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Question - Everquest / MQ on Linux (1 Viewer)

Joined
Feb 8, 2005
RedCents
8,490¢
So how viable is this? I'm really getting ramped up on a variety of things with Linux and want to take my main rig there now. Technical aspects are no concern, as I have an extensive background in Linux Usage and Virtualization.

Here are the methods I see:

-Wine (Wrapper doubt it would handle boxes well or MQ2 injection) - The little history I see on this subject says its a big No go.
-VMWare Player - The good ole, load Win10 VM and launch the game inside it. I need to be able to launch my 4 boxes and utilize my 3 monitors, and I'm just not sure how well that will do. (VirtualBox Left off due to lack of GPU support and dodgy DirectX)
-PCI Passthrough using KVM - I could buy a second video card, toss it in and dedicate it to a VM. The only downside to this is it will limit the monitors I use based on my research. Not optimal if I can't use all my monitors.

Give up option:
-Dual boot: yeah... I could do that but damn it I don't want to.
 
Omg you find a decent answer let me know. I tried wine I tried vmware and just went with dual boot myself

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
 
Closest thing I can think of is to do the PCI Passthrough with a 2nd GPU and push 2 screens and leave one screen behind for the Primary GPU. This so far is the best solution, but I'm game to hear other options. The linux instance can still utilize all 3 screens, but the VM (Windows) will only be able to utilize 2 monitors hooked up to a seperate graphics card.

This will be using KVM for the VMs so should considerably better for performance and stability.

To expand on this:

I have a GTX 970 atm in this pc and then utilize the onboard Intel Graphics for primary monitor. When launching the VM it should dedicate the 970 to it if I do the PCI Passthrough properly.
 
I have nothing to offer but my support. We've had several threads on this with no luck. It's the only thing keeping me on Windows
 
I'm going to try when I get home on my second rig to see what I can come up with will post results Sunday when I'm off and have time to type it all up. Going to try with KVM like noobhaxor was talking about and using wine see if anything might work but doubt that one---- I have one other idea but will have to test it out first

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
 
Ok, i went somehow in the same path you took NH, but here what i ended up with:

My Hardware
----------------
Intel 6th Gen i7 6700K
32GB of FAST DDR4 RAM
Dual Samsung S950 PCI-E NVMe in RAID!!!!
ASUS Nvidia 1070 with 8GB of DDR4 RAM.
Windows10 Pro with a lots of tweaks and optimization (Using Advanced System Care and other apps).

Network
----------
- DSL with 8Mbit
- Two Routers 4G with average 20Mbit
- All the above connected to Peplink Balance 380 (bought cheap in eBay, it costs $thousands as brand new) which is connected thru VPN in Cloud. If one of the routers of DSL goes down, my boxes will be still be running smoothly even if i end up with DSL or any of the two routers being down. This is how you keep your EQ session LIVE! :D

Virtualization
---------------
Tried VirtualBox first, waited till v5.x with the hope that it will perform better with standalone GPU support, but oh well. Finally moved to VMWare Workstation Player 12, it supports DirectX 9.0c natively like a charm, no glitches, rock solid stability for days to run. Mind that it will support max of 2GB for GPU memory but that's kinda ok for a low graphics settings and group of 6 toons. I run Windows 7 in that instance and it comes autobooted with it's own OpenVPN connection to dodge any mass ban based on IP.
 
Ok, i went somehow in the same path you took NH, but here what i ended up with:

My Hardware
----------------
Intel 6th Gen i7 6700K
32GB of FAST DDR4 RAM
Dual Samsung S950 PCI-E NVMe in RAID!!!!
ASUS Nvidia 1070 with 8GB of DDR4 RAM.
Windows10 Pro with a lots of tweaks and optimization (Using Advanced System Care and other apps).

