modding skyrim on linux kinda rocks, actually

march 16 2026

!! the following is copied from my article on my nekoweb, i just wanted to have some activity on here :3 !!

skyrim has been in my life since it first came out in 2011, my brother got a copy for xbox 360 but i played it way more than him, and i have loved modding Skyrim for as long as i have played it on PC. my Steam says I bought the original Skyrim for PC in 2014, and i'm sure i started modding it within days. i have a lot of memories of me installing random mods from the Steam workshop _{(because OG Skyrim had workshop support instead of the fuckass creation club)} until i would reach the plugin limit, then i'd randomly delete some things and start the cycle over again. i think i also got some mods from nexus, as i remember using NMM way back before it was abandoned. i did all of this on one, uninterrupted save file as well, which with my current knowledge feels like nothing short of a miracle; i'm astounded that i never completely bricked my game.

now, 15 years of skyrim (and 10 years of Special Edition) later, skyrim modding is the best it has ever been, and it will only continue to get better as legions of unpaid volunteers nobly pursue the task of modernizing and improving a shoddy game that's older than an 8th grader. so, how does one actually mod skyrim on linux?

although i've been using linux for several years, there have been long periods where most of my gaming is done on Windows, not by choice but by necessity, as games like R6 Siege and Destiny 2 explicitly do not and will not support running under Proton; and so i have never actually tried modding skyrim on linux until recently.
i was very pleasantly surprised to learn that getting Mod Organizer 2 (MO2) working on Linux is not that difficult, a quick web search brought me to this lovely article by Nexus Forums user MummelPuffin, which was invaluable; the heaviest tinkering that needs to be done is very well explained in steps 4 through 7 and the instructions were up-to-date and easily adaptable for Skyrim despite the author mostly giving advice for Fallout: New Vegas. MAKE SURE YOU RUN THE GAME THROUGH STEAM ONCE BEFORE MODDING! _{the game will still open and run through MO2 if you don't, but I had no dialogue audio; NPCs' mouths wouldn't move, but captions would still appear.} The Steam install script that runs on first launch is needed for the game to work properly.

after that initial setup, i was able to just start using MO2 as i would have on Windows. however, there are still a few small annoyances: i have not been able to get the nexus "Mod Manager Download" button to work, i simply manually download the mod and then drag it from my file manager to MO2 and that has worked just fine. additionally, the Root Builder plugin for MO2 that I previously had used to install SKSE64 and the .dll plugin from SSE Engine Fixes seems to not work, which is a great shame, but is easily circumvented by just manually installing those things into my game folder. thankfully, those are small & easily fixable issues, and everything else has worked as I expected it to.

all in all, modding Skyrim on Linux was much easier than I expected, and it's no more finnicky than it is on Windows. if you are reading this and you are also a linux-using skyrim enjoyer, i hope that your experience is as painless as mine, and that you have a good time turning skyrim not into skyrim, but into another game, because that's what modders do.

166 active mods in MO2

ui mod: Nordic UI skin for TrueHUD, location: JK's College of Winterhold

sorry for potato quality in the screenshot, this PC doesn't like running at anything over 10 FPS if i don't use the lowest settings