Linux: Anyone install WITP AE as a non steam game using Proton?

[zebrazwo]

Nicals! You deserve a case of beer! (or other preferred beverage) !

[Nicals]

Send the case of beer to wine developers, they are doing an amazing job. All I really did is upgrade a package and have a bit of knowledge about how my machine works

[btd64]

Send the case of beer to wine developers, they are doing an amazing job. All I really did is upgrade a package and have a bit of knowledge about how my machine works

How about a nice bourbon ....GP

[zebrazwo]

A case of Maker's Mark on it's way.

[LeeChard]

Hi: I'm Lee's wife, the in-house techie! He's patiently waiting the installation of WITP on his new Linux Nobara setup.

I wound up installing other games on Nobara, but WITP is still giving me a headache. I'm attempting to install and run it via Lutris. I have all three necessary exe files (base, v1126, & v1128).

First problem: Couldn't run 32 bit under GE-Proton
Tried again: This time chose wine version wine-ge-8-26-x86_64
This time I get the error related to PWdata files. I understand that can occur when you don't run the three executables, which is confounding me since they appear to be running in the proper sequence.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I'm reaching a frustration point. Can anyone give any pointers/advice on trying to install this via Lutris or... another way to avoid running around in circles. Thanks!

[btd64]

Hi: I'm Lee's wife, the in-house techie! He's patiently waiting the installation of WITP on his new Linux Nobara setup.

I wound up installing other games on Nobara, but WITP is still giving me a headache. I'm attempting to install and run it via Lutris. I have all three necessary exe files (base, v1126, & v1128).

First problem: Couldn't run 32 bit under GE-Proton
Tried again: This time chose wine version wine-ge-8-26-x86_64
This time I get the error related to PWdata files. I understand that can occur when you don't run the three executables, which is confounding me since they appear to be running in the proper sequence.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I'm reaching a frustration point. Can anyone give any pointers/advice on trying to install this via Lutris or... another way to avoid running around in circles. Thanks!

Hi Mrs. Chard. I don't know how much help this will be, but the last time I received PW error, Rebooting the computer helped. Also, one one exe is running and needed. If you have 1128 loaded then that is the exe that will run the game. That's all I have. I hope it helps....GP

[btd64]

Also, you may need to install switches later on. There are several threads here for that. This is a 2009 vintage game with an older engine that has been updated over the years....GP

[GrosserKreuzer]

Just in case anybody wants to use tracker alongside the game and has problems installing it, I want to explain how I did it.

tldr: install the Windows version of java inside Wine, the rest is like on Windows.

I installed both WitP:AE and tracker using Wine, so the following will be based on that. I am using CachyOS in case anybody wants to know.

In my opinion, the first and most difficult step to figure out is to install java. Remember that tracker uses the 32-bit version.
Using the native (Linux) version of java does not work. We need to use the Windows version installed inside Wine.
While using the (windows) installer for java in Wine starts initially, the installation process always crashed for me. I ended up just copying the folder I had java installed in from my old Windows PC. If you look at your files under Linux (starting from root), it might look something like this: "/home/yourUserName/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Java/jre1.8.0_341" with "jre1.8.0_341" being the java version (likely a more recent one for you).
It might be worth checking if the "proper" installation of java works by the time you try it, but it did not work in early 2026 for me.
From here it worked similar to installing tracker on Windows. Remember that Wine simulates a Windows file structure internally. I had to modify the "WitPTracker.bat" file to look like the following:
""C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_341\bin\java.exe" -Xms512m -Xmx640m -jar "WitPTracker.jar"
pause
"
(excluding the outermost quotation marks)
I think I got an error saying something like "cant find Java" before doing this. Be sure to use your path (that will likely be a bit different from mine) with "C:" being "drive_c" in your Wine folder. Also note that Windows (and therefor Wine internally) uses "\" instead of "/", I fell into that trap.

This should cover the installation process itself. After this, continue to configure the "witptracker.properties" as normal for a tracker installation. Again, act as if using Windows when setting the directory.

This is only the way I did it, maybe there are other and easier ways to do it, but I hope this might help if somebody is struggling with this.