Warframe

What works

My main reference was the Lutris website for Warframe. I think it is, right now, the easiest way to get to install the game and use all workarounds to make it run. (Lutris is a game manager, comparable to Steam. Official website link).

It's possible to download all the game's content in a terminal opened by the installation script.

What does not

The game does not run, because it gets stuck in the Cache Optimizing step, giving these two specific lines of error

0.147 Sys [Info]: Downloading cache manifest index...
0.147 Sys [Error]: Could not get cache manifest index.

Some workarounds were tried, like manually executing the scripts, not using lutris, trying a few winetricks commands, but nothing changed the state.

Workarounds

The Lutris script for Warframe installation was used on a Gnome linux environment that had gnome-terminal as the basis terminal.

The script itself contains a bunch of other workarounds for default libraries, but it only works with Wine staging, branch.

This workaround is invalid for both Wine 3.0 and Wine 3.5.

What was not tested

Finding the key differences in Wine 3.5 and Wine 3.5-staging to pinpoint the problem with downloading the Cache manifest to proceed with launching the game.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

First I tried installing on Linux Mint under a MATE environment, but it felt very incompatible (scripts, window managers)

I tried installing the game in four ways: using the mentioned Lutris script, using wine to install and run the launcher, using the Lutris script manually (following the steps provided by the creator) in terminals and using wine to install the standalone version available.

The installation has a lot of breaking points. The dependancy installation may not work, the patcher may not work, picking a folder may not work, cache optimization may not work...

The Lutris script did not work properly in my MATE environment. That may be because MATE uses mate-terminal. After migrating to Linux Mint Cinnamon, I was able to install the game using gnome-terminal.

This is installation process was only valid for Wine 3.4-staging and Wine 3.5-staging, tested by changing the runner settings on Lutris>Configure>Runner options>Wine versionn

I'll rank this one Silver because the script really makes the installation easier, given that your system is compatible with all its steps. It also seems to be more resource-heavy than it should be. There might be a specific workaround to make the game run better, since the game seems pretty optimized for Windows and PS4.

ADMIN NOTE: This clearly isn't a HOWTO

Using wine-1.7.51 (Staging) (wine-staging.com) and winetrix-20150826
Using 32-bit Wineprefix
I am setup all Games into single partition mounted on «/games».
# Initialize «Bottle»
% WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/path/to/warframe wineboot
# Installing some components
% WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/path/to/warframe winetricks winxp d3dx9 d3dx10 xact hosts wininet winhttp corefonts fontfix
# Setup game trough installer
% WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/path/to/warframe wine msiexec /i /path/to/Warframe.msi
Launch trough menu item «Apps -> Wine -> Warframe»
System Hardware
H/W path       Device     Class          Description
====================================================
                          system         System Product Name (SKU)
/0                        bus            P8B75-M LX PLUS
/0/0                      memory         64KiB BIOS
/0/4                      processor      Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
/0/4/5                    memory         128KiB L1 cache
/0/4/6                    memory         512KiB L2 cache
/0/4/7                    memory         3MiB L3 cache
/0/1                      memory         8GiB System Memory
/0/1/0                    memory         4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0,6 ns)
/0/1/1                    memory         4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0,6 ns)
/0/100                    bridge         Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller
/0/100/1                  bridge         Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor PCI Express Root Port
/0/100/1/0                display        G94 [GeForce 9600 GSO 512]
System Software
× app-emulation/wine-1.7.51-r32::gentoo
app-emulation/wine-1.7.51-r32 USE="X alsa cups dos fontconfig gecko gsm jpeg lcms ldap mp3 ncurses nls odbc openal opencl opengl osmesa perl png prelink pulseaudio realtime run-exes s3tc ssl staging threads truetype udisks v4l vaapi xcomposite xinerama xml -capi -custom-cflags -gphoto2 -gstreamer -mono -netapi -oss -pcap -pipelight -samba -scanner -selinux -test" ABI_X86="32 -64 -x32"
× app-emulation/winetricks-20150826::gentoo
× x11-base/xorg-server-1.16.4:0/1.16.1::gentoo  USE="dmx glamor ipv6 kdrive nptl suid udev xnest xorg xvfb -doc -minimal -selinux -static-libs -systemd -tslib -unwind -wayland"
× x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-340.93:0/340::gentoo  USE="X acpi multilib tools -pax_kernel -uvm"

• dwrite — disabled
• raspi32 — builtin, native
• wininet — builtin, native