Discovery on Linux. Article Guide (2025) (Requires update by Koshi materials)

[Sally]

More updates about this.

Now that the new patch dropped I just tried to install Freelancer 1.0 and Discovery on a new prefix from scratch and here's the things I discovered:

1. Both games install and run just fine on the latest mainline Wine, my runner was compiled using wine-tkg scripts, but no special patches nor proton fixes are needed.
2. Manually installing DXVK is no longer required for Discovery because the launcher bundles a (pretty new) renderer, DXVK 2.4 which is what this guide recommends has known issues, 2.6.2 which is another one used by Lutris also has issues, but 2.7.2, which is the one included by the launcher works (leaving random crashes aside which I must investigate), rolling distributions also (should) include an equally new DXVK renderer that should work just fine, I can say Artix/Arch at least does.
3. Freelancer 1.0 installs and runs flawlessly with DXVK 2.7.2.
4. From all runtime dependencies listed, the ones I installed are the C++ one found on the main post about installing Discovery here, dotnet48, directplay, msacm32 and webdings, and Discovery works just fine with these.
5. The launcher has some problems with window focus, there's some strange gray layer on top of it which doesn't play nice with wineserver and won't allow selecting, I bypass this problem by alt-tabbing on the launcher a couple times but on first run the launcher will open two windows, both with this gray layer, and alt-tabbing won't circumvent the problem. What I had to do was to move the launcher to another workspace, which left the gray layer (visibly) stuck on the first workspace and allowed clicking on the launcher on the second workplace, I use xfce4 though so this behavior might be different or not present on other DEs.

Other than that both game work, Wine 9 is no longer needed, but you do still need to make a 32bit prefix with whichever wine runner you wanna pick, the games will fail to launch otherwise, even if all 32bit dependencies are checked and properly installed. The gray layer thing was introduced when the renderer flavor was implemented on the launcher, I'm sure it's there for a good reason but given it's a nuisance on Wine it's probably worth fixing or maybe patching out.

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"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS

[darkwind]

More updates about this.
...

! IMPORTANT

@Sally we have a leading point made by Koshi what we should do. He discovered a way to stabilize Discovery on linux working to a perfect state equal to Windows according to his claims.
At some point i wish to find a time and replicate and update guide to what he discovered.
Planning at nearby week to try it all

Conversation copied from here https://discord.com/channels/61242979055...9993153598

Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:06 AM
I would just like to share my experience with getting disco to work properly on linux. So maybe someone in the future will find this helpful.
I returned to disco 2 months ago aprox.
I flowed all the tips and guides i found on the forums and also got advice here on discord.
The game worked .. it performed well but there were these random crashes. Mostly on undock, going trough jump gates or tradelanes. The jumgate issue was the most problematic. because it would leave me 100k from the jump gate upon re-log. I was told crashes like this can happen on windows also but they were more frequent with me.
I have tried many different wine versions,dx3d dlls, focused on 32bit wine prefix. Also tried couple different distros OpenSuse, Kubuntu, Fedora. The crashes persisted. I have asked around, people were saying the are not having the same issues. I have lost all hope and decided im going to play disco on windows. But , i dont want to boot to windows ?
As a last ditch effort, I have decided to ditch all the advice's about 32 bit prefix and try 64bit one and Ge-proton as a runner ( ge proton doesnt suport 32bit prefix ).
And what would you know ... the crashes are gone.
There is this font issue on 64 bit prefix ... Its enormous and cut off but i managed to get it to acceptable level by modifying fonts.ini and using Areal as font.
Im unsure why other linux users dont have this issue or maybe they do but the are silent.
Hope somebody finds this helpful and doesnt have to go to many sleeples nights, distro , game and prefix instals like i have
Using:
Fedora 43
Lutris
Runner: Ge proton 10-26
DXVK enabeled just in lutris for ge proton
Disc launcher using directx 9 -dx
fonts.ini in disco directory - reduced all fonts and switched to Areal


Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:22 AM
https://github.com/gloriouseggroll/proto...m/releases
I presume from here downloaded?

Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:24 AM
I downloaded it via ProtonUp-QT and inserted to lutris

Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:30 AM
Okay, some room for experimentation then
Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:31 AM
Yea... I lost my mind with this ?

Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:32 AM
After downloading to address we can see in screenshot
Lutris saw it as wine possibly to use and from there we follow guide as usual?

Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:35 AM
Feel free to mention example of changes u made to fonts with more details also

Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:37 AM
I would recommend setting up a normal 64 prefix after that install the required winetricks like directplay and others form guide.. install the game from lutris like in the guide.. than using protonup download and put ge proton in your lutris runners folder ... select it in lutris as a runer, select Enable dxvk in lutris ... in dico launcher select directx9 and use -dx optional arguments
Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:39 AM
How did u input -dx optional argument?

Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:40 AM
in the launcher that optional argument field

Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:40 AM
Screenshot?

Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:41 AM
Thanks, I will test it all
:mlem:
And then use it to update the guide

Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:45 AM
fonts.ini .. far from perfect but acceptable .. much better that the crashes
```
[TrueType]
nickname = ButtonText
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.031000

[TrueType]
nickname = PageHeader
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.031000

[TrueType]
nickname = SubHeader
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.026000

[TrueType]
nickname = ItemName
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.022000

[TrueType]
nickname = ListText
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.020000

[TrueType]
nickname = ToolTip
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.020000

[TrueType]
nickname = Rollover
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.016000

[TrueType]
nickname = HudSmall
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.019000

[TrueType]
nickname = MissionObjective
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.044000

[TrueType]
nickname = Normal
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.022000

[TrueType]
nickname = NewsMission
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.019000

[TrueType]
nickname = NewsTicker
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.032000

[TrueType]
nickname = PlayerName
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.019000

[TrueType]
nickname = TradePlayerName
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.015000

[TrueType]
nickname = DebugText
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.019000

[TrueType]
nickname = ConfirmPlayerText
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.026000

[TrueType]
nickname = ConfirmText
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.026000

[TrueType]
nickname = NavMap1600
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.008000

[TrueType]
nickname = NavMap1024
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.014000

[TrueType]
nickname = NavMap1280
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.013000

[TrueType]
nickname = NavMap800
font = Arial
fixed_height = 0.017000
```

maybe fonts instal from winetrick is also needed for this
but thets only for fonts fix the game will work
Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:48 AM
I suspect your instruction will work far better if we change to proton in the beginning instead of later

It will make sure fonts from freelancer vanilla during installation will actually get into the system, so your fonts fix will not be needed.
It is somehow possible to fix later also by copying fonts from iso
Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:48 AM
I tried it no help
Darkwind The Dark Duck — 12/14/25, 2:48 AM
Changing wine runner resets system under the hood I think, so changing runner supposedly wiped all things before done
Koshi — 12/14/25, 2:49 AM
i instaled it under wine 10.16 staging runer
font issues were there before proton
i think 64 bit prefix causes it
not like runer related
my regular 32bit prefix same 10.16 staging runer no font issue
i was reading someware bacause freelancer is so old its some scaling issue on 64bit prefixes
mind you .. i tried 9.0 runner from the guiede .. and many others QQ
also, as a sidenote ... the most reacent wine doesnt suport pure 32 bit prefixes anymore .. its unable to run 32 bit prefixes

---

Interstellar	Autogit	Ctrl-V	Encryptor	Discovery At Linux
Dark Tools	DarkBot	DarkLint	DarkStat	DarkMap

[darkwind]

More updates about this.

Now that the new patch dropped I just tried to install Freelancer 1.0 and Discovery on a new prefix from scratch and here's the things I discovered:

1. Both games install and run just fine on the latest mainline Wine, my runner was compiled using wine-tkg scripts, but no special patches nor proton fixes are needed.
...

it is all interesting, but it is looking like hard to replicate. Koshi discovered instruction looks like currently i can replicate and document at least. (he provided some screenshots towards how he did what he did so i have sufficient information to do it)
Plus i would prefer to avoid compiling as it is always complicated procedure
The desired result is achieving Stable running of Discovery at linux with least effort in simple instructions / repeated easy to do by different people.

---

Interstellar	Autogit	Ctrl-V	Encryptor	Discovery At Linux
Dark Tools	DarkBot	DarkLint	DarkStat	DarkMap

[Sally]

it is all interesting, but it is looking like hard to replicate. Koshi discovered instruction looks like currently i can replicate and document at least. (he provided some screenshots towards how he did what he did so i have sufficient information to do it)
Plus i would prefer to avoid compiling as it is always complicated procedure
The desired result is achieving Stable running of Discovery at linux with least effort in simple instructions / repeated easy to do by different people.

