[Solved] a good installation guide for Wine in Linux Mint 20.3

[Ronald1969]

If you have spare GPU & motherboard support, maybe you could try using GPU passthrough in KVM?

What is KVM ?

[cretsiah]

@Ronald1969Fritz how exactly are you trying to install these games?
- chessbase 15, Elder Scrols Online, 3Dx Chat and GTA5

if not by steam how exactly? wine via CD, wine via download? an alternative launcher (aka EA's origin, Ubisoft Uplay/ Ubisoft connect, GOG.com )

have you tried reading this thread? viewtopic.php?f=225&t=364245

you could install these from synaptic package manager
- dxvk
- vulkan
- libfaudio ( for sound sound)

then wine and winetricks from software manager/store

you could also try using steam's add game function (but this would possibly need to be done twice 1) for install and 2) to run the game exe file) but i havent figured out how to do that yet

[ShadowSkill]

If you have spare GPU & motherboard support, maybe you could try using GPU passthrough in KVM?

What is KVM ?

KVM is kernel-based virtual machine.
I haven't try it myself (GPU is still expensive nowadays ), but try googling "gpu passthrough KVM".

[trytip]

This, exactly. After many years of gaming in Linux, I finally gave up and just resigned myself to dual-boot. Forever. It just got really tiresome tracking down which game worked best with which version of WINE, if at all. And forget games like Wow, especially after they integrated Battle Net. I can't tell you how many times back in the day a Tuesday update would completely fubar the entire game, again. Each game had it's challenge and it's implementation, but almost none of them ever ran as good as doing it natively in Windows, where they were designed to run.

So, learn to dual boot and learn to love it. Or, if you enjoy the challenge, go for it and piddle away in Linux. Just realize you are doomed to ultimate failure in some titles.

same sentiment here, there is no way you can use .wine or .steam for all new games especially online games requiring windows 11 now. i stopped trying to play games in linux quite a while back and only use .wine for angry birds and some basic games. if i try a game and not working i have to give up right away otherwise you can go insane trying to make one work, which never will

dual-boot is the way to go but that's also a headache. with my UEFI i could not install mint bootloader on a GPT partition. and then of course you need to deal with windows updates destroying your grub.

my solution was to keep windows for games, install mint on a partition same drive as windows BUT bought another drive (SSD) partitioned it as MBR and installed the bootloader on a separate drive. if you can understand the headache that causes you know it's hard to maintain.

now everything went well for a time and things were good. until i decided to upgrade my bios and everything went downhill from there. system would not boot, or if it did it would loop back and fourth. me thinking it was hardware failure took my computer apart checked wires, switched RAM around (tested fine), installed more drives but still lots of issues.

finally i decided to go for broke and downgraded my BIOS to a few years earlier and now things are much better. but then again now my system may be vulnerable to some security updates. what to do - what to do?

this is my windows drive with Mint Cinnamon 18.3 which stopped working, i'll keep it as windows for my games and now installed mint on a separate drive BUT had to use MBR. things will only get worse and as you said users need to learn how to properly dual-boot if they want best of both worlds. asking for help here is ok for some basic troubleshooting, but if you dot educate yourself (youtube tutorials) not much anyone can do for you

[sarge816]

DOOM 2
My favourite game.

https://www.silvergames.com/en/doom-2/
Just in case someone out there missed it back in the day. I always liked Quake better, but that is probably because I played it with the OpenGL patch (GLQuake) on my 3Dfx Jazz Adrenaline Rush card (whopping 6MB (yes, MEGABYTE) VRAM). Freaking amazing graphics for 1997, even though GLQuake ran like crap on the Rush chipset. I was hooked though, so I upgraded to a pair of Voodoo2 8MB SLI cards for simply amazing 1024x768 graphics. Unreal Tournament was released shortly thereafter, and God only knows how many hours of life I've wasted away on that title. Still have it installed and run a LAN server for the kids.

