Blizzard makes some extremely popular PC games, and their Battle.net application is how gamers install those games on their systems and keep them up to date. The only problem is that Blizzard has neglected the Linux community by never porting their Battle.net application over to it. Fortunately, most of the games still work pretty well on Linux if you are using Wine. We’ll show you how to install Wine and run Battle.net on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish in this tutorial.
Before getting started, it’s a good idea to make sure that your system has the latest graphics drivers installed. This will make the games run smoother and save you a possible headache later on.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Wine and related packages
- How to configure Winetricks and additional components
- How to install Battle.net
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
| Software | Wine, Battle.net |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Install The Dependencies
Running a native Windows application like Battle.net on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish is going to require Wine. In addition to Wine, you’ll also need to install the winetricks and winbind packages, as the app needs them to function.
Open a command line terminal and type the following commands to get all of the packages installed:
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install wine64 winbind winetricks
Configure Winetricks
Battle.net is a bit of a tricky app to run because it depends on a lot of Windows specific conventions. For example, the application is written in Qt but requires Internet Explorder to function. Fortunately, we can configure Winetricks to provide our Windows environment with the various things that Battle.net expects to find.
- Open up Winetricks either from the applications launcher or by simply typing this command in a terminal window:
$ winetricks
Select the default wineprefix - When you first open Winetricks, you’ll see the prompt pictured above. Just leave “Select the default wineprefix” selected and click OK. On the next screen, click “Install a font.” This will open up a list of available fonts.
Install a font with Winetricks - Find
corefontsand check it. Then, press OK. Winetricks will install all of the basic Microsoft fonts that Battle.net relies on.
Select the fonts to install
- Once the fonts finish installing, you’ll be brought back to the previous window. When there, we need to create a new wineprefix with 32 bit architecture, since Wine will only install some of the components on 32 bit and not 64. Select “create new wineprefix” and select 32 bit architecture. We are just naming our wineprefix “32” in this example:
Create a new wineprefix with 32 bit architecture - After creating the wineprefix, select “Install a Windows DLL or component.” In this selection menu, check the boxes for
ie8andvcrun2015. Once both are selected, click OK to begin installing them.
Install ie8 and vcrun2015 with Winetricks Don’t be alarmed if Winetricks prompts you a few times about errors or similar messages. This is annoying but it seems to be the norm with Winetricks. Let it do its thing and it should finish soon. Once it’s done installing the components, you can close Winetricks.
Wine configuration
Before continuing, we need to configure Wine to run as Windows 10. It seems to select Windows 7 by default, which may be fine, but we’re better off sticking with Windows 10 since that has full support from Blizzard.
In a terminal window, type the following command to open Wine configuration:
$ winecfg
On the first tab you see, change the Windows version at the bottom to Windows 10 and apply the change.
Install Battle.net
- Now we’re finally ready to install Battle.net. You can grab the Windows version from Blizzard’s download page. Save the file somewhere you’ll find it, like your Downloads folder. You should be able to click on this file and open it like normal and Ubuntu will know that it needs to use Wine to run it. But just in case it doesn’t, you may want to open it from the terminal instead. Use this command:
$ wine64 ~/Downloads/Battle.net-Setup.exe
- Begin installing Battle.net like normal. There’s nothing special to do here.
Battle.net installation prompts - Once you’ve gone through the installation, it’ll be time to login. You may notice some ugly formatting on this screen, but it’s typical for the app to not render properly in Wine. You should still be able to login just fine.
- After signing in, the full app will open up and should look a lot like it would on Windows. You might notice some ugly formatting here and there, but this is just cosmetic and shouldn’t affect your games at all. The core functionality is still present, and you can start installing and playing your games.
Closing Thoughts
Using Wine and a bit of configuration, you’re now able to run Blizzard’s Battle.net on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. Keep in mind that gameplay might be a little finicky for some titles, so be sure to check system requirements for specific games.