We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

GOG have another interesting sale going on as well as Freespace 2 going free for the next 48 hours, don't miss out!

If you're not aware, Freespace 2 can be played on Linux thanks to the FSOpen project after Volition open sourced the game engine used way back in 2002. Freespace 2 is also one of my absolute favourite space combat sims and it's still awesome to this day even when compared to some newer games.

Grab Freespace 2 free on GOG here.

There's also the big Interstellar Sale going on, with some good Linux games going cheaper like:

There is of course various DLC for games discounted as well.

The Interstellar Sale runs until September 30th, 2019, at 1 PM UTC.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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17 comments

Rooster Sep 25, 2019
Awesome, thanks for the info.
brokkr Sep 25, 2019
Master of Orion 2 for 2€. That was the game that introduced my right arm to the concept of tendonitis.
14 Sep 25, 2019
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Has anyone else been having trouble paying via PayPal at GOG? I have been trying to buy a game there for a couple days now.
Klaas Sep 25, 2019
Has anyone else been having trouble paying via PayPal at GOG? I have been trying to buy a game there for a couple days now.

Not yet, because I haven't tried paying via paypal since they fiddled with the checkout process, but I've read that several people had (or have) trouble.
dibz Sep 25, 2019
Has anyone else been having trouble paying via PayPal at GOG? I have been trying to buy a game there for a couple days now.

I don't buy games terribly often at GOG but for what it's worth, I've only ever paid with Paypal with no issue (so far!). Must've gotten flagged for some reason?
slaapliedje Sep 25, 2019
Freespace (1 & 2) are games I keep meaning to give a proper play through. Even bought the first one for the Amiga. Never have gotten more than the Demo to load though....
kurp Sep 26, 2019
Thanks for letting me know about FSOpen project, however it looks like a bit complicated process to use it.
Anyone tried the game just under Wine?
kokoko3k Sep 26, 2019
Thanks for letting me know about FSOpen project, however it looks like a bit complicated process to use it.
Anyone tried the game just under Wine?
It seems you didn't bothered to read anything from the link posted, because setup is straightforward via knossos...


Last edited by kokoko3k on 26 September 2019 at 8:51 am UTC
Liam Dawe Sep 26, 2019
Thankfully on Arch/Manjaro you can just grab fs2-knossos from the AUR. Edit: Although I can't actually build that myself <_< errors with npm...


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 26 September 2019 at 9:36 am UTC
kokoko3k Sep 26, 2019
Thankfully on Arch/Manjaro you can just grab fs2-knossos from the AUR. Edit: Although I can't actually build that myself <_< errors with npm...
pacman -S python-pyqtwebengine
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fs2-knossos/#comment-709432
Liam Dawe Sep 26, 2019
Thankfully on Arch/Manjaro you can just grab fs2-knossos from the AUR. Edit: Although I can't actually build that myself <_< errors with npm...
pacman -S python-pyqtwebengine
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fs2-knossos/#comment-709432
You legend, I missed that comment somehow. As much as I appreciate people doing AUR packages, they really should check the deps <_<
kokoko3k Sep 27, 2019
Thankfully on Arch/Manjaro you can just grab fs2-knossos from the AUR. Edit: Although I can't actually build that myself <_< errors with npm...
pacman -S python-pyqtwebengine
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fs2-knossos/#comment-709432
You legend, I missed that comment somehow. As much as I appreciate people doing AUR packages, they really should check the deps <_<
Well the comment is from about a day ago, so probably the breakage is recent.


Last edited by kokoko3k on 27 September 2019 at 8:10 am UTC
kurp Sep 27, 2019
Thanks for letting me know about FSOpen project, however it looks like a bit complicated process to use it.
Anyone tried the game just under Wine?
It seems you didn't bothered to read anything from the link posted, because setup is straightforward via knossos...
I don't think we share the same understanding of being straightforward. However, indeed, knossos seems to be the easiest way to launch the game at least.
slaapliedje Oct 1, 2019
Thanks for letting me know about FSOpen project, however it looks like a bit complicated process to use it.
Anyone tried the game just under Wine?
It seems you didn't bothered to read anything from the link posted, because setup is straightforward via knossos...
I don't think we share the same understanding of being straightforward. However, indeed, knossos seems to be the easiest way to launch the game at least.

