Unofficial SteelSeries Keyboard Support

Original post and code written by Michael Lelli here: https://gist.github.com/ToadKing/26c28809b8174ad0e06bfba309cf3ff3

There are a bunch of Linux gamers out there, some new to the Linux game and some who have been around since the days of rebuilding kernels to get your sound and wireless working. While SteelSeries GG (formerly SteelSeries Engine) does not have official Linux support, with some setup you can get parts of it running and have some functionality working well.

Note that is is all unofficial and not supported by SteelSeries. After this post you will be on your own and there will be bugs.

Prerequisites

• Wine - Use 11.9 or newer for current SteelSeries GG. Older Wine versions can crash during GG's .NET certificate generation with 0x80092023 (Wine bug 59746, fixed in 11.9). Setting the emulated Windows version to Windows 10 does not fix this Wine bug.
• udev - Unless you're using an obscure/old distro you probably already have this.
• Python 3 - Used by the udev rule to grant device permissions.
• gnu make - Install setup scripts and udev rules
• winetricks (optional but recommended) - Used as a fallback to install the Arial fonts GG needs for its login screen and OLED apps.
• winbind (optional) - Provides ntlm_auth for Wine's NTLM authentication support. A missing helper is separate from the certificate crash above.
• Your favorite distro of Linux.

Upgrading Wine on Ubuntu 24.04

Ubuntu 24.04's Wine package is 9.0. Use the WineHQ Ubuntu repository to get a newer version. As of October 2026, WineHQ stable is 11.0, which predates the GG certificate fix; use winehq-devel (11.9 or newer).

Close Wine applications before upgrading. These repository commands are specifically for Ubuntu 24.04 (noble):

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key \
  -o /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key
sudo curl -fsSL https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/noble/winehq-noble.sources \
  -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-noble.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-devel winbind
wine --version

If GG is already installed, reapply setup and launch it without reinstalling:

bash resources/wine-init.sh
wine 'C:\Program Files\SteelSeries\GG\SteelSeriesGGEZ.exe' \
  '-dataPath=C:\ProgramData\SteelSeries\GG' -dbEnv=production

Use the same WINEPREFIX as the original install if it is not ~/.wine. Current GG uses SteelSeriesGGEZ.exe as its launcher. If an old desktop shortcut still invokes wine-stable, use the command above to launch with the upgraded wine command.

Setup (automatic)

Clone this repo, setup the above prerequisites, and run make install

This will:

1. Install the udev rules from resources/ into /etc/udev/rules.d/ (uses sudo) and reload udev so no reboot is needed
2. Download the latest SteelSeries GG installer into .temp/
3. Configure your Wine prefix (resources/wine-init.sh): initialize it, set the Windows version to Windows 10, enable full plug-and-play support, apply GG's database compatibility workaround, and install/register the Arial fonts GG needs
4. Run the GG installer under Wine

To use a Wine prefix other than ~/.wine, set WINEPREFIX before running make.

Wine setup initializes the prefix without launching its startup applications or waiting for every Wine application to exit. Required setup failures stop the install. The optional Winetricks font fallback has a five-minute limit; if it fails or times out, setup warns and continues with the available fonts.

The installer is only downloaded once; run make clean first if you want to force re-downloading the latest version.

To uninstall the udev rules, run make uninstall.

Setup (manual)

udev Rules

To configure the firmware on SteelSeries devices, you will need to send it HID reports through the hidraw kernel driver. However by default the device files the driver creates are only readable and writable by the root user for security purposes. Rather than just give read and write permission to everything, we are going to make a udev rule to only allow read and write access to the devices we need.

Copy resources/98-steelseries.rules and resources/98-steelseries-init.py into /etc/udev/rules.d/ and make sure the python script keeps its execute bit.

The rule matches any hidraw device with the SteelSeries USB Vendor ID (1038) and forwards the device file path to the python script, which:

1. Reads the HID Descriptor of the device.
2. Does a simple parsing of the HID Descriptor to get the usage page of the descriptor.
3. Checks whether the device has a vendor-defined usage page or a consumer usage page. These two usage pages are what most SteelSeries USB devices use for configuring the device.
4. If the usage page matches one of those, sets read and write permissions for the file.

Once the files are in place, reload udev and re-trigger the devices (or replug them, or reboot):

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=hidraw --action=add

You should now see that some hidraw device files have read and write permissions for everybody:

$ ls -l /dev/hidraw*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 237,  0 Jul 13 17:58 /dev/hidraw0
crw------- 1 root root 237,  1 Jul 13 17:58 /dev/hidraw1
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 237,  2 Jul 13 17:58 /dev/hidraw2

(Notice that some files have "crw-rw-rw-" permissions. That means they have read and write support for everyone.)

Wine Setup

Run bash resources/wine-init.sh, or do the equivalent by hand:

1. Windows version - SteelSeries GG refuses to install on anything older than Windows 10:

    wine winecfg /v win10
   

2. Plug-and-play support - By default, Wine makes fake plug-and-play devices from SDL devices. For SteelSeries GG we need full proper plug-and-play support:

    wine reg add 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WineBus' /v 'Enable SDL' /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
   

3. Fonts - The GG login screen and OLED Engine Apps need "Arial Bold" and "Arial Black". Put arialbd.ttf and ariblk.ttf under drive_c/windows/Fonts/ in your Wine prefix (from your distro's Microsoft fonts package, or via winetricks corefonts) and register them:

    wine reg add 'HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts' /v 'Arial Bold (TrueType)' /t REG_SZ /d arialbd.ttf /f
    wine reg add 'HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts' /v 'Arial Black (TrueType)' /t REG_SZ /d ariblk.ttf /f
   

4. Current GG database compatibility - Let GG's SQLite library fall back from Wine's incomplete WinRT storage API. This override applies only to the GG launcher:

    wine reg add 'HKCU\Software\Wine\AppDefaults\SteelSeriesGGEZ.exe\DllOverrides' /v windows.storage.applicationdata /t REG_SZ /d '' /f
   

Installing SteelSeries GG

Installation works very similarly to Windows: Simply run the installer exe and follow the steps. Note that during installation the driver installation process might crash or hang due to missing functionality in Wine. To work around this, simply kill the win_driver_installer.exe process if it hangs. The installer will continue along after it's killed.

