DotA 2

What works

Everything, installed both test version and standard version via steam.

What does not

Alt+Tab caused the client to ignore keyboard input, hitting Alt again fixed it.
Some fonts are a bit hard to read, but it's not a big problem.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Matchmaking

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Running wine 1.5.21 virtual desktop with vsync on, nvidia 310.19 on GT440 Performance is above average if setting startup option "-gl" via steam menu.

Dota 2 is now available natively under linux. Follow http://www.dota2.com/ for further info.

Wine Prefix

Wine prefix and initial setup If possible, install each application (including Dota 2) to its own prefix, which ensures clean and isolated environment. Default Wine prefix is ~/.wine/, it can be controlled using WINEPREFIX environment variable (both wine and winetricks follow it). This article shows how to install dota into ~/.wine_dota2/. We should initialize it first:

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_dota2/ winecfg

Setup may prompt you to install Mono and Gecko modules during initialization, allow both; sometimes servers hosting them may be slow, be patient. In a while, you should see "Wine configuration" window – just close it, we do not need to adjust anything yet.

Steam setup

Steam has its own AppDB section, you can use it to get full Steam installation instructions or if you have any Steam-related problems. In this article, we'll use nice helper script:

wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_dota2/ sh winetricks --no-isolate steam

Winetricks prepares environment for Steam, downloads its setup file and launches it. Steam setup itself should be no different from one on Windows: it's interactive Steam Setup wizard, after which Steam performs self-update and shows greeting screen. Log into your Steam account, agreeing with all the conditions and confirming new installation via email code.

Dota 2 setup

You should have Dota 2 in your Steam Library to be able to play. Just install it via Steam, like Windows users do (e.g. RMB > Install Game). Process is simple and straightforward – follow initial wizard and wait for some time while Steam downloads and deploys game files within your Wine prefix. Now, you're ready to play, but there're few additional steps which may improve your game experience.

Tuning Wine

Following advices are based exclusively on my experience of running game under stock Gnome 3, and may be not applicable to other window managers or desktop environments.

1. While game runs fine, switching focus from it is horribly broken (bug 31502). There're two ways to work around it:
   • In game options, under Video tab, switch display mode to Borderless Window. However, such approach is not perfect on my system – when focus is brought back to the game, in 90% of cases Gnome's top panel becomes inactive, but does not disappear visually.
   • Alternatively, you can leave display mode as Fullscreen, but confine both Steam and Dota 2 to virtual desktop. This will decrease level of integration between Wine and your desktop environment (for example, virtual desktop window has its own tray, game won't notice if you switch focus away from virtual desktop, and so on), which sometimes may be desirable. You can enable it either in winecfg (Graphics > Emulate a virtual desktop) or by launching game using following command:

     WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_dota2/ wine explorer /desktop=dota2,1920x1080 "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe"

     Where "dota2" is name of virtual desktop (which will appear as window name in your desktop environment) and 1920x1080 is its resolution. In this mode desktop environment can capture various events and react accordingly, which may be extremely annoying (for example, Gnome 3.4 shows notification panel when you move cursor to the bottom-right corner, trying to edge-scroll in that direction). You can prevent it by running winecfg and enabling "Graphics > Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows" option.
2. To avoid launching game manually each time, append "-applaunch 570" to launch command:

   WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_dota2/ wine "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 570

3. If you plan to use in-game console, install Lucida font:

   WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_dota2/ sh winetricks lucida

   Otherwise console font will be hardly readable.

Current status and problems

Currently Dota 2 runs almost perfectly under Wine.

• Characters from tooltips and player names above heroes are randomly missing (bugs 31493 and 31494). No known workaround.
• Post-game screen is extremely sluggish (bug 31495). Doesn't have significant impact on general game experience.

Recent problems

• Black screen on launch. I'm not sure what causes it, but after following steps in this how-to it doesn't occur for me anymore. Most likely clean prefix solved it (previously I installed vcrun2010 as recommended by old how-to). If you're still getting it – append "-novid" option to game (RMB Dota 2 > Properties > Set launch options). You may want to add it even if you're not getting this bug, to avoid skipping these intro videos manually over and over again.