ZIMARUS

Playing on Linux (Steam / Proton)

The client is a 32-bit Windows program and runs well under Proton — Wine's built-in DirectDraw gives it a proper hardware renderer, sound works, and you play online against Windows players on the same server. This is how it is played daily on the developer's Ubuntu machine with GE-Proton 10 and Proton Experimental; other distros should behave the same — if something misbehaves, say so on Discord.

You need: Steam with Proton Experimental (or GE-Proton) installed under Library → Tools, an account here, and the game download from your account page.

Setup

  1. Extract the zip somewhere with no spaces anywhere in the path, e.g. ~/Games/Zimarus/. The game reads its own command line as "everything after the first space is the argument", so a space in the folder name breaks it.
  2. Get the launcher: Tanarus_Linux.sh (from v26.8.17 on it is already in the game folder) and put it in the game folder.
  3. Run it from a terminal: 
    cd ~/Games/Zimarus
bash Tanarus_Linux.sh                                          # newest GE-Proton if installed, else Proton Experimental
TANARUS_PROTON="Proton - Experimental" bash Tanarus_Linux.sh   # pick a runtime by its folder name
TANARUS_WINDOWED=1 bash Tanarus_Linux.sh                       # in a window (mouse-only in arena)
    The first start builds a Wine prefix (30–60 s, nothing to click). Then the 640×480 title screen: TRAINING is offline single-player, LOGIN is the server — use the username and password you registered here and create a handle.

Do not use _Start.bat / Tanarus_Start.bat on Linux — they run a PowerShell self-updater Wine cannot execute. Use Tanarus_Linux.sh.

Automatic updates work on Linux from v26.8.19. That release adds ZimarusLauncher.exe, and it turns out to run fine under Proton — so Tanarus_Linux.sh now starts the game through it. Every launch picks up a new release if there is one and downloads any map that has been rotated in, then starts the game. Your key bindings, macros and settings are never touched. It cannot create a desktop shortcut under Wine (it says so in ZimarusLauncher.log and carries on), and because that step fails it never runs its Windows-only cleanup, so Tanarus_Linux.sh and the .bat files stay put. Skip it with TANARUS_NO_UPDATE=1.

On v26.8.18 or older there is no launcher in your folder yet, so this one time, download the zip and extract it over the old folder (keep your control.dat). After that it keeps itself current.

The launcher finds your Steam install (native or Flatpak, the client need not be running), the chosen Proton, and — for Valve's own builds — the Steam Linux Runtime container they run inside; then it runs proton run tangame.exe online with a private prefix at ~/.local/share/zimarus-pfx-<runtime>. If you would rather do it by hand, that line is all there is to it: absolute path to tangame.exe, exactly one argument, online.

Good to know

Plain-text copy of this page: README-LINUX.txt.