Elite: Dangerous HUD Mod UI on Linux

EDHM+UI is a tool that lets you change the colors and lighting of the HUD in Elite: Dangerous. Does it work on Linux? Yes!

tl;dr: Install EDHM+UI in its own WINE prefix, then point it at your E:D install.

Long version:

  1. Download the EDHM+UI installer (EDHM_UI_Setup.msi) from GitHub.
  2. Choose a name for a new WINE prefix: export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine_edhmui"
  3. Initialize the prefix with: wine wineboot
  4. Install .NET to the prefix: winetricks dotnet48. This will take you through a couple installers. Just continue through any warnings the installers show.
  5. Make sure the Windows version is set to one supported by EDHM+UI: winetricks win10
  6. Install EDHM+UI to the prefix (replace with the path to the .msi if it is not in the current folder): wine msiexec /i ./EDHM_UI_Setup.msi
  7. (Optional) Download an icon for a shortcut: wget https://bluemystical.github.io/edhm-api/assets/img/logo.png -O "${WINEPREFIX}/logo.png"

  8. Set up a .desktop file to put EDHM in your menu. Create ~/.local/share/applications/edhm-ui.desktop with a text editor and put the following in. Replace NAME with your username.

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=EDHM UI
Comment=E:D HUD Mod UI
Exec=env WINEDEBUG="-all" WINEPREFIX="/home/NAME/.wine_edhmui" "/home/NAME/.wine_edhmui/drive_c/users/NAME/AppData/Local/EDHM_UI/EDHM_UI_mk2.exe"
Icon=/home/NAME/.wine_edhmui/logo.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Game

  9. Start EDHM+UI. Point it at your Elite Dangerous install(s). In the following picture it references my Steam install. You can likely find your install with: find ~ -name elite-dangerous-odyssey-64, but be sure to use the Windows-style path like I do, usually under Z:\. To make the box editable/browsable, CTRL+LEFT-CLICK the pi (π) symbol first. image

  10. You can then use EDHM+UI like on Windows. Select a premade theme, tweak it, add third-party plugins, and apply it. And just like Windows, you can use a hotkey (F11 by default) to reload a changed theme while the game is running.

Note: I was getting frequent crashes from EDHM UI, but I was still able to apply a theme and add a third-party plugin.

References: 1. EDHM+UI Discord MrVaad 2. EDHM+UI Discord Thorned Rose 3. GitHub issue

Tested versions: * Arch Linux as of 2024-02-19 * wine 9.2-1 * winetricks 20240105-1 * EDHM+UI v2.2.19

Filed in: #elitedangerous #linux