queued up locally though. They need a bit of polishing but soon it’s ready for another push.
That sound interesting. Any examples of games where you’re using this?
I tested in these games -
ls -1 "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mod-manager":- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.toml
- Cyberpunk 2077.toml
- FlatOut 2.toml
- Gotham Knights.toml
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.toml
- Ready Or Not.toml
- Stellar Blade.toml
- The Witcher 3.toml
cat "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mod-manager/Gotham Knights.toml"
active = "my" [my] mods = [ "nocape", "upscaler", ] [upscaler] # https://github.com/cdozdil/OptiScaler # v0.7.7-pre9 mods = ["OptiScaler"] [upscaler.environment] WINEDLLOVERRIDES = "version=n,b" [nocape] mods = [ # https://www.nexusmods.com/gothamknights/mods/330 "BatGirl Cape Off", ]tree "/mnt/games/mod-manager/Gotham Knights/"
/mnt/games/mod-manager/Gotham Knights/ ├── BatGirl Cape Off │ └── Mercury │ └── Content │ └── Paks │ └── ~mods │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Demon_26_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Demon_26_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Demon_26_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Eternal_13_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Eternal_13_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Eternal_13_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_KnightOps_41_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_KnightOps_41_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_KnightOps_41_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Metal_36_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Metal_36_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Metal_36_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_NeonNoir_22_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_NeonNoir_22_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_NeonNoir_22_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_NewGuard_5_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_NewGuard_5_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_NewGuard_5_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Privateer_31_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Privateer_31_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Privateer_31_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Shinobi_46_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Shinobi_46_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Shinobi_46_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Titan_9_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Titan_9_P.ucas │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_Titan_9_P.utoc │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_YearOne_18_P.pak │ ├── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_YearOne_18_P.ucas │ └── BatGirl_Cape_OFF_YearOne_18_P.utoc └── OptiScaler └── Mercury └── Binaries └── Win64 ├── amd_fidelityfx_dx12.dll ├── amd_fidelityfx_vk.dll ├── D3D12_Optiscaler │ └── D3D12Core.dll ├── libxess.dll ├── libxess_dx11.dll ├── nvngx.dll ├── OptiScaler.ini └── version.dllNo idea why that tree is broken in monospace - it works in the preview, sorry!
For Minecraft specifically Prismlauncher is really good.
It’s not ready yet (preview state) but NexusMods is developing an app for managing all their mods: https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App, for Linux they’re releasing both an appimage and a standard setup.
It does currently support Stardew Valley.
I suggest Prisim Launcher for Minecraft, but if you also play other games and want mods I can recommend r2modmanPlus they have a appimage and platform specific builds that you can download and its opensource!
I am using r2modman most of the time and it works well for the modded games I play on my machine. I uses Thunderstore so it might not have the biggest library of mods for all your titles but it’s worth mentioning imo.
very niche but i think it deserves a mention: the Outer Wilds mod manager doesn’t just support Linux natively, but it even has a CLI version, and it’s up on AUR and Flatpak
https://outerwildsmods.com/mod-manager/
as others have said though, r2modman/thunderstore manager also runs in an appimage and works perfectly well for games it supports, and MO2 and Vortex work more or less alright if they’re in the same prefix as your game or potentially even if they aren’t.
Mod Organizer 2 works great with wine and proton. Installation is a bit complicated though. The recent versions of MO2 require wine 9 or newer.
Don’t know if it has games you’re interested in, but I’ve been using r2modman and it’s worked pretty well. Even for games run through Proton.
There is one in the works right now: https://www.nexusmods.com/app
The only problem is, there are just 2 games supported at the moment; Stardew Valley and Cyberpunk 2077. Many more will follow, but it takes time. And updates can break your current setup, because its heavy on working and changes. So this is more of a future thing. I myself wait for this right now.
I use Limo, it takes some getting used to after using Mod Organizer 2 for so long but it gets the job done. I havent used it for any huge modlists yet though as it tends to be a little buggy/unintuitive sometimes.
There’s also a way to get MO2 on linux, should he on github as modorganizer2-linux-installer.
https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch for when you need MO2 or Nexus (that isn’t Stardew). Keep in mind this will install a new instance of the app for each game you use it with (in its proton prefix folder).
https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App is the current version of the new Nexus Mod Manager App, which has linux support. Currently it only has game support for Stardew Valley.
As many others have said, go with PrismLauncher for Minecraft. Modrinth’s launcher works fine too, but doesn’t have curseforge support.
You might try Vortex through lutris: https://lutris.net/games/vortex-mod-manager/
I’m not sure why one of those is flagged. From what I can see its just the obnoxiously written
write_file.contentone-liners and lots of regex/sed, but nothing looks wrong with what its doing.I haven’t done it a lot, but running a Windows mod manager in the same prefix as the game should work where there isn’t a Linux native version available.
I’ve not really tinkered with any kind of settings and just use Steam’s default which is to have a separate C: drive for every Proton game, so does that mean I’d need a separate install of a mod manager for every game? Ideally I’d like to have just one mod manager that recognises all my games (that are supported by the mod manager at least)
Yeah, the way I was suggesting would only work for one game at a time. You might be able to set something up with symlinks to make everything visible in a separate prefix for the mod manager, but that sounds like way more trouble to me.
I’ve modded bg3 with vortex installed through steamtinkerlaunch
Protontricks can help for some games. Personally I used it to install Openplanet for Trackmania which doesn’t have any sort of explicit Linux support specified.
What Protontricks does is allow you to run installation files within the context of a steam game, as you mentioned. Simply launch Protontricks and select the game you’re trying to modify and it will mount it properly for you. Then choose “Run an arbitrary executable (.exe/.msi/.msu)” and proceed to run the installer as you would normally.
Sometimes the path can still be a bit janky. For example when Openplanet wanted to install to the Trackmania directory as mounted through Protontricks, I had to specify: Z:\home<USERNAME>.steam\steam\steamapps\common\Trackmania.
