Origin

What works

Installing

Updating

Login

Downloading games

Playing

What does not

Origin in game never worked, it causes a game to crash

Workarounds

During the installation you may face an application crash which you will not understand where it comes from even looking at the terminal output for errors. Perhaps in your case Origin is locking out its own folder for writing access as it did for me. To know that, navigate to the following folder at your preferred file browser:
~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files

If it has a locked icon in the "Origin" folder, or at folder properties there is no mention to write access, at the linux terminal do the following:
cd ~ && cd ".wine/drive_c/Program Files"

The && allows for the execution of multiple commands, it is the same as AND.

Run the following command which will keep changing the folder permissions to 755 while being run:
bash -c 'while [ 0 ]; do chmod 755 Origin; done'
"-c" stands for command

"while[0]" will execute the command until at the terminal window you press Ctrl+C to end it

"do chmod 755 Origin" will change the Origin folder permission to read and write to you (7) and read to groups (5) and others (5).

"done" tells where the code to be executed in loop ends.

Run Origin and you will notice it will not crash during installation at least. After the install is complete end the command above at its terminal window with the said hotkey combination.

Origin will also crash if you have not installed Microsoft corefonts or at least will display ugly fonts. To install that you, need to first install winetricks using your distro commands. In the case of Freebsd it is:

sudo pkg install winetricks

Then at the terminal do:

winetricks corefonts

After the process finish you should have a functional Origin installation.

If your origin still is crashing during install, remove your .wine folder or equivalent and do:
winecfg

There set the environment to Windows XP, then use as installer the old windows XP origin from the link below while keeping in mind all the possible issues above:
https://www.dm.origin.com/down...

This version will have limitations regarding shopping, chat and others.

Disable origin in game at Origin settings, otherwise the game will crash at startup.

What was not tested

Anything besides installing, doing the login, installing a game, disabling origin in game and playing.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: AMD
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

Some applications may work better with a 32-bit wineprefix (this is obviously not true for 64-bit games). You may also have to install some native DLLs to get a game working (commonly this is done with winetricks) - some of them may only work in 32-bit mode (these are issues in Wine, winetricks can't do anything about them).

To install Origin in a separate 32-bit wineprefix issue the following commands:

export WINEARCH=win32
export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine.Origin-32-bit
wine OriginSetup.exe

From now on, simply use the Desktop launcher to start Origin. If you want to start Origin from a terminal, you have to export the WINEPREFIX (repeat above command) first whenever you open a new terminal.

It's recommended to use the Origin Desktop launcher.

If you want to start it from a terminal you should first change into Origin's installation directory.

Example for default installations:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Origin
wine Origin.exe

Example for 32-bit installations (see above):

export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine.Origin-32-bit"
cd $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program\ Files/Origin
wine Origin.exe

To avoid this simply disable Origin in Game. Start Origin and click in the menu
Origin
-> Application Settings
-> Origin in Game
-> Untick "Enable Origin in Game"

Symptoms:

• Origin sporadically crashes with "C:\Program Files\Origin\Origin.exe: double free or corruption (!prev)" or "*** glibc detected *** Origin.exe: double free or corruption (!prev): 0x7cf3b940***".
• Origin doesn't show up although the Origin.exe process uses the CPU completly.

This issue is tracked in bug #35041.

Workaround:

Use taskset to force the app on one CPU core only. Execute in a terminal:

taskset -c 0 wine Origin.exe

Be warned that this may decrease the overall performance of games launched from Origin.

This issue is tracked in bug #33159.

There's a patch for wine in this bugreport which workarounds this problem. Please note that it is very "hacky" and not a clean solution (while it solves problems for Origin it may cause other apps fail), so this patch can't be added to official wine. To use it you need to download the wine sources, apply the patch and compile your own Wine.

Symptom: Both OriginSetup.exe and OriginThinSetup.exe fail to install/update successfully since Origin version 9.5.11.2855. You get a message "Error installing Origin: Something went wrong during the installation. Please reinstall Origin" and afterwards "UPDATE ERROR: Your update could not be completed. Please download and install the latest version of Origin from https://download.dm.origin.com/origin/live/OriginSetup.exe".

Fixed in Wine 1.7.55 (2015-11-13, bug #38417).

Workarounds:

• Reinstalling with the full installer obviously doesn't work.
• Download the full Update zip-file from http://download.dm.origin.com/origin/beta/OriginUpdate_9_10_1_1501.zip
  If the link is outdated you have to adjust the version number to the current one, which is printed in the first window that pops up when you start the current OriginThinSetup.exe. Please leave a comment if you find an updated link.
  Then unzip it in the directory of your Origin installation (e.g. ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Origin).
  Thanks Jürgen Doser for the report and tip, and thanks to the following people to keep this info updated: Michael Alexander, Allen, mactrix.

Symptoms:

• At the end of a game installation it may stall at 99% (or even earlier) or on "Installing...".
• After quitting a game you aren't able to restart it again ("Play" is greyed out).
• If you quit Origin after playing you get a warning "Close Origin: It's recommended that you quit [NAME OF GAME] before exiting Origin. Do you want to exit anyway?"
• "Last Played" and "Time Played" are not updated.

Workaround for earlier wine versions:

• In this bugreport you'll find a working patch for wine.
• If you don't want to build your own wine from source, you can use the "kill EAProxyInstaller.exe" workaround:
  Wait for some time for your HDD to stop working (indicating the installation is done) and kill EAProxyInstaller. To do this type the following in a terminal:

      killall EAProxyInstaller.exe

  The game should immediately become ready to play. If you kill EAProxyInstaller.exe too soon, Origin will keep offering to install the game. Killing the process too soon is not harmful and the game can always be installed again.