I really wish so badly I had other games to play.

[AaronOfMpls]

For Wine, I rarely need to launch it specifically.  Mostly. I just launch Windows programs by double-clicking on their .exe or running a desktop shortcut to one.  Linux knows it's a Windows .exe and launches Wine, which runs the program automatically in the default Wine prefix.  This holds as true for installers as it does for the actual programs/games.

I do have Winetricks and Protontricks installed too, in case I need finer control of something.  (Plus I think both were needed for that MO2 installer script.)

And yah, running non-Steam games in Steam Proton is totally an option too. 

29 minutes ago, InDarkestNight said:

What other music would I even look up? I know of no other.

I can't answer that for you; I don't know your music tastes.  But if you know any specific songs or artists you like, you can always search for them, maybe subscribe to their channels, and build from there.  And ask friends or acquaintances if they have any good recommendations.*

In my own experience, YouTube's algorithm can be a bit BS sometimes, but it's also trainable.  It already knows pretty well what kinds of videos and music I like, from many years of logged-in watch history and all the many channels I've subscribed to over the years.  (Mostly science, history, tech/retro tech, and other edutainment, with a few music channels too.)  I don't even visit the front page much; on desktop I always go straight to my subscriptions page.

My own music taste is mostly rock-centered, but also pretty "polyjamorous" -- I like a lot of different kinds of music.  Classic rock and '90s alternative rock are sort-of my "home" ones, but I also like some dance pop, and 80s synth, and disco, and big band.  And my DJ friends in Second Life have introduced me to plenty of different kinds of music I'd never have found on my own. 

 

* I've long enjoyed Frog Leap Studios' and 331erock's metal covers of popular songs, myself.  And I've been listing to Weird Al Yankovic to some extent since I was a kid in the '90s; his parodies, style parodies, and original songs span a ton of different kinds of music, for the 45+ years he's been at it.  Been a fan of the Foo Fighters and Weezer and the Presidents too since they got going in the 90s.  And some retro tech channels turned me on to Anders Enger Jensen/LNDRMN and his retro-synth stuff.

[InDarkestNight]

Thinking I need to just start playing with Tavern Games installed. Its obviously bare-bones basic, but its better than having absolutely nothing. I've also tried to find pip boy games for Fallout New Vegas (the only fallout game I own), but apparently they're not really possible in the engine unlike fallout 4, though I can't seem to find any evidence of pip boy games being made for that either. And yes, I would play fallout 4 for nothing but those pip boy games, but of course the full price of the game isn't worth them, and I'm never ever giving worthless bethesda money again, nor Steam either for obvious reasons. Skyrim is legendary for its mods, but yet we still don't have eveerything. No board game mods? No mods that make npcs perform the various plays you can find in the game? No clown outfit? Why have none of the new creatures with new rigs and animations made it out yet? Those argonian snails did, but the uploader rigged them to use horker animations rather than the unique ones they have in argonia! Wtf?

[UsernameWithA9]

You can give the middle finger to Youtube by downloading Freetube. 

[zixi]

How about install Synaptic and thereby install 7kaa (Seven Kingdoms) it's strategy... like playing chess against as many opponents as you want (up to 6 computer generated ones). It's old as the hills so the graphics are appalling... all blobby. The music's nice if you can get it to work which often it won't. But there's something strangely interesting about it. The AI is primitive so you can find some very amusing solutions but it's so old that it has none of the issues that modern games have. In addition Trevor Chan (the developer) gave it to us. He'd made  enough profit so just handed it over on condition that no one profits from it. I like that too.

The community adapted 7kaa and tweaked the AI so you could instead install that directly from their site thus not installing Synaptic but I like Synaptic. It contains loads of stuff and feels like a huge Christmas present. I run both versions... 

BTW Not sure if it's available via Snap... it might be...

Nice to see you here btw...

[InDarkestNight]

I haven't heard good things about snap, and things I've installed through snap have all malfunctioned, including steam!

As for wine, I know nothing about it. As I've said, I've been mainly using Proton ge 8 through steam. I did install wine, winetricks, and protontricks I think, but I've since removed all of them because I couldn't figure out how to get them to work. I was using them to try and install mod organizer and skse and enb  None of that worked. The linux version of MO comes with a linux-comatible version of skse and even enboost. Have yet to try and get TES5Edit to work, though I think I did find a linux build of it. I really need to get on that so I can start making my own patches again. Its getting rather annoying having to overly rely on other mod authors like I did before I had any idea how to make my own mods. I'm even having to ask compatibility questions that I could normally investigate myself through TES5Edit.

As for 'free' games, I do know of a few, but none for linux. The original Command and Conquer games were released for free years ago, but I wouldn't know about getting them to run on linux. There's also starcraft, but to get that you have to also install blizzard's obvious spyware program with it, so I never did it. Besides, when this thing had windows 10 on it I was able to install it through my original discs anyway, and it ran perfectly fine which surprised me. Of course, what's the point in playing it? I always sucked in multiplayer, and in starcraft in particular YOU COULD SWITCH TEAMS ON ONLINE MATCHES. And yes, I had someone actually do that to me, to punish me for being a noob they claimed. Seriously. Also, from what I've heard the strategies for that game have completely changed. The hydralisk rush strategy I used to use is no longer viable, or any rush strategy for that matter. Seeing recent videos of people playing it, I don't see how I could ever play the game like them. I suck at multitasking, and micromanagement too. Point is, what's even the point in playing starcraft and warcraft 3 when I could never handle real opponents anyway? I don't imagine Command and Conquer would be any better, given that they're also rts games that I have even less familiarity with. I've never been able to figure out how to play Age of Mythology either, because its just so utterly different from the Blizzard rts games I'm used to to give you an idea. Point is, why bother installing these games when I can only play against the AI, which I never found very engaging. In both games it was incompetent and always did the same moves over and over again. It was like I was playing the same match over and over. What's the fun in that?

Also, there is a reason why I switched to strategy and casual games. I can't play hardcore action games, or most action games in general. I can't even beat Freedom Planet, seriously. I never did finish Oblivion because I couldn't handle it (it was my first ES game, after I got Skyrim I never looked back). I've only even started thinking of it again because maybe the Skyblivion project would let me actually experience the game's story lines but in a game I can actually play. Of course, I only own it on disc, so there's that issue. I am NOT buying it again, and certainly not through steam.

Edited May 26 by InDarkestNight

[AaronOfMpls]

And if you just need to kill a few minutes, Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection can serve a similar role to the old Windows games like Minesweeper.  Check your usual Linux repositories for it.

And Quadrapassel is a very good Tetris clone.

[zixi]

Snap has issues. I loathe it with a vengeance. I prefer Synaptic. Synaptic is an apt-getter effectively but it's not pretty like Snap. You can install it from a terminal if you haven't got it already. 7K might well amuse you! It amuses me. I've been playing it since 1997 when it was first released and I'm still not tired of it. If you install through Synaptic there is nothing else to do. It knows it's on a Linux system. The sound is an issue. My latest version on a fresh install of Ubuntu 24.04 is without the music... but the sound effects are there. Weird. Maybe the Synaptic version doesn't have the music... I've been playing the community's version so I may have forgotten... The community's version definitely has music...

7kaa is interesting in that you can make it really really easy to start with by reducing opponents to 1 and slowing the time and reducing their aggression. With 6 opponents on the highest level of aggression they do whack you a lot... There's also a comprehensive training help which you can go to at any time... There's multiplayer but I've never done it. I prefer to play against the computer...

Some games drive me to distraction too...

[InDarkestNight]

Honestly, I'm not quite old enough for the DOS era. I did play the NES when I was little, moved on to the Sega Saturn then the playstation 1. To me, those machines are the 90s. I didn't get into PC gaming until the 2000s, which are the games I mostly think of, as evidenced by what I've been mentioning: starcraft, warcraft 3, The Sim 2, civ 3 and 4, Magic the Gathering Battlegrounds, Oblivion. For a time I was hoping to make a functional clone of a few of these through Pygame.

As for dos games like tetris, I already technically own my own versions which I made through Pygame. I was working my way through a book teaching you how to make such games, but I fell off after the SSHD fried and I had to switch focus to getting this new linux machine up and running. Fortunately, the games I did make on the windows 10 machine still work fine on this. Well, minus the ones I made to use the python console which doesn't seem to exist for Linux (you can access its interface though through the terminal, but I am highly annoyed that I can't change the palette of the terminal, oh well its what I got and its certainly going to be seeing plenty of use, I even recently learned how to clear the screen which is certainly going to be immeasurably useufl). And yes, I'm a certified programmer, though pygame wasn't a part of my degree. I do have a certificate in python though.

[zixi]

Here you go... at great personal expense because I'm no fan of youtube - here it is running on Linux.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jv3FZTlhZY

I play Sims3... and love it. I don't think I tried Sims2 and I never fancied 4... I did early versions of Civilization too. But hated the later ones... it's all a matter of taste. 7Kaa v2 is on Steam and would likely play on Linux but I never cared for it. However, it's so cheap at the moment even I am tempted to try it out again...

I never cared for the tetris type things either but some people love them. The problem with suggesting things is that one suggests things one loves and that doesn't mean the next person will love them. My favourite game is BG 1& 2 (1 continues into 2) but it's isometric and you have to read a lot. Most players these days coming to it new wonder why we think it such a classic. But I adore it. It looks at the nature of good and evil and whether one is constrained by one's heritage. Does fate exist? Are we pre-determined? All questions I think I have worked out the answers to but never get tired of replaying...

 

[InDarkestNight]

I never cared for The Sims 3. I bought a bunch of its expansions trying to turn into something decent, because I thought the lack of content was my issue. In reality, I realized it was the gameplay changes. NPCs aging, not being able to have more than one household in the same neighborhood, making money being far harder than it was in The Sims 2. I ended up quitting it and went back to playing The Sims 2 instead. I think long-time fans of the series normally consider that the best of the 4, despite its dated issues.

As for the original Baldurs Gate, honestly I don't know much of anything for computer rpgs from that era. I did play Neverwinter Nights a lot, but I never finished any of the campaigns. I mostly played on an online roleplaying server. I did watch a video once about the plot of Planescape Torment, but that's about it. I did buy some classic games through GOG years ago. The original Dungeon Keeper, the Eye of the Beholder games, the Pool of Radiance series, and Kings of Dragonpass. I only played Dungeon Keeper, Kings of Dragonpass, and Curse of the Azure bonds though. I couldn't figure out how to progress in the latter game btw, because its so stinking hard and I've never even seen a first edition book in person let alone have any real idea how it worked. All I know of d&d from that era is through retroclones like Labyrinth Lord and Dark Dungeons. I have no way of knowing though how accurate they to the actual games. Obviously, I don't really care about graphics anymore. Maybe I would enjoy dos games, but honestly since they're sorta before my time I don't really know what's all out there. The only things I can name off the top of my head is the original Sims and those d&d computer rpgs. Most of the games I bought on GoG were from the 80s.

As for games, honestly I prefer a fantasy theme. These historical strategy games you all keep mentioning aren't exactly my cup of tea. I would also like superhero games, but obviously there's not a lot of them out there. I have the first two Batman Arkham games, along with Injustice (I suck donkey balls at the game btw, I never could beat the final boss, and now I can't even get through the middle act). Yeah, I suck at fighting games, or any games that require you to think fast. I only bought Injustice for the superhero theme. Also, I think the games I just listed are the only good superhero games that exist. Superhero games aren't exactly well known for quality. Doesn't help that most of them are just movie tie-ins too.

Edited May 26 by InDarkestNight