Unreal Engine 5

This article or section is a candidate for merging with Unreal Engine 4.

Notes: There are too many duplicates. It is better to merge these two articles under Unreal Engine. (Discuss in Talk:Unreal Engine 4#Update or split article to UE5?)

Unreal Engine 5 is the latest version of the videogame engine created by Epic Games.

The content of this article was originally written on Unreal Engine wiki and adapted specifically for Arch Linux.

Prerequisites

See Recommended Hardware. If you plan to write C++ code for Unreal projects, you will need a supported code editor or IDE. Popular cross-platform choices are Visual Studio Code (free) and JetBrains Rider (free for FOSS projects).

Installation

You can install Unreal Engine by either downloading pre-compiled binaries or compiling from source.

Pre-compiled binaries

You can install pre-compiled binaries manually or with a helper application or script.

Manual installation

To download pre-compiled binaries, you will need to visit the Unreal Engine for Linux web page and log into a valid Epic Games account. Once logged in, you should see a list of available builds as compressed archives ("Linux_Unreal_Engine_<version>.zip"), usually weighing about ~25GB (~43GB uncompressed). Additionally, you will still need to install dependencies to run the extracted binaries (see the AUR package for reference).

After installing dependencies and downloading Unreal Engine, you should be able to extract the files wherever you please and launch the Unreal Engine editor using the binary located in the extracted path:

$ .../Linux_Unreal_Engine_5.x.x//Engine/Binaries/Linux/UnrealEditor

Note If you want Unreal Engine to be available for all users in the system, you will want to place it in /opt/unreal-engine, but that will require you to set appropriate permissions. Wrong permissions can result in issues running the Unreal Engine editor and compiling project code.

Assisted installation

There are multiple helper applications and scripts that handle installing Unreal Engine alongside common additional setup steps. Common choices published on the AUR are:

unreal-engine-manager^AUR: a minimalist application focused solely on installing Unreal Engine and managing multiple versions.
epic-asset-manager^AUR: a front-end for installing Unreal Engine and accessing assets purchased on Epic Games Store.
asset-manager-studio^AUR: a feature-rich launcher for Unreal Engine, Unreal for Fortnite (UEFN), and FAB.
unreal-engine-bin^AUR: an AUR package that installs Unreal Engine and handles common additional setup.

Note All of these applications and scripts require an Epic Games account.

Compiling from source

The Unreal Engine repository on GitHub is private and maintained by Epic Games. To gain access, login or register at Epic Games Accounts and provide an accessible GitHub username at the bottom of the Linked Accounts page. GitHub will then send an email inviting you to join the EpicGames organization on GitHub, and accepting that invitation will automatically provide you with access to the Unreal Engine repository. More information can be found here.

You can compile manually from a downloaded GitHub release or install from AUR. By default the engine will be compiled on all physical cores.

Note Excluding shaders, the compilation will take about ~5 hours for the average high end consumer CPU (i9 or Ryzen 9). This could be somewhat accelerated by forcing to use all cores instead of just physical cores. A Ryzen 9 6900HX compiles Unreal Engine 5.4.2 in ~5 hours using all 8 physical cores, with packaging, un-packaging and compiling shaders afterwards taking about another hour - thus making the total install time for that CPU ~6 hours.

Manual compilation

Once you have access to the repository, you can clone it. As the source is quite large, it is faster to clone only the desired branch:

$ git clone git@github.com:EpicGames/UnrealEngine.git --branch release --single-branch

Note Since the repository is private, you will likely need to set up an SSH key so your GitHub account is used to clone the source.

Note Manual compilation instructions differ greatly from the PKGBUILD in the AUR.

You can get the most recent releases on GitHub as ZIPs.

Note Access to the private repository requires an invitation to the Epic Games Organization. An invitation can be acquired by linking a GitHub account to an Epic Games account.

Setup:

$ ./Setup.sh

Generate project files:

$ ./GenerateProjectFiles.sh

Then compile:

$ make -j1

This will compile the Unreal Engine and the Unreal Editor.

Note Do not try to use -jN with N bigger than 1 (e.g. -j12). This would cause build to fail with another instance of UnrealBuildTool is running. Compilation of individual sources would run in parallel regardless of this flag, this influence sub-modules being run in parallel.

Warning Building via make seems to cause build failures on some modules. If you experience build failures, the recommended approach is to build using the provided Build.sh script as shown below. Some modules may still fail on the first attempt, but repeating the Build.sh script seems to fix the issue (unlike rerunning make).

$ ./Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Linux/Build.sh UnrealEditor Linux Development -Progress

From the AUR

Unreal Engine 5 is available in the AUR as the unreal-engine^AUR package. You might have to fix permissions for UE5 to precompile shaders on first launch:

# chmod -R a+rwX /opt/unreal-engine/Engine

In the case of version 5.4, the installed size is ~190 GiB, it needs 340+ GiB to build with the final package being ~45 GiB when compressed. This PKGBUILD downloads ~20 GiB of source files plus ~5 GiB of dependencies.

Note The precompiled version available with unreal-engine-bin^AUR is only a third of this size at around ~63GB.

For a smaller download you can use .zip releases as a source for PKGBUILD. Note that this link will not work unless you first follow the steps outlined above.

Note Manual compilation instructions differ greatly from the PKGBUILD in the AUR.

Troubleshooting

Compilation problems

If the compilation fails you should try building the Editor using the Debug profile[1]:

$ make UE5Editor-Linux-Debug

However, this might have some performance impact.