[Ronald1969]

It is almost a copy of my two harddisks

[Infidelus]

same sentiment here, there is no way you can use .wine or .steam for all new games especially online games requiring windows 11 now. i stopped trying to play games in linux quite a while back and only use .wine for angry birds and some basic games. if i try a game and not working i have to give up right away otherwise you can go insane trying to make one work, which never will

While everyone's needs may vary, I haven't used Windows for gaming for over 5 years now. It does rather depend on the games you want to play. I know there are some recent games with anti-cheat protection that don't currently work, though I've seen posts about a couple of projects being worked on to fix that.

I play a variety of games; some new, some old, some online only, others single & multiplayer. I do tend to check ProtonDB & Lutris first to see if they work on Linux and if not I hold off buying them, but there's no way I'm ever installing Windows again just for gaming, and I have around 1000 games over all the various platforms (Steam, GoG, Epic, Origin etc) that I can try (I don't imagine they will all work on LInux, but a great many definitely will) so I'm not that bothered either.

And forget games like Wow, especially after they integrated Battle Net

I've played WoW pretty much solidly on Linux for the past five years and only one update ever borked the game, and that was fixed within about a week. In fact most Blizzard games work pretty flawlessly via Lutris with just the one Blizzard launcher. The only one I've tried that I haven't got get working so far is the Blizzard Arcade Collection that they released a year or two ago, but I haven't put a lot of effort into making it work either as I've got way too many games and not enough hours in the day to play them .

[sarge816]

I've played WoW pretty much solidly on Linux for the past five years and only one update ever borked the game, and that was fixed within about a week. In fact most Blizzard games work pretty flawlessly via Lutris with just the one Blizzard launcher.

Really? That is good news then. I haven't wrestled with WoW in Linux since Cataclysm/Panda, where WINE was still the only way to play it (and it sucked). Are you playing it with the software cursor, or does the hardware cursor work now? That was always a deal breaker for me back in the day, as raiding was laggy and miserable. Probably won't try piddling with it again but thanks for the info.

Edit: https://lutris.net/games/world-of-warcraft/ Looks like plenty of folks still run into issues, but it's good to know there has been progress for people such as yourself who have minimal downtime.

[Infidelus]

Are you playing it with the software cursor, or does the hardware cursor work now? That was always a deal breaker for me back in the day, as raiding was laggy and miserable. Probably won't try piddling with it again but thanks for the info.

Not entirely sure what 'software cursor' is if I'm being honest. I just installed WoW and played it. The only lag I ever really see is in large raids and I don't think that's necessarily down to Lutris/Wine. Other than that I may as well have been running Windows; decent framerates, and I can't think of anything that doesn't work. Haven't seen any of the pixelation or freezes mentioned on the Lutris link. The Blizzard launcher occasionally doesn't display the news content, but you can still launch the game without issue.

[sarge816]

Not entirely sure what 'software cursor' is if I'm being honest.

IIRC, WINE used to only work properly with OpenGL in WoW, and this relegated you to the software mouse cursor in game (no hardware acceleration). This meant your camera, wherever you pointed your mouse, moved, etc. was laggy, like a delay in execution of what you were trying to do. It sucked, and OpenGL has never been supported by Blizzard AFAIK, but you could enable it to work. You could run DirectX for the game in WINE, but it was buggy and had it's own issues (like ultra-low FPS). But, you got the hardware accelerated cursor, so you had to pick your poison. I remember that WINE ran the game at about 25% frame-rate of Windows using DX, and approaching 50% using OpenGL. This was on then current nVidia GPU gaming computers. It was awhile ago though, so it looks like things have been ironed out considerably with your experience.

[Infidelus]

Ahh, I see. OpenGL isn't supported at all anymore IIRC in Wine (for WoW at least); they use DirectX now, and combined with DXVK in Lutris performance is dramatically improved. Haven't seen low framerates for years in WoW to be honest.

