How to install on Linux

This guide will help you get Alien Swarm working on any standard Linux system.

Installing Proton

First you must install Proton if you don't have it already. Do this through the following. First press the little gear icon and navigate onto properties (as shown below)



After that navigate to the Compatibility tab of the new window that shows up. Select the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" checkbox and make sure Proton Experimental is selected in the dropdown below it.

It should look like this once you are finished.

Setting Launch Options

If you launch Alien Swarm now, you will see it being cut off by a black area. Worry not! There is a method to fix this

In the Properties window, go to the General tab. In the Launch Options text box, copy and paste this.

%command% -startwindowed -noborder -width 1980 -height 1080 +fps_max 300

It will start in Windowed Borderless mode, at HD resolution with an FPS cap of 300

You can change these if you want, but it must start in Windowed Borderless mode for it to display properly.

Thanks

Thanks to Valve Developer Wiki for useful command line option information and Grocery for testing it on KDE Ubuntu. Also thanks to a commenter for testing on LMDE & Artix

Tested by me on Fedora 40.

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alien swarm works good on LMDE && Artix GNU/Linux too