Older than Vista? I was just playing some C64 titles, Maniac Mansion specifically, on VICE after running d64copy on a 1541 drive to create some images.

Do you mean native Linux titles, Windows ports, "legacy" computer in a native library, "legacy" computer arch in an emlated environment?

Although I've got to say, with Proton rounding out the already proficient WINE libraries I have a pretty good time no matter what I'm running. Native Linux ports might actually be harder to run than some of the WIndows library versions though.

Inhibit wrote on 2025-11-04, 21:04:

Older than Vista? I was just playing some C64 titles, Maniac Mansion specifically, on VICE after running d64copy on a 1541 drive to create some images.

Do you mean native Linux titles, Windows ports, "legacy" computer in a native library, "legacy" computer arch in an emlated environment?

Although I've got to say, with Proton rounding out the already proficient WINE libraries I have a pretty good time no matter what I'm running. Native Linux ports might actually be harder to run than some of the WIndows library versions though.

Well I was going on with a default "assumption" of Windows games (Win32,Win16) but it's cool to see emulators doing just fine.

So at one point I tried to get Mechwarrior 3 running under Proton to no avail. But I didn't try that hard. It didn't "just work" the way most software had though.

There was another older game called Harvest: Massive Assault. Weirdly enough this had a Linux build that just refused to run because Linux Mint lacked the ancient libraries required for it to run, and my amateurish attempts to install them kept failing spectacularly because of incompatibilities in software versions. The Windows version ran fine under Proton.

I think if you use older version of Wine you may have better luck than the latest and greatest versions of Proton?

Namrok wrote on 2025-11-04, 21:26:

So at one point I tried to get Mechwarrior 3 running under Proton to no avail. But I didn't try that hard. It didn't "just work" the way most software had though.

There was another older game called Harvest: Massive Assault. Weirdly enough this had a Linux build that just refused to run because Linux Mint lacked the ancient libraries required for it to run, and my amateurish attempts to install them kept failing spectacularly because of incompatibilities in software versions. The Windows version ran fine under Proton.

I think if you use older version of Wine you may have better luck than the latest and greatest versions of Proton?

Damn I never ever thought of the reality of Linux backwards compatibility. I don't know how Linux changes but since it's the same kernel getting updated, I would have assumed it to be better.

Also I don't know how Proton or the other emulators work (would you give an intro?) but I have just used plain Wine and it has worked fine in the few games I tested (except games with MIDI)

WINE generally does old titles fine.

Proton generally (90% ish) does new titles fine.

Very very old titles may need older wine versions, due to odd, depreciated behaviors in ddraw and pals. (Diablo 1, being infamous)

All of these cases can be handled with things like Heroic game launcher, Lutris, and co.

I'd say you would be hard pressed to find a vintage windows game that cant be made to run with existing tools.

As for 'vintage linux builds', i'd say the main issue comes from 'version pedantry'.

'No, I want THIS SPECIFIC ia32 library! NO, THE SAME LIBRARY FROM ANOTHER DISTRO IS FORBIDDEN! I dont care about it having the same functions and calling ordinals, the magic strings dont match!'

Much of the problem could be solved with shim libraries and some env variables to define the version to lie about, imo.

Many distros already give shim libraries for older versions to avoid dependency hell, but the version pedantry persists.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-11-05, 16:29:

Namrok wrote on 2025-11-04, 21:26:

So at one point I tried to get Mechwarrior 3 running under Proton to no avail. But I didn't try that hard. It didn't "just work" the way most software had though.

There was another older game called Harvest: Massive Assault. Weirdly enough this had a Linux build that just refused to run because Linux Mint lacked the ancient libraries required for it to run, and my amateurish attempts to install them kept failing spectacularly because of incompatibilities in software versions. The Windows version ran fine under Proton.

I think if you use older version of Wine you may have better luck than the latest and greatest versions of Proton?

Damn I never ever thought of the reality of Linux backwards compatibility. I don't know how Linux changes but since it's the same kernel getting updated, I would have assumed it to be better.

Also I don't know how Proton or the other emulators work (would you give an intro?) but I have just used plain Wine and it has worked fine in the few games I tested (except games with MIDI)

Proton (And GE-Proton by extension) was originally created by Valve to try to make games "just work" on Linux. It uses a version of Wine, and other libraries like DXVK, NVAPI, VKD3D to try to translate windows and directx calls into Linux and Vulcan calls.

I'm confident that people with more persistence than myself could get games to run on Linux. But I've found it to be a crapshoot whether older games "just work" any more on newer versions of Linux any more than they "just work" on newer versions of Windows. Sadly it seems like the only platform you are nearly 100% guaranteed a game will "just work" on, is contemporary hardware running a contemporary OS. Everything else, you might have to work for it.

All that said, from where I sit, I don't think Linux is any worse than Windows for old games. And everything I've bought from GOG or Steam, regardless of age, "just works". That copy of Mechwarrior 3 I mentioned was my own ancient CD copy.

@BEEN_Nath_58

its a little little bit unclear what you meant with "how linux holds up in legacy games" - due to the fact that Linux can't run Windows games nativly (nor legacy or new) it depends only on the "emulation" environment

then you got two questions
1. how good can an older linux kernel run a newer wine/proton environment
2. how good run your legacy game in wine/proton (on linux)

or did you mean something else?

llm wrote on 2025-11-06, 08:52:

@BEEN_Nath_58 […]
Show full quote

@BEEN_Nath_58

its a little little bit unclear what you meant with "how linux holds up in legacy games" - due to the fact that Linux can't run Windows games nativly (nor legacy or new) it depends only on the "emulation" environment

then you got two questions
1. how good can an older linux kernel run a newer wine/proton environment
2. how good run your legacy game in wine/proton (on linux)

or did you mean something else?

Since native Linux gaming has been primitive for decades, I had felt it safe to assume I would refer to Windows emulation.

Your followup questions are related

wierd_w wrote on 2025-11-05, 17:20:

As for 'vintage linux builds', i'd say the main issue comes from 'version pedantry'.

'No, I want THIS SPECIFIC ia32 library! NO, THE SAME LIBRARY FROM ANOTHER DISTRO IS FORBIDDEN! I dont care about it having the same functions and calling ordinals, the magic strings dont match!'

Much of the problem could be solved with shim libraries and some env variables to define the version to lie about, imo.

It would be nice to have a "send it and see what happens" flag.

For Windows games that require a CDRom I created a trusted environment machine and write up a bash script to auto-mount the image as a "real CD" rather than just a file system. Works well for old games that required the physical characteristics of the otherwise present, but not in Windows, CD.

llm wrote on 2025-11-06, 08:52:

@BEEN_Nath_58 […]
Show full quote

@BEEN_Nath_58

its a little little bit unclear what you meant with "how linux holds up in legacy games" - due to the fact that Linux can't run Windows games nativly (nor legacy or new) it depends only on the "emulation" environment

then you got two questions
1. how good can an older linux kernel run a newer wine/proton environment
2. how good run your legacy game in wine/proton (on linux)

or did you mean something else?

It might not be readily apparent but neither WINE nor Proton are emulators. Any more than the libraries they replace are emulating things on Windows.

A point of distinction I make for the less familiar because there are neat tricks WINE can pull (especially in our use case) that wouldn't be possible if it was emulating hardware and running some original Windows release.

I have plenty of experience buying and playing older games on linux. I use flatimage to sandbox the game in 1 file with windows so in theory the game will run forever on a linux distro.