Linux Support

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Revision as of 00:22, 19 August 2022 by Ardil (talk | contribs) (Supported platforms cleanup, remove changelog.)
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Linux support in Flashpoint is currently experimental due to a lack of maintainers. This page describes the current state of our Linux support. If you need assistance with installing or playing, visit us at #flashpoint-mac-linux-help.

As it stands, the Docker version of Flashpoint for Linux supports Flash, HTML5, Shockwave, Unity and Java. The exceptions are content that uses the Chromium browser, and Shockwave content that plays in-browser. If you want support for the other platforms that are Windows-exclusive, there are a few options to get the Windows version of Flashpoint running on Linux:

  • Download the Windows version of Flashpoint and run it in a Windows virtual machine. This is the recommended non-native option.
  • Run the Windows version of Flashpoint with Wine. This works well on some computers, but does not work consistently.

Otherwise, download the latest Docker Flashpoint package and install it.

Manual Installation

Dependencies

First, install Flashpoint's dependencies.

Dependency package names on various distros
Library/command name Docker PulseAudio* X11** PHP bash
Debian (see this page) pulseaudio xorg php bash
Ubuntu, Linux Mint (see this page) pulseaudio xorg php bash
Fedora-like (see this page) pulseaudio xorg-x11-server-Xorg php bash
Arch-like docker pulseaudio xorg-server php bash

Note: Chances are that Docker and PHP will be the only packages that you'll need to install, as most distributions come with the rest of the packages already pre-installed.

* : PipeWire can also be used in place of PulseAudio by installing the pipewire-pulse package on Ubuntu-like and Arch-like distros. For Debian, see this link.

** : X11 can also be used within Wayland by installing the xwayland package on Debian-like and Ubuntu-like distros, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland on Fedora-like distros, and xorg-xwayland on Arch-like distros.


To install them, use your distro's package manager:

Distro Package manager install command
Debian sudo apt-get install {PACKAGE}
Ubuntu, Linux Mint sudo apt-get install {PACKAGE}
Fedora-like sudo dnf install {PACKAGE}
Fedora-like (old) sudo yum install {PACKAGE}
Arch-like sudo pacman -S {PACKAGE}

Installation

Before you start, you need to configure Docker to run as a non-root user, then reboot your computer.

If you have an Nvidia GPU, you will need to add Nvidia's repository and install the nvidia-docker2 package. Follow the "Setting up NVIDIA Container Toolkit" instructions under the heading corresponding to your distro here.

Then, download the latest Docker Flashpoint package if you haven't already and extract it somewhere.

Go to the place where you extracted it, and pull the docker images by running ./pull.sh. They'll take ~3.5 GB.

Finally, run the ./flashpoint executable script to start the launcher.


Config files can be found in ./LinuxConf/ and ./FPSoftware/FSPConfigs/.

Save data is stored in ./SaveData. Java save data isn't persistent, because there's no standardized location for it.

Troubleshooting

proxy.sh: "Permission denied" error

Depending on your system's permissions, the proxy.sh script may throw a "permission denied" error in the launcher logs when launching a game, causing it to fail to start. To fix this, follow these steps:

  1. Close the Flashpoint launcher.
  2. Open ./LinuxConf/proxy.sh in a text editor.
  3. Change /var/lock/flashpoint-networking.lock to /tmp/flashpoint-networking.lock and save the file.
  4. Relaunch Flashpoint.

Technologies

Flashpoint Infinity, like its Windows counterpart, it uses router.php as a proxy server. But unlike Windows, Linux provides native ways to set per-application proxy settings, so no equivalent to the Flashpoint Proxy library is used. On Linux, each application is simply told via environment variables to use localhost:22500 as a proxy server. For example, before Flashpoint Launcher opens the Flash projector, it sets the http_proxy environment variable to http://localhost:22500/ in the docker container.

The Flashpoint FAQ contains a list of all web game technologies ("Platforms") supported in the Windows version of Flashpoint. The Linux version currently supports a subset of these platforms. This is explained in detail below.

Supported Platforms

  • Flash: Supported through Wine by default. Although a Linux Flash Projector exists, it suffers from graphical glitches on many systems. If you'd like to try your luck with the native projector, then tick it as a 'Native Platform' on the Config page.
  • Shockwave: Supported through Wine.
  • HTML5: Supported natively through the Basilisk browser.
  • Java Applets: Supported natively using the OpenJDK.
  • Unity Web Player: Supported through Pipelight.