[Ronald1969]

Is there a Wine Guide especially for Linux Mint 20.3 ?

[norse]

dear people,

Several years ago I experimented with Linux distroes. Long time ago I was succesfull with Mandrake 10. It was befor it became Mandriva. That was in 2004. But I had other hardware then. After failed attempts with openSuse I stopped experimenting with Linux. But since the coming of Windows 11 I feel forced to buy new hardware cause of a lacking TPM, while my 4th gen core 7 has the same performance as an 8th gen, It is all 4 cores, 8 mb cache and the same chipset. I refuse to buy new hardware. So I was in search for a new but fitting Linux distro for myself and my PC.

Well. Linux Mint is a succes for me. Most games in Steam are working fine, except for Fritz chessbase 15, Elder Scrols Online, 3Dx Chat and GTA5. That is why I have decreased my hard disk at the windows side and increased my ext4 paertition for Linux Mint. But I want to play ALL games on Linux, including the 4 I just named. Especially Elder Scrols Online. I want to make windows obsolete. Elder Scorls Online, 3D x chat and GTA5 arent installed in Steam, and I do not want to pay for it a second time. It also has to work without steam.

I installed the Ubuntu wine.. but wine config isnt very succesfull.. it misses something. Can someone help me making the remaining four games working in Linux Mint ? then I can delete windows for ever. Windows !! What;s that ? lol

Have you enabled Proton in Steam?
All of my steam games work...from the old ones up to the latest ones.

[Ronald1969]

dear people,

Several years ago I experimented with Linux distroes. Long time ago I was succesfull with Mandrake 10. It was befor it became Mandriva. That was in 2004. But I had other hardware then. After failed attempts with openSuse I stopped experimenting with Linux. But since the coming of Windows 11 I feel forced to buy new hardware cause of a lacking TPM, while my 4th gen core 7 has the same performance as an 8th gen, It is all 4 cores, 8 mb cache and the same chipset. I refuse to buy new hardware. So I was in search for a new but fitting Linux distro for myself and my PC.

Well. Linux Mint is a succes for me. Most games in Steam are working fine, except for Fritz chessbase 15, Elder Scrols Online, 3Dx Chat and GTA5. That is why I have decreased my hard disk at the windows side and increased my ext4 paertition for Linux Mint. But I want to play ALL games on Linux, including the 4 I just named. Especially Elder Scrols Online. I want to make windows obsolete. Elder Scorls Online, 3D x chat and GTA5 arent installed in Steam, and I do not want to pay for it a second time. It also has to work without steam.

I installed the Ubuntu wine.. but wine config isnt very succesfull.. it misses something. Can someone help me making the remaining four games working in Linux Mint ? then I can delete windows for ever. Windows !! What;s that ? lol

Have you enabled Proton in Steam?
All of my steam games work...from the old ones up to the latest ones.

apprantly you dont have Fritz chessbase 15 by steam ? ESO is NOT installed in Steam and I refuse to pay a second time for it.

[Ronald1969]

How to mark this as Solved ?

[SMG]

How to mark this as Solved ?

Go to your very first post in this topic, click the pencil icon, and add [SOLVED] to the beginning of the title.
(animated gif courtesy of user BJZilberman)

[SomeDudeInAZ]

*snip*

finally i decided to go for broke and downgraded my BIOS to a few years earlier and now things are much better. but then again now my system may be vulnerable to some security updates. what to do - what to do?

this is my windows drive with Mint Cinnamon 18.3 which stopped working, i'll keep it as windows for my games and now installed mint on a separate drive BUT had to use MBR. things will only get worse and as you said users need to learn how to properly dual-boot if they want best of both worlds. asking for help here is ok for some basic troubleshooting, but if you dot educate yourself (youtube tutorials) not much anyone can do for you

Since you have things installed on a separate drive you could try switching in the bios. Or install 1 to a USB SSD