DeMignon: I don't know why there isn't a deb installer for Witcher 2. I think there is supposed to be one. Send a ticket to support to let them know.

Gydion: It's always only been a tarball. The impression I have is there are no current plans to create a .deb installer.

DeMignon: I assumed, GOG would provide both options for one of their "in-house" games. There's obviously demand.

BKGaming: I have to say that not including a deb installer for people who just want to click install and have it work was a stupid decision, especially when a lot of people like Linux or are new to Linux but haven't learned terminal commands. There Linux FAQ even says the games are suppose to include a deb installer and a tarball so that if your not on Linux Mint or Ubuntu you can still try to install it. I'd expect that from random internet software, not games being sold on a major distribution site.

So I unpacked the game and tried to use start.sh, the game launcher comes up but the game will not run.

Apparently the game needs these packages: libc6:i386 libasound2:i386 libasound2-data:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-image-2.0-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libcurl3:i386 and dependencies

So I assume I just open terminal and use sudo apt-get install then the package name correct? I'm on Linux mint by the way, and I appropriate all your help. So thank you.

sunshinecorp: That's correct.
You don't have to use apt-get install multiple times, just dump all the package names after the command.

igor.699: The question is how the archive is prepared - sorry I never tried to play GOG games on Linux.

Just try to unarchive it (e.g. with command "tar -xzvpf the_name_of_the_archive.tar.gz") and check what files are inside. If you will find something like "install.sh" than just execute it. If there are no install scripts than search for other *.sh files.

.deb packages were originally invented and used in Debian. Then those packages were used also in other Linux distributions. Alternative packages like *.rpm were used originally in RedHat and then also "moved" to other distributions. I'm not sure what is the current state of the art but at the time when I was advanced Linux user various distributions were, in theory, able to handle packages from "competitors" but as far as I remember there were always problems with that (e.g. with dependencies or with uninstalling or with strange installation errors). For that reason it was usually good idea to use just tar.gz files with installation scripts when providing application as binaries only (closed source) - it was much more easier to support various Linux distributions.

Edit:
Please note that if you extracted archive with different options (especially without "p" option) or with different tool (e.g. any GUI extractor) than it could happen that *.sh scripts will have no correct file attributes. In such case if you will try to execute such scripts you will probably see an error message and script will not be executed. To "fix" the problem you should set file attribute "x" on *.sh files. You can use e.g. command "chmod +x anyfile.sh"

Edit2:
I'm now curious enough to try it myself ;) - I started downloading The Witcher 2 for Linux - 4 hours left ;)

BKGaming: Again I appreciate the help guys, but at this point I'm to the point of giving up as I have tried everything I can think of. I actually ruined my Linux Mint install trying to get this to work, and had to do a fresh install. :(

If anyone has an idea on what I'm doing wrong please let me know.

GOG has made this more complicated than it should have been. I may send an email to support.... and specifically ask them as to why there is no deb installer. Kind of crazy that not only there is none, but it's labeled as an installer when it's clearly not.

Thank you.

Daliz: About the patch, did you install it as root? Since you copied to game to /opt, you need to be root to be able to write in there. Only /home/[yourusername]/ is writable by a normal user by default.

Open a terminal and go to witcher 2 directory:

cd /opt/witcher2/game (Or whatever the witcher2 directory is named, can't remember the default name. Note everything's case sensitive in Linux. You can automatically fill the correct directory by typing the first letter and pressing tab as you type)

Start game:

./witcher2

Then copy/paste here the error you see in the terminal window, starting from the ./witcher2 command you gave.

I have a similar problem about the game not starting but I don't get any error message at all. But I'm on a different distro, not Mint.

By the way, do you have an nVidia or AMD graphics card?