Oh ok, so I was lucky with the first one I tried. Good to know, thanks :)

Oh, that seems to be a bit much. :-(
Please tell me it asks me before going ahead before installing a new one.

Oh, I should say I was referring to my Windows XP system. I did used to run some software of dubious origin there. Just some.

I have repurchased several games on GOG. I do feel that it is a somewhat stupid thing to do, but if I like the game and it is not expensive, I often times do it. But SEGA and Blizzard?

I recall using DaemonTools with success some times on my laptop (great tool). This time it seems I'll have to spend a few weekends ripping my legally purchased game disks and testing them out. (using what? I doubt dd would be enough) :-(
Or I could simply torrent a cracked version of the game and try it out on a safe sandbox environment (wich provides a larger surface to hide nasty things). Thanks a lot, copy-protection!

I wish the publishers would be forced to mention the presence of such measures on the box, but I don't even see them mentioning Steam some times.

Bringing the post back on topic, I wonder if Linux or Wine may choke on those SafeDisc or SecuROM tricks, even if running from the disc.

I don't think it's a bit much... especially when you consider that a Windows install uses around 10GB. The scripts download the specified Wine version automatically. Otherwise, it will only let you choose between the system's version of Wine & what you've already got downloaded.

There's nothing stupid about re-buying games here IMO. I do it for several reasons:

- The convenience of not having to mess about with loads of game discs (and often numerous patches) & being able to free up the physical space occupied by said game discs
- To have a complete & fully updated DRM-free version and not having to mess about with cracks
- More likely to run well in Wine
- To support GOG & encourage more DRM-free releases

(the extras GOG often provides are also nice to have)

That said, I almost never buy games with DRM & those that I do buy I only buy as complete editions at a steep discount or for next to nothing in bundles (and I will only tolerate Steam's DRM - UPlay, Origin, Denuvo etc are total deal breakers & I won't tolerate those even at free). And I generally don't buy newer games unless they have Linux support.

If publishers/developers don't bring their game here then they won't get much from me, if at all.

For my DRM'ed games I install them, then apply cracks & sort out any registry keys etc. they need and then zip the whole thing up for archival & easier installation in future.

I don't often buy retail games any more, as they're almost always little more than a Steam/UPlay/Origin key plus an instruction leaflet with the game code & "manual on disc" text (or something along those lines) and an advertisement for DLC/"Season Pass" for the game and/or other games from the publisher.

I'm certain that the variants that rely on installing system drivers & services won't work, and even if they do they'll most likely cripple performance due to the methods used to hinder attempts at cracking them.

Could you please elaborate? You zip the installation files with the auxiliary data, right? Although I suppose you could zip the entire Wine prefix, but that would not allow you to reinstall the game later.

Yeah, new games are not worth buying at stores. My latest purchase was Rome: Total War for less than 3 Euros, a few weeks ago.

I install the game and then apply any tweaks that are needed/recommended along with the crack before zipping the entire installation up in a ready to go (or almost ready) package.

e.g. my archive copy of Fallout 3 GOTY has been prepared with some .ini tweaks to reduce crashing, GFWL disabled (it causes the game to crash instantly even on Windows) and a cracked launcher. It needs a registry key to be set so I also exported that into a .reg file in the game's base directory. Then I zipped it all together.

Now to reinstall it all I need to do to is extract the archive into a Wine prefix, apply the .reg file and create the shortcut for the launcher (it doesn't need any additional components). This has the added benefit of not getting any extra junk like GFWL installed into the prefix :)

Curious idea... but why don't the regestry and shortcut remain? Do you know where Wine store that information?

Because it's just the game directory

Wine's registry is stored in the prefix's root directory

But... is it share across all Wine prefixes?

No, each prefix has its own separate C: path, registry etc

The old drivers are not available anymore in Ubuntu 16.04. Any recommendations for a Linux system that has good driver support for AMD with GCN 1?

The old Catalyst drivers are not available because AMD no longer support them, because they had lots of issues/kept breaking and were generally a bit of a mess.

Unless you use a distro with an older kernel that the old Catalyst drivers will work with the only option for GCN 1 cards right now are the old open source drivers. The new AMDGPU and AMDGPU-PRO drivers are planned to have support for GCN 1 eventually though.

The problem is the compatibility with games. I found that some games just won’t launch. Not even Steam works without workarounds, because it misses particular libraries. I have to admit, I found it quite frustrating to install Ubuntu, because only very few games worked out of the box.

Unfortunately the situation with AMD GPU drivers currently isn't great :/ The new AMDGPU drivers are supposed to be much better than both the old open source & proprietary Catalyst drivers, but they're still in beta & don't yet support GCN 1 (and in my experience with the RX480 they don't work with Mint yet).

You could use Mint 17.3 though, as the Catalyst drivers still work on that (just don't update the kernel past 4.2 IIRC).

No question you'll run into more issues with the open sources drivers.

But once you apply the library work-around to Steam it's fine, including games.

And with GOG games just don't use GOG's "start.sh" scripts to launch games, that's almost guaranteed to fail with the open source drivers. Just launch the games directly from their binary, I never found a case where that didn't solve the problem when I was still using my R9 270. Installing a few extra libraries was the only side effect I noticed of going around start.sh.

I'm not sure exactly why the start scripts do not work with those drivers, probably the same reason Steam fails. It's a little beyond my current knowledge and I haven't really made an attempt to learn once I discovered how to get around it. :)