This is the easiest path. Steam’s Proton and native runtime handling makes the installation a one-click affair.
Native builds respect Linux file permissions. Your player .plr files and world .wld files live in ~/.local/share/Terraria. No registry keys, no hidden AppData folders. This makes backing up your worlds via rsync or cron jobs trivial for power users. Terraria - 1.4.4.9 - MULTi9 - GNU Linux Native ...
Unlike many “Linux ports” that are just Proton wrappers, Terraria uses FNA (a reimplementation of Microsoft XNA) to run natively. The result: This is the easiest path
Tested on: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (X11/Wayland), Steam Deck (Game Mode), Fedora 38. Zero crashes after 20+ hours. Proton Settings: Right-click Terraria in your library >
If you have the DRM-free MULTi9 folder:
No discussion of Terraria 1.4.4.9 is complete without tModLoader. As of this version, tModLoader is a free DLC on Steam, and crucially, it is also native Linux.
The "MULTi9" tag extends to mods; mods like "Calamity" and "Thorium" have fan-translated language packs that load correctly under the native Linux runtime. Because the native binary uses case-sensitive file paths (unlike Windows), mod developers have been forced to write cleaner code. Consequently, running 100+ mods on Linux native 1.4.4.9 is often more stable than running the same mod list on Windows, as the Linux filesystem catches path errors before they crash the game.