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Get Minecraft Education running on Ubuntu Linux!

Minecraft Education on Ubuntu Linux

Currently, there are 2 ways you can accomplish this task:

  • Waydroid (preferred method)
  • Wine

Along with some information on the progress of running newer versions!


If you found this gist useful, remember to share it with others!

Minecraft Education on Ubuntu Linux (using Waydroid)


What you will need

  • A computer running Linux and using Wayland
    • X users can run Waydroid in Weston
  • A Google Account

Steps

  1. Add the Waydroid repository to your system

    sudo apt install curl ca-certificates -y
    curl https://repo.waydro.id | sudo bash
  2. Install Waydroid

    sudo apt install waydroid -y
  3. Install GApps build of Android

    sudo waydroid init -s GAPPS
  4. Google Play Services Registration

    Open the Waydroid Shell by typing:

    sudo waydroid shell

    You should see a prompt that resembles :/ #. At that prompt, paste the following command:

    ANDROID_RUNTIME_ROOT=/apex/com.android.runtime ANDROID_DATA=/data ANDROID_TZDATA_ROOT=/apex/com.android.tzdata ANDROID_I18N_ROOT=/apex/com.android.i18n sqlite3 /data/data/com.google.android.gsf/databases/gservices.db "select * from main where name = \"android_id\";"

    Copy the string of numbers after android|, then type exit into the Waydroid shell.

    Paste the copied string of numbers into the textbox of the following website, and then press Register: https://www.google.com/android/uncertified Note: You will need to be logged in for this to work

    Open the terminal again, and then type:

    sudo waydroid session stop

    Then open Waydroid again.

  5. Log in to Google Play

    Once Waydroid has booted again, open Google Play and sign in like you would on an Android phone. Ignore the on-screen keyboard for now.

  6. Download and Install Minecraft Education

    Once you have logged in to Google Play, search for Minecraft Education or com.mojang.minecraftedu. Select the first option, and click install.

  7. Open Minecraft Education

    Once it has installed, go to your apps launcher and find Minecraft Education. Then click it. It should open in the Waydroid environment, and ready to sign in.


QoL Tweaks

Running apps in separate windows

If you prefer running Minecraft Education in a window instead of the Waydroid shell, you can run the following command from your terminal while Waydroid is running:

waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.multi_windows true

Disabling on-screen keyboard

If you dislike the on-screen keyboard popping up, follow the steps outlined below:

  1. Open Settings in the Waydroid Shell
  2. Find the System category and click it
  3. Find Languages & input and click it
  4. Click Physical keyboard
  5. Disable the Use on-screen keyboard setting

Thanks to

  • Waydroid's docs

Minecraft Education on Ubuntu Linux (using Wine)

IMPORTANT

Microsoft decided to change the way users log in in Minecraft Education (but they didn't for Bedrock, why?), which uses the Microsoft.Identity.Client.*.dll libraries, which Wine does not support. This issue affects the following versions:

Version Status
1.18.45 Not affected. Works as intended.
1.19.51/52 Affected. Opens to the login page, where the login window is a blank, unclosable window.
1.19.53 Affected. Window behaves the same as 1.19.51/52, but is the correct size.
1.20.12 Affected. Window behaves the same as 1.19.53, but with a close button
1.20.13 Affected. Same as 1.20.12. The login window displays 4 or 5 Chinese characters.
1.21.05/1.21.06 Doesn't even launch.
1.21.50 Preview Loads, opens login screen but cannot complete login process, error 1001.

Please use Waydroid for later versions (if you can, of course).

What you will need

Steps

  1. Add the Wine repository to your system

    Ubuntu:

    sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
    sudo mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings
    sudo wget -O /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
    sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/$(lsb_release -cs)/winehq-$(lsb_release -cs).sources
    sudo apt update

    (Linux Mint users will need to replace $(lsb_release -cs) with the version of Ubuntu their version is based on, for example: 20.2 Uma -> focal)

  2. Install Wine Stable + winbind

    Install Wine Stable using the following command

    sudo apt install winehq-stable wine-stable wine-stable-i386 wine-stable-amd64 winbind
  3. Open Wine Configuration

    Type winecfg to open Wine's configuration. If any dialogs pop up saying that something needs installing, press 'Install'. Once winecfg has opened, select the drop down box labeled 'Windows Version: ' and select Windows 7 (1.18.45 and earlier) or Windows 10 (1.19.50 and above).

  4. Install dxvk

    To install dxvk, run the following commands:

    wget https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/download/v2.6.2/dxvk-2.6.2.tar.gz
    tar -zxvf dxvk-*.tar.gz
    mv dxvk-*/x32/* $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/?indows/syswow64
    mv dxvk-*/x64/* $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/?indows/system32
    rm -r dxvk-*
  5. Extract Minecraft Education

    Type unzip ME-1.18.45-Extracted.zip to extract the files.

