How to play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on Linux
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the 5th entry in the Metal Gear Solid series. In MGS V, you play as Punished “Venom” Snake, during his adventures in Soviet-occupied Afganistan.
The game was developed by Kojima Productions and published by Konami. It was released in 2015 and was highly regarded as an excellent entry in the series. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to get MGS V working on your Linux PC.
Setting up Metal Gear Solid: V The Phantom Pain
Getting MGS V up and running on Linux requires the Linux Steam client. To install the Linux Steam client, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then enter the commands below to get Steam up and running.
Ubuntu
On Ubuntu, installing Steam is quite easy. Just use the Apt command below to get it working.
sudo apt install steam
Debian
On Debian, installing Steam isn’t as easy as using apt-get install. Instead, you must download the Steam DEB package from the internet and use the dpkg tool to get it working.
wget https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steam.deb sudo dpkg -i steam.deb
Arch Linux
Steam is widely available to all Arch Linux users. To get it up and running on your Linux PC, use the following Pacman command in a terminal window.
sudo pacman -S steam
Fedora/OpenSUSE
Those running Fedora Linux or OpenSUSE Linux will have a little trouble getting Steam set up through traditional means. For this reason, we highly recommend using the Flatpak release of Steam on these operating systems.
Flatpak
Steam is available as a Flatpak. Since it is available as a Flatpak, all Linux operating systems have the ability to play their favorite games. Even those using lesser-known Linux distributions will be able to use it.
To start the installation of Steam on Linux, set up the Flatpak runtime on your Linux PC. Setting up the Flatpak runtime is critical to using Flatpak apps. After setting up the runtime, use the command below to add the Flathub app store to your Flatpak sources.
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
Once you’ve added the Flathub app store to your system, you will be able to install the Steam Linux app with the flatpak install command below.
flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam
With the Steam app set up on your Linux PC, open it up by browsing for “Steam” in your app menu. Then, log into your Steam account and find the “Steam” menu, and click on it with the mouse.
Inside of the “Steam” menu, select “Settings” to access your Steam settings. From there, locate the “Steam Play” option, and select it with the mouse.
In the “Steam Play” area, check the box that says “Enable Steam Play for supported titles.” This option will enable you to play Microsoft Windows games (like the Phantom Pain) on Linux. Be sure also to check the box next to “Enable Steam Play for all other titles,) as MGS V must have this option checked.
After enabling Steam Play in Steam, click “OK.” Then, find the “Store” button and click on it with the mouse to go to the Steam Store Front. On the Steam Store Front, find the search box, and click on it. Type in “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain,” and press the Enter key to search.
Look through the search results for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and click on it to go to the game page. Purchase the game by clicking “Add to Cart.”
When you’ve purchased MGS V, click on the “Library” button in Steam to return to your Steam library. Look through your Steam library for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and click on it to go to its library page.
On the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain library page in Steam, click on the green “INSTALL” button to download the game to your Linux PC. When MGS V is done downloading, the green “INSTALL” button will turn into a blue “PLAY” button. Click it to play the game!
Troubleshooting Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain runs very well on Linux with no tweaks necessary. Some say that you’d be surprised it’s a Windows game and not a native Linux port. Still, it’s not 100% perfect, and issues can occur.
If you run into problems playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, be sure to check out its page on ProtonDB. It’ll help you troubleshoot your issues. Additionally, the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain ProtonDB page may help you find various tweaks to make the game run even better than it already does!
