What Linux version are you using?

[JackFarmer]

Since we're talking a lot about Linux on Fractured Glass right now and one fearless mission maker has even tried out several distros over the last few days - from what I have read so far, the man must have ice water running through his veins - , I'd be interested to know what the "distribution of the distributions"  looks like.

The poll does not allow too many choices, so I had to reduce the selection to the core aspects. If you feel like, you can add specific info here - such as, "I switched to Ubuntu" and you can also provide additional remarks like "because my neighbor's dog ran away with a washing machine".

If you tried out Linux, but left because of cruel or supernatural experiences, then you are welcome to share your pain with us here.

[JackFarmer]

....aaand I am too dumb to get the fracking poll work. Oh dear.

[Jnon]

I personally use a couple of distros on several machines. I've got Linux Mint on an old desktop I use for browsing and stuff, Ubuntu for my Steam/gaming machine, and I have a travel laptop with Whonix on it (that I barely ever use). I've tinkered around with ZorinOS, but never stuck with it (for no reason in particular).

I switched to Linux in early 2020 when Windows 7 went end-of-life. Windows 8 didn't sit will with me, and Windows 10 force-installing itself on peoples' computers was very upsetting, so I took the plunge. Been 5 years now, haven't really looked back.

[datiswous]

I used Linux, multiple distro's in the past on a netbook. Lubuntu and Zenwalk mostly.

I had more problems getting stuff working at the time. Things have improved on desktop Linux over time.

Then in 2018 when I had to leave Win 7 I decided to see if I could live with Linux for my main pc including gaming. First as a dualboot Manjaro (xfce) and Win7. After a while I wasn't using Win7 anymore on the pc.

Starting this year I build a new pc and switched to Linux Mint, I didn't like the huge updates because of the rolling release and the problems if you wait too long to update and wanted to try another distro. Tested a couple of Desktop Environments, but stuck with xfce (not because of the speed). It has not failed on me yet.

Edited November 28 by datiswous

[revelator]

i use solus on my developer machine. earlier i have dabbled in pretty much any unix distro out there even several BSD distros but those need to catch up to have any relevance in the desktop market.

i settled for solus KDE because it is easy to use and rock solid most of the time. i also like the eopkg package handler quite a bit.

I do game from time to time on it and it handles that well to with steam, id like to see some refinement to lutris though which while working ok can be a bit of a headache to figure out if you are not used to it.

i still use windows on my main gamer but that is mostly because i have so many old games it would be absolute hell to get them all set up on solus .

mint seems to be pretty popular to unfortunatly i had a few problems last time i used it.

[JackFarmer]

6 hours ago, revelator said:

i still use windows on my main gamer but that is mostly because i have so many old games it would be absolute hell to get them all set up on solus .

 

I know exactly what you mean. I also have a few old games, and I can't get them to run on my distro (Ubuntu Mint) for the life of me.

The same goes for Thief and Thief 2. I managed to get Thief Gold working, but that is not my preferred version of Thief. That sucks, I'd love to try Skacky's new mission for Thief 2...

[revelator]

thanks quite a few of them i have actually gotten to work on it but many of my other old games require non standard workarounds to run so im a bit afraid to even try . 

the worst offenders are probably my lithtech based games which can be a royal pain to get working on both linux and windows, i managed to get them working on windows 11 but it took quite some work so im not too keen on repeating that.

hmm strangely i have no problem with system shock 2 which should be the same engine as thief 2 ? though i dunno if thief 2 also has access to the updated dark engine ?.

[revelator]

Hmm yeah newdark also works for both thief 1 and 2 and also the gold version it seems.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141148

latest version seems to be from 2019.

[datiswous]

4 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

The same goes for Thief and Thief 2

I got Thief 2 working on Linux Mint but it's via Steam using Proton 9.0-4

[revelator]

should be possible to copy of steams workarounds for use with lutris in case someone does not have the game on steam.

otherwise using newdark might help since it is somewhat more modern so should atleast work well with proton or dxvk (system shock 2 on newdark runs well with dxvk atleast).

only problem is if you prefer thiefs old 16 bit gfx mode since im not even sure if it is supported anymore on newdark (it is not supported with system shock 2 atleast it seems ?).

