Gramblosh
Irradiated Dwarf
Installing Fallout + Fallout Fixt
on Linux using Wine
on Linux using Wine
Note: If you are just into installing Fallout on Wine that's a pretty straight forward thing. Any (basic) version of Fallout should work fine.
Test system:
- Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr
- Wine 1.7.44
- Fallout 2.0.0.14 aka. the GOG version
- Fixt 0.81alpha (using a custom setup)
1 Requirements
First you need an up-to-date version of Linux or at least not a too ancient one. The examples in this guide are for Ubuntu 14.04 based systems (which includes e.g. the Linux Mint 17 series, Elementary OS and many others), however, this is just important for this first chapter, the way things are handled under Wine should be universal for all Linux systems.
In the Ubuntu repositories from Trusty to Wily you find Wine 1.6.2 (that's the latest stable), you can install it from your package manager (Software Center, Synaptic, etc.). You can also install Wine 1.7 (fairly stable beta versions) from the - more or less - official or officially endorsed Wine PPA using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.7 winetricks
Note: These are the only steps that require root access, do not (really never) install or run applications on Wine as root.
The situation on many other Linux distributions might be similar, sources can be found here https://www.winehq.org/download. In this guide I will be using a basic Wine setup as an example, you can also use Play On Linux, however, it is not needed, but the problems that might arise, should be pretty similar.
Further reading on Wine:
- the official Wine wiki
- the Arch user wiki (nice overview on Wine)
- the German Ubuntu user wiki (similar as above but for German speaking users)
2 Creating a Wineprefix
A wineprefix is like a Windows system setup (not like an isolated system), it can be either 32 or 64 bit and can contain different Windows components. It is not required but it is often a good idea to give different programs a different wineprefix. To create a wineprefix you open the terminal and enter for example
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" winecfg
On a 64 bit system this will create a 64 bit wineprefix called fallout in your home directory ($HOME or ~). You can adjust that to your liking but I will keep this throughout this guide as an example. After the creation of the wineprefix the Wine Configuration dialog will open, for now leave it the way it is, but you should remember the env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" part because it is needed to run an application in that wineprefix.
During installation you will get prompted to install Wine Gecko and Wine Mono, you can cancel that, they are not needed to run Fallout.
3 Installing Fallout
To install an application on wine you can run
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" wine uninstaller
The name is a bit confusing, as it opens the Add/Remove Programs dialog. Click "Install...".
If you have a download version and saved it to your Downloads folder, just open the download here, if you have it in another place (e.g. outside your home directory), you can navigate to it through drive Z: (that is the same as / on Linux). If you switched from Windows to Linux, the dialog design should be familiar.
For the sake of easy, I chose to install Fallout to C:\games\fallout (that is $HOME/fallout/drive_c/games/fallout on Linux), you should be able to run it using
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" wine start /Unix $HOME/fallout/drive_c/games/fallout/falloutw.exe
4 Installing Fallout Fixt
Fixt is installed in exactly the same way, so open the uninstaller again and chose "Install...", to make the installer show in the file dialog, change "Files of type" to "Programs (*.exe)". In the installer simply choose what you like.
4.1 Enabling the Hi-Res Patch
Now you can adjust screen resolution to your liking using
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" wine start /Unix "$HOME/fallout/drive_c/games/fallout/Fallout Fixt/f1_res_Config.exe"
Also make sure that you have DirectX 9 Graphics enabled, if it is not enabled and you apply the next step (4.2) the game will crash. If you want to use ALT+TAB you can enable Windowed Mode, in Fullscreen Mode ALT+TAB wasn't working at all in my tests.
Now you can start Fallout Fixt using
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" wine start /Unix "$HOME/fallout/drive_c/games/fallout/Fallout Fixt/FALLOUTW.exe"
You should also have a launcher in your start menu to launch Fallout as well as Fallout Fixt.
4.2 Enabling Sfall
You might notice that Fallout still does not use Sfall, to enable Sfall, start
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" winecfg
and open the libraries tab, add ddraw (it's not in the drop-down, so simple type it and click add, and you are sure you want to do that).
Instead of changing the Wine Configuration you can also add a DLL overwrite during game launch
env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/fallout" WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n" wine start /Unix "$HOME/fallout/drive_c/games/fallout/Fallout Fixt/FALLOUTW.exe"
In this case you have to apply the change also to the launcher in $HOME/.local/share/applications/wine to make it work correctly.
4.3 Enabling Custom Settings
The installer has one problem, the custom settings (GVARs) are not saved to the VAULT13.GAM, the file is located in /Fallout Fixt/DATA/DATA in your fallout game directory, if you chose the same directory I chose, that is $HOME/fallout/drive_c/Games/Fallout/Fallout Fixt/DATA/DATA. The values you need can be found in the install.log (/Fallout Fixt/DATA/FIXT). Simply open both files in a text editor, alter the values manually and you are done. To my knowledge that is all.
If you have a Windows installation of Fallout + Fixt and want the same settings on Linux you can just copy and paste that one.
Okay, this is it, now you can enjoy Fallout with Fallout Fixt on Linux
5 Uninstalling

5 Uninstalling
I cannot image why you would want to do that, but uninstalling is easy: delete the wineprefix. You might also want to remove the entries in $HOME/.local/share/applications/wine.
6 Known Issues
- Fallout sometimes crashes on exit (black screen), if that happens switch to a virtual console (CTRL+ALT+F1), login and enter pkill FALLOUT, then switch back to the graphical interface with ALT+F7.
- ALT+TAB does not work.
7 Famous Last Words
Everything in this guide was tested multiple times. I also did a complete play-through using Fallout Fixt 6.7.3 and roughly half a play-through using Fallout Fixt 0.81. However, I cannot guarantee that on your Linux system something is not working, I also cannot guarantee that somewhere deep inside the Wasteland is a Wine-related bug. The game is large and there are different versions, Wine is a beast and Linux systems can differ.
Please, take this as an invitation to share your experience and it would be great if you would include a) the Wine version you are using, b) the Linux distribution you have installed and c) the version of Fallout and Fixt you are using.
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