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Running LaunchBox and Big Box on Linux


Jason Carr

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Tried this on in VM Ubuntu and Mint and am pretty stoked, but in reality I'm a (novice) Manjaro user. That being said, it appears I will need to change only one thing in your script (the call to the package manager).  I will try this later, primarily because I don't want to try this on my daily driver (just in case).  Looking forward to this.  Linux does have software with this kind of functionality (Gnome Games, GameHub, Nostlan, Pegasus) but nothing has quite the same...  verve?  Personally I'd rather have Launchbox as an AppImage or better a Flatpak/Snap (keeping it distro non-specific), but if you got it working in Wine I'll take it.

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Doing some testing finally. Atm just testing launching Steam games. I had to manually changed the Steam id shortcut ie steam steam://rungameid/612880 I get a "application path not found" I tried changing the path to the desktop shortcut and get a similar error "file not found" I haven't tried any emulators yet. Maybe I'll try the exe file (this is a Windows game that runs perfectly via Proton). Any suggestions would be great as I'm really into getting this working :)

 

Same error with PCSX2 (Linux version) also trying to launching PCSX2 from the right click menu gives me a "invalid OS platform error" hope these are helping.

Edited by The_Keeper86
PCSX2 testing
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53 minutes ago, locutis said:

1 Up for native linux support.

Thank you for big box, it solved my Windows 10 cabinet nightmares.

I'd pay you a second time if this would work on linux. A stable platform for my home gaming appliance would be brilliant.

Regards

Brett

 

 

Thank you Brett. I do need to clarify though that a native Linux version isn't likely to happen any time soon. Keep in mind that over 7 years of full-time development have gone into LaunchBox and Big Box on Windows, so as you can imagine, starting over for Linux is somewhat of a pipe dream.

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3 hours ago, The_Keeper86 said:

Doing some testing finally. Atm just testing launching Steam games. I had to manually changed the Steam id shortcut ie steam steam://rungameid/612880 I get a "application path not found" I tried changing the path to the desktop shortcut and get a similar error "file not found" I haven't tried any emulators yet. Maybe I'll try the exe file (this is a Windows game that runs perfectly via Proton). Any suggestions would be great as I'm really into getting this working :)

 

Same error with PCSX2 (Linux version) also trying to launching PCSX2 from the right click menu gives me a "invalid OS platform error" hope these are helping.

Thanks Keeper, I'll be back to this here soon. I had some fires to put out with the release here first.

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5 hours ago, The_Keeper86 said:

Doing some testing finally. Atm just testing launching Steam games. I had to manually changed the Steam id shortcut ie steam steam://rungameid/612880 I get a "application path not found" I tried changing the path to the desktop shortcut and get a similar error "file not found" I haven't tried any emulators yet. Maybe I'll try the exe file (this is a Windows game that runs perfectly via Proton). Any suggestions would be great as I'm really into getting this working :)

 

Same error with PCSX2 (Linux version) also trying to launching PCSX2 from the right click menu gives me a "invalid OS platform error" hope these are helping.

I also tried to launch Steam games right now and had the same result as @The_Keeper86: trying to launch Steam games without any tweaks (just like we'd do on Windows) doesn't work. Not even pointing LB to the location of the native version of Steam (Z:\usr\games\steam) allows LB to launch any games (just like you mentioned, I'm also getting "Application path not found" or "File not found").

It's great news that Jason is aware of this!

 

Regarding PCSX2, LB launches the native version of the emulator when I right click the menu and tell LB to do so (but can't launch the games so far); in order to manage that, here's what I did:

- on your Linux distro, open the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) and type WINEPREFIX=~/LaunchBox regedit

- add a dot character to the end of the list of extensions in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment\PATHEXT

These are the instructions at WineHQ Wiki.

And obviously, after that you have to point LB to the native version of PCSX2 (I believe you already have, but just in case, it's located at Z:\usr\games\PCSX2).

But, like I stated on a previous post (and I just tested it again, same results), trying to directly launch any games through LB with the native PCSX2 doesn't work: I keep getting the same "CDVD plugin error" because, apparently, native PCSX2 launched through LB isn't loading the plugins.

 

Other emulators I've tested (launching the Windows version through LB Wine prefix), but froze / didn't launch / didn't work for some reason:

- DOSBox: insta-crash.

- PCSX2: freezes after clicking "Next" (the "first configuration" screen always comes up, couldn't bypass it).

- RPCS3: the emulator opens (even updates when needed, lol), but freezes when it's about to start compiling PPU modules.

- Supermodel (Sega Model 3 system): doesn't launch.

- Dolphin: doesn't launch.

- MAME: launches and immediately closes. 

The good news is that all of these apps / emulators are natively avaliable on Linux; eventually, if there's a way to allow LB/BB to launch the native versions of them, most of the current issues would probably be solved. Let's give it time.

 

Oh, and I just tested Retroarch again: like I mentioned on a previous post, LB launches the Windows version of Retroarch perfectly. Now I've tested the online functions (online updater, RetroAchievements) and they work just like on the native version. So, for the systems ran with Retroarch, we're fine for now, even without launching the Linux version of Retroarch (but I'm still hoping that the native Retroarch will someday be able to launch games from within LB, of course).

