TIL about Amethyst Mod Manager for Linux
Since Nexus Mod Manager for Linux fizzled out, I was excited to find a decent mod manager. It has built-in support for about 100 games, but adding other games seems pretty easy. I pasted in the Steam ID and path the the .exe of a proton game (MineMogul), and then everything just worked.
https://github.com/ChrisDKN/Amethyst-Mod-ManagerOpen linkView original on lemmy.today
23 replies
Since a picture is worth 1,000 words:
100000%. Developers, include screenshots in your READMEs! This one did, but it can't be said enough.
That's just mo2?! It's beautiful
That actually looks pretty good. I might give it a try but my current MO2 setup already has hundreds of mods, is there any way to reuse that rather than migrate it over?
Apparently they used to have a function for that, but the reversed order indexing borked it up
I would love to have this be the Linux Skyrim modding fix I need to get through the coming winter. That said, I remember when this was first announced there were rumors that it was a vibe-coded project. Has that issue been cleared up?
The author confirmed they use LLMs for coding on the Nexus page for the tool
Yeah, I saw Claude in the contributors box, not super excited about that, but so far it's worked flawlessly for me, so hopefully it's not too sloppy...I'll come back and reply here if I start encountering broken-arse garbage.
Modding isn't broken on Linux. I used MO2 fine with both Skyrim and Fallout 4
You're not wrong. MO2 really didn't suit me, but I did okay with the workarounds for Vortex and was just wondering if we finally had a Linux-native alternative for me in particular. The other mod managers just don't work for me as well as Vortex does, and it helped me understand exactly how prefixes work
Huh, they added Flatpak support since I last checked it out. I'll have to look into it.
I have some apprehensions, since I've got a stupid large Skyrim modlist I've been working on for months, and a swap could booger things up. But if there's better backup/import/export management than MO2 I might make the switch.
Edit: After checking, while the author has a flatpak version in their GitHub, but refuses to publish to FlatHub, which makes no sense.
Plus, this tool is the one that flips load order for no goddamned reason, and because of that the automated importer has destroyed/broken a couple peoples' MO2 installs.
Personally, while this looks more polished it seems sketchier than Fluorine once you do some digging. Also, the author of Fluorine is upfront about using LLM's to code (it's right in their readme). Amethyst's author admits it under the "issues" of their GitHub so while they're not hiding it, but it's annoying that you have to do some digging to find it.
R2ModMan is my favorite, I’ll check this out as well!
I have had great luck with amethyst so far, including large collections installed to cyberpunk 2077.
Also Jackify is a great wee tool for getting Wabbajackmodlists installed on Linux. So many handy features (such as downgrading Skyrim if needed by a list)
https://github.com/Omni-guides/Jackify
I was considering putting windows 10 on my steam deck (yes I know, booooooo) because installing mods is always such a pain in the ass but I'll try this first.
There's also an install script for pure MO2. Will edit soon to include links
EDIT: Sauce, as promised. Also I followed this guide to walk through the process.
Also, there's another installer that's been archived and replaced with Fluorine, a full Linux port of MO2, but it uses LLM's (like Amethyst does)
Hope this helps
How does it compare to Fluorine Manager?
Both use LLM's for coding. This one flips the load order for no damn reason.
Cant compare but I used Fluorine and can recommend it. It seems to be really just mo2 with settings for wine prefix and VFS adjusted to work in linux. I used it with skyrim and cyberpunk and it worked fine.
Do you have any experience using it with large modlists? Like a couple thousand mods at a time?
No, couple hundred at most.
Not sure, first I've heard of that too...screenshots look similar, I'll have to check that out too, thanks!
Looks like it has support for Wabbajack and Nexus modlists. Nice.