Halo Custom Edition Installation Guide (Linux)

Before starting you should make sure your system is running up-to-date software. Begin by launching a terminal and running the commands for your distribution.

Now you can install the dependencies required to run the game on Linux. We will be using winetricks to help install dependencies.

Now you can download the Halo Custom Edition installer and patch (required). You are also highly recommended to download the Chimera mod and the Refined map pack for a vastly improved experience. Download mirrors are ordered from most to least recommended. This guide assumes you use the top mirror, if you choose another mirror make sure you adjust file names where they differ in future commands.

In your terminal navigate to where you downloaded your installer and patch (cd ~/Downloads).

In your terminal navigate to where you downloaded Chimera (cd ~/Downloads).

7z x "chimera-latest.7z" -ochimera

cd chimera

Before installing, you will need to make a change to the chimera.ini configuration file. Open it in your editor and navigate to the [font_override] section and change the enabled\=1 to be enabled\=0 to disable the font override.

; Enable overriding Chimera's fonts
enabled=0

You may also customize other settings as you wish. When you are satisfied, run the following commands to install Chimera.

# install chimera
cp -f chimera.ini strings.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Microsoft\ Games/Halo\ Custom\ Edition/

# install fonts in wine
cp -f fonts/*.ttf ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts/

In your terminal navigate to where you downloaded Refined (cd ~/Downloads).

7z x halo_refined*.7z -orefined

cd refined

cp -f *.map ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Microsoft\ Games/Halo\ Custom\ Edition/maps/

Halo Custom Edition should now be installed on your machine (along with any addons you may have opted to install). If you are running a standard desktop environment such as Gnome or KDE you should find an entry for Halo Custom Edition in your application launcher. If you don’t find one, or are using alternate desktop environment/window manager, you can follow the steps below to create a launcher script.

Create a new file using your editor, name halo-launcher or similar. Input the following script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

export WINEDEBUG=-all

cd "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Games/Halo Custom Edition"
nohup wine haloce.exe &

Save the file and run chmod +x halo-launcher to make it executable. Finally, run sudo mv halo-launcher /usr/local/bin which will allow you to launch the application from anywhere. Run halo-launcher from your application launcher or the terminal and the game should run.

Congratulations, you should now have Halo Custom Edition installed and running on your favorite Linux distribution. Have fun playing one of the best video games of all time. Please join the community at Open Carnage (if you are experiencing issues we’d love to help you out). You can also find some discord channels, websites, and further resources below.