I have a CD-ROM game that (to my knowledge) only exists as a physical disk. Is there a way to install it on my Linux PC with Lutris?

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So, I have a number of old CD-ROM games that I would like to play on my Linux PC (I’m running Linux Mint 21.2 64bit).

I’ve been told that the best way to run these old games on Linux would be to ignore the physical CDs and just download ripped .ISO files of these games. However, a number of my games don’t have a .ISO file that’s available on the internet.

I’ve looked around on lutris.net for “install scripts”, but I’m not finding much there either.

This leaves me with just the Lutris program and the physical CDs. (I do have an optical disc drive to read these disks.)

(FYI, I have Lutris and most of my other programs installed as Flatpaks because “reasons”)

In old Lutris install tutorials, there used to be an “install from CD option”, but it looks like that’s gone now, or it goes by a different name.

The “add games to Lutris” options are now:

  • Search the Lutris website for installers

  • Scan a folder for games

  • Install a Windows game from an executable

  • install from a local install script

  • Import a ROM

  • Add a locally installed game

If the only copy of my game I have is the physical disk, what would be the best way to install it on Linux?

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Hi, you might try the option “Install a Windows game from an executable” and browse for “setup.exe” in your cd-rom path

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If you don’t want the CD disk to be loaded, you can just mount it once, and convert it into an iso image.

After as already been said, just create an empty wine prefix and try to run the setup exe.
Should probably work without issues.
When it’s an old CD, the game probably is not as complicated, so there should not be any issues on your path.

Also, if dependencies are not installed automatically, you should also find the respective dependency isntallers on the disk. - check the names of the dependencies and install those through winetricks inside your prefix