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One of the most anticipated games of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, is finally here and it looks like it’s playable on Linux with a few simple tricks.
Cyberpunk 2077 launched today on Steam, but it’s a Windows-only game. However, Valve was quick to update their Wine-based Proton compatibility tool for Steam Play to add support for Linux systems.
Therefore, to run Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux you would need to have Proton 5.13-4 installed on your GNU/Linux distribution, along with the Mesa Git graphics stack, and an AMD Radeon GPU.
Yes, that’s right, the game doesn’t work with Nvidia GPUs on Linux, for now. It would appear that the game does work on Nvidia GPUs with driver version 455.45.01. Thanks to Martin Wimpress of Ubuntu MATE who tested the game on his Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS machine.
So, if you happen to own a Linux PC with an AMD GPU capable of running Cyberpunk 2077, all you need is Proton 5.13-4 and the mesa-git package. But not all distributions offer the mesa-git package, which is currently based on the upcoming Mesa 21.0 graphics stack series.
As far as I know, the only distro offering the mesa-git package is Arch Linux. But, if you don’t have Arch Linux installed or you find it too hard to install, you can always use a derivative, such as Manjaro Linux, and install mesa-git from AUR.
Arch Linux also ships with the latest Linux 5.9.13 kernel, which might contribute to the overall performance of the game on AMD GPUs.
At least someone already managed to get Cyberpunk 2077 to play on his Arch Linux laptop and was kind enough to record a short video for us to see it in action. Thanks Lolo Penalta!
If you know of any other GNU/Linux distribution offering the mesa-git package in its software repositories, please do comment below to let others who want to play Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux.
For those not in the known, Cyberpunk 2077 is a role-playing, action video game that takes place in the year 2077 in an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. The game is developed and published by CD Projekt RED, and can be purchased from Steam for $59.99.
Last updated 3 years ago