  6. Install Visual C++ Redist 2017

    Open your file manager and right click on each executable and open it with Wine Windows Program Loader

  7. Launch Minecraft Education

    Navigate to the 'ME-1.18.45-Extracted' directory using cd ME-1.18.45-Extracted

    Then launch Minecraft Education using wine Minecraft.Windows.exe

Thanks to

  • WineHQ Community
  • Unix StackExchange

1.21.80.01 Preview

Updated June 11th 2025

Works too, but suffers from the same error as the previous preview.



(Added 5:50PM)

1.21.50 Preview

Updated June 10th 2025

Now loads in Wine 10.0, login page does as well but suffers from "Error 1001"

@TheLizardMarkZuckerberg

Is there any future plans for support on GNU+Linux

@techguy16
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techguy16 commented Jun 18, 2024

Is there any future plans for support on GNU+Linux

@TheLizardMarkZuckerberg Sadly, no, unless any of these happens:

  • Microsoft decides to revert the login system changes back to the one used in 1.18.
  • Wine starts including the libraries (a stub would probably work fine)
  • Someone can somehow modify MCPELauncher to run MCEE
  • Or (extremely unlikely), MCEE will start supporting Linux

(Honestly, the last option will never probably happen, but how hard is it to port an app from macOS, which is another UNIX-like operating system)

@CyrilSLi
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Porting command-line apps from macOS to Linux is relatively easy as they share common libraries, however macOS graphics are completely different and proprietary.

@techguy16
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Porting command-line apps from macOS to Linux is relatively easy as they share common libraries, however macOS graphics are completely different and proprietary.

MCEE uses OpenGL (through RenderDragon) on non-Windows devices to display graphics. It also uses .NET, which can run on Linux (albeit without the "cool" stuff).

The problem here is, not that a port is possible, but that Microsoft (probably) thinks a Linux port would be useless and unnecessary, due to the smaller user base and not many people using it. The whole problem could be solved just by switching back to the pre-1.19 login system, which the Minecraft Launcher AND standard Bedrock edition use.

@techguy16
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@TheLizardMarkZuckerberg @CyrilSLi I can confirm Minecraft Education works in Waydroid (although it's annoying to get working)!

@CyrilSLi
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I was able to get MCEE 1.14.70 (I needed that specific version) running on Fedora with wine-staging. I used the latest version of Visual C++ as it is backwards compatible. I also had to install dxvk for graphics to work properly (note that on Fedora it needs to be installed from source as the repo version expects regular wine). Follow the readme to set it up in winecfg. I had gotten an "out of storage" error in MC when I loaded many chunks, may test this further if I have time.

@techguy16
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I was able to get MCEE 1.14.70 (I needed that specific version) running on Fedora with wine-staging. I used the latest version of Visual C++ as it is backwards compatible. I also had to install dxvk for graphics to work properly (note that on Fedora it needs to be installed from source as the repo version expects regular wine). Follow the readme to set it up in winecfg. I had gotten an "out of storage" error in MC when I loaded many chunks, may test this further if I have time.

I am aware that MCEE prior to the login system change in 1.19* work in Wine. For some reason, 1.18.45 used to work, but now it doesn't. 1.21.* have become full UWP apps, and no window launches in Wine anymore.

@Mroxny
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Mroxny commented Jun 29, 2025

Has anyone also had a trouble logging in and knows how to solve it?

image

@MrMan314
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MrMan314 commented Jul 3, 2025

I found a tutorial that allows you to get past the sign-in dialog even on the latest versions and also allows for ray-tracing support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so1VszRPOfk

The bypass method is a bit outdated and will break many textures, so you can do the following:

  1. Extract the education.zip file from the description
  2. Copy the files education/textures/{1,2,3,4}.png and education/ui/{ui,debug}_screen.json to the extracted appx directory in their respective directories under data/resource_packs/education
  3. Edit the data/resource_packs/education/ui/_ui_defs.json to include the ui_screen.json file:
18c18,19
<     "ui/multiplayer_lesson_screen.json"
---
>     "ui/multiplayer_lesson_screen.json",
>     "ui/ui_screen.json"
  1. Edit the data/resource_packs/education/contents.json file to include the new textures and UI json files:
129a130,141
>             "path": "textures/1.png"
>         },
>         {
>             "path": "textures/2.png"
>         },
>         {
>             "path": "textures/3.png"
>         },
>         {
>             "path": "textures/4.png"
>         },
>         {
583a596,601
>         },
>         {
>             "path": "ui/debug_screen.json"
>         },
>         {
>             "path": "ui/ui_screen.json"
  1. Follow the rest of the video for the setup. RTX is supported on any GCN 1.0 or later AMD GPU, however the performance is best when RT is natively supported. If you don't want RTX or don't have the hardware required, you can just run wine Minecraft.Windows.exe to start (I had to switch to the wine-staging 10.10-1 package on arch (cachyos), as the normal wine package just showed the panorama when I launched)

@techguy16
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Has anyone also had a trouble logging in and knows how to solve it?

image

Login used to work in Wine 7.16, so I don't know why it doesn't work now.

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