[revelator]

ok read a bit about this on the above forum and 16 bit mode is no longer supported but can be emulated with a sample shader which is included with newdark. the reason it looks wrong is that 16 bit uses dithering but this is no longer supported with modern gfx cards and has to be emulated. I remember 16 bit games tended to look like shit on a geforce tnt but strangely rather good on a voodoo card. This is also a problem with the older lithtech games like blood2 which look rather bad compared to back then on my voodoo 3. If you have the guts to do some hex editing of the executable it can also be forced but will look rather bad so the sample shader is probably the best bet if you absolutely must have 16 bit mode.

as for other old games that i have running on lutris heretic II runs quite ok as well as many of the early opengl games based on idtech.

[JackFarmer]

2 hours ago, revelator said:

thanks quite a few of them i have actually gotten to work on it but many of my other old games require non standard workarounds to run so im a bit afraid to even try . 

the worst offenders are probably my lithtech based games which can be a royal pain to get working on both linux and windows, i managed to get them working on windows 11 but it took quite some work so im not too keen on repeating that.

hmm strangely i have no problem with system shock 2 which should be the same engine as thief 2 ? though i dunno if thief 2 also has access to the updated dark engine ?.

That's the strange thing, DeusEx works on my machines.

 

18 minutes ago, revelator said:

should be possible to copy of steams workarounds for use with lutris in case someone does not have the game on steam.

otherwise using newdark might help since it is somewhat more modern so should atleast work well with proton or dxvk (system shock 2 on newdark runs well with dxvk atleast).

only problem is if you prefer thiefs old 16 bit gfx mode since im not even sure if it is supported anymore on newdark (it is not supported with system shock 2 atleast it seems ?).

I am using Lutris for that. On both machines, I get the same problem during installation: once the installer demands CD 2, it does not get recognized and I have to abort the installation. Which means, I cannot apply the patch because it searches for a complete install.

[datiswous]

What I couldn't get working is the editor for system shock 2 although I think I could load Dromed.

Edit: I just tried again and it loads fine.. Before I tried many different ways and couldn't get it working.

Edited November 29 by datiswous

[datiswous]

25 minutes ago, JackFarmer said:

I am using Lutris for that. On both machines, I get the same problem during installation: once the installer demands CD 2, it does not get recognized and I have to abort the installation. Which means, I cannot apply the patch because it searches for a complete install.

If you still have the game's product code you can add it to steam and then you can install it via it's download. I think this is how I got Prey (2006) in Steam.

I still have the discs for T1 (not Gold) and 2 so could give it a try..

What is actually better about the original Thief 1 in comparison to Gold?

Edited November 29 by datiswous

[datiswous]

58 minutes ago, JackFarmer said:

On both machines, I get the same problem during installation: once the installer demands CD 2, it does not get recognized and I have to abort the installation.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134733

Quote

-if you have the original CD release, and the game installer is not working, you can do a manual install - just copy the THIEF folder from both CDs to your hard drive (overwrite the folder from the first cd with the one from the second, that should make sure all the resources end up in just one folder), run TFix, and follow the instructions.

 

[revelator]

I seem to remember the original discs used some kinda drm crap that royally f... up some later windows versions. Not sure if wine also gets hit by the same crap but possibly. Datiswous idea might actually be the easier part since mucking about with the drm crap can be detrimental to your pc's health BOOOM ! .  I usually use a cd emulator since most of my original cd's have long since been imaged and i have luckily not run into that problem atleast.

[revelator]

Ah bah its a known problem with wine and some discs . It refuses to release the drive which leads to being unable to switch because even if you manage to swap the cd the explorer still shows disc 1. The reason why i havent run into it is that im using an emulator which seems to bypass wines problem with releasing the disc. As mentioned you could also just copy the content to your harddrive which should also work. Strangely not all discs are affected by this bug but call of duty is one such. And apperantly also thief it would seem.