Absolutely. I plan on documenting my process with footage, you've got a point about compiling things being an unneeded step for many people and I do intent to test the regular mainline runner provided from upstream, which should behave exactly the same. If it doesn't then I can upload mine somewhere and you can post it, Wine is always statically linked, mine needs with glibc 2.38 or newer which even Debian Stable has right now.

---

"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS

[darkwind]

it is all interesting, but it is looking like hard to replicate. Koshi discovered instruction looks like currently i can replicate and document at least. (he provided some screenshots towards how he did what he did so i have sufficient information to do it)
Plus i would prefer to avoid compiling as it is always complicated procedure
The desired result is achieving Stable running of Discovery at linux with least effort in simple instructions / repeated easy to do by different people.

Absolutely. I plan on documenting my process with footage, you've got a point about compiling things being an unneeded step for many people and I do intent to test the regular mainline runner provided from upstream, which should behave exactly the same. If it doesn't then I can upload mine somewhere and you can post it, Wine is always statically linked, mine needs with glibc 2.38 or newer which even Debian Stable has right now.

ok, nice.

---

Interstellar	Autogit	Ctrl-V	Encryptor	Discovery At Linux
Dark Tools	DarkBot	DarkLint	DarkStat	DarkMap

[Sally]

! IMPORTANT

@Sally we have a leading point made by Koshi what we should do. He discovered a way to stabilize Discovery on linux working to a perfect state equal to Windows according to his claims.
At some point i wish to find a time and replicate and update guide to what he discovered.
Planning at nearby week to try it all

I tried using a 64bit prefix with mainline Wine but Freelancer vanilla refused to launch with exit error code 256, I didn't test Discovery though as I assumed it'd be the same thing, but it's worth giving it a try to see if these crashes can be dealt with.

---

"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS

[Sally]

So here's a summary of how I install Disco through Wine:

1. Get the needed runtime deps here, the vanilla game here, the mod installer here and a Wine runner that has been tested, for example this one.

2. Extract the tarball on "~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/" and mount the Freelancer CD ISO somewhere, /mnt should do, mount it with "sudo mount --read-only /path/to/Freelancer.iso /mnt".

3. Create a launcher for the game on Lutris and select "add locally installed game", on "Game options" leave the executable field empty for now, but point the "Wine prefix" path to an empty directory, the prefix architecture to 32bit, go to "Runner options" and make sure to select the correct wine runner, unless you have DXVK 2.7.1 or newer listed on the DXVK context menu, set DXVK to "Manual". You can also enable the DXVK FPS overlay with the DXVK_HUD=fps environment variable on the system tab.

4. Select the launcher we just created and open a Bash terminal, type "winetricks directplay msacm32 dotnet48" to install these. You must do this step exactly as described because spawning a regular Bash terminal won't set the environment variables that point to the right wine prefix, don't use a regular terminal, once winetricks is done you can close the window.

5. Select the launcher again and this time click on "Run an EXE inside Wine prefix", head to /mnt and run SETUP.EXE, when the installer launches select "Express install", this will install Freelancer 1.0, the fonts and whatever bit is needed to run the game into the prefix.

6. Run another EXE inside the same Wine prefix, and install Discovery this time, change the default install path for Discovery to "C:\Discovery" for the sake of convenience so you don't need to dig deeper into the prefix if you wanna browse the game directory, once done run EXE again and install "vc_redist.x86.exe".

7. Open another Bash terminal inside the prefix, change directory to "drive_c/users/<your username>/", delete the Documents symlink to your regular home Documents and create a directory, this will keep the game saved config and accounts inside the prefix, in case you wanna play other mods or vanilla, you can do so with "rm Documents && mkdir Documents". Close it once done.

8. Select the launcher and click "Configure", in "Game options" now we can set the game executable to the Discovery Launcher, which if you followed the docs step-by-step should be "/path/to/prefix/drive_c/Discovery\DSLauncher.exe".

9. Select the launcher and click "Play", see if the launcher starts, you may come accross this issue which has been reported and hopefully will soon be fixed, but other than that the game should launch and work.

---

"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS