submitted by /u/Atecep
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https://preview.redd.it/iqx7x4jbdtag1.png?width=1476&format=png&auto=webp&s=b115726b2e221a96d5f5e9b4b0fb7a3b58001a20

You may be wondering: "Why are you trying to get a racing game from 1998 running on Linux?? And it is a MICROSOFT game?? Isn't that *gasp* sacrilegious??".

Well, it is because it is fun to try to run old games/applications on Linux!

It may sound dumb, but it makes me more eager to use Linux when I'm able to run games/applications on Linux, even though I may not even play the game again after setting it up. It is just a "wow Linux is able to do this??" kind of thing. Besides, the less reliance on Windows, the better.

Thankfully, games nowadays are very easy to run (thx Valve pets the gaben), but sometimes there are games that just don't work, and Monster Truck Madness 2 is one of them...

There is a guide on /r/Steam_Deck explaning how to run it on the Steam Deck, however, when I tried running it on my system (Arch Linux, KDE Plasma) I just couldn't get it to work with Wine 10.20...

So I've decided to dig deeper and try to get it to work and, after a lot of trial and error, here are the results!

Video showing off Monster Truck Madness 2 running on Arch Linux via Wine 6.18

Setting up Wine

I'm using Arch Linux with KDE Plasma. This may also work on other distros, and maybe even on the Steam Deck.

I'm not using any Wine manager (like Lutris) because I like doing things manually to understand how everything "ticks" behind the curtains. However, I'm pretty sure you are able to get this to work via Lutris too.

Download Wine 6.18 (wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz) from Kron4ek's Wine Builds, Wine 6.18 is the LATEST version that can run Monster Truck Madness 2. For more information, read the "Newer Wine Versions Shenanigans" section at the end of the post.

Extract the wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz file using tar -xvf wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz -C ~, this way the Wine 6.18 build will be present on the ~/wine-6.18-x86

wget -O wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz https://github.com/Kron4ek/Wine-Builds/releases/download/6.18/wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz && tar -xvf wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz -C ~ && rm wine-6.18-x86.tar.xz

Let's setup our Wine prefix! Use WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" ~/wine-6.18-x86/bin/winecfg and change the following settings:

• Applications -> Windows Version -> Windows NT 4.0
  • The installer requires Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0.
• Graphics -> Enable Emulate a Virtual Desktop -> Desktop Size = 640x480
  • The game gets very cranky if you don't use a Virtual Desktop because it constantly switches between a full screen window (the game does not support today's large resolutions) and a tiny window.

Apply, click OK. Mount the Monster Truck Madness 2 install ISO and run the SETUP.EXE

cd /run/media/$USER/CDROM/ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" ~/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine SETUP.EXE

The install is uneventful as it gets, just click to install and, when finished, close the setup program.

After installing, you can run the game with

cd ~/.wine-mtm2/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Games/Monster\ Truck\ Madness\ 2/ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" ~/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine Monster.EXE

And it does work! However, when you get into a game, you'll notice that the game only renders a black screen when getting into a race, and the console will be flooded with 010c:fixme:d3d_shader:glsl_blitter_upload_palette P8 texture loaded without a palette.. If you click on the screen, or press F4, then the game will render in "windowed" mode (which isn't really windowed).

You can fix this by going into the game Graphics settings and changing the renderer to Direct3D (Wine does not render the dropdown correctly, you can move between the options by clicking on the dropdown -> move with the arrow keys).

And yay, the game is playable! Yippee! But now things get tricky.

We need to somehow limit the FPS of the game, because if the game runs at framerates higher than 30 FPS, the physics/AI get wonky. You can notice the FPS causing AI issues on the Crazy 98 track, where the AI overshoots the checkpoint on the curve near the lake, and that playing the game at framerates higher than 30 is very easy.

Capping the FPS in the Hardware Renderer

Monster Truck Madness 2 supports Hardware Renderer via Direct3D or via 3dfx (Glide). WineD3D works fine with the Direct3D renderer, but capping the FPS is next to impossible.

