Linux users tasukete! How can I use CD Installers?

[KenaiPhoenix]

Hello!

This past Christmas I got a new DVD/CD reader burner (couldnt find an affordable BD one) and it works like wonders. I burned and played some games and it showed me that my old drive was really on it last leg.

Now to the topic: I got curious and wanted to install some older PC games that I have laying around. At first I tried to Install my The sims 2 game, but it was like 4 CDs and I never manage to make the CD swap works.

As I undestand that a limitation of lutris or wine when it comes to multiple CD, but then I saw my 6 CDs UT2004 box, which is compatible with windows and has a linux installer inside. I put the disc and try to run the script but it fails to get the permissions to run the installer from the disc, I tried giving it permission with chmod +x [the installer script] but it didnt work.

I know a reliable way to install is just to copy and paste the CD contents on a folder in my drive and then run the script "locally", but that cant be the way Epic though right? There are no linux installation manual on the CD or game manual, and I have search online and havent found a good answer, so I came here for you aid fellow penguins:

How can I install games from the disc?

Thanks


PS: Oh and my distro is Arch (btw), and yeah I suck at using it.

 

[skramz]

elaborate. what do you mean by "it didn't work"? did it spew some error in the terminal? did it launch and then exit?

 

[petran79]

you could save a lot of time by getting and installing the ripped version, eg GOG, Myabandonware, Collection Chamber, Abandonware France etc or a cue/bin image

 

[SunBroDS4]

Hello!

You’ve been hit by how Linux handles physical discs: they’re mounted as read‑only, and Wine often can’t detect when you swap them.
That’s why the installer script on the UT2004 disc fails, you can’t change permissions on a read‑only filesystem.

The most reliable way is to avoid installing directly from the CDs.
Instead it's often done that way:
- you rip each CD to an ISO file.
- you mount the ISOs one by one in a fixed folder.
- point Wine to that folder as your virtual “CD drive.”

This gives Wine a consistent location that doesn’t change, so it never loses track when swapping discs.

There are Lutris scripts repos and I found this. That might help you:

MyLittleLutrisScripts/Unreal Tournament 2004 at master · legluondunet/MyLittleLutrisScripts

Lutris scripts for old games. Contribute to legluondunet/MyLittleLutrisScripts development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

If you run into more trouble, don’t hesitate to use some AI to help with commands.
When you do, please share your terminal history via `history` and your output so we can get a clear picture of what you’ve tried.

 

[Potapota]

I'm guessing the linux installer on that disc is simply just way too ancient to work out of the box on modern linux and you'd be much better off just running the windows version on wine. Or rather I would be surprised if it did work 20 years later. I know it's fun to use original media and all that but the sad(?) truth is that there are often way better methods of playing most old games (ie. rips, repacks, fan made game engines and so on).
For ut2004 in specific, this doesn't really help you right now but the oldunreal folks are working on a similar patch/installer for it that they've made for Unreal and Unreal tournament.

Multi disc games might be a bit trickier to install in wine due to the way it and linux (generally) handles things but it could be doable simply by copying the discs' contents to a directory and swapping them out with the second disc when prompted and so on. For example. I would still expect issues with this approach.

Also, just saying, ai is nice and all but there's a lot of nuance in troubleshooting software issues especially on linux where the safeguards are generally nonexistent when compared to something like windows. I've seen a lot of "just paste this command to your linux terminal :)" in search engine ai things and I really would advice against that.

 

[aquova]

The most reliable way is to avoid installing directly from the CDs.
Instead it's often done that way:
- you rip each CD to an ISO file.
- you mount the ISOs one by one in a fixed folder.
- point Wine to that folder as your virtual “CD drive.”

This is definitely the way. I've done something similar in the past and copying the data off the discs first saves a lot of hassle