Firestorm, Currently Broken on Linux

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If you’re like me, and you abandoned Windows quite a while ago, or maybe even recently, and you use the Firestorm viewer for Second Life (yes, this is probably an extreme niche of a niche of people), you’ve likely noticed that the latest update to the Firestorm flatpak has destroyed Firestorm. Destroyed, as in, as soon as you launch it, it closes itself. But, there’s a work-around …

The issue, is that, apparently, in the latest update a few days ago, due to recent changes with regard to Mesa drivers, Firestorm no longer works. There is a fix on the way, but, as we know, these fixes could take … any infinitely guessable amount of time to hit your machine. It could be tomorrow, it could be in 3 weeks, it could be in 3 months. Who knows! I’m personally running Pop!_OS, and my Firestorm updates come, sometimes, weeks after they’ve been released.

As someone who is running multiple stores in Second Life, and has some other things I need to look after on a daily basis, this is no bueno.

But, also, if you’re on Linux, you might like to game? You might dabble in a little pew pew, and a little fictional love triangle? Well, do I have news for you.

Open up Lutris. If you don’t have it, get it. Use Flatseal to make sure it has access to all of your drives (just in case you don’t want to install things to your main hdd). Search for Firestorm, install that motherfreaker. Boom.

Launch it.

You’re back in Second Life.

For now.

Until the Mesa, or Firestorm devs break something else.

I figured I would share this, though, because the amount of Linux users out there are growing. Growing, as Microsoft continues to transform Windows into a vehicle for malware and spam.

I was willing to give up Call of Duty to use Linux, due to their kernel level anti-cheat, that should, frankly, be illegal. But Second Life is essential, and I refuse to reinstall Windows for one damn program or game.