• DxWrapper works, but a lot of the textures are incorrect (example: the light rays do not have correct transparency).
• DDrawCompat does not work.
• D7VK crashes with Skipping: Device does not support required feature 'maintenance5' (extension: VK_KHR_maintenance5) because Wine Vulkan driver does not recognize the new feature extensions that were added after the Wine version was released, and there isn't an old enough version of D7VK that does not require that extension.
• MangoHUD FPS limiter does not work.
• libstrangle does not work.
• Gamescope works, but it is very stuttery.

So, what about Glide?

• nGlide does work, but you can't limit the FPS to 30 (it only goes down to 60), so the physics/AI are wonky.
• dgVoodoo2 does also work, but there is a 3dfx logo at the corner of the game at all times, and the game crashes if you try opening the menu bar (ALT) or when pausing the game.

So here comes one of the hackiest workarounds you ever seen: nGlide supports Vulkan and DirectX 9... DXVK has a framerate limiter... So why not use nGlide AND DXVK at the same time?

To do that, download nGlide. When this post was written nGlide's website is down because it seems the owner forgot to renew the hosting, so you'll need to download it via the Wayback Machine.

Install nGlide by using WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" ~/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine ~/Downloads/nGlide210_setup.exe

Run Monster Truck Madness 2 again, go to the Graphics settings, and change the renderer to 3dfx. You may need to restart the game if you were using Direct3D before.

If everything worked correctly, when going into a race, the 3dfx logo will show up and the game will be hardware accelerated. If you want to get fancy, enable all the visual effects in the "Hardware Options...".

Now we need to cap the FPS, to do this, we need to force nGlide to render via DirectX instead of Vulkan. To do this, run the nGlide configuration tool.

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" ~/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine ~/.wine-mtm2/drive_c/windows/system32/nglide_config.exe

In the tool, change the "Video backend" to "DirectX". You can also disable the 3dfx logo if you want to.

Download DXVK v1.9.2, we need to run a old DXVK version due to the same issue we had with D7VK. With D7VK we don't have the luxury of having a version that doesn't use newer Vulkan extensions, but thankfully we do have this luxury with DXVK!

After downloading, move the d3d9.dll file to Monster Truck Madness 2's install folder.

wget -O dxvk-1.9.2.tar.gz https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/download/v1.9.2/dxvk-1.9.2.tar.gz && tar --strip-components=2 -xvf dxvk-1.9.2.tar.gz -C ~/.wine-mtm2/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Games/Monster\ Truck\ Madness\ 2/ dxvk-1.9.2/x32/d3d9.dll && rm dxvk-1.9.2.tar.gz

Open the winecfg again with ``WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" ~/wine-6.18-x86/bin/winecfg, go to "Libraries" and create a new override ford3d9`.

Now you can run Monster Truck Madness 2, and force DXVK to limit the framerate to 30! WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" DXVK_FRAME_RATE=30 /home/mrpowergamerbr/Downloads/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine Monster.EXE

If you want to be sure that the game is running at 30 FPS, you can start the game with MangoHUD

One bug is that a small part of the bottom-half of the screen is "chopped off" because the game thinks that the menu bar is still on the screen, even though the game is in full screen. However I think that this is a Wine bug, because both hardware renderers have this issue. (this does not happen with Gamescope)

Running with Gamescope

To run the game in full screen, or in any other resolution that isn't 640x480, you'll need to run it with Gamescope.

I recommend disabling the "Virtual Desktop" option when using Gamescope because, if you don't, the game won't cleanly scale with nearest neighbor.

To upscale the game from 640x480 to 1280x960...

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" DXVK_FRAME_RATE=30 gamescope -w 640 -h 480 -W 1280 -H 960 -F nearest -S fit /home/mrpowergamerbr/Downloads/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine Monster.EXE

To upscale the game from 640x480 to full screen...

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-mtm2 WINEARCH="win32" DXVK_FRAME_RATE=30 gamescope -w 640 -h 480 -f -F nearest -S fit /home/mrpowergamerbr/Downloads/wine-6.18-x86/bin/wine Monster.EXE

Using Gamescope has its caveats:

• Gamescope fails to shutdown cleanly. This is a bug in Gamescope: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/777
• Any window that the game opens will be shown in full screen.

