Hello,

I have some trouble running Baldur's Gate 2 Complete (the classic GOG release, not Enhanced Edition) on my (Arch) Linux system. Graphics are fine but most of the time, the game plays all the audio in a weird way; crackling, as if it was just some static noise, or if you can imagine what a slowed down video sounds like.

Are there any Linux users that encountered this issue? I've been searching online for days and haven't got much luck.
I can possibly play BG2 using GemRB, which has no sound issues, but it seems the engine is not quite prepared for the game (I've encountered a game-breaking bug in the first dungeon already, plus the combat is super slow making it tedious rather than fun), so I'd prefer to avoid that...
I've obviously also tried running it on my distro's Wine version (5.5-1) but can't even make it to the main menu: the game is flickering like crazy. Using the baldur.ini settings from the Linux GOG installer did not help.

Thanks in advance.

Okay, I seem to have found a solution that will work for me. Perhaps it will help someone else in the future.

Since I've had no luck fixing the audio on the Linux version, I did some experimenting with settings and patches instead while using my Linux distro's Wine (which has no sound issues with the game) to figure out how to get rid off the flickering. What helped was installing ddrawfix (by simply running wineconsole ie-ddraw-fix-bg.cmd from the game directory, the patch is already there), then setting hardware acceleration on (via BGConfig.exe or by setting the appropriate value in baldur.ini). After that run winecfg, configure bgmain.exe to use a virtual desktop of appropriate size (based on the game's resolution). This will run Baldur's Gate 2 in the windowed mode which is not perfect, considering how big current displays are, therefore what I do before running the game is change resolution via xrandr (it should be a little bit larger than the Wine's virtual desktop, otherwise the game runs in fullscreen which reintroduces the flickering).

The [Program Options] section of my baldur.ini looks like this:
Installing=0
Install Type=3
BitsPerPixel=32
16Bit Textures=0
3D Acceleration=1
GLSetup Driver=0
Resolution=1024
Maximum Frame Rate=30
Path Search Nodes=32000
Translucent Shadows=0
Force 50 Percent Transparent=0
Disable Brighten=1
Display Subtitles=0
Full Screen=1
SoftMirrorBlt=0
SoftBlt=0
SoftSrcKeyBlt=0
Disable Vertex Padding=0
Volume Movie=100
Volume Music=100
Volume Voices=100
Volume Ambients=40
Volume SFX=100
Font Name=
Double Byte Character Support=0
Drop Capitals=1
Display Frequency=60
Tooltips=10
Sprite Mirror=0
Gamma Correction=0
Brightness Correction=0
Backwards Compatible 3d=0
SoftSrcKeyBltFast=0
SoftBltFast=0
Strref On=0
First Run=0