How to play league of legends on Linux

[wasab]

 

This guide is on how to play LoL on Linux. it is meant for the inexperienced Linux users but it is also relevant to LoL players who would like to switch to Linux but wonder if their favorite game will run. 

Without further ado, let's begin. 

 

Prerequisite 

1) You need a decently modern machine. I know many people run Linux on aged hardware. Well, I am not confident if this will work on such machines due to driver support and such. However, I am quite confident any decently powerful hardware from the 2012 and onwards should handle it perfectly fine. 

 

2) A current version of Ubuntu Linux which is 18.04 LTS installed on your machine. Any popular mainstream derivatives of it like Linux Mint and kubuntu should work too. You can do it on other distros but you will need to google yourself to figure out how to get proper graphics drivers installed.

 

3) Patience, like a lot of patience. Depending on your internet connection, the LoL client can take a bloody long time to download and Installed its game files. 

 

Step One: Install graphics driver

If you are on AMD or have only Intel HD, just run this command in your terminal to get everything updated and you are already done. 

Spoiler

sudo  apt dist-upgrade

If you are on Nvidia, you can use the graphics driver from the ubuntu repo but it is not the most up to date version. I suggest you use the most up to date version from a third-party PPA. 

Run the command below

Spoiler

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa && sudo apt update

Then run the one below and let it finish. It will ask you to disable secure boot if you are using EFI with secure boot on. Do that if that is the case.

Spoiler

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Afterward, reboot your computer and check the ubuntu software sources and the X server display setting to see if everything is installed properly. It should look like the image shown below. (Only relevent to users with Nvidia cards)

 

Step Two: Install WINE

We are just going to get the WINE from the Ubuntu repo. Wine development has been very rapid this past year mostly because of the huge influx of contributed code from Valve's Software engineers who worked on Proton. Wine versions have shot up from 2.xx to  3.xx and now a 4.xx compare to just a year ago. As usual, WINE on Ubuntu repo is outdated but that is OK. We are NOT going to install the latest wine. In fact, the wine we will be using may even be a different version because we will be using lutris. We still need it however because some lutris script uses the default system WINE so just go ahead and get it from the repo with this command

Spoiler

sudo apt install wine-development

 

Step Three: Install Lutris

We are not going to use and configure WINE directly. It is too much a pain. Instead, we let lutris do it for us. Go on this website and register for a lutris account. It's free to register.

Next, run these four lines of commands successively, one at a time, after the another. 

Spoiler

ver=$(lsb_release -sr); if [ $ver != "18.10" -a $ver != "18.04" -a $ver != "16.04" ]; then ver=18.04; fi

Spoiler

echo "deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/strycore/xUbuntu_$ver/ ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lutris.list

Spoiler

wget -q https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/strycore/xUbuntu_$ver/Release.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Spoiler

sudo apt update && sudo apt install lutris

Now you should have lutris installed and you can launch it using the launcher in the gnome application menu and then login with your lutris account. If lutris becomes none responsive, close it and then re-launch. You will be login when you do.

 

Step four: Install League of Legends

Now let's go to lutris LoL script page and run the LoL install script. Go to this website and then click on install. A browser pop up should appear asking you whether to run. I am using chromium web browser so I would hit run Open xdg-open in the pop up. Now the game should be added to your lutris client and work you through the install. It may ask you for installation folder, languages, region, install fonts and such. Hit yes to all. Regions and language depend on you. Sometimes the script may fail to grab the LoL installation .exe from the LoL website, if this happens, exit out of the installation and run the script again from the lutris website. 

 

Finish!!!

Now just wait for the LoL client to finish updating itself and download its game files. This took hours for me so I suggest doing this at night during sleep and it should be all set and ready to go in the morning. Enjoy!

 

24 fps beacuse i had zoom out to to take a snapshot otherwise running at 60 fps, 1080p at max. Quite smooth 

Edited February 15, 2019 by wasab
Typos and grammar errors.

