Installing games with CD iso images and change disc in WINE

Previously I mentioned about playing games in WINE and enabling Ibus input and CJK fonts. Recently, I solved another problem, that is installing the game with ISO images.

We know that, in Linux, we can mount the ISO image easily. However, some old games will need to install with several discs, that means we need to change discs during the installation. When my disc 1 was completed, I tried to unmount, it failed. Even I tried with symlink, the disc 2 with the symlink is not detected by the installer, failed also.

The solution is actually simple.

  1. Firstly, run the winecfg.
  2. Go to Drives tab.
  3. Click Show Advanced button.
  4. Click Add…, for example, add a D: drive.
  5. Now, we can Browse… the path of our mounted ISO images.
  6. The important part is the Type:, we need to change to CD-ROM.
  7. Apply.

Now, in the WINE, there is a new CD-ROM drive. We can change the CD-ROM to any Linux file system path. So, mount the disc 1, run the installer.exe in the D:, complete disc 1, the installer will ask for disc 2. In the winecfg, change the D: path to mounted disc 2, apply. Go back to the installer, the disc 2 should be detected.

Enjoy the games.

(This is tested with SimCity 4 Deluxe.)