This post is a companion to my VRChat on Linux guide.
So, you’ve gotten Linux installed, VRChat’s running well, but you want to get into content creation for VRChat.
This, hopefully shorter, post will walk you through getting it set up, though a lot of the steps depend heavily on the distro you choose. I run Arch (btw) so I’ll be providing exact steps for Arch, but I’ll do my best to provide steps for Fedora as well!
Arch-based distros
The very first step is to get an AUR helper installed. There’s a few, but we’ll be using yay for this. Already have paru? You can use that too, just substitute the commands. You can skip this if you already have one installed!
If not, proceed to installing yay.
Installing yay
- Copy and paste this line (direct from the
yaygithub repository):sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel && git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-bin.git && cd yay-bin && makepkg -siinto a terminal. - Wait for it to be done and type your password as needed. Once for installing packages, once for installing yay itself
Once you’re done, run yay -V. If it returns something like yay v13.0.1 - libalpm v16.0.1, you’re golden.
Once yay is installed, we can simply run yay -S alcom-bin unityhub, and wait for it to install.
Fedora-based distros
NOTE: These steps are UNTESTED. Please let me know if it doesn’t work!
First, install a few packages that Unity Hub needs: sudo dnf install openssl openssl-libs GConf2 openssl1.1
Next, we’re gonna need to run this really long command. Don’t worry, it just creates and writes to a text file so we don’t have to type it in manually!
sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[unityhub]\nname=Unity Hub\nbaseurl=https://hub.unity3d.com/linux/repos/rpm/stable\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://hub.unity3d.com/linux/repos/rpm/stable/repodata/repomd.xml.key\nrepo_gpgcheck=1" > /etc/yum.repos.d/unityhub.repo'
If you’re curious, the file’s contents are:
[unityhub]
name=Unity Hub
baseurl=https://hub.unity3d.com/linux/repos/rpm/stable
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://hub.unity3d.com/linux/repos/rpm/stable/repodata/repomd.xml.key
repo_gpgcheck=1
The command itself creates a new shell and runs echo -e. The -e flag allows for escape sequences, like \n, for a new line. It then echos a line, again, using \n for new lines and redirects it to a file (which doesn’t exist, but bash, the default shell for most Linux distros, will automatically create the file if it doesn’t exist) using > (>> will append and is extremely useful!)
Okay, now that that’s done, it should be as easy as running sudo dnf install unityhub.
Next, we want to download the RPM listed here. Download the latest release that starts with gui. As of this post, that’s gui-v1.1.8. Download alcom-<version>.x86_64.rpm. Note that <version> is just a placeholder, so with the latest version it’d be alcom-1.1.8-1.x86_64.rpm.
Then, run sudo dnf install ./alcom-<version>.x86_64.rpm in the directory you downloaded it to. If you’re using Firefox like any sane person, that’s going to be ~/Downloads. Run cd ~/Downloads BEFORE running the dnf command. Again, replace <version> with whatever version you downloaded.
These next steps are distro agnostic, so no collapsing for them!
Open Unity Hub, log in, do not install anything it offers to, and install Unity 2022.3.22f1 by clicking the installs tab (just under projects), clicking the blue install editor button, going to the archive tab, changing the version from Unity 6, to Unity 2022, then scroll until you find the version ending in .3.22f1.
Can't find everything?
Hopefully this GIF helps! It might take a bit to start playing.
Next, open ALCOM. It should automatically detect Unity Hub. If it doesn’t, you might need to figure out where it is manually. It should also automatically detect your Unity installation.
Last step! Open a terminal and run mkdir -p ~/ALCOM/Projects, then move your VRChat projects (if any!) into that projects directory.
Then, click this:
Once that’s done, open a project and make sure everything works!