I would be surprised if you had to do anything special for Linux, but don’t know for sure. Splitsie is my go-to for specific tutorial, but Engineered Coffee’s let’s play is also fairly informative, although not structured as pure tutorials.

Space Engineers 1 mostly just worked. Not great sim speed, even on a decently powerful system, but as long as the world didn’t get too complicated it was fine. Restarting the game from time to time helped.

SE2 on the other hand, I was unable to get to run.

Edit: I got my copy through Steam.

Edit 2 (2026-02-10): I solved the performance issues with SE on my system. I found non-Valve compatability tool called Proton GE. Runs pretty much perfect now using version 10-29. Installing the tool was pretty straight forward. Still no joy with SE2.

I tried different guides, and eventually went to the source, this worked great for me.

From SE Discord, posted by "lord.of.woe":

Space Engineers Linux Installation Guide Last Updated 2025-07-24

Prerequisite Packages

git

wget

WINE

Step 1: Install GE-Proton9-25 and GE-Proton10-X. There are several methods you can use to install this, but this guide uses only common terminal commands. (Edit: I used Protonplus for this)

wget -qO- https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/download/GE-Proton9-25/GE-Proton9-25.tar.gz | tar xzvf - -C "${HOME}/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d"
wget -qO- "$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/latest | grep "\"browser_download_url\": \".*\.tar\.gz\"" | cut -d'"' -f4)" | tar xzvf - -C "${HOME}/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d"

Step 2: Remove local Space Engineers data. ‼️ WARNING: THIS WILL PERMANENTLY DELETE ALL SAVES, GAME DATA, ETC. THAT ARE NOT BACKED UP TO THE STEAM CLOUD OR ELSEWHERE. ‼️

export STEAMAPPS_PATH=${HOME}/.steam/steam/steamapps # edit as necessary
rm -rf ${STEAMAPPS_PATH}/compatdata/244850

Step 3: Restart Steam

Step 4: Change the compatibility layer in Steam to GE-Proton9-25.

Step 5: Launch Space Engineers in Steam and close the game upon reaching the main menu.

Step 6: Install dotnet48. DO NOT USE PROTONTRICKS.

WINEPREFIX=${STEAMAPPS_PATH}/compatdata/244850/pfx winetricks --force -q dotnet48

or experimentally

WINE=${HOME}/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton9-25/files/bin/wine64 
WINEPREFIX=${STEAMAPPS_PATH}/compatdata/244850/pfx ${HOME}/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton9-25/protonfixes/winetricks --force -q dotnet48

Step 7: Change the compatibility layer in Steam to GE-Proton10-X, where X is the minor version.

Step 8: Launch the game and hope everything worked.