Since Demonicon has stopped working in Windows (due to the 24H2 update), I decided to see whether it is possible to run it in Linux instead.

The target machine where Demonicon (GOG) runs ok in Windows 10 or pre-24H2 Windows 11:

System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: XPS 15 9550
BIOS: 1.14.0 (type: UEFI)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300HQ CPU @ 2.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM

Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 530
Display Memory: 4148 MB

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
Display Memory: 6030 MB

Linux Mint 22.1 Xia fresh install

Done so far, please point out if I did anything wrong. For instance, some instructions also mention about installing "winetricks", but I have no idea if it is needed, especially if Lutris is installed as well.

1. Changed Linux to use NVidia proprietary drivers with Driver Manager:

- nvidia-driver-550 (recommended)

2. Installed WINE 10.0 (the one offered by the Mint repository was WINE 9):

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings
wget -O - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key -
sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/noble/winehq-noble.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

3. Ran "winecfg" just in case, but didn't really change anything.

4. Installed Demonicon using the GOG Windows offline installers.

- Pointed WINE to the offline installer executable.
- The game seemed to install fine, similarly like in Windows. The installer installs at least DirectX 9.0c as well.
- Run the game with the Demonicon desktop icon but it fails to run the game. I didn't remember to take the error log, I have to get it again...

5. Uninstalled this standalone version and installed Lutris instead, by running the .deb package (0.5.18):

https://github.com/lutris/lutris/releases

- Logged into GOG account through Lutris and started the install through there so that Lutris downloads the installer itself (Sources => GOG => Demonicon => Install).
- The installation aborts with an error, error log below.

So what next? I'd prefer to keep it simple and run it with vanilla WINE, I know someone will soon suggest some other wrapper or Heroic or other Lutris-kind of tool, but to me they just seem to complicate things because you have no idea why they don't work, when they don't. Frankly, I don't think I've EVER gotten any Windows game to run successfully on Linux with Lutris, there is always some hiccup and in the end I may have had much better chance with vanilla WINE.

The error log seems to report at least about missing libraries for vulcan and opengl; shouldn't Lutris and/or WINE installations taken care of those, if they are needed? How do I install them manually, and is there something else missing as well?
Then again, I don't think that should make the installation fail...

Or is it failing because I didn't install "winetricks" like some instructions suggested?

Any other suggestions? I am ready to try even Heroic or Steam, if running the GOG version through them works better...

Lutris error log:

Command exited with code 256

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/exception_backstops.py", line 79, in error_wrapper
return handler(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/util/jobs.py", line 127, in wrapper
repeat = func(*a, **kw)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/installer/commands.py", line 447, in _monitor_task
raise ScriptingError(_("Command exited with code %s") % command.return_code)

lutris.installer.errors.ScriptingError: Command exited with code 256

Lutris log:
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:50:46,886:application]: Starting Lutris 0.5.18
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:50:47,539:startup]: "card1" is Intel HD Graphics 530 (8086:191b 1028:06e4 i915) Driver 24.2.8
[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:50:47,540:startup]: i386 libGL.so.1 missing (needed by opengl)
[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:50:47,540:startup]: i386 libvulkan.so.1 missing (needed by vulkan)
[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:50:51,781:style_manager]: Error reading color-scheme: g-dbus-error-quark: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface “org.freedesktop.portal.Settings” on object at path /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop (19)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/style_manager.py", line 74, in _call_cb
values = obj.call_finish(result)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
gi.repository.GLib.GError: g-dbus-error-quark: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface “org.freedesktop.portal.Settings” on object at path /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop (19)
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:38,654:gog]: Getting game details for 1862122311
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:39,143:gog]: Getting game details for 1862122311
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:41,692:installer]: Getting files for goginstaller
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:41,693:gog]: Getting game details for 1862122311
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:41,817:gog]: Getting download info for https://api.gog.com/products/1862122311/downlink/installer/en1installer0
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:42,157:gog]: Getting download info for https://api.gog.com/products/1862122311/downlink/installer/en1installer1
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:52:42,506:gog]: Getting download info for https://api.gog.com/products/1862122311/downlink/installer/en1installer2
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:54:40,414:file_box]: Download completed
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:54:40,562:files_box]: All files available
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:54:40,563:installerwindow]: All files are available, continuing install
[INFO:2025-04-18 11:54:40,566:installerwindow]: Launching installer commands
[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:55:07,121:errors]: Command exited with code 256
[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:55:07,122:exception_backstops]: Error handling timeout function: Command exited with code 256
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/exception_backstops.py", line 79, in error_wrapper
return handler(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/util/jobs.py", line 127, in wrapper
repeat = func(*a, **kw)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/lutris/installer/commands.py", line 447, in _monitor_task
raise ScriptingError(_("Command exited with code %s") % command.return_code)
lutris.installer.errors.ScriptingError: Command exited with code 256


