How to run Unreal Game Engine 5 on Fedora 36

Unreal Engine 5 just released a Linux version which runs on the Fedora 36

This article explains how to download and run Unreal Engine 5 on Linux. My test machine is an Asus Zephyrus G15 gaming laptop which has an RTX 3080 mobile graphics card . The operating system is Fedora Workstation 36 running Gnome 42 with the asusctl-gex extension. Besides that, the laptop is connected to an external ultrawide 1440p monitor via Display Port.
This article covers the following four steps:

1. Download UE5 for Linux
   Includes the download link (registration and log in required)
2. How to start Unreal Engine 5
   Engine > Binaries > Linux > UnrealEditor
3. Memory usage
   How much RAM was used to run UE5
4. Temperature
   Find out how hot the RTX 3080 got while running the UnrealEditor

I am so excited and can’t wait to start using Unreal Engine 5 on Linux.

Download and backup UE5 for Linux

First, I create account and log in to downloaded the Unreal Engine 5.0.3 zip file. Note that this file is over 20 GB in size. Before doing anything else, I backed it up to a secondary drive. Since I will be installing UE5 on Fedora, I most likely will need that file again when I upgrade to Fedora 37 later this year.

How to start Unreal Engine 5 on Linux

After unzipping the file, I navigated to: Engine > Binaries > Linux and clicked on the UnrealEditor icon as shown in the image below. Then I followed the prompts and specified a project directory to save the new project. After that, the familiar UE5 editor started quickly and without problems.

Unreal Engine Editor running on Fedora 36

Here is a screenshot of Unreal Engine Editor running on Fedora 36. To the left of the Unreal Editor is the Gnome System Monitor app. It shows the 16-code processor graphs and 4.9 GB of system memory usage.

I can’t believe how easy it is to run the Unreal Engine 5 Editor on Linux. One thing that I noticed was that the graphics card fan noise was audible until I closed Gimp and the file browser. The fans stopped spinning almost immediately after that.

In my excitement, I forgot to switch the monitor input from HDMI to Display Port. Right now, asusctl is set to hybrid mode which is not ideal. I will update the system temperatures after I reboot with the correct settings.

External monitor HDMI / Display Port
Game design on just a laptop is not ideal. To give myself plenty of space, I connect an LG ultrawide monitor to both, the HDMI and the DP port. This way, I can run the laptop with the integrated AMD graphics chip which is sufficient for programming and web design. When I work with Blender and UE 5, then I chose the Display Port option. Switching to dedicated mode via the asusctl-gex Gnome extension gives me the best performance possible.

Unreal Engine 5 Linux memory usage

With a new default scene open and no assets added, Gnome System Monitor reports 5 GB (15.3% of 32 GB) of memory usage. For the first time ever, I see that 2.9 MB (of 8.6 GB) cache memory is being used. So far, no other Linux app has managed to access swap space. Then again, with 32 GB of RAM I just never checked.

NVIDIA RTX 3080 temperatures

With only the Unreal Editor open, the graphics card temperature is 54 degrees or 129 Fahrenheit. Moving, panning or zooming the arena for a while increases the temperature to around 70 degrees or 158 Fahrenheit. The cooling fans start to start to spin fast as soon as the temperature reaches 80 degrees.

Running the demo game simulation in live preview

While running the live demo preview, the temperature stays at a modest 79 degrees. No matter how much I pan and run and shoot, the temperate does not go up. Although I don’t yet have an exact comparison, I think that under Windows 10, the fans run at full blast. Lastly, the demo preview runs at 80 FPS which is great.

Importing game assets from the marketplace needs further testing. I don’t really want ready-made stuff because I use Blender to create all assets. I will update this blog post as I learn more but so far, it has been working perfect. Please comment if you have questions or suggestions. Thank you for your time.