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Last active December 9, 2025 13:05
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STALKER GAMMA on Linux 2025.md

STALKER GAMMA on Linux with Steam - 2025

Mord3rca's neat gamma-launcher tool makes it possible to install STALKER GAMMA natively on Linux bypassing GAMMA's installer which needs Windows to run.

This doc is a short summary of 2 other documents but aimed at using Steam instead of Lutris to run the game.

  1. gamma-launcher covers the installation of gamma-launcher. If you're on Arch or a variant of it, consider using yay -Sy gamma-launcher to let Arch manage the install and keep it updated for you.
  2. A guide to getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - G.A.M.M.A. running on GNU/Linux by DravenusRex is a good guide to getting it running with Lutris. It was the basis for this document.

Read the above for reference if you need, but the below covers the entire process.

Installation

Pre-requisites

You should have Steam installed and running on your Linux machine already.

You will also need the protontricks package so install that using your distro's install tool. On Arch that would be yay -Sy protontricks (or pacman or equivalent if you don't use yay).

Install GAMMA

  1. Install gamma-launcher as above.
  2. Pick a location to store the game. You'll need 3 folders, the locations I chose are in parentheses:
    • ANOMALY install location (~/Games/STALKER/ANOMALY)
    • GAMMA install location (~/Games/STALKER/GAMMA)
    • gamma-launcher cache folder (~/Games/STALKER/gamma-launcher-cache)
    • The space needed for a full install (September 2025, GAMMA 0.9.4):
        17G ANOMALY/
    83G GAMMA/
    46G gamma-launcher-cache/
    • The cache will speed up updates significantly and prevent moddb from blocking you for using too much bandwidth, so you should consider leaving it there permanently
  3. Run gamma-launcher to do a full install of the game:
    • gamma-launcher full-install --anomaly ~/Games/STALKER/ANOMALY --gamma ~/Games/STALKER/GAMMA --cache-directory ~/Games/STALKER/gamma-launcher-cache
    • Change the folder names to suit your preference

Add GAMMA to Steam

  1. Bring up Steam and go to the Library
  2. In the bottom left corner click "Add a Game" and then "Add a Non-Steam Game"
  3. Navigate to ModOrganizer.exe in the GAMMA folder (/home/YOURUSERNAME/Games/STALKER/GAMMA/ModOrganizer.exe)
  4. Now that you have a new game called ModOrganizer.exe in the list, right click on the game and select Properties, then go to the Compatibility tab. Select "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" so that it is ticked. From the drop-down that shows up, select the newest version of Proton listed. A Proton 10 or 9 version would be good in 2025, but you can use a later one if it exists.
  5. Run MO2 by clicking the Play button and when the MO2 window pops up, hit Cancel and quit out - don't proceed further until you've done the steps below

Add dependencies

  1. Run protontricks from the terminal.
  2. Select Non-Steam shortcut: ModOrganizer.exe from the list and hit OK.
  3. Protontricks will look like it exited, be patient - it will pop up a bunch of dialogs. Just hit OK on any warnings or errors.
  4. When you get to the "Winetricks - choose a wineprefix" screen, make sure "Select the default wineprefix" is selected and hit OK.
  5. In the next screen select "Install a Windows DLL or component"
  6. In the next screen select each of these components before hitting OK:
    • cmd
    • d3dcompiler_47
    • d3dx10
    • d3dx11_43
    • d3dx9
    • dx8vb
    • quartz
    • vcrun2022 - Ignore any warnings about the SHA hashes not matching when this is being installed.
  7. Aside: We do not select dxvk here because Proton, used by Steam, already incorporates dxvk. If you're using Wine instead, perhaps through Lutrix, you should use dxvk as it's a big performance boost.
  8. Follow the prompts to install all of the packages, one by one.

Running MO2 and the game

  1. Go back to Steam and launch MO2 (the ModOrganizer 2 non-Steam game you added)
  2. Pick a portable install when asked
  3. When asked for the game's location pick the ANOMALY install directory (~/Games/STALKER/ANOMALY), not the GAMMA folder.
  4. The defaults are correct for all other folders.
  5. When MO2 comes up, the Anomaly Launcher should be visible on the right pane. Run it to play GAMMA.
@zachButsyakDev
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zachButsyakDev commented Nov 28, 2025

peak

@VernonHughes-OR
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VernonHughes-OR commented Nov 29, 2025 •
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Absolute mega W in the chat for this chad, ill let you know if it worked for me later when I can get to it.

Edit: Wait that worked?! The first time? Without troubleshooting? Brother might be the biggest gigachad fr.

Note that Mord3rca's install guide did seem to leave out that the uninstall reshade gamma-launcher remove-reshade --anomaly <Anomaly path> is required, not an optional step. Game still looks great, and also the mod organizer will tell you it is not set up for x3d links or something like that iirc, but you have to hit yes in the warning box. Also if you have to venv the python install for Mord3rca's script, do note that If currently in your gamma-launcher folder, you can simply type pip install . OR pip install directory. Replace 'directory' with the actual path of said directory. The specificed directory must contain the gamma-launcher setup.py file. is not actually the setup.py file (there is no such file), you actually need the pyproject.toml directory.

@zachButsyakDev
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zachButsyakDev commented Dec 1, 2025 •
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OLD: Seems like theres issues when you uninstall it and install it onto a different drive. Worked perfectly installing to my HDD until I got fed up with loading times (My fault for putting it onto my HDD to be fair), now have attempted installs on my SSD three times now and can't get MO2 to load the gamma mods. Launches anomaly just fine, but with... no mods.

EDIT: Figured out the issue. When you select Anomaly as the game location, MO2 jumps to the next prompt asking for the instance location (i.e. where the mods are located) which will default to the gamma directory, which is correct. I, in all my genius, thought that MO2 was for some reason setting the game location as the gamma directory even though I clicked on the Anomaly directory. As it turns out, once you select Anomaly as your game location (correctly), MO2 jumps straight to selecting the instance directory with no 'confirmation' on setting the Anomaly directory as the game directory. This , to me, makes it look like I incorrectly set GAMMA as the game directory. Upon 'fixing' my mistake, I set both the game and instance directories to Anomaly. If you made this mistake post-install, try going into the instance settings and changing the instance directory to GAMMA. Oops.

TLDR: When you select Anomaly as game location like the guide says, you're basically done and you can click through the rest of the setup.
Game Directory: /FILEPATH/TO/ANOMALY/
Instance Directory: /FILEPATH/TO/GAMMA

@olekse
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olekse commented Dec 9, 2025

OK this is based. Thoughts?

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