If you are like me and watch a lot of TV streams using acestream, you had the problem that there was no Linux client. So you had to use a window$ PC for that (with all the hassle that brings) but we don’t want that.

So I resorted to using wine for that. And that works beautifully. But the hope remained that it would be possible to run it native on Linux. I have found out how, and here are the instructions for tumbleweed:

install the acestream packages

First, we add a repository where the acestream software is to be found. Then we install the latest beta version of VLC, and then I will show you how to start it all.

# zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/drommer/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/ acestream-repo
# zypper in acestream-engine acestream-launcher

install vlc

This next section is not necessary, you can skip that if you already have a working VLC.

The reason that I install the latest VLC -beta is because in the future I hope to stream to my chromecast. The latest VLC *should* do the trick, but here it is not working yet. Anyway, I installed and use the vlc 4.0 beta version.
You will have to get it from the packman repo, so if you haven’t already added it, do it now: http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/packman/suse/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/

# zypper in vlc-beta

In order to satisfy the dependencies, you will have to agree with de-installing the regular -installed- VLC version.

how to start

And now for the real stuff. To start it all, as user do:

$ acestreamengine --client-console

and leave the terminal open. In a new terminal console do:

$ acestream-launcher -p vlc acestream://67665adae9b7535a10f7b7a22d43f15683e78bde

The VLC player will open and after a short while (hopefully) the stream will start playing in the vlc window. And of course you substitute the acestream-id in this example with the one that you found for your stream.

Happy viewing!

P.S.: the instructions in this article worked as of 26/8/2018

updated 30/8/2018 for typos.