MINECRAFT ON GNU/LINUX

Minecraft on GNU/Linux is incredibly good these days. For some time the freedom OS had better performance over Windows. And with the way GNU/Linux handles things, Minecraft is a simple thing to get going, and going well. Here are a quick list of methods, depending on taste, to get Minecraft up and going. I will not, say its a full list, but a good number of options are present.

MICROSOFT LAUNCHER

To use the Microsoft Launcher you have a few options. As I do not recommend nor use Snaps, I have omitted them. For those that are interested in that route, feel free to search the Snap store for the appropriate download. Last I heard, it existed.

• Minecraft Java Edition Launcher Flatpak

• Microsoft Java Edition Official Packages

• Use one of the fancy all in one launchers detailed below

THIRD PARTY LAUNCHERS

There are a myriad of third party launchers that make life quite nice. The following are ones I have used, or an associate has used, and have been impressed with. I personally use the Flatpak for PolyMC and the RPM release of GDLauncher.

• GDLauncher Github release page

• GDLauncher FLatpak : Unofficial release and thus may be out of date at times. If using and run into problems, use the package or AppImage instead.

• PolyMC

• PolyMC Flatpak

• MultiMC

• Tekkit Launcher : this is a jar, reference how to run jars on GNU/Linux below.

• Bukkit, CraftBukkit, & Spigot : this is a jar, reference how to run jars on GNU/Linux below.

• TLauncher : : this is a jar, reference how to run jars on GNU/Linux below.

• ATLauncher Github release page : this is a jar, reference how to run jars on GNU/Linux below.

RUNNING .JAR FILES

Running a jar is simple. For the purposes of running one of the launchers above, the following steps should get you going.

1. Download what you want.
2. Make a directory somewhere for minecraft stuff, and then a subdir named what you are using, for illustration purposes I shall detail ATLauncher
3. Move the zip/jar file into the newly created folder
4. Unzip if need be
5. Launch it

mkdir -p ~/Games/Minecraft/ATLauncher
mv ~/Downloads/ATLauncher.jar ~/Games/Minecraft/ATLauncher
java -jar ./ATLauncher.jar

If you are looking to create a menu entry for this, create a new file. Then edit appropriately the following and save it in your Minecraft directory:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Games/Minecraft/ATLauncher
java -jar ATLauncher.jar

Then, once that is made, you can create a menu entry and save it as "~/.local/share/applications/ATLauncher.desktop". Take note that here we cannot use any shortcuts such as the tilde for /home/username and the like.

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/home/andrew/Games/Minecraft/atlauncher.sh
Name=ATLauncher
Icon=/home/andrew/Games/Minecraft/atlauncher.png
Categories=Game;

Once the game is plopped where it needs to be, the launch script is done, and the .desktop file is plopped where I mentioned earlier, you should see on most systems the newly created shortcut appear in the menu. If it does not, relog. If it still is gone, recheck spelling, paths, and case. Remember GNU/Linux, BSD, and UNIX are very much so case sensitive.

For each additional jar you need to do, simply copy and edit accordingly. Frankly, although easy enough, my laziness is the winner, and PolyMC or GDLauncher are just faster. But if you need to manually run a jar file, here is how.