Hello. I thought I'd give this FFXI server a try. However, I'm running Gentoo Linux and am really hesitant to switch over to Windows just for one game.

I followed the HOWTO here with a couple tweaks:

* Follow steps 1 - 10.
* Run "winetricks dotnet40"
* Download xiloader and use it instead of the Ashita launcher since it flat-out doesn't work. Run "wine xiloader.exe --server nasomi.com".

It almost works. The FFXI opening disclamer page pops up, but after pressing Accept, it crashes. Has anyone had any luck getting this to work under Wine? I'm so close and it'd be a shame to back out now and run it under an emulator.

Hi there!

I have not gotten FFXI to run on Linux, but that certainly doesn't mean it's not possible. Since you are running Gentoo I'm guessing you know your way around a Linux box. Have you tried "more /var/log/messages | grep wine" ? I'm not sure if Wine has a specific log location either, but that's usually the first place I check. Also have you looked into wine tricks? Not sure if it will help but maybe a dependency is missing somewhere?

Lastly you could always try PlayOnLinux. I have had better compatibility with Windows programs this way, however it may not be listed in your distro's repositories.

Good luck!

I've been tempted to give linux a shot over the years, but this game alone is what keeps me from making the jump. If you get it working, I'd be real tempted to give it a shot.

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The system logs weren't showing anything useful. This report is the same error that I was getting, but none of the comments were helpful.

I'm going to try PlayOnLinux. It seems FFXI was the most playable in the 1.1.* series and the 1.3.* series. I'll try installing those versions through PlayOnLinux and see what happens.

Good luck with the PlayOnLinux!

One thing to consider is possibly permissions on your install directory. I've had many a problem with apps calling programs to move files but do so with insufficient permissions. Can always 755 or 777 the directory if that jives with you.

I know Wine used to allow running programs under an emulated environment, kind of like a VirtualBox, but that tends to be more demanding on the system if you've got an older box.

Just some thoughts. Unfortunately I've only gotten a handful of games to run successfully on Linux through Wine, so I don't have a ton of experience there. Hopefully something ends up working out for you!

The last thing I hate to mention because it can be a pain, but if proprietary drivers are available (if you have an AMD or nVidia card) you could consider updating. Intel integrated chipsets are usually part of the distro.

I'm running on a laptop with a discrete Nvidia GPU, but it's been able to handle everything I've thrown at it just fine (other programs under Wine, Dota 2, the FFXI disclaimer page before it crashed, etc.). I doubt the graphics drivers will be a problem as long as I use optirun.

As for file permissions under Wine, I seriously doubt that would cause problems unless one does something goofy like login as root and run Wine under the same prefix.

Now that I'm typing this post, I remember running FFXI on Linux once before. I would randomly lose connection to the server every once in a while for a couple seconds and reconnect, but it did otherwise work quite well. And then I rage-quit after having a horrible party as a Corsair in one of the Aht-Urgan areas.

I'm going through the installation once again, this time running under version 1.3.37. If this works, I'll do a writeup on it.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. xiloader was compiled with a very recent version of vcruntime2015 and only the later versions of Wine are able to support 2015. On the same token, the most recent versions of Wine have this problem with getting past the FFXI disclamer screen. If I downgrade to the 1.3.* series, I can't run xiloader. And ashita still flat-out doesn't work for some reason.

Looks like it's not possible to run FFXI with Wine until someone fixes the issue with getting past the loading screen, or xiloader is compiled with an older version of vcruntime.

Got a bit further. Found xiloader on github and recompiled it against vcruntime2013. I can now get past the disclaimer page, but it crashes after the character creation page.

Agh!

SUCCESS!! AGGAGHAGHGHGHAGHAHGHAGHAGHAHG

Here's my writeup on getting this to work. A lot of stuff is going to be glossed over, so you need to be technical.

Here's the sources I used to get this to work. You don't have to read them, but you're curious, it'll shed some light on the problems Wine has with FFXI.
Wine compilation problems
Wine runtime deadlock problems
DLL's needed

Prerequisites:

• A Windows installation with Visual Studio 2013 (YES, IT NEEDS TO BE 2013!). If you don't have Windows, you can download Windows 10 and install it in a virtual machine, which is what I did.
• GCC and autoconf
• PlayOnLinux or WineTricks
• Wine 1.3.37 and any sources it relies on (you're on your own for that one)
• xiloader source

Let's get the Windows part out of the way first. Log into your Windows machine and pull the xiloader source code. Open Visual Studio and open the xiloader project. Compile a release version and place the compiled binary on your Linux box.

Go back to your Linux box. Be sure you have all of the development libraries you need for compiling 1.3.37. Your distribution should supply them through its package manager. Download the Wine 1.3.37 source code and extract it. Open dlls/imm32/imm.c and delete lines 1378-1379 (See the "Wine runtime deadlock problems" link for more details).

Then, at the root of the Wine source directory, create this script and run it. It's patching the source code to use a more recent lexer.

#!/bin/sh

PATCHES=(
3f98185fb8f88c181877e909ab1b6422fb9bca1e
8fcac3b2bb8ce4cdbcffc126df779bf1be168882
bda5a2ffb833b2824325bd9361b30dbaf5f78068
c14e322a92a24e704836c5c12207c694a30e805f
f86c46f6403fe338a544ab134bdf563c5b0934ae
ffbe1ca986bd299e1fc894440849914378adbf5c
)


for i in "${PATCHES[@]}"
do
   # Check if patch file exists in directory
   if [ -f $i ];
   then
      echo "$i file exists"
   else
      echo "$i file doesn't exist, downloading:"
      curl "http://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/patch/$i" -o $i
   fi

   # Apply patch if necessary
   if nohup patch -p1 -N --dry-run --silent <$i 2>/dev/null; then
      echo "$i Patching now:"
      patch -p1 < $i
   else
      echo "$i Already applied"
   fi

   echo

done

Compile and install.

Be sure the Wine binary you just compiled is first on your PATH and not any other version of Wine you might have. Create a new WINEPREFIX dedicated to FFXI. You can do this manually or through PlayOnLinux. After creating a new prefix, use PlayOnLinux or winetricks to install these packages:

• dinput8
• directmusic
• directplay
• dotnet20
• dotnet20sp1
• dotnet20sp2
• dotnet30
• dotnet30sp1
• dotnet35
• dotnet35sp1
• ffdshow
• gdiplus
• quartz
• vcrun2005
• vcrun2008
• vcrun2010
• xact
• xinput

Now, follow the installation instructions, steps 1 through 10. You're expected to know how to do this with Wine. After FFXI has been installed and updated, get the xiloader binary you compiled from Windows and run:

wine xiloader.exe --server nasomi.com

After creating an account and logging in, you should be good to go.