Linux Wine and GURPS Character Assistant

My traveling laptop now runs with Fedora 27 versus Windows 10, mostly because Fedora 27 runs with a lot less overhead and as such, gets me year or two more out of this laptop.

I wanted to run GURPS Character Assistant via Linux Wine, and while CrossOver Linux is great, I'm ultimately cheap and wanted this to work without having to buy it.

I first made a directory /usr/share/fonts/WindowsFonts and mounted my Windows partition (I'm dual booted for the moment).  I copyed the Windows/fonts files to this folder and cleaned up some of the files that were not readable (when you do an ls, it will be obvious.)   You could also mount the windows partition permanent, and make a link, but I had no need for that, the windows partition will ultimately go away.

I then added a printer (this is required whether you use one or not, you can pick a generic printer of some sort...)

Now, I installed wine and winetricks with the usual "sudo dnf install wine winetricks"

I then prepared for using GURPS in it's own "bottle" by opening a terminal and typing:


$ mkdir $HOME/.bottles
$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.bottles/GURPS winetricks

This initializes the wine folder and  starts winetricks.   The next steps prepare the environment for the installation:

  1. Choose the "Select the default wineprefix" and press OK.
  2. Select "Install a Windows DLL or component" and press OK
  3. Check the box for riched20, and vb6run.   Press OK
  4. Select "Change Settings", press OK
  5. Check the box for fontsmooth=bgr (Depending on your computer, you may want fontsmooth=vga), native_oleaut32, and winxp.   Press OK
  6. Cancel out of winetricks

I downloaded the two lates updates (GCA and datafile updates) and am ready to run the installer.   I have my installer files in a folder in my home directory, you will need to adjust the path in the commands accordingly:

$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.bottles/GURPS wine $HOME/GURPS/installer/setup.exe

$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.bottles/GURPS wine $HOME/GURPS/installer/gca4patch_232_to_423_cumulative.exe

$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.bottles/GURPS wine $HOME/GURPS/installer/gca4dataupdate.exe

For my build, the GCA items appeared in my menu, if they don't for you, you will need to run GCA via the command line specifying the WINEPREFIX, and the path to the installed GCA file, for example:

$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.bottles/GURPS wine $HOME/.bottles/GURPS/drive_c/'Program Files (x86)'\'GURPS Character Assistant 4'\gca4.exe






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