Troubleshooting

GG crashes immediately with SteelSeriesGGEZ.exe, X500DistinguishedNameEncode, or 0x80092023 - GG uses cn=SteelSeries A/S for a self-signed certificate. Wine versions before 11.9 incorrectly look up the certificate's common-name field case-sensitively. Upgrade to Wine 11.9 or newer (upstream fix); see the Ubuntu instructions above. Installing Mono, fonts, or changing GPU flags does not resolve this specific exception. GG ships its own .NET runtime.

GG crashes in Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.SqliteConnection / ApplicationData.get_LocalFolder after upgrading Wine - Wine 11.18 exposes an incomplete WinRT storage API. GG's bundled SQLite library probes it and crashes. Run bash resources/wine-init.sh again: setup disables windows.storage.applicationdata specifically for SteelSeriesGGEZ.exe, letting SQLite use its normal desktop fallback. This does not replace GG's DLLs or change other applications' DLL overrides.

ntlm_auth was not found / no NTLM support - Wine cannot find Samba's helper for Windows NTLM authentication. On Ubuntu, install it with sudo apt install winbind and check ntlm_auth --version. This can affect authentication that uses NTLM; it is not the cause of the X500DistinguishedNameEncode certificate exception.

Install stops at "Initializing wine prefix" / "configuration ... has been updated" - Earlier versions of the setup script used wineserver -w, which waits for all applications in the prefix to exit. SteelSeries Engine, PrismSync, or another background application can keep it waiting indefinitely. Cancel the stuck make install with Ctrl+C and re-run it with the updated script. Setup now uses wineboot --init and no longer waits for the whole Wine session to finish.

WDFLDR.SYS missing / ssdevfactory fails to load - An existing GG installation may try to load its Windows kernel driver when Wine starts. That driver depends on functionality unavailable in Wine (Wine bug 49193); this project uses Linux hidraw access for the supported device features instead. Removing the setup hang does not add Windows driver support, and these diagnostics may still appear. Messages such as query_service ... 1060 or ensure_mta ... 0x800401f0 alone do not establish whether setup failed; check whether it reaches "Wine configuration complete" and starts the installer.

Winetricks font setup times out - Close applications running in the selected Wine prefix, then run winetricks -q corefonts with the same WINEPREFIX, or install your distro's Microsoft core fonts package and retry make install.

"Windows 10 or up is required for SteelSeries GG." - Your Wine prefix is set to an older Windows version. Run wine winecfg /v win10 (or set it in winecfg under the Applications tab) and try again. make install now does this automatically.

"Error: Font arialbd.ttf not found in system fonts!" - Your system doesn't have the Arial fonts installed. Install your distro's Microsoft core fonts package (ttf-mscorefonts-installer on Debian/Ubuntu, ttf-ms-fonts from the AUR on Arch) or winetricks, then re-run make install. See the Fonts section above for the manual steps.

GG runs but the login screen is blank / can't type credentials - This is almost always the missing/unregistered Arial fonts. See the Fonts section above; make sure the fonts are both present in drive_c/windows/Fonts/ and registered in the Wine registry.

No devices listed - Make sure the udev rules are actually applied: sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=hidraw --action=add, then replug the device and restart GG (device hotplugging doesn't work under Wine; devices plugged in while GG is running won't appear until it restarts). Verify permissions with ls -l /dev/hidraw* - your device's node should be crw-rw-rw-. Note that some devices (and all non-SteelSeries devices) simply aren't supported.

Gray/blank window or stuck installer - This is usually the embedded Chromium renderer failing under Wine. Things to try:

• Make sure Wine Gecko is installed (Wine will offer to download it on prefix creation; your distro may ship it as wine-gecko).
• Kill a hung win_driver_installer.exe process - the installer continues after it's killed.
• Upgrade Wine; each release fixes more of the rendering stack.
• Try running GG with GPU rendering disabled: wine "C:\Program Files\SteelSeries\GG\SteelSeriesGG.exe" --disable-gpu

What Works

• Configuring non-key binding settings on most devices
• Some Engine Apps, like PrismSync, ImageSync, and even Discord! (Discord requires having Discord running on a local Linux client, not a web browser.)

What Doesn't

• The taskbar icon doesn't work. This is probably a Wine bug. If you want to stop SteelSeries GG you must kill the process or shutdown wine with wineserver -k.
• Device hotplugging does not work. If you unplug a device you will need to restart GG for it to show up again.
• App detection does not work.
• Features requiring driver support. Depending on the device this includes some or all button bindings and macros.
  • Devices that have onboard macro support, like the Rival 700 and the new Apex 7 and Apex Pro, will have functional macros, but not other key bindings like launch application.
• Devices with software-driver virtual surround will not have configurable surround sound.
• Arctis 3 support does not work.
• No devices are tested on Wine at all, and there could be random bugs anywhere.

What Else

This support is unofficial and bugs will be abundant. While we won't provide official Linux support at this time, we will be open to talk with devs who are looking to fix bugs in Wine or other Linux software to better support SteelSeries products. Please feel free to drop us a line at the tech blog email at the bottom of the page if you want to get in touch.