Network
----------
- DSL with 8Mbit
- Two Routers 4G with average 20Mbit
- All the above connected to Peplink Balance 380 (bought cheap in eBay, it costs $thousands as brand new) which is connected thru VPN in Cloud. If one of the routers of DSL goes down, my boxes will be still be running smoothly even if i end up with DSL or any of the two routers being down. This is how you keep your EQ session LIVE! :D

Virtualization
---------------
Tried VirtualBox first, waited till v5.x with the hope that it will perform better with standalone GPU support, but oh well. Finally moved to VMWare Workstation Player 12, it supports DirectX 9.0c natively like a charm, no glitches, rock solid stability for days to run. Mind that it will support max of 2GB for GPU memory but that's kinda ok for a low graphics settings and group of 6 toons. I run Windows 7 in that instance and it comes autobooted with it's own OpenVPN connection to dodge any mass ban based on IP.
Quick question how well does VMware player work across multiple monitors?
 
Check out the image attached, you can use whatever monitor connected to your Windows 10. Btw, i use Windows 10 Virtual Desktop which comes very handy, all i have to do just (CTRL+Windows Key + Right Key) to flip between sessions.
 

Attachments

  • VMWare Workstation Player 12.PNG
    VMWare Workstation Player 12.PNG
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Check out the image attached, you can use whatever monitor connected to your Windows 10. Btw, i use Windows 10 Virtual Desktop which comes very handy, all i have to do just (CTRL+Windows Key + Right Key) to flip between sessions.
I need to use a minimum of two monitors, how well does it span them? I can't use just one monitor for EQ.
 
WINE has no issues with EQ, but MQ2 is just a matter if they support the WinAPIs used. I know eqmule changed some things a while back with the exe that requires installing some newer vc runtimes I think, but I haven't tried.
 
Since I run Innerspace MQ2 and about 6 boxes atm, a total of 8 once I get all my classes and new auto macros built. I pretty much have to use VMWare Player, but I am going to keep messing around and trying all the options I outlined. I have raids tonight in about 3 hours so we will see where I'm at now. I suck at graphic Linux is what I'm finding out and as crunch time is upon me... I've reverted to just doing everything in terminal for getting everything setup.
 
If you can get wmi to work in wine then it should work.

Or use like the 5 year old macroquest2.exe as the injector.

Wine 1.6 release notes show this
Rich (BB code):
*** Miscellaneous

- XML namespaces are better supported. XML parsing is also implemented
  in the XMLLite library.

- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is implemented, with a wide
  range of WBEM system classes.

Once I try this I'll report my results. I'm install 2.0 stable and about a billion other things atm.
 
Ok first report back, while I wait for raid to recover from wipe:

-Wine : Not really viable for me. Boxing is pretty much a no go and overall I just use too many windows based things to justify it. GINA, Innerspace, etc... that I pretty much have to give up.

-VMware: It works and pretty well if you have a beefy system. It takes some tinkering, screen setup, mouse smoothing for gaming, etc... Overall its not bad, but you will take a performance hit. A large one if your processor doesn't support VT-d / VT-x. I think this is what I will stick with, but i need to tinker with it a bit more to get it running really well. I think with Unity, I can get it to feel pretty much native.

-PCI Crossover - This will be the next step, but I need to grab a couple ATI cards for this. The onboard Intel graphics using XOrg display is HOOOORRRRIID, and can not be used for anything but setting up graphics drivers for nVidia Cards. Stay tuned!

I'll do a how to on the Linux conversion and pain points I've encountered. Overall though, the more I use Linux as my primary the more I enjoy it.

So far EQ crashes have been triggered by Item Display (right clicking item to view details) no other crashes though.
 
Custom out date UI?

Na, it was just a one off crash. Overall VMWare is a bit clunky and I just don't like it. You pretty much have to use Workstation Pro if you want to do mouse smoothing and a couple other tweaks. It still doesn't feel right to me though. I'm moving on from VMWare, going to hit up KVM now and tinker with its native abilities since I can utilize VT-x VT-d with it.

Overall in a pinch you can use VMWare however on a daily basis for gaming... not really a solution for me, but a jimmy rig'd fix. I definitally would not recommend doing it.

- - - Updated - - -

Was it Nvidia or AMD that wouldn't release drivers for Linux? I thought it was nvidia. Maybe they changed their mind?


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This was fixed, AMD is supported out of the box. Nvidia started releasing linux drivers now, but not natively supported. I have a nVidia GTX 970 and I had to boot and install off my built-in Intel graphics, install the drivers and then flip one of monitors back to my GTX and now I'm running them all on the nVidia card now.

Driver installation on Linux has gotten better, but still not fantastic if it isn't there already.

