NFSU Linux Guide

Welcome to this easy guide on how to set up Need for Speed Underground on Linux including online multiplayer.

Prerequisites:

  1. An internet capable PC with your chosen Linux distro installed and ready to use. I will not be covering Linux installation or configuration and will be assuming a clean ready to use system.
  2. The Need For Speed Underground installation and game disc or equivalent digital install media.
  3. Some kind of graphics from the last 10 years or so that has Vulkan support.

This guide will be based on Fedora KDE which being a mainstream Linux distro should be fairly close to whatever system you are using. Exact folders names and locations could vary from those mentioned in this guide depending on your chosen distro but for most users it should be the same.

INSTALLATION OF REQUIRED SOFTWARE

There are 2 key bits of software before we can begin with the game itself, we need:
-Steam
-Wine
Steam is best installed from your distro's software centre. On Fedora I have the Discover Store as seen here: Screenshot_20260619_080450.png
Just go ahead and install that and you can launch it and sign into steam here if you like to save doing it later.

Second thing we need is Wine which can be found here: https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Download Screenshot_20260619_081101.png
Please follow the instructions on WineHQ to install Wine for your system before continuing.

Installation of NSFU

Installing the game is pretty much the same no matter what format you have the game in. But the easiest way is from our very own portable install which comes optimally setup with the Kickstart game launcher which manages both online play and quality of life mods like widescreen and high resolution support. Here is the Google drive link to download it from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFB_X6nTFW0M959AfwZiwCfl6vLZQAeB/view

Once Downloaded you need to extract the .zip file to anywhere you like, it doesn't matter where. And once done we can move onto adding you game to steam.

  1. Launch Steam
  2. Click "Add a game" on the bottom left of you page. Screenshot_20260619_083251-2.png
  3. Click "Add a non-steam game" Pasted image 20260619083819.png
  4. Click "Browse" Pasted image 20260619083930.png
  5. Navigate to where you exacted your game to and find Kickstart.exe and select that. Pasted image 20260619084054.png
  6. Once selected, click to add selected programs. Pasted image 20260619084203.png
    kickStart.exe will now show in your steam libaray.

Next up we need to tell steam how to run it. Right click kickStart.exe in your steam library and go properties>compatibility and tick the box for "force use of a specific steam play compatibility tool" and select your preferred version of proton. I personally always use Experimental as it offers the best performance and will stay up to date but any version should work fine. Once selected you can close that window and hit play on kickStart.exe and you're done. Kickstart will launch and it's now outside of the jurisdiction of this guide.

Thank you for choosing Linux to play this game.