How to Install Luanti 5.17 on Linux in 2026

If you have ever wanted a Minecraft-shaped creative sandbox without the Microsoft account, the launcher, the marketplace, or the launcher asking you again whether you really meant to launch the launcher — Luanti might be exactly what you have been looking for. Luanti (formerly Minetest, renamed in late 2024) is an open-source voxel game engine that runs natively on every mainstream Linux distribution, and the freshly-released 5.17.0 update landed on 21 August 2026 with three things most Linux users have been asking for: real gamepad support, Android user-data export, and a beefed-up Lua modding API.

This guide walks through what is actually new in 5.17, how to install it on Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, SteamOS / Steam Deck, openSUSE, and via Flatpak, plus a few first-run tips so you do not lose the first twenty minutes to misconfigured settings.

What changed since 5.10 — and why 5.17 matters

For most of its life, Minetest / Luanti was a keyboard-and-mouse affair. Modders built their own controller support on a per-game basis, but there was nothing first-class in the engine itself. 5.17.0 changes that. The blog post for the release calls it the “start of gamepad support” — emphasis on start, because it is the foundation, not a finished feature. Expect the next two releases to refine it, but if you have a Steam Deck, a Logitech F310, or an Xbox controller plugged into your living-room HTPC, 5.17 is the first release where plug-and-play should actually work without a third-party mod.

The second headline feature is the ability to export user data on Android. This was added because Luanti’s Android app keeps all your worlds, mods, and texture packs in an internal sandbox the user cannot reach — which is fine until your tablet dies and you realise your kid’s three-year castle is locked inside it. With 5.17, you can pull that data out via a system file picker. It is not the most glamorous feature, but it is the one that prevents the most tears.

Third, the Lua modding API picked up a handful of improvements that modders have been asking for since the rename. The full changelog is on docs.luanti.org/about/changelog, but the practical takeaway is that mods written against 5.17 will be more portable and easier to maintain.

There is also a non-engine development worth flagging: on 27 August 2026, Luanti was temporarily removed from Google Play after a baseless DMCA notice was filed on behalf of Microsoft by Tracer.AI, alleging that Luanti infringes Minecraft’s copyright. The Luanti project contains no Minecraft code or assets and the takedown is widely seen as an automated over-reach. If you depend on the Android app, the open-source APK is still available directly from the project’s GitHub releases page.

Install Luanti 5.17 on your distro

The official luanti.org/downloads page bundles binaries for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux, BSDs and Android. On Linux you almost never need to touch that page — every major distro has a packaged version.

Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS and other Debian derivatives

sudo apt update
sudo apt install luanti

If your distribution is stuck on an older release (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is the most common offender) and the apt version is still 5.x-pre-17, the project ships a maintained PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:luanti/luanti
sudo apt update
sudo apt install luanti

Fedora, Nobara, Bazzite and other RPM-based distros

sudo dnf install luanti

This works on rawhide and on Fedora 40+. On Bazzite and SteamOS-derived images the same package is available via rpm-ostree install luanti, followed by a reboot.

Arch Linux, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, CachyOS

sudo pacman -S luanti

Arch tends to track upstream closely; you will usually get 5.17 within a day or two of the upstream release. If you want the absolute latest and do not mind a little compile time, the AUR package luanti-git tracks the master branch.

openSUSE Tumbleweed / Leap

sudo zypper install luanti

SteamOS (Steam Deck and the new Steam Machine)

SteamOS already includes Luanti as a Flatpak, so you do not need to do anything special. To confirm you have the new version:

1. Open the Luanti entry in your library.
2. From the game’s Properties → Compatibility tab, force the Linux runtime rather than Proton.
3. Launch it.

Gamepad support in 5.17 is still partial — Luanti’s start menu and settings screens handle the controller natively, but in-world controls depend on the specific game you load. The default Minetest Game has keybindings for place / dig mapped to mouse buttons that the controller layer does not always translate; if you find that awkward, the popular MineClone2 and VoxeLibre games both ship first-class controller mappings out of the box.

Flatpak (the universal answer)

If your package is missing, stale, or you just want isolation from the host system:

flatpak install flathub org.luanti.Luanti
flatpak run org.luanti.Luanti

The Flatpak ships its own bundled dependencies and updates independently of your distro.

Docker (headless dedicated server)

For a self-hosted multiplayer world that runs unattended:

docker run -d --name luanti-server 
  -p 30000:30000/udp -p 30000:30000/tcp 
  -v $HOME/luanti-data:/var/lib/luanti 
  ghcr.io/luanti-org/luanti:latest

The default world is plain Minetest Game; you can mount your own worlds/ and mods/ directories over /var/lib/luanti to customise.

First-run tips that save you twenty minutes

• Create the world before installing mods. Luanti’s ContentDB lets you browse and install mods and games from inside the main menu. The first time you click Content it will pull a list from content.luanti.org; that list is large, and a slow connection can make the menu feel broken. Let it finish before doing anything else.
• Pick a game, not just the engine. Luanti is an engine. The default Minetest Game is the closest thing to a vanilla survival mode, but the community has built everything from medieval RPGs (RPG16) to competitive capture-the-flag (CTF) to liminal-space horror (Backrooms Test). Browse the Games tab on ContentDB before you commit.
• Texture packs are global, mods are per-world. If you install a texture pack like Soothing 32, it applies to every world you launch. Mods, on the other hand, are world-specific — you enable them when you create the world or in the world settings. This trips up a lot of new users.
• Save often and back up the worlds directory. Worlds live at ~/.local/share/luanti/worlds/ on Linux. The directory is a folder of files, not a single blob, so rsync -a ~/.local/share/luanti/worlds/ /your/backup/location/ is all you need.
• Bind useful keys. Press F1 in-game to see the keybinding legend. The ones most new users miss: K toggles fly mode (you need the fly privilege), J toggles fast mode (needs fast), and H toggles noclip (needs noclip). On a singleplayer world you have all of them by default.

Mods worth installing on day one

There are more than 3,100 mods on ContentDB, and the Trending tab is the easiest way to find what is currently good. A few that have aged well and survive every engine upgrade:

• Mobs Redo / Animalia — adds mobs (chickens, sheep, wolves, bears) to Minetest Game. The default world feels lifeless by comparison once you have used these.
• i3 — replaces the default inventory with a much more usable grid layout and adds hotbar shortcuts.
• 3D Armor — standalone armour mod with a sensible API.
• Unified Inventory — alt-tab style inventory manager if you prefer that workflow.
• Maptools / Worldedit — if you want to build anything larger than a hut, the WorldEdit-style building tools are non-optional.

The big picture

Luanti has been quietly chugging along as the most flexible open-source voxel engine for almost fifteen years. The 2024 rename was a deliberate attempt to shake the “is this a Minecraft clone?” association, and the cadence since — 5.13 in August 2025, 5.14 in October 2025, 5.15 in January 2026, 5.16 in May 2026 and now 5.17 in August 2026 — has been remarkably steady for a volunteer project. The 2025 move to Open Collective Europe gave the project a non-profit fiscal home alongside other well-known free-software projects like EndeavourOS, F-Droid and postmarketOS. If you ever wanted to support the engine but were put off by the lack of a donation mechanism, that has been solved.

If you have not tried it since the rename, 5.17 is a good release to come back to. Gamepad support is still a work in progress, the Android export story is a work in progress, and the modding API is a work in progress — but all three are moving, the project is transparent about what is and is not ready, and the engine itself is more polished than it has ever been.

Official site: luanti.org. Downloads and packages: luanti.org/downloads. Mods and games: content.luanti.org. Source: github.com/luanti-org/luanti.