- - - Updated - - -

For all the wierd issues and problems with going from windows to linux (ubuntu flavor) I am really digging it. Linux Desktops have really come a long way. I still find myself utilizing terminal a lot, but that is just probably years of being a server admin and me falling back to it.
 
Having only really ever used Windows as my desktop environment and the occasional MacOS on a friend's laptop or school PC or something, what are the advantages of going over to a Linux based OS? And would it be worth looking into for someone who's never really dabbled with it at all?
 
I ran EQ in Wine on Linux for years. I still have it set up (fedora 21 at the moment). If you get an old MQ2 Injector (older version of MacroQuest2.exe), it works fine. The newer version uses some WMI calls that aren't supported in WINE, and crash MacroQuest2.exe. I am in Linux at the moment, so I'll see if it works with the latest patches, etc... I use PlayOnLinux to manage wine prefixes for video games. There are versions of Wine that work better with EQ than others (Check the winehq website to be sure).
 
Having only really ever used Windows as my desktop environment and the occasional MacOS on a friend's laptop or school PC or something, what are the advantages of going over to a Linux based OS? And would it be worth looking into for someone who's never really dabbled with it at all?

No spyware (Microsoft Telemetery, Cortana, etc...), Very light install (only like 5 GB and practically no overhead), the programs that are made to run in linux run extremely well, and very stable.

That is really the pros. For someone that doesn't need to game, just browse internets, and the occational document/video editing it is wonderful. For gamers it has really come a long ways in the past couple years, but it is still way to technical for the common man imo. SteamOS is all linux based, and can stream games from a windows PC which is very nice. Out of the 100 games in my Steam library 25% support linux natively and can be launched without any assistance.

Personally, I'm going to stick it out on Linux no matter the cost. Basically because windows has pissed me off for the last time and will do it out of spite.

P.S. Found an old 480 in my tech closet. Gonna toss that in my pc and try out the PCI GPU passthrough
 
ISBoxer works if you set up everything in Windows and copy it over... I haven't tried GINA. Virtualization will be tough w/o HW passthrough (it works, but it's slow frame rate on a high-end machine). WINE will be much better performance. With my old wineprefix and the latest patched EQ, it's crashing, so I'll have to do some research. Maybe Daybreak upgraded the DirectX library they're using... It was d3dx9_30.dll...

- - - Updated - - -

wine: Call from 0x7b83d8e2 to unimplemented function d3dx10_43.dll.D3DXCpuOptimizations, aborting

- - - Updated - - -

Interesting. DirectX 10.
 
ISBoxer works if you set up everything in Windows and copy it over... I haven't tried GINA. Virtualization will be tough w/o HW passthrough (it works, but it's slow frame rate on a high-end machine). WINE will be much better performance. With my old wineprefix and the latest patched EQ, it's crashing, so I'll have to do some research. Maybe Daybreak upgraded the DirectX library they're using... It was d3dx9_30.dll...

I'd love if I can just use Wine for it all. Sadly my background is heavily in the virtualization arena and linux server OS's without a GUI. So for me the VM approach with PCI passthrough is the most achieveable. Wine I'm a complete and utter noob, so I need to learn it and then tinker with it to get it going.
 
Going to try a newer version of Wine too. Also copied the native d3dx10_42.dll from Windows over to Wine's system32 directory.

- - - Updated - - -

I upgraded to wine 2.4 and was able to log in, but crashed at character select. Could be the same bug that d3dx9_30.dll had to be patched for...eq-wine.png

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Could also be because I got d3dx10_42.dll instead of d3dx10_43.dll :)

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Found another issue. Apparently, it still uses part of DirectX 9...

wine: Call from 0x7b83d9eb to unimplemented function d3dx9_36.dll.D3DXCreateKeyframedAnimationSet, aborting

- - - Updated - - -

After copying the other DirectX files from Windows, I am logging in with a character... :)

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Success!!