I made a snapshot with Timeshift just before I started this process, ie. installed WINE, so I can always easily get to the original pristine state and start over again, in case I installed some wrong version of something etc...

Just in case, I installed also winetricks_20240105-2_all.deb but it made no difference, Demonicon installation still fails.

[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:50:47,540:startup]: i386 libGL.so.1 missing (needed by opengl)
[ERROR:2025-04-18 11:50:47,540:startup]: i386 libvulkan.so.1 missing (needed by vulkan)

I feel like these are the slightly more important things.

What my question would be, did thou try extracting the installer using something like InnoExtract or just installing and then pointing to Lutris?

That's how I go for most programs. And I perhaps suggest that the lovely DeusEx avatar haver should be along soon with actual advice.

Make sure you are connected to your GOG account in Lutris and are online when installing, i know it totally makes offline installers kind of pointless but compatability improves a lot. I've had this working recently.

Yeah I noticed those too, but:

1. Who or what should install those? Lutris? Wine? The Driver Manager when I switched to the proprietary NVidia drivers? Me manually?

If me, how do I install those? Just "sudo apt install libGL.so.1 libvulkan.so.1"?

2. Would those missing libraries/files really make the installation fail? Shouldn't it fail only if I ran the game?

I guess I can freely experiment and break things because I always have the Timeshift snapshot to go back to (already used it once) and there is nothing important on this laptop yet, started it all over from the scratch. No I didn't extract anything because I am unsure why that is needed,

When trying the installation with vanilla WINE, I just pointed WINE to the .exe Windows installer and it installed it similarly like it would in Windows, no errors there. Even created a desktop shortcut for me.

With Lutris, I tried both pointing it to that Windows installer, or telling it to download the installers itself from my GOG account. Both ended with the same error. I tried both by pointing Lutris to the offline installer files I had already downloaded, and logging into my GOG account and let it download them itself. Both had the same error, then again I have no idea whether Lutris was able to clean any remnants after the first unsuccessful try.

I presume Demonicon should be able to run on WINE, based on that there is an entry in Lutris for it (spefically for the GOG version) and by googling I find some ProtonDB reviews of many people (Steam users probably) being able to run the game in Linux, including Steam Deck.

What is the purpose of winetricks? Do I need it if I am trying to use Lutris as well? Winetricks that introduces itself as an extra utility which is supposed to help get around some configuration issues and quirks with many Windows applications; isn't Lutris supposed to do the same, without having to manually edit WINE prefixes or whatever they are?

Yeah I still am quite a newbie when it comes to Linux gaming, except when running some Steam games through Steam which is about as easy as in Windows...

I am actually right now installing the Steam client and Team Fortress 2 on this same Linux, just in case that installs some extra Vulkan/OpenGL/whatever libraries that WINE/Lutris is now missing...

Generally googling for these instructions is a bit of a pain because you get dozens of different opinions what is the best approach to get your Windows games run on WINE:
- use Lutris
- use Bottles (didn't work for me the last time I tried it in Rcoky Linux 9, meh...)
- use the Flatpack version of WINE and everything else
- no no whatever you do, don't use Flatpacks! They are eeeeevil!
- don't use the WINE and Lutris that come with your distro because they are older versions
- no no quite on the contrary, use the distro versions because they are guaranteed to work with your distro!
etc. etc. etc.

Well, I'm kind of an oldschool user, so I'd push all the graphical cruft aside and invoke the magic words of, "sudo apt get install", and follow packaging naming schemas according to your distro.

(Though in my case, it'd be sudo DNF install).

So what's the deal with extracting the installer? What is the benefit with that, doesn't running the installer within WINE sometimes work as desired or does unwanted stuff?

In the past I recall installing e.g. Icewind Dale (GOG) with the installer, no pre-extracting anything. The installation went fine, the game itself ran crappily but that was fixed by some change to the game prefix or something and then it ran perfectly...