[datiswous]

I just installed the cd-rom version of Thief 1 (not Gold) via Lutris (os: win98), it installed fine, but then did not work. Then I downloaded Tfix. Applied it to the directory and now it loads fine.

Edit: Weird enough now the video's don't load anymore, so have to check that..

Edit2: This is fixed by simply copying all the movies from the cd-rom to the install folder.

@JackFarmerI installed Thief 2 via Lutris now and encountered your problem, but got around it by removing the usb-cable of the portable dvd-drive an adding it again. It mounted correctly, but now it became the E:\ drive, but worked correctly and continued installation. Then I installed Tfix2 over it (without it it did not work). After closing the installer, Lutris Aborted, so I had to manually add the install again. But it works now.

But anyway, I think you can just install it via the priviously mentioned tfix method.

For tfix you have to navigate to the Thief install directory inside the wine c-drive. So for me that is: 

Games/thief2/drive_c/Thief2/

So Lutris installs all the files in thief2. Inside it there is a fake drive_c for wine and inside that via wine the game is installed into folder Thief2. When you use Tfix you have to navigate to that subfolder. 

Edited November 29 by datiswous

[revelator]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Edit: Weird enough now the video's don't load anymore, so have to check that..

Edit2: This is fixed by simply copying all the movies from the cd-rom to the install folder.

aye lutris has several problems handling physical cd drives it would seem. diablo II has the same problem so needs some mucking around copying files to get it going. The old thief before TFix(TFix is basically newdark) relies on dx6 so would need a somewhat old version of wine i reckon so no vulkan wrapper stuff eg. dxvk/proton wont work.

[BSmitty]

I'm currently running MX, PopOS, and CachyOS as my daily driver on my new hardware. Cachy has been a joy to use. I'll probably add Solus to the mix when I install the next HDD.

[revelator]

Solus works great but its up to personal preference . I much prefer it to some other distros but that said its not the only one that just works. Pop is pretty great to havent tried cachy so cant comment ubuntu and derivates also works fine though im not a fan of the ui. Mint seems popular though my stint with it ended because of some problems with lutris and the ui was sadly rather broken for me but that may have been a glitchy release.

[jaxa]

Zorin OS

[revelator]

Hmm theres also Arch Linux if youre into toying with the latest and greatest (and potentially unstable ) features.

Arch has pretty much abolished 32 bit as a target so take this into consideration to.

The Msys2 build environment is based on Arch's and has also pretty much deprecated anything 32 bit except packages that rely on msvcrt (standard mingw-w64) in favor of ucrt.

I did use OpenSuse at some time which was great for crossbuilds. not sure how it does today as it was some time ago.

[Xolvix]

It took absolutely ages of puttering around until I was comfortable but I think I can finally say I've moved to Linux for good.

My current distro is Kubuntu 25.10. I was using 24.04 but when I heard KDE was going to be moving to Wayland exclusively I figured I should experiment with a newer version of KDE and get used to how Wayland works as well as its quirks, which I've mostly got a handle on now.

It really does help that I only play singleplayer games these days which Proton handles really well. I use https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher so I can run anything including GOG games without needing Steam along with my own game launching scripts, because that's how I roll. And of course native TDM works great.

EDIT: For what it's worth the old Thief games (via GOG installers) along with their respective fix patches work really well without any issue.

Edited Friday at 12:23 AM by Xolvix

[revelator]

wayland is probably the way forward in the linux world (X was simply getting to crowded with unnessesary stuff).

Xfce or OpenBox if you want to go really minimal.

Yeah gog installers usually tend to work well on linux .

For those games not on gog it can be a bit of a hazzle at times since many older games dont work with proton/dxvk (pre dx8 games). For those you still need to toy with wine's internals (runtimes DX flags etc.) and for games who only support upto dx6 you need a really old version of wine.

Nvidia cards can also be a bit hit and miss with certain distros, generally AMD does way better with linux because they tend to be more amenable to open source.