The following tutorial will teach Linux users how to install the Mass Effect 3 game on their open source operating system.

The third installment in the Mass Effect franchise, Mass Effect 3, is an action role-playing game (RPG) developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts.

For more details about Mass Effect 3, you can check out the official home page or the Wikipedia article.

Editor's note: For this guide, we have used the latest version of the PlayOnLinux application. We've tested the tutorial on the current 32-bit release of the Ubuntu OS, 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) with Wine 1.5.8.

Before anything else, please make sure you meet the minimum system requirements (especially the graphics card and CPU/RAM) for playing Mass Effect 3.

To install the Mass Effect 3 game on your Linux system, follow the next step-by-step (with screenshots) tutorial.

Step 1 – Install PlayOnLinux

The PlayOnLinux developers provide binary packages and repositories for many Linux operating systems, including Fedora, Debian, ArchLinux, Frugalware and Ubuntu, as well as a universal binary package.

We can't write instructions for all these Linux distributions here; therefore, if you use one of the aforementioned OSes, go HERE for detailed installation instructions.

Step 2 – Install the latest version of Wine

The PlayOnLinux developers provide an easy installation process of any Wine version, stable or development. So, all you need to do now is to go to the "Tools" menu, select "Manage Wine version" and you'll see a new dialog showing you available Wine versions on the left side, and installed Wine versions on the right side.

Select version 1.5.8 of Wine from the left side and click the middle arrow button to install it...

Step 3 – Install Mass Effect 3

Assuming you have the PC DVD of Mass Effect 3, open the PlayOnLinux app and follow the first time instructions to setup the application. Once these are finished, you'll see the PlayOnLinux interface. Click the "Install" button...

Editor's note: If the game asks you about the PhysX Engine, install it manually by clicking the "Configure" button while the Mass Effect 3 entry is selected, and going to the "Miscellaneous" tab, and clicking the "Run a .exe file in this virtual drive." Then search for the PhysX Engine installer in the /path_to_masseffect3_installation/_Installer/physx/redist directory.

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