GOG installers tend to bog down hard, they're terribly inefficient, and you can arbitrarily place the files extracted to a directory you please, instead of the double mirror copy that the installers do.

I marked rojimbo as the solution because it had the most suggestions probably pointing to the right direction.

Anyway, I got the game to install and work. I did two (EDIT: actually, three) things since my last message, either or both of which affected this:

1. When reinstalling through Lutris, I am not sure if I noticed earlier the warning that the default directory to which I was going to install the game was not empty. Sure enough, there were files from earlier installation attempts. So I just removed that directory manually (something like ~/Games/gog/demonicon/ ).

2. As I said before, I installed the Steam client, installed Team Fortress 2 within it, and ran Team Fortress 2 (twice actually since it gives an option to run it either with Vulkan or legacy OpenGL). So I presume Steam may have installed some dependencies now that Lutris and that game needed, maybe those two things that it was complaining about in the earlier log?

3. Oh yeah there was a third thing too, as rojimbo suggested, I also thought whether it matters to which graphics card it is defaulting to. Just in case, in the NVidia control panel, I set it to "NVidia (Performance Mode)" which I guess means it uses the old NVidia GPU all the time?

The other option, where it was earlier I think, is "NVIDIA On-Demand". The third option is "Intel (Power Saving Mode") but at least right now it is greyed out for some reason. Oh well, I don't care...

However, I think I tried this already before, and at least alone it didn't seem to fix this issue?

Anyway, after those three additional steps, now Lutris started the installation normally. It gives the very same installation windows and dialogs as when you install the game on Windows (starting with the screen where you select the installation language etc.), which means that earlier the installation didn't even start. Then again, why were there those files in the directory already if all the earlier Lutris attempts had failed? Maybe they were from the very first installation without Lutris, but I did uninstall the game, didn't check the directory though?

Anyway, now the game seems to work ok, I see the intro and videos and played it a bit (with a keyboard and a mouse, I didn't test how to get a gamepad to work with the game).

I will re-test the installation again (using the snapshot with Timeshift to get to the beginning before installing even WINE), just so that I get the right procedure that works, at least for this particular laptop model with Linux Mint 22.1 XFCE. Also hopefully I find a way to finish the installation without having to install Steam and run Team Fortress 2. :) Just need to figure out what are the missing pieces that Steam/Team Fortress 2 possibly installed that helped with this game as well.

After that, I still want to measure how well the Linux/WINE version runs compared to the same game on Windows 10 (same laptop; I currently have both Windows 10 and Linux Mint 22.1 dual-booted on the same laptop so that I can test this). Is there any simple utility for Linux that would display frames-per-second while playing? For Windows I have one already, and maybe one option would also be to run the game through Steam, I recall its FPS counter works also for non-Steam games run through the Steam client (tried it once with the GOG version of The Witcher 3).

Anyway, it is kinda cool now that Linux gives a new life to a game that Windows failed. At least so far I haven't found a working solution (PCGamingwiki, Steam game forum etc.) to get the game to run on Windows 11 24H2, but now I got it to work on Linux at least.

Oh right, that name rings a bell. I think I've tried it before. Thanks.

if this continues, windows. i guess i will reserve part of my windows drive for Linux....

Cool cool cool!

Yeah, it's hard to pin down sometimes what worked, if you tried several things at once. Could also be multiple things in conjuction (like not using integrated GPU + having dependencies installed).

Coolio it works though.

MangoHud seconded. Configuring it with the text file can be a pain. GOverlay is a gui app for it though, but it didn't have all the bells and whistles I needed, so YMMV.

According to some MangoHud guide, I:

1. Installed it with "sudo apt install mangohud"

2. Enabled the FPS counter in the Lutris game settings
Demonicon => Configure => System options => Display => FPS counter (MangoHud) = Enabled.

However, I see no counter. Is this because Ubuntu/Mint offer only the 64bit version of MangoHud, and a 32bit version is apparently needed for 32bit applications, like Demonicon?

https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud?tab=readme-ov-file#debian-ubuntu Sooo... is the only option to build the 32bit version from a source?

In Windows you can run non-Steam games with the Steam client, e.g. in order to use the built-in FPS counter within Steam. I wonder if the same is possible in Linux?