Running LFS on Linux

This document will guide you through the process of installing and configuring Wine and LFS to allow you to run the LFS game client in Linux. We'll also touch on the subjects of configuring your wheel and solving common problems.

Intro

What to expect

Users have reported that LFS runs great on Linux. Force Feedback should be the only point that may cause issues. Graphics and audio appears to be at par with the native environment, and gamepads should work out of the box (although you may have to map the buttons manually).

This article was updated in June 2025; I (Bokujishin) have been playing LFS on Manjaro Linux (KDE Plasma Wayland) for about 2 years now, and it works just fine. The steps in this article were updated and verified to work on both Manjaro Linux and Ubuntu 24.04 (running in virtual machines), and so should work for most Arch-based and Ubuntu-based distributions.

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge of Linux and your distribution (shell, package manager).
• A recent version of the Linux Kernel.
• Willingness to spend a little time setting things up (probably less time than I spent writing this article!)

Basic setup

Install and configure Wine

LFS, like any other Windows software, runs on Linux through wine (or Proton, the Valve-developed fork that runs Steam games). LFS can be run using either of those, but wine is quite simple to setup, and lets you run LFS without launching Steam.

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, you can install wine with the following command:

 sudo apt install wine

Note that LFS is still a 32-bit program, and Ubuntu will only install the 64-bit version of wine, so you need to enable support for the 32-bit architecture, and install wine32:

 sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt update && sudo apt install wine32:i386

Manjaro

Manjaro makes things easier for us: you can open the GUI software center/updater to look for "wine" and install it (or use the pamac command, or more generally for Arch, pacman). You don't need to manually add support for the 32-bit architecture or install wine32.

winetricks for Vulkan and other tweaks

If your GPU supports Vulkan, you should enable dxvk (Vulkan renderer for DirectX) for better performance (in my case, it also prevented crashes from full grids of cars, and properly showed my GPU in the game's options).

Install it from the GUI (Manjaro) or with the following command (Ubuntu):

 sudo apt install winetricks

Of course, you can also use an equivalent command for your distribution, including pacman for Arch and Manjaro.

From the terminal, execute winetricks, you will be greeted with a simple GUI. From there, choose Select the default prefix > Install a Windows DLL or component > dxvk.

During installation, you may see warning about the wine prefix being 64 bits, you can ignore those warnings. On Ubuntu, you will be prompted to install multiple Microsoft redistributables.

Install LFS

If you haven't done so already, download the game from https://www.lfs.net, then open a terminal and execute the setup with wine:

 wine LFS_S3_7F_setup.exe

If wine fails to execute with the error wine: could not load kernel32.dll, simply delete the configuration folder in ~/.wine and try again. This error is especially likely to occur on Ubuntu, since we added 32-bit support manually.

Once the game is installed, you can launch it from the app launcher like any other app, or double-click the desktop icon (on Ubuntu, you will first need to allow executing it). You can also go the manual way and launch it through wine:

 wine ~/.wine/drive_c/LFS/LFS.exe

This can be useful to get logs in the terminal, if you have issues.

Controllers and force feedback

All controllers should work out of the box, as far as input is concerned. You will likely need to assign all axes and buttons to your preferences.

The main issue on Linux has to do with FFB, or rather the lack thereof: steering wheel manufacturers typically provide their drivers for Windows only, and getting FFB to work on Linux has historically proven challenging. However, things are much better today than they used to be, and we have several options, even for direct drive wheels and the multiple brands that sell them:

• Oversteer is a generic steering wheel manager for Linux. Some distributions provide packages for it. The github repository also provides links to projects for specific drivers, so you should test FFB with Oversteer first (especially if you have a Logitech or Thrustmaster wheel), and then look for those specific drivers; for direct drive wheels, you can directly check the specific drivers, chances are you will not have FFB out of the box.
• Logitech and Thrustmaster drivers are available in recent Linux kernels, those wheels should therefore work without much trouble.
• Fanatec: A driver specific to Fanatec wheels is being developed. I am myself using a Clubsport DD and driving with this.
• Moza, Asetek, and likely many others: A more universal option, which should work with at least Moza wheels, is available. The repository also claims support for Asetek and other brands (user feedback would be appreciated for those).

Note that wine 10 includes support for raw PID communication, which also helps directly translate FFB to Linux, and additionally allows games to make use of a wheel's advanced features, for instance using the FanatecSDK to communicate with the wheel's LEDs; LFS does not seem to be affected by this. Do also note that at the time of this writing, the wine version packaged with Ubuntu 24.04 is still 9.x.

Firmware updates

While wine allows running all sorts of software on Linux, with various success, firmware updates for your wheel base and other devices are still better left for a Windows OS. If you do not have a Windows PC available, you should try running a virtual machine. Or maybe we can petition manufacturers to provide Linux drivers and software...