Alternative Installations

Prerequisites

New to Linux?

See our Recommended Distributions for a list of the distros most compatible with Star Citizen.

Our LUG Helper tool can perform these steps for you automatically! See our Quick Start Guide for instructions.

  1. Install Wine v9.4 or newer following the instructions for your distro. See the WineHQ Main Page for current versions. If your distro provides an up to date version of wine (ie. Arch), you may install from its repos instead.
  2. Install winetricks 20250102 or newer. Instructions are on the Winetricks Github
  3. Set vm.max_map_count on your system to at least 16777216
  4. Set the Hard open file descriptors limit on your system to at least 524288

To check and set vm.max_map_count temporarily

sysctl vm.max_map_count => To check the value
sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=16777216 => To set it temporarily

To set vm.max_map_count permanently

Distributions using sysctl.d: Manjaro / Antergos / Arch / Arch-based (probably) / Ubuntu (and probably derivatives) / Fedora

  • Create a new drop-in config file: /etc/sysctl.d/99-starcitizen-max_map_count.conf
  • Add the following line to the file: vm.max_map_count = 16777216
  • To reload it, run sudo sysctl --system

Distributions that use sysctl.conf

  • Append the same line to /etc/sysctl.conf
  • To reload it, run sudo sysctl --system

To set your system’s hard open file descriptors limit

Distributions using systemd: Manjaro / Antergos / Arch / Arch-based (probably) / Ubuntu (and probably derivatives) / Fedora

  • Create a new drop-in config file: /etc/systemd/system.conf.d/99-starcitizen-filelimit.conf
  • Add the following line to the file: DefaultLimitNOFILE=524288
  • To reload it, run sudo systemctl daemon-reexec

Distributions that use /etc/security/limits.conf

  • Add the following line to /etc/security/limits.conf: * hard nofile 524288

Wine Installation

Our LUG Helper tool can perform these steps for you automatically! See our Quick Start Guide for instructions.

  1. Install and configure the necessary prerequisites
  2. Create and configure your wine prefix: 
    WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Games/star-citizen" winetricks -q arial tahoma dxvk powershell win11
  3. Download a recommended wine runner into $HOME/Games/star-citizen/runners
  4. Download and run the RSI installer (be sure to update the path to your downloaded runner): 
    WINEPREFIX="$HOME/Games/star-citizen" WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dxwebsetup.exe,dotNetFx45_Full_setup.exe=d" "$HOME"/Games/star-citizen/runners/{downloaded lug-wine runner}/bin/wine "~/Downloads/RSI Launcher-Setup-2.11.0.exe" /S
  5. Create a launch script to run the game with a recommended wine runner. An example is provided on our LUG Helper’s Repo

Proton Installation

  1. Install Open Wine Components umu-launcher
  2. Download and run the RSI Launcher installer: 
    GAMEID="umu-starcitizen" WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dxwebsetup.exe,dotNetFx45_Full_setup.exe=d" umu-run "~/Downloads/RSI Launcher-Setup-2.11.0.exe" /S
  3. Run the RSI Launcher: 
    GAMEID="umu-starcitizen" PROTONPATH="GE-Proton" umu-run "~/Games/umu/umu-starcitizen/drive_c/Program Files/Roberts Space Industries/RSI Launcher/RSI Launcher.exe"

Flatpak Installation

Flatpak repository or latest release
For documentation and issues refer to https://github.com/mactan-sc/rsilauncher

  1. Add the repo 
    flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists RSILauncher https://mactan-sc.github.io/rsilauncher/RSILauncher.flatpakrepo
  2. install the rsi launcher flatpak 
    flatpak install -y --user --noninteractive RSILauncher io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher
  3. run the rsi launcher flatpak 
    flatpak run io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher
  4. Refer to documentation for configuration tips including setting the game location

NixOS Installation

The nix-citizen flake is the recommended install method. Please see the repository for instructions. This flake provides a module to configure your NixOS config for running Star Citizen. Packages for both standard wine and proton methods are available. To try without adding anything to your configuration, you can use the following command:

nix run github:LovingMelody/nix-citizen#star-citizen

If you prefer not to use nix-citizen, the Flatpak method is recommended.

If not using the module included in nix-citizen, set vm.max_map_count and fs.file-max by adding the following to your NixOS config:

# ... your NixOS Config ...
boot.kernel.sysctl = {
  "vm.max_map_count" = 16777216;
  "fs.file-max" = 524288;
};

Steam Deck Installation

The Steam Deck is resource limited and Star Citizen performance will be poor. Some Penguins have been able to run the game with the following configuration:

  • We recommend a 32gb+ swap file for the Steam Deck. Create it under /home instead of / to protect it from being wiped out by SteamOS updates.
  • Configure the max allocation of ram to vram
  • Install Star Citizen using the flatpak method or a flatpak third party launcher

Third Party Launchers

We cannot guarantee that these third party launchers will work with Star Citizen or perform well. Our community may not be able to provide support for these installations if something isn’t working right.

The recommended installation method is to follow our Quick Start Guide.

If using flatpak apps, ensure the install location is whitelisted using Flatseal or similar methods.

The Star Citizen launcher does not support temp paths via xdg-portals.

Lutris

The most recent Lutris release, 0.5.18/0.5.19, no longer works with Star Citizen out of the box and there is no sign of a new release on the horizon. You may try the steps below but, if you have any issues, we strongly recommend following our Quick Start Guide instead.

  1. Set the default wine runner to GE-Proton in global preferences
  2. Install Star Citizen from Lutris
  3. Run the RSI Launcher, log in, and click install to finish installing the game

Heroic Games Launcher

  1. Download latest Star Citizen installer.
  2. Install Heroic Games Launcher.
  3. Launch Heroic, browse to Wine Manager>Proton-GE and install Proton-GE-Latest.
  4. Return to the Library page, and click Add Game.
  5. Set Title to Star Citizen.
  6. Click Show Wine Settings and ensure Wine Version is set to Proton-GE-Latest.
  7. Click Run Installer First and select the Star Citizen install file.
  8. Once install is complete, set Select Executable to the RSI Launcher.exe and click Finish.
  9. Open the game settings in Heroic, change to Advanced tab and under Environment Variables add GAMEID=umu-starcitizen.
  10. Run the RSI Launcher, log in, and click install to finish installing the game

Bottles

  1. Create a new gaming bottle
  2. Change the wine runner to GE-Proton or “system wine” 10.0
  3. Use the “Install Programs…” Star Citizen option
  4. Run Star citizen, log in, and click install to finish installing the game

Faugus Launcher

  1. Download latest Star Citizen installer
  2. Press the “New” button
  3. Set title to “Star Citizen”
  4. Set the Path value to the RSI Installer file you downloaded
  5. Set the prefix to your preferred location e.g. ~/Games/star-citizen
  6. Set the Protonfix value to umu-starcitizen on the Tools tab
  7. Press the “Play” button to run the installer, then exit
  8. Right click the game and set the “path” value to the RSI Launcher executable in the wine prefix
  9. Press the “Play” button to run the RSI Launcher, log in, and click install tto finish installing the game

Steam

We do not recommend installing Star Citizen within Steam. While it can be done, it creates several issues that we feel are not worth the effort to try to work around. For example, it limits configurability options and does not invoke needed protonfixes by default.

We believe you will have a much better experience following our Quick Start Guide. If you want to use Steam’s proton, you may use umu-launcher by following the Proton Installation instructions above.