View attachment 11646
 
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About to give up on this here is the run down of what is possible on Linux:

Wine = Use old version of Macroquest 2 (requires compiling your own MQ2), Innerspace can work if you tinker with it a bunch and EQ runs OKish.
  • Pros: Native Linux
  • Cons: Performance is meh, takes TONS and TONS of hours tinkering to get this to work. I managed to get some of this going but didn't want to dedicate anymore time to it.
Virtual Machine (VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU, etc...)
  • Pros: Easy setup
  • Cons: Performance is quite awful, VMWare was the best but mouse smoothing was tricky, and overall an unpleasant experience. I did raid with it twice.
PCI Passthrough
  • Pros: Good Performance
  • Cons: Highly technical passing the hardware, Sucks switching a monitor to another input to game (1 monitor was hooked into 2 GFX Cards), and you need 2 GFX Cards (non-identical)
Last Option and imo the only practical one for most folks: Dual Boot

So there you have it I now need to convert my VM back to my physical disk and go back to windows. I really like linux and think i'm going to stay on it for a bit longer, but in the end EQ + Linux = headache. All the options are suprisingly viable, but far from an ideal experience or the cohesive experience you get with Windows.
 
Thank you for trying noob, really appreciate it. I've always been told, "sure it will work!" but nobody followed through with a guide on how to do so. I always figured I was doing something wrong.
 
not much of a guide needed for eq running. get wine and play on linux (if u dont have them) install them. look in the games section, if im not mistaken eq2 runs there, but u have to manually get eq1, download it, hit the exe run the patcher, play eq...... Zorin os has wine and play on linux precomplied. i never got mq2 running on it nor isboxer.
 
not much of a guide needed for eq running. get wine and play on linux (if u dont have them) install them. look in the games section, if im not mistaken eq2 runs there, but u have to manually get eq1, download it, hit the exe run the patcher, play eq...... Zorin os has wine and play on linux precomplied. i never got mq2 running on it nor isboxer.

If you just play one toon, and you don't need MQ2 or ISBoxer, Wine is an acceptable solution. I think it was very misleading of folks to say "Yes! It works in Linux.". For anyone that plays EQ a bunch and uses RedGuides compile (non-technical user), I'll save you all the hastle by saying "It won't work for shit". Linux fanboys are always saying "You can do everything in Linux that you can do in Windows now". I'm going to call bullshit on this. I love Linux, its great for performance and stability, but there are 2 areas where its fails miserably and why it will continue to have a considerably low adoption.
-Microsoft Office (I'm sorry but the email clients in Linux suck, Thunderbird/Evolution, and are horrible in comparison to Outlook). Wine works with Office 2010 and before (2013/2016 are crash city)
-Games (Yep, SteamOS is making this better, Drivers are there now but lack features (Overclocking and utilities), and only about 25% of games are on Linux based on my Steam Library.)

Conclusion
Linux is a fantastic operating system, in both terms of performance and reliability. It has come a long way and is great for a lot of things. Games and Microsoft Office, specifically Outlook, are the two things that just don't work as well or at all. Its a deal breaker for me.

Where to go from here? Probably go back to Windows 10 and strip out Telemetry, Cortana, and mod the OS as best as I can till the next update screws it up. I will support Linux anyway I can during this time and hopefully, we will see it address the above issues in time, so a switch is possible for me. If someone doesn't need Outlook or Mass game support, Linux will be my go to Operating System.
 
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yup. i played 1 toon, it was quite easy for just eq, i didnt try isboxer, i did try mq2 it did not work (for me)... im definately not a linux fanboy and i think its lacking in ease of use and of course gaming. its been this way for years but with play on linux it leaped lightyears ahead. as far as stability on eq i let it run for a month and no crashes other than game side, logged into windows boom crash within a day
 
EQ is incredibly easy to get up and running under wine (just look at the app db and follow the directions there.) All you need to do to get MQ2 working is to run it under the same prefix, sometimes you need to re-inject from the MQ2 task menu, but it 100% works.
 
I dual boot; it's easier. But this thread reminds me of an article I read a long time ago that I can't find now. Wasn't there a distro of linux that was being developed with an embedded ability to run windows programs? (no, not wine, it was something else). I recall one of their biggest features was that they were getting different games to work as well. Sadly, that's the last of that I ever saw and a google search just now leads me no where but maybe some one remembers. There is ReactOS but i'm not sure if that fits your bill or that it runs EQ (could vm, try it) and it's not really linux either. Just like FreeDos isn't dos or linux.
 
Question - Everquest / MQ on Linux

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