M.U.G.E.N games also work perfectly out of the box with LB (Wine seems to do a good job running them).

Edited by jedigu
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Hey everyone, sorry in advance if this is a dumb question.

 

I have a RG350m portable handheld and it runs with opendingux. I am not really up to speed with this type of stuff so can anyone tell me if this is Linux and if Launchbox would now work on my RG350?

I have loads of games on there but the only frontend that is half decent is SimpleMenu, it's alright but nothing special. I absolutely adore Launchbox so it would quite honestly make my year if someone tells me I could now use it on RG350.

 

Again, sorry if this is a dumb question, but thanks in advance!

Edited by mrleelee123
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1 hour ago, The_Keeper86 said:

@Jason Carr Np glad to be helping! Take your time :)

 

@jedigu Thanks for such a detailed post! Posts like yours will definitely help! Regarding the registry edit how did you put in the dot character?

Thanks, @The_Keeper86!

About the registry edit, after clicking twice on PATHEXT, I put a ";" at the end of extension list, and put a "." right after the ";" (always without the quotes).

In my case, the last extension was ".WSH" (without the "); it's now like that (without the quotes) : ".WSH;."

After doing that, you should be able to launch the native version of emulators from within LB / BB.

Edited by jedigu
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OH yea! I need to swap my arcade machine over to linux and give this a shot. Linux is my daily driver OS but I had been holding out installing it on my multicade because I love LB too much to give it up.

EDIT: Linux is installed! now time to get all the emulation going correctly and run the script. I'll post again below with results. 
OS: custom Kubuntu 20.04 "ReOS" 
hardware: 4790k 8GB 3TB GTX950SC
arcade bits: 2 Ultimarc Ustik 360 controllers, an Ultimarc light gun inside Happ shell, ebay trackball, and an Elo touchscreen from a POS, inside a Derby Owners Club World edition cab.

IMG_20200831_142148.jpg

Edited by jedi404
added info and picture of proof.
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It might sound silly, but I ran into all kinds of issues trying to install on a fresh Mint XFCE, until I realized it was creating a 32-bit prefix, so I added "WINEPREFIX=~/LaunchBox WINEARCH=win64" into the downloaded script (at the top, so it would be created in 64-bit properly), before realizing the root problem:  For some reason apt decided to install the Wine 32-bit instead of Wine 64-bit.  This is the first time I've encountered this, and I've tested this with success many times on Mint and Ubuntu (in Virtualbox) and Manjaro (without success) without this architecture issue.  I've since added the proper version of Wine.

Now, I am a bit of a noob when it comes to Wine, but would it be beneficial to add that bit to the overall script from the get go, or if both architectures exist does it automatically pick 64-bit in that case (or is my issue just a one in a million fluke)?

Edited by bombatomba77
clarity
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I just updated Wine to version 5.16 staging (Manjaro) and finally LaunchBox started, it can be used well, but it has random craches that make it close.

I tried to replace in the file "Emulators.xml" all the extensions "dll" by "so" to try if the games could be opened with the native version of retroarch, but it didn't work :s I hope that soon we can play the games in the linux native emulators.

Excellent work.

Edited by Amnesia
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4 hours ago, Amnesia said:

I just updated Wine to version 5.16 staging (Manjaro) and finally LaunchBox started, it can be used well, but it has random craches that make it close.

So you installed with the default and changed it to staging after and it worked?  I've been hitting my head against the Manjaro wall all weekend trying to figure it out.  The best I could do was to get it installed and it would crash at startup.  I'll try this on my main laptop when I get home.  Thanks.

Edited by bombatomba77
Answered own question
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22 minutes ago, bombatomba77 said:

So you installed with the default and changed it to staging after and it worked?  I've been hitting my head against the Manjaro wall all weekend trying to figure it out.  The best I could do was to get it installed and it would crash at startup.  I'll try this on my main laptop when I get home.  Thanks.

No, when I install it I use the staging version 5.15 and today update staging 5.16. Still beyond opening the interface, it doesn't open any game (in native mode), and to use retroarch in the windows version, I better keep using the native one and wait for it to improve the compatibility of LB with Linux, but opening the interface is a good advance.

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Got it running in a very funky Manjaro Edition called mGAme using the wine-stable-git package from the AUR.  So far it runs more or less like the Ubuntu-likes do, though it seems to download assets a little faster (without freezing) and the sub-menu on the main screen (under the three lines) tends to be invisible until I mouse over it.  Even with that I am very happy with the results so far, though installing was anything but seamless, and doesn't consistently finish.  The largest problem seems to be with installing dotnet48, as it will spit out massive amounts of "fixme" nonsense  and sometimes nothing else.  But beggars can't be choosers, and I am extremely happy to use LaunchBox on Arch and Arch-like distros.  Next I plan on emulating Amnesia a bit and installing Manjaro Gnome on a different laptop then testing native support, though I am not dead set on using native emulators (when Retroarch under Wine works so well). 

Next, I'd like to test the older wine-stable package on AUR (5.0.2-1 I think).

Edited by bombatomba77
mistype
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