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Howto: Deus Ex: Human Revolution in Ubuntu/Linux

I just bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and if you did too, or are contemplating it, don't let the bad rating on WineHQ scare you off - it runs near perfectly. Now, the in-game tutorials are a bit wonky, but if you can live without those (I know I didn't have much of a problem without them), here's how you can install and run DE:HR in Ubuntu/Linux.

You are going to need Vineyard, so install that first if you haven't already, also we are going to use the terminal a bit, but don't worry, it's not scary, just quicker.

First off, let's install the game.

Do whatever you would normally do; run the installer from the DVD or download it from Steam - just make sure you do it in a new prefix in Vineyard.

Secondly, install a custom version of Wine (with rawinput2 patch).

We're going to use one provided by PlayOnLinux, so if you have PlayOnLinux installed, just install Wine 1.3.34 rawinput2 from there, otherwise, either go to http://www.playonlinux.com/wine/binaries/linux-x86/, download the one called PlayOnLinux-wine-1.3.34-rawinput2-linux-x86.pol, rename it to have a .tar.bz2 ending and then extract from it the folder called "wineversion/1.3.34-rawinput2" to $HOME/.local/share/wineversions/1.3.34-rawinput2 - or run the following command:

1mkdir $HOME/.local/share/wineversions && \
2  wget -q -O - 'http://www.playonlinux.com/wine/binaries/linux-x86/PlayOnLinux-wine-1.3.34-rawinput2-linux-x86.pol' | \
3  tar --wildcards --transform 's/wineversion///' --bzip2 -xvf - -C $HOME/.local/share/wineversions/ 'wineversion/*'

Setup Vineyard to use it

Now we need to edit the prefix configuration so Vineyard knows to run this version of Wine, so if you know where that directory is, just go and open the file wrapper.cfg, otherwise open Vineyard Preferences, select the prefix and under "Tools", click "Open Main Drive" and then navigate one directory up, there's your wrapper.cfg.

Add the following lines to this file:

1ww_wine="$HOME/.local/share/wineversions/1.3.34-rawinput2/bin/wine"
2ww_wineloader="$HOME/.local/share/wineversions/1.3.34-rawinput2/bin/wine"
3ww_wineserver="$HOME/.local/share/wineversions/1.3.34-rawinput2/bin/wineserver"
4ww_winedllpath="$HOME/.local/share/wineversions/1.3.34-rawinput2/lib/wine"`

Or, if you installed the Wine version through PlayOnLinux:

1ww_wine="$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-x86/1.3.34-rawinput2/bin/wine"
2ww_wineloader="$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-x86/1.3.34-rawinput2/bin/wine"
3ww_wineserver="$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-x86/1.3.34-rawinput2/bin/wineserver"
4ww_winedllpath="$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-x86/1.3.34-rawinput2/lib/wine"

Done! (or do you have sound?)

Now you actually might be able to run Deus Ex: Human Revolution just fine! For me though, I needed to go to Vineyard Preferences again and make sure the Deus Ex: Human Revolution launcher had "Disable PulseAudio whilst running" checked on, and then it was smooth sailing.

Hope this little guide was helpful, comments are very welcome.