sudo apt install freespace2-launcher-wxlauncher innoextract lgogdownloader game-data-packager
lgogdownloader
lgogdownloader --download --game freespace_2
cd freespace_2
cp -rv /usr/share/games/freespace2-open/packages/* .
mv 'setup_freespace_2_1.20_(32720).exe' setup_freespace2_2.0.0.8.exe
dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc


Unfortunately at this stage (for me) innoextract fails to extract the freespace game. I'm pretty sure this is because GOG has changed their installer, which is why the setup file is now a newer version than when game-data-packager was written. Not sure how to find the older version of the GOG download..
g000h Oct 1, 2019
Unfortunately at this stage (for me) innoextract fails to extract the freespace game. I'm pretty sure this is because GOG has changed their installer, which is why the setup file is now a newer version than when game-data-packager was written. Not sure how to find the older version of the GOG download..

I've noticed this for a few GOG titles as well (and I presume the problem could be a lot more than "a few", as I haven't been testing everything).

Does anyone (e.g. Shmerl) know an alternative way to use innoextract for extracting GOG Windows titles when the regular innoextract technique seems to fail? For reference, this is what I get when I try to run innoextract on Doom II + Final Doom:

/Downloads/doom$ innoextract setup_doom_ii_with_master_levels_1.9_\(28044\).exe 
Warning: Unexpected setup data version: 5.6.2 (unicode)
Warning: Unexpected Auto Boolean value: 19
Warning: Unexpected Auto Boolean value: 20
Warning: Unexpected trailing byte in UTF-16 string.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Warning: Unexpected trailing byte in UTF-16 string.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Warning: Unexpected trailing byte in UTF-16 string.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Stream error while parsing setup headers!
 ├─ detected setup version: 5.6.2 (unicode)
 └─ error reason: basic_ios::clear: iostream error
If you are sure the setup file is not corrupted, consider 
filing a bug report at http://innoextract.constexpr.org/issues
Done with 1 error and 10 warnings.

innoextract -v
innoextract 1.7
Extracts installers created by Inno Setup 1.2.10 to 5.6.0


For me, some installers extract fine and others fail. Avoiding the use of WINE to run the actual installer is my preference. Maybe there is a source tarball of innoextract I could build and use that instead?


Last edited by g000h on 1 October 2019 at 12:31 am UTC
kokoko3k Oct 1, 2019
I did not bothered at all, because it seems what i've downloaded from gog was simply corrupted.
So i downloaded another *outdated* copy from somewhere.
slaapliedje Oct 2, 2019
Unfortunately at this stage (for me) innoextract fails to extract the freespace game. I'm pretty sure this is because GOG has changed their installer, which is why the setup file is now a newer version than when game-data-packager was written. Not sure how to find the older version of the GOG download..

I've noticed this for a few GOG titles as well (and I presume the problem could be a lot more than "a few", as I haven't been testing everything).

Does anyone (e.g. Shmerl) know an alternative way to use innoextract for extracting GOG Windows titles when the regular innoextract technique seems to fail? For reference, this is what I get when I try to run innoextract on Doom II + Final Doom:

/Downloads/doom$ innoextract setup_doom_ii_with_master_levels_1.9_\(28044\).exe 
Warning: Unexpected setup data version: 5.6.2 (unicode)
Warning: Unexpected Auto Boolean value: 19
Warning: Unexpected Auto Boolean value: 20
Warning: Unexpected trailing byte in UTF-16 string.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Warning: Unexpected trailing byte in UTF-16 string.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Warning: Unexpected trailing byte in UTF-16 string.
Warning: Unexpected data while converting from UTF-16LE to UTF-8.
Stream error while parsing setup headers!
 ├─ detected setup version: 5.6.2 (unicode)
 └─ error reason: basic_ios::clear: iostream error
If you are sure the setup file is not corrupted, consider 
filing a bug report at http://innoextract.constexpr.org/issues
Done with 1 error and 10 warnings.

innoextract -v
innoextract 1.7
Extracts installers created by Inno Setup 1.2.10 to 5.6.0


For me, some installers extract fine and others fail. Avoiding the use of WINE to run the actual installer is my preference. Maybe there is a source tarball of innoextract I could build and use that instead?
I found the repo on opensuse build system for Arx-liberatis that has a newer version of innoextract, but not sure if it works with the newer freespace 2 installer.
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