AppImages
The latest versions of OpenRA are distributed using the portable AppImage format. These packages contain all of the files and libraries (except for Mono) required to run OpenRA on any modern 64 bit Linux distribution.
After you download the AppImage file for the OpenRA mod(s) that you wish to play you must make them executable. You can do this by right clicking on the file in your file manager and activate the Properties panel. Switch to the Permissions tab and enable the Allow executing file as program checkbox. You can now double click the AppImage to play!
This can also be done using the terminal:
$ chmod a+x OpenRA-*-x86_64.AppImage
$ ./OpenRA-*-x86_64.AppImage
By default, OpenRA will not attempt to integrate with your operating system (aside from storing data in the ~/.openra directory). If you would like to install launcher shortcuts, icons, and MIME types (the openra-*:// protocol that lets you join a server directly from your web browser) then you must install appimaged, provided by the AppImage team. OpenRA also integrates with AppImageUpdate (described on the appimaged page) to enable simple updates through your software launcher.
OpenRA versions 20190314 and earlier require a system installation of mono, version 4.2 or later. Most recent Linux distributions include Mono in their default repositories that can be installed using your usual package manager. For example:
| Distribution | Package name |
|---|---|
| Debian or Ubuntu-based | mono-complete |
| RPM-based (e.g. Fedora, Mageia, openSUSE) | mono-complete |
| Solus | mono-devel |
| Void Linux | mono |
| Arch Linux and derivatives (e.g. Manjaro) | mono |
| Gentoo and derivatives (e.g. Sabayon) | dev-lang/mono |
Other distributions, or older releases that include Mono < 4.2 can install or update from the upstream Mono repository.
A dedicated server instance can be started by running the AppImage with the --server argument. For example:
./OpenRA-Red-Alert-x86_64.AppImage --server Server.Name="My Server" Server.ListenPort=1234 Server.AdvertiseOnline=True
If you want to run a server from a container that does not include libfuse then you can execute the AppImage with the --appimage-extract command to extract the filesystem contents into a squashfs-root directory. You may then launch the AppRun script with the same arguments as above.
If you want to use the OpenRA Utility modding/mapping helper tool you can run the AppImage with the --utility argument (requires playtest-20190106 or later). For example, to convert an original Red Alert map to an oramap you can run
./OpenRA-Red-Alert-x86_64.AppImage --utility --import-ra-map /path/to/map.ini
and the converted oramap will be saved in the current working directory.