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Ask HN: Diablo 4 on Ubuntu?

1 points by herodoturtle ↗ HN
Has anyone here got it to reliably work? Please let me know how?

So many different guides / tutorials online, but sadly every one I try comes up short in some way.

I really don’t want to have to dual boot Windows.

Kinda hoping there’s an HNer that figured out.

Thanks.

9 comments

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general_reveal
Not sure. See if you shift the itch to another game, WoW I know works on Linux always. Diablo 4 in particular won’t even run on a Mac I believe, so they don’t care too much about making that multi platform.

Albion Online is another one with great great portability, literally on everything.

zufallsheld
Can't give you any specific help since you didn't specify your problems. However it worked for me in the steamdeck with Proton out of the box.
herodoturtle
Fair point.

I'm on vanilla Ubuntu 22.04 but have also tried vanilla 24.04, with an Nvidia card.

That said, I thought steamdeck was just the handheld device - not sure if this would help with my Ubuntu situation - but I don't know enough about steamdeck so perhaps I am misinterpreting your comment.

Thanks either way.

d3Xt3r
Ubuntu isn't suitable for gaming... or anything at all. It's only really good for corporations because their offer paid support if you get Pro.

Instead, I'd recommend switching to something more optimised for gaming, like Bazzite or Nobara. Both work fine with nVidia cards.

But I also recommend trying a different Proton, like Proton Experimental or Proton-GE, as they often get compatibility updates before mainstream Proton.

embeng4096
tl;dr: go to protondb.com, search for Diablo 4, and then filter the list of results by "Distro" for Ubuntu (and Mint), and try the options that people say worked for them

ProtonDB is a site that aggregates reports from users of Proton, the compatibility layer to let Windows games run on Linux. For lots of games, users will submit reports of their system info (distro, CPU, GPU, driver version, Proton version) and any configuration they needed to do to get that game working on their setup. The usual solutions are switching the Proton version you use, commands you add to the custom commands in the configuration for that particular game in the Steam menu or updating the GPU driver version.

I just looked at Diablo 4, and specifically filtered for Ubuntu users; I see 22 reports, with the most recent ones being people saying it worked for them on Ubuntu.

Although the distro shouldn't matter too much, Linux is Linux - yes, some might come with optimizations or niceties (CachyOS, Nobara, and Bazzite come to mind) but it shouldn't be a requirement to switch distros wholesale.

CachyOS and EndeavourOS (which I do 99% of my gaming on, except for games that require Windows-compatible anticheat, mostly just triple-A first-person shooter multiplayer games like Battlefield) are based on Arch Linux; Bazzite and Nobara are based on Fedora; heck, I even see reports on ProtonDB that people have been playing Diablo 4 on Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu), with the most recent reports being within the week. The Steam Deck runs SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux.

type4
I installed Battle.net launcher in Steam, the .exe file. From there I installed Diablo. Works fine. I had some performance issues and had to add some command line args. Codex/claude code helped me with all of that, it ended up running very smooth (I've since deleted it).

But Steam -> custom app -> battle.net exe -> run it in 'compatibility/proton mode' and you should be good.