Arma 3: Experimental Ports

Please visit this overview page to learn more about our experimental client ports to Linux and Mac, including the limitations and F.A.Q.

Installation

1. Check the limitations overview to decide whether you find them acceptable.
2. Check the minimal requirements to determine whether your system is able to run the ports.
3. Download and install the Steam client, create an account and purchase the Windows retail version of Arma 3.
4. Install the game (it will automatically download the data for Mac or Linux, depending on the platform you are installing from).
5. Play!

Known Issues

• Potential Out Of Memory client crashes/freezes when playing for longer periods of time
• Lower FPS after long gameplay - this may hint at an incoming OOM crash. Restarting the game cleans the memory.
• Lag and desync under heavy multiplayer load
• Problem with different languages and diacritics - only English works properly. Non-ASCII characters are not supported.
• Low FPS on OS X - running the OS and the native display resolution eat up a lot of computing power.
• AMD graphical artifacts - black and white squares appear on-screen and AMD GPUs do not show all shadows correctly.
• Occasional Alt + Tab crashes
• Aspect ratio changing CTD - changing the aspect ratio in-game can cause issues and/or CTDs.
• Unable to use free camera (double Alt key) in some planes - players may not be able to change to free camera in airplanes.
• Joystick, gaming devices - Xbox 360 controllers should work plug-and-play on Linux and Mac, but it's not always possible to remap their buttons in-game. Joysticks, Xbox One gamepads and other game controllers need user alterations of the SDLGamepad.config file located in the Arma directory on Linux.
• The VP wrapper can lower Arma 3’s performance by up to 25 percent on several systems, but the performance drop should not exceed 10 percent on a vast majority of systems.
• Video options have some limitations dependent on the system’s computing power. It can disable your option to set up High or Ultra quality levels on less powerful machines.
• Some keys (e.g. "Alt") are designated for something else in the system (on Mint for example), so you may need to re-map your keyboard settings.
• The shader cache file can become corrupted during some crashes. Deleting "~/.local/share/bohemiainteractive/arma3/eONprecompiledShaders.dat" fixes the problem.
• Drivers on AMD cards - AMDGPU-PRO Beta and MESA drivers - are in development and are prone to cause unexpected issues from time to time.
• Arma 3 Server run on Linux may suffer from BattlEye client not updating properly. Try restarting the server to trigger the update.
• Any issues fixed since the 1.58 Windows version

Distros

Supported Linux distributions are:

• Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS 64bit and later (recommended is Ubuntu 14.10 64bit)
• Mint 17.1, 64bit and later
• Fedora 22 and later

32bit Linux systems are considered too unstable due to crashes in MP, although it may be possible to play Arma 3 on them.

We support only default desktop environments such as Cinnamon on Mint and Unity on Ubuntu. It should be possible to run the game on Debian and Gentoo, but it was not the part of the QA process, therefore we cannot guarantee support.

There are community tests of Arma 3 on other Linux distributions such as Arch Linux. You can find more information on the forums and Feedback Tracker regarding issues on unsupported distros.

Linux Graphics Drivers Updates

NVIDIA

A quick 'how-to' on updating NVIDIA drivers on Linux systems:

1. Open Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T).
2. Enter "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa".
3. Enter "sudo apt-get update".
4. Enter "sudo apt-get install nvidia-361" .

Your drivers should now be updated after restarting.

Check https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa for newer drivers.

AMD

AMD Catalyst drivers are a bit more complicated. The only method we have found that works reliably, is to install the driver from the archive provided by AMD for download. The drivers shipped with Ubuntu 14 are outdated, they have known performance problems and contain bugs (http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Linux+x86).

There is a guide to manually installing them here. The guide mentions the 13.12 drivers, but the process is the same for the later ones.

Ubuntu 16.04, Fedora 23 (and all distros with Xorg1.18) and higher need the AMDGPU-PRO beta driver (for newest GPUs) or Oibaf MESA drivers (recommended). Installing AMDGPU-PRO: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-GPU-PRO-Linux-Beta-Driver%E2%80%93Release-Notes.aspx

Installing MESA drivers for AMD:

1. Open Terminal
2. Type in and execute: "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers"
3. Type in and execute: "sudo apt-get update"
4. Type in and execute: "sudo apt-get install synaptic"
5. Type in and execute: "synaptic - launches synaptic manager"
6. In the manager click on "mark all updates" and apply
7. Reboot

In the case Steam is not working with MESA this may help :

1. Open Terminal
2. Type in and execute: "gedit .bashrc"
3. Add line "export LD_PRELOAD='/usr/$LIB/libstdc++.so.6' DIAPLAY=:0"
4. Save and exit
5. Steam should now launch by typing "steam" into Terminal

Joysticks & Gamepads

Unfortunately, Steam’s standard only supports standard Xbox and Windows XInput gamepad schemes, which means that more sophisticated schemes present in Arma 3, and using DirectInput and allowing reconfiguration of gamepads and joysticks in-game, had to be turned off in the ports. It is possible to reconfigure them by modifying the mapping text, but it’s not intuitive. Alternatively you can try to remap your keybinding using third-party software (e.g. AntiMicro).

Dedicated Servers

Mac

1. Run the Steam client (if do not start the normal game first, it will not let you launch after the Dedicated Server is on).
2. Run Arma 3 and wait for the game to get to the main menu.
3. Run Terminal.
4. Change the current directory to the path where the Arma3.app is (e.g. "cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Arma\ 3/").
5. Run the Dedicated Server by command: "./ArmA3.app/Contents/MacOS/ArmA3 --args -server -config=Server.cfg".

Linux

Method 1

1. Launch Arma 3 via Steam normally (if you want to run server and client on the same PC).
2. Find your Arma 3 installation folder by using your right mouse button to click on the game name in Steam's library and go to the Properties click on Local files tab, then click on Browse local files button to open the file browser at that location. You should also put the server.cfg file there. Default installation folder is: "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Arma 3".
3. Open Terminal and type in: "cd 'your Arma 3 path'" and then press Enter. It should change to your game folder.
4. Type in and execute: "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/.steam/ubuntu12_32""
5. Type in and execute: "./arma3 -server -config=server.cfg"

Your Dedicated Server should run alongside the normal game now. Note - you can skip #4 by entering "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/.steam/ubuntu12_32" directly into the ~/.bashrc file.

Method 2

Arma_3_Dedicated_Server#Instructions_.28Linux_o.2Fs.29

Fedora Firewall

There may be an issue with connections on Arma 3’s server on Fedora caused by a firewall. For disabling this you may use this: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/19/html/Security_Guide/sec-Disabling_firewalld.html.

Keep in mind this will open your firewall completely, and opening ports just for Arma 3 is advised (default ports are: 2302-2305 UDP)

Cross-Platform Windows Compatibility

The Linux / Mac ports use the Arma 3's Legacy version 1.58. Ported Arma 3 can currently access servers only with this version (green in the server list).

1.58 legacyports version installation on Windows:

1. Open the Properties of Arma 3 in the Steam library.
2. Open the Betas tab.
3. Enter access code: Arma3LegacyPorts. This should unlock the legacyports - Legacy Build (1.58 - ports).
4. Download and play.