What about the Software Renderer?

The software renderer, which is used when the game is not running in "full screen" (because the game is running within a Wine menu, or when you have software renderer selected, does not have a FPS cap.

You can cap the FPS using cnc-ddraw, but in my experience while it only worked as long as the game was in "full screen", and it also broke the in-game popups/dialogs. Using cnc-ddraw disables Direct3D support.

You can also cap the FPS using DxWnd, but in my experience, just like cnc-ddraw, it only worked if the game was in "full screen", and the game bugged out if you put it in Full Screen -> Windowed -> Full Screen.

You could get devious with it and try to cap the process CPU speed to get it to run at 30 FPS.

What about DOSBox-X?

I'm not sure about you guys, but I think that running the games with Wine is way more cooler than running it with a emulator.

You can also run Monster Truck Madness 2 with Windows 98 + DOSBox-X, and it does run well enough with the software renderer, as long as you increase the cycles to a Pentium 3.

However, if you want to use Direct3D it will be PAINFULLY slow, and while DOSBox-X does emulate a Voodoo 1, it will also be PAINFULLY slow. DOSBox-X does support 3dfx passthrough with OpenGlide, but DOSBox-X crashed when using openglide-git + manually compiled DOSBox-X SDL1 version.

You could also go even further and run DOSBox-X with Wine + nGlide. This does work and it does have a somewhat acceptable performance.

There are also other projects, such as 86Box, SoftGPU and qemu-3dfx. But...

• I didn't want to use 86Box, because it is way more hardware intensive than the other options.
• SoftGPU would work, but it requires VirtualBox or VMware, and both require disabling KVM.
• qemu-3dfx could be a good option, but I deeply dislike his attitudes against other projects.

Miscellaneous

The game does recognize gamepads (Xbox One Controller).

Maybe in the future it would be nice to containerize Wine (Docker?) because we are running an older Wine version, so I think it may break in the future when libraries change.

Newer Wine Versions Shenanigans

As I said previously, running Monster Truck Madness 2 on newer Wine versions seems to be downright impossible.

The game will crash right after the intro with free(): double free detected in tcache 2. You can bypass that error with LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libjemalloc.so (`yay -Syu lib32-libjemalloc"), however the game will be VERY unstable and WILL have graphical glitches, such as buttons with corrupted palettes, the course image will be rendered in BGR instead of RGB for some reason, and the game will be VERY prone to crashing, especially if you try to open the graphics/sound/etc menu in game. The game will also take a stupidly long time to load any race.

So yes, you can get it to run on newer Wine versions, but it will not be a pleasant experience.

Anyhow, have fun!

submitted by /u/MrPowerGamerBR
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I have a question that’s been confusing me, and I want to treat it as a separate topic from “which distro is best”.

I’m currently using Zorin OS, and I’m thinking about switching to Fedora or CachyOS mainly for gaming.
But before distro hopping, I want to understand what I actually gain.

From what I understand, gaming performance on Linux shouldn’t really depend on the distro itself, but on what’s underneath it.

So my questions are:

1. What really makes one distro “better” for gaming?

Is it mainly: - Kernel (newer kernel, custom kernels like Zen/XanMod)? - GPU drivers (NVIDIA proprietary, Mesa versions for AMD/Intel)? - Mesa / Vulkan / LLVM versions? - Default system tweaks and configs?

For example: - Fedora is known for newer kernels and Mesa - CachyOS ships with custom kernels and performance-focused defaults

But technically… aren’t these things installable on any distro?

2. What do Fedora or CachyOS give me that Zorin doesn’t?

If I stay on Zorin: - Can I install a newer kernel? - Can I get the same Mesa / drivers / Vulkan versions? - Can I reach the same performance and compatibility with my hardware?

If yes, then is the real difference just: - how easy it is - how much manual work is needed - how fast updates arrive?

3. How do I get the best performance regardless of distro?

What should I actually focus on learning and configuring instead of hopping distros?

For example: - kernel selection (generic vs zen vs xanmod) - GPU drivers & Mesa - Proton / Wine / DXVK / VKD3D - CPU governor & system tuning

4. Learning efficiently (important)

I don’t have weeks to deep-dive into one single topic.