[TVwazhere]

How to: LoLoL

[wasab]

8 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

How to: LoLoL

Lol

[GloriousPain]

Oof I finally got around an Ubuntu install configured the way I'd like; refer back to this guide to get league going and BOOM; "Currently broken on ubuntu and other debian based distros" FEELSBADMAN

[wasab]

4 hours ago, GloriousPain said:

Oof I finally got around an Ubuntu install configured the way I'd like; refer back to this guide to get league going and BOOM; "Currently broken on ubuntu and other debian based distros" FEELSBADMAN

idk, works fine on my machine. I havent play LoL since the day I first installed it.(actually I only installed it to proves it works, never had the intention of playing)

I relaunch the client today and it told me there was a patch.

I let it download the updates, patch, and then relaunch.

Everything still works great afterward.

 

I am still using Ubuntu btw. Maybe it's the install script with the issue, or the installer. Already existing client doesn't seem to be an issue. 

 

[GloriousPain]

9 hours ago, wasab said:

idk, works fine on my machine. I havent play LoL since the day I first installed it.(actually I only installed it to proves it works, never had the intention of playing)

I relaunch the client today and it told me there was a patch.

I let it download the updates, patch, and then relaunch.

Everything still works great afterward.

 

I am still using Ubuntu btw. Maybe it's the install script with the issue, or the installer. Already existing client doesn't seem to be an issue. 

 

well damn 

[wasab]

On 3/8/2019 at 1:41 PM, GloriousPain said:

well damn 

Someone uploaded a new install script on lutris like 10 hours ago. Try it out maybe?

[GloriousPain]

On 3/13/2019 at 10:52 AM, wasab said:

Someone uploaded a new install script on lutris like 10 hours ago. Try it out maybe?

I actually with some troubleshooting was able to get it to work except with performance issues; averaging like 60fps now (but considering I have a 144hz monitor and am used to averaging 260fps on windows that's kinda bad.)

[wasab]

35 minutes ago, GloriousPain said:

I actually with some troubleshooting was able to get it to work except with performance issues; averaging like 60fps now (but considering I have a 144hz monitor and am used to averaging 260fps on windows that's kinda bad.)

well, not much can be done about that. WIne has always been subpar in this regard. For me if it is playable, it is good enough for me. Im not type of the person who chases after framerates. Try dota2 perhaps. similar game but runs better in linux opengl than windows directx. 

[GloriousPain]

1 minute ago, wasab said:

well, not much can be done about that. WIne has always been subpar in this regard. For me if it is playable, it is good enough for me. Im not type of the person who chases after framerates. Try dota2 perhaps. similar game but runs better in linux opengl than windows directx. 

You know normally I'm not either; except in League I kinda have to be... I'm actually fairly high ranked (somewhere in diamond, depends bouncing between like top 1.5% and top 0.25%) ...  and I sometimes do tournaments and/or coachings for money, and so if I'm averaging 60fps (which goes as low as 20 or 30 in big fights) with nothing else running I don't think I can safely record gameplays and such for my coaching sessions or use VOIP functionality without really compromising my play-ability which really sucks. 

[wasab]

11 minutes ago, GloriousPain said:

You know normally I'm not either; except in League I kinda have to be... I'm actually fairly high ranked (somewhere in diamond, depends bouncing between like top 1.5% and top 0.25%) ...  and I sometimes do tournaments and/or coachings for money, and so if I'm averaging 60fps (which goes as low as 20 or 30 in big fights) with nothing else running I don't think I can safely record gameplays and such for my coaching sessions or use VOIP functionality without really compromising my play-ability which really sucks. 

I wouldn't rely on wine if I do this for a living....

[GloriousPain]

On 3/15/2019 at 11:24 PM, wasab said:

I wouldn't rely on wine if I do this for a living....

I mean that's not what I do for a living just making some side-money off of a hobby. But yeah.