Installing Diablo II on a Linux Operating System



1. General Infos

This guide will work on Debian, Ubuntu and other Debian-like Linux systems.
If you are using another Linux system, simply replace "apt-get install" with your package manager's installing command.

All code blocks are commands you have to type in the console / terminal.

File systems commonly used by Linux are case sensitive. You may add a folder /home/xyz/ABC and a folder /home/xyz/abc. Wine does ignore case sensitivity. Please make sure that your folder and file names are unique, ignoring upper and lower case. You will run into problems if you ignore this.



2. Preparation

Install wine (which is needed to run Windows applications on Linux) and libjack0 (which is needed for Diablo II sound - missing libjack0 may cause crashes on act changing!).


After installing wine and libjack0, you have to configure wine.
Do not run this command as root! Make sure that username@computername and not root@computername is visible in the console. Many Windows viruses can be run with wine. Giving them root access can seriously harm your Linux installation.


In the Applications tab, select "Windows XP" or "Windows 2000" for default settings.

Head to the Graphics tab. Enable a virtual desktop and set the size to anything (I recommend something small). If you are using a virtual desktop, you do not need to add the -w for windowed mode. Playing in fullscreen mode will resize the virtual desktop to 640*480 or 800*600 pixels, the wine settings will be ignored.
With patch 1.13, you don't need the virtual desktop anymore to prevent d2 from minimizing when you click outside the window. The windowed mode is faster and smoother than the full screen mode.
Deactivate "Allow window manager to control the windows", otherwise you will have to replace some shortcuts.

In the Audio tab, make sure that an audio driver is enabled. If no audio driver is enabled, just select ALSA (will work in most cases).



3. Installing or copying Diablo II on your Linux PC

There are 2 ways of getting Diablo II on your Linux PC.

One way is installing it. The other way is copying an existing Diablo II installation from a Windows PC. If you already have a Windows PC with Diablo II on it, use the copy method - it's easier.



3a. Copying Diablo II from a Windows PC

This is the easiest and the recommended way. All you need is Diablo II (full installation) installed on a Windows PC. If your Diablo II installation is not installed as "full installation", upgrade it.

Copy all files from the Diablo II folder on your Windows PC to an USB flash drive or to any other external drive. You do not need to copy any parts of the Windows registry. Registry entries will be created when you start Diablo II.

Insert the drive at your Linux PC. If it does not get recognised automatically, you may need to mount it (will happen if you are using a NTFS formatted drive).


Replace "ntfs" with the file system on your external drive. For some file systems, you will need to add "-o loop". Replace "X" with your hard drive letter. Maybe you have to find out which letter the drive is assigned to.
Please make sure that you use an empty folder as mount point! If /mnt is already taken by some other device, you have to select or create another one. The content of a folder will be lost if you use it as a mount point, so make sure that your folder is empty!


This will list all partitions installed on the computer, including external drives. Usually /dev/sda is your 1st hard disk drive, /dev/sdb is your second, ... The numbers indicate the partitions.
The last listed drive will be your external drive in most cases.

After mounting the external drive, simply copy the Diablo II folder (which can be found in /mnt after mounting) to your Linux PC.
Make sure that you have read & write permissions in the Diablo II folder. Do not copy them being root. Maybe you have to change the permissions in your target folder before copying. This could require administrative permissions. If you don't know how to change permissions, simply copy the files into a new folder in your home directory (example: /home/username/Diablo_II).

Right-click on your desktop and create a new launcher.
Select "Application" as type and a name of your choice.
For "Command", type in the following command:




3b. Downloading Diablo II from Blizzard Store

Follow the Diablo II Download Guide.

Download the download and install manager. Open the terminal and execute the manager with wine. Follow the instructions, and you are done.
** Note: this does not always work. If it does not work, install from cds.



3c. Installing Diablo II from CD

Only use this if you cannot download Diablo II from Blizzard Store and if you do not have a working Diablo II installation on another PC. Installing from CD will fail with some older wine versions.

Insert your CD and start the Setup. Wait for the CD being mounted. If it does not get mounted automatically, follow the steps to mount a drive as described in 3a.


Select full installation.
Follow the instructions. When prompted to change the CD, simply change it, the setup should continue without any problems. Maybe you need to mount the CD manually (descibed above).

When prompted about creating a desktop launcher, answer "yes". The created launcher will work.

After installing Diablo II, you are able to install the expansion set the same way you installed Diablo II.



4. Updating Diablo II

Execute your Diablo II installation to create the missing registry entries. Do not connect to battle.net, the update could fail! This step is not needed if you installed it, following 3b or 3c.

Download the Diablo II patch for Windows: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20758&rhtml=true?rhtml=y

Install the patch, using wine.


After installing the patch, Diablo II will start in fullscreen mode. If you do not use a virtual desktop, this can mess up your screen resolution. Exit Diablo II and adjust your screen resolution if needed.

Visit the How To Run Diablo II Without A Cd guide and follow the instructions. I recommend to run Diablo II without CD.



5. Playing Diablo II

Click the launcher on your desktop and wait some seconds until the virtual desktop opens.

If Diablo II crashes when you change between acts after completing the last quest, you probably do not have libjack installed. See above (chapter 2) for more informations.

If you followed all instructions in this guide, your Diablo II window should look like this:


This post was edited by tcl on Apr 6 2010 02:31pm