So: - What keywords / topics should I search for? - What type of videos or blog posts are worth watching/reading? (e.g. “Linux gaming stack explained”, “Mesa Vulkan Linux”, “Linux kernel for gaming”, etc.)

My goal isn’t to chase a “magic gaming distro”,
but to understand what actually matters, so I can make an informed decision:
either optimize my current system or switch knowing exactly why.

Thanks in advance

submitted by /u/Ok-Worry460
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i jumped from windows to Linux on new year.
i started on pop os. and it was a bad experience, games ran yeah but like 20 fps.
so next day i went and installed Ubuntu because i get access on drivers in Ubuntu but not in pop os.
now after testing and installing it aint turning on those performances at all.

Processing img q54y0fembtag1...

so yeah how do i get team red to reep the power up?

submitted by /u/CapitalDramatic3990
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What I mean, is that once a game has been installed and you have all the configuration setup so the game runs, could I just back up the installed folder (in the case I want to get a new drive or reinstall the OS, etc.) and then simply use lutris to point back to the executable after copying the folder back to the new drive/OS? Or does each game have dependencies stores elsewhere on the OS that would break the game?

While I have everything setup and working with my games, it took some time with a few of them to dial in the wine settings, etc. to get them to run. I'd like to avoid that should I need to do a reinstall. Worse case, I'll have to make some notes on each game so I can reinstall fresh if they aren't "portable".

submitted by /u/RazinX
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Hey guys, I would like to play this local co-op game (Tipston Salvage, if that is important) with a friend using Steam Remote play. AFAIK two players can't both use keyboard with Steam Remote play, one has to have a controller. Back in the day on windows, I had some simple program, which created virtual gamepad, using WSAD (plus some other keys for those ABXY). I tried google for something similar for Linux (Arch btw), but found only some low-level and complicated programs, where you need to write JSON configs with exotic key codes etc. Is there simple go-to option for this use case I missed? Thanks!

submitted by /u/rouen_sk
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I have been wanting to make the GitHub project phly95/Deck-Upad into something that works seamlessly in game mode. In other words, I'm looking to make a seamless launch without entering desktop mode or using a keyboard, even if you choose to use the streaming second screen functionality.

Here's what I tried so far:

• Using obs-vkcapture for capturing the game output directly. I made a basic script that can output the stream live as well as cropping.

• I tried using obs-vkcapture with separate windows mode in Azahar, but that doesn't work because it causes obs-vkcapture to crash.

• I tried creating an oversized window and scaling it with something like gamescope -w 2560 -h 3040 -W 2560 -H 1440 -S fill -b -- %command% but it did not work because it seems the "-S fill" flag is broken in gamescope and does not successfully crop the image. Also, gamescope command flags don't work in a gamescope session.

Does anyone know of a clean way to render a Vulkan window at a larger size than what the gamescope session is without leaving game mode or entering desktop mode during each game launch?

If not, here is my current plan for how to set this up in a brute force way:

• You run a script as an app from gamescope.
• It starts a daemon.
• It kills the current desktop/gamescope session.
• It spins up a podman container that has its own sway desktop session. (No touching the immutable image required)
• The sway session starts
• It sets up a 7680x2960 display canvas
• a gamescope session is placed on the top left 3840x2160 portion of this canvas, which would be the portion you would see on the TV/monitor
• You then launch your 3DS game from the big picture menu
• It creates an Azahar window on the right 3840x2960 portion of the screen with obs-vkcapture injected
• It creates a window within the gamescope portion that output the top part of the Azahar window
• It streams the bottom 1280x800 portion over the network to the steam deck.

However, I would prefer a solution that works directly in gamescope itself without needing to spawn a Sway environment from a container.

submitted by /u/pneuny
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submitted by /u/MSH9
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Im using the open source drivers because the others don't work with all 3 of my monitors. Roblox played well but minecraft hasn't. Vanilla or modded.

submitted by /u/athentdm2
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I am wanting to mod Diablo II Resurrected via D2RMM. I installed D2R through Lutris because I downloaded it because I can not afford it. Which is the preferred method for installing D2RMM, Lutris or right click on the executable file and open with Protontricks launcher?

submitted by /u/SamGamjee71
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Found an article sharing thoughts from developers. From Heroic Games Launchers to RetroDECK, RomM, RPSC3 and PCSX2. So many. All developers asked the same questions to answer about the gaming year of 2025.