Another approach would be to use different clang version (e.g. 3.8 or 4.0)

Runtime problems

If the editor does not start from the menu, or something does not work right, start it in a console and check the output for errors.

$ /opt/unreal-engine/Engine/Binaries/Linux/UnrealEditor

C++ code project problems

After creating a code project, the new project opens in a text editor instead of in Unreal Editor as it should. After re-launching the editor, the new project shows up and can be opened, but on the first run, it takes a half-hour or so to compile, and since this happens in the background (no GUI) it might not seem to be doing anything. The CPU usage should show that it is still compiling, and you may want to launch the editor from a console to see progress.

If while trying to open the project in UE for the first time, you get a message about editor modules being out of date, you need to build the UE5Editor target in your IDE. Do not abort this build, or you will brick the Unreal Editor and will need to reinstall unreal-engine. Afterward, it will open and ask you to rebuild the project class, after which you can actually start working on your new project.

Note that completing both of these rebuilds can very well take over an hour, depending on your system specs.

Engine modules are out of date, and cannot be compiled while the engine is running. Please build through your IDE

First, in your source folder in your project, check that {nameofproject}.Target.cs and {nameofproject}Editor.Target.cs has "DefaultBuildSettings = BuildSettingsVersion.V2;" in the section base(Target) { ... } If it does not work, check the file Engine/Source/Developer/DesktopPlatform/Private/DesktopPlatformBase.cpp in your Unreal Engine source code, look for the line `Arguments += " -Progress -NoEngineChanges -NoHotReloadFromIDE";` and remove the two last options : `Arguments += " -Progress";`

Re-compile Unreal Engine
Launch your project and accept the rebuild

Disable Tooltips

UE4's mouse-over tooltips might be rendered very slow. They can be disabled by adding to:

Engine/Config/ConsoleVariables.ini

Slate.EnableToolTips=0

Random freeze under KDE

Disable index file content in the KDE file search options.

Slow rendered tooltips in KDE

Epic suggests allowing compositing for the Unreal Editor, which is stopped by default. Source: https://michaeljcole.github.io/wiki.unrealengine.com/Linux_Known_Issues/#KDE

Blank window in Blueprint with multi-monitor configuration

To fix the big blank window go to Edit Preferences > User interface > Enable Window Animation and activate the checkbox

Issues with Wayland in a Window Manager

Unreal Engine has lots of issues with its wayland support. It is recommended to use the x11 version by setting these environment variables.

unset QT_SCALE_FACTOR
unset QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR
unset GDK_SCALE
unset GDK_DPI_SCALE

export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11

Alternatively, edit the Exec= line in the desktop entry:

~/.local/share/applications/com.epicgames.UnrealEngineEditor.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=env QT_SCALE_FACTOR=unset env QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=unset env GDK_SCALE=unset env GDK_DPI_SCALE=unset env SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11 ~/UnrealEngine/Engine/Binaries/Linux/UnrealEditor

SDL: wayland not available

When trying to force the editor to run on Wayland using the SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland environment variable, the editor will give this error to some users. The cause of this problem is unknown, as such no reliable solution exists for this problem. Setting SDL_DYNAMIC_API=/usr/lib/libSDL2.so will actually allow you to run the editor on wayland but it will crash the moment you hover your mouse over certain UI elements.

Flickering shadows, stuttering, random crashes

There seem to be major issues with frame buffer synchronization with Vulkan on NVIDIA drivers. The simplest fix for this is to run in `one-thread mode without parallel rendering. It's not ideal, but it provides a significantly more stable experience and fixes a variety of issues in the editor.

If you're experiencing issues, try launching your project like so:

$ /Path/To/Unreal/Engine/Binaries/Linux/UnrealEditor "/Path/To/YourProject/YourProject.uproject" -NoParallelRendering -onethread

FAB plugin does not load

The FAB plugin, as well as other Unreal Engine components that rely on web services via CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework), may fail to load or work only partially on some systems.

This issue is related to name resolution via glibc NSS when using systemd-resolved. In particular, configurations that include the resolve NSS module with conditional return rules (such as [!UNAVAIL=return]) may cause DNS resolution failures inside CEF-based applications. As a result, CEF is unable to resolve Epic Games service endpoints, causing the FAB plugin to malfunction or remain blank.

This problem is most likely to affect Unreal Engine 5.6 and later versions, which ship with newer CEF builds (CEF 128 and newer).

A workaround is to simplify the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf to use a more traditional and deterministic resolution order:

For example:

/etc/nsswitch.conf

# Default configuration (commented out)
#hosts: mymachines resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] files myhostname dns

# Simplified configuration to improve compatibility with CEF-based components
hosts: files dns

After applying the change, restart Unreal Editor.

Additional Content

Starter Content

The StarterContent project is installed to /opt/unreal-engine/Samples/StarterContent/StarterContent.uproject, you can browse to it from the launcher.

Marketplace Apps

The launcher with the Unreal Marketplace is not available for Linux yet[2], so apps like the ContentExamples project cannot be installed from Linux[3].

The marketplace apps can be downloaded using the launcher on Windows (or Mac), they are stored in /ProgramData/Epic/EpicGamesLauncher/VaultCache. ProgramData is hidden by default.

There are several options to download Marketplace content natively:

use lutris and the Epic Games Store installer, with disabled sandbox you can add content directly into your projects
use Epic Asset Manager from flathub or eam-git^AUR which lets you download the assets to the vault
there is an implementation of UE4 Marketplace Downloader written in JS.