HOWTO: Play FL on Linux in under an hour

masternerdguy

I’ve finally completed my quest of getting Freelancer working on Linux.
Although it wasn’t totally pure. Wine doesn’t solve the problem so I
had to turn to a more extreme solution. Everything works!

In fact you can do this on more than just linux……

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Howto
0 - Set up VirtualBox with an installation of windows xp
1 - Configure the VM to Have 128mb of VRAM and up to 4096mb of RAM
2 - Launch the VM WinXP in safe mode and install the guest additions

Remembering to install Direct3D support when asked
3 - Reboot into normal mode
4 - Install Freelancer as normal
5 - Go online and get a no-cd crack for Freelancer

6a- Set up the environment (For normal resolutions)

Disable Mouse Integration
Disable auto-size guest display
Fullscreen the VM
Set the screen resolution to your liking
Launch Freelancer

6b- Set up the environment (For Widescreen/Custom)

Disable Mouse Integration
Pre configure FL for your resolution
Failure to do so caused wonky things to happen
Fullscreen the VM
Launch Freelancer

7 - Play Freelancer!

Having Issues? Here’s what I’ve seen:
a. “My FL won’t install, it can’t copy files” - Bad install
of XP on the VM seems to have been the problem.
b. “Laggy” - VMs add some lag, but on cutting edge PCs we have
today it isn’t bad. You can get 256mb of VRAM vs the 128mb
discussed earlier by manually editing the VM config file.
c. “No Video in Fullscreen” - The intro cutscenes won’t play
properly. You’ll hear them though. Use ESC to skip them.
d. “My mouse is jumpy and out of control!” - You forgot to
disable mouse integration. Do so under Machine.
FAQ:

a. Can I haz multiplayer? - Yes.
b. Can I host multiplayer? - Theoretically yes.
c. Can’t you do this on wine? -
Yes, but its so hard to get FL working on wine, and even then
you won’t have multiplayer support. FL and wine do not play
well together.
d. Do I really need a no-cd crack? -
Yes. Otherwise VirtualBox will be properly detected as a debugger
and FL won’t launch.
Footnote on AMD Hardware Acceleration:
Some people with AMD cpus can actually get a massive performance booth
by using hardware level VM support. However, not all AMD cpus support
this and the VM will not start if it does not.

If your VM will not start, go to settings, system, acceleration, and
disable the acceleration. I get great performance even with it disabled.

Alex.

FL in a virtual machine? I’ve been doing that for a while. Except under VMWare. I’ll probably change to VirtualBox soon though, because I don’t like the way VMWare reserves all the RAM that I allow to be used by my VM.

StarTrader

Well… OK, good work for doing this, as others have already done (me too).

But this is not a Linux solution at all, you are still running it under XP.

Vesko

I’ve run it under VMWare before, this is nothing new.

Oh and BTW, it works in Wine as it can be installed using PlayOnLinux, which is a Wine frontend. It’s not fully functional as it only allows basic SP, but it works.