I found it an interesting read, thought it might be worth sharing here since there's lots of Linux devs weighing in.

https://gardinerbryant.com/2025-wrap-up/

submitted by /u/retrowaved
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submitted by /u/Stepan_Here
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I bought the 8BitDo Ultimate 2.4G controller yesterday and immediately loved it. It's the first controller I have had that has hall effect sticks and really the first controller that isn't a major console brand controller. The one issue I have been running into, however, is that the back buttons aren't being recognized on steam. I can't seem to find any info about it online, so I thought I'd come here and ask for some help.

Has anybody run into this issue? Is there a fix or is it just kind of a waiting game, hoping for support to be added?

submitted by /u/Silver_Bow
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submitted by /u/anthchapman
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I wonder how many times this kind of image has been posted in a linux sub.

submitted by /u/Kevadro
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Operating System: Bazzite 43

KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.4

KDE Frameworks Version: 6.21.0

Qt Version: 6.10.1

Kernel Version: 6.17.7-ba22.fc43.x86_64 (64-bit)

Graphics Platform: Wayland

Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor

Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.5 GiB usable)

Graphics Processor 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

Graphics Processor 2: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor

Manufacturer: ASUS

First just tried launching it just as it was, it would start the steam bootup, then just instantly crash.

Next i tried skipping the shader loading to no change in success.

I have tried the DX11 force boot in steam, i could launch the game with the menus but all cut scenes are red and is basically crashes there.

I switch back to DX12 (or rather an empty box) but try proton 10.0.3 and i think 9.something for the force boot. With these i can finally play the first cut scene, but it often takes FOREVER to load into it and i hear a bit of the music before it almost seems like it crashes then comes back to with the whole cut scene working fine. But i never make it to the game really. I got to it once, and it was like 5 frames a second and just not playable. I have tried with low med and high settings.

Is there something else i should be doing to make this actually work? I havnt had a tun of Linux experience but with this new build i wanted to not use windows as its become quite awful to deal with.

submitted by /u/notheothernoise
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I recently started playing my first AAA game on Linux and chose Where Winds Meet via Epic Games.

System:

• Lenovo Legion 5
• RTX 4060
• 24 GB RAM
• 512 GB SSD

For reference, I previously played The Last of Us Part 2 and Spider-Man 2 on the same laptop on Windows, getting ~85–110 FPS and ~80–100 FPS respectively.

On Linux, the game initially froze twice during startup (stuck on early screens). On the third launch, it finally loaded and became playable.

During the first 30 minutes of gameplay, I noticed:

• Random 1–2 second stutters , rame drops
• Occasional fast-forward feeling, like the game runs at ~1.5x speed

my question is this a game issue, or Proton or Wine issue, or NVIDIA + Linux issue, or this is how it will run on my laptop

need advice from anyone who has tested this game or has experience with Epic (heroic launcher)+ Proton setups on NVIDIA GPUs.

thank you

submitted by /u/Life-Holiday6920
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The game is running flawlessly performance-wise at max settings (no RT) using proton-experimental without getting banned. The only thing I cannot seem to figure out is the texture/shader flickering.
Things I've tried:
-Gamescope on/off

-HD texture pack on/off

-Recompile shaders

-Running battlenet through steam *and* lutris

-d3d11 and -DISABLE_DXR in launch commands

My specs are:
Arch linux - Kernal version 6.18.2-arch2-1 (64-bit)
DE: KDE Plasma 6.5.4 (Wayland)
CPU: 5700X3D
GPU: AMD RX 9070XT
Memory: DDR4 32GB 3800MT/s

I've seen online that users on windows with AMD GPUs also had this issue when the game was more current. I haven't tried different proton version as experimental is the only confirmed way to not get banned. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

submitted by /u/AintNoLaLiLuLe
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