reshade on linux
switching to linux (nobara KDE plasma) has been smooth so far and I'm really loving how clean and fast it is. the one thing I've been struggling with, however, is getting reshade to work on it. it's a very simple install on windows but as there's currently no official support for linux, it's been a wild troubleshoting journey...
as I don't remember all the steps I took (since my idea to blog my progress came late) I'm just going to share what did work for me in the end.
reshadelinux by asafelobotomy is the most up-to-date and what I would recommend using. I previously used reshade-steam-proton which sort of worked but did not fully work. for simpler shaders I think that script would suffice, but larger shaders (in my case, Glamayre_Fast_Effects). I do wonder if the shell script works better for steam versions of FFXIV, though.
functionally the two are very similar especially considering that reshadelinux uses and credits reshade-steam-proton.
start completely fresh; the game folder for FFXIV should have nothing reshade-related, which may need to be cleaned up if you copy-paste the files from windows to linux. remove d3dcompiler_47.dll and dxgi.dll and ReShade_shaders if it's from a failed previous attempt like in my case. ReShade.ini can stay but I would recommend letting the script overwrite it. the log files can stay or not, up to you. linux reshade doesn't use reshade-presets and reshade-shaders in the game folder like on windows, so you can keep them. I used them to back up the shaders and textures I wanted to use.
the reshade files themselves are actually stored on ~/.local/share/reshade. if you have this folder from a previous failed attempt, delete it. this is where the symlinks in the FFXIV game folder point to, and where you would actually want to paste shaders, textures, etc. (it's also where the in-game reshade menu points to if you open the source directory.)
make sure you put all the textures in the folder! for a while my Glamayre_Fast_Effects wouldn't load and it was all because it was missing the texture files. I also didn't realize what symlinks were and that they don't quite work the same like windows shortcuts. I have to right-click and select "show target" rather than just double clicking into the folder. still don't know exactly why that's the case but that's how it is.
also make sure ReShade.fxh is in your shaders folder. it seems a few shaders that I had use this and without it, I ran into compile errors.
within ReShade.ini itself, I would make sure PerformanceMode=0 and SkipLoadingDisabledEffects=1. I'm not sure why performance mode makes reshade hang but I rarely needed it in windows so I'm keeping that off. and skipping loading disabled effects prevents it from crashing because a shader that you don't use couldn't be compiled for one reason or another.
if I run into more issues and such related to reshade, I'll add them here. in the meantime, I'm so glad that this is solved for now! I am not a graphics person so I was super lost when troubleshooting and would love for it to not cause issues!