Trainz on Linux in 2022

[MasterTracklayer]

Thank you, @wilts747, for applying your considerable insight to my issue. I am used to being the one with the most computer knowledge, but that`s mostly because I know so few people who know anything about them. I am something of an expert in my own little world, but your expertise is probably far greater. (A little fish in a big pond can still be bigger than the big fish in a little pond, after all.)

My KUbuntu installation certainly /appears/ to be working, at any rate. As for the two versions of Wine, one is apparently for 32-bit client software while the other claims to be for 64-bit software, and I trust Ubuntu enough to believe that they would have ensured that the two would either coexist peacefully or cause the uninstallation of the other. They`re pretty good at that. I`ve had few problems with them over the years. Lutris installed its own custom Wine as well, for a total of three. Pretty much everything seems reasonably functional, until the hang at the update window.

I do not believe that I have enough storage space to perform as many back-ups as you advise, and I would be unable to purchase more until Monday (not to mention my severely limited budget). The back-up utility I have installed currently is Back In Time, which has been meeting my humble needs so far.

Other than those minor details, and the fact that I don`t drink coffee, your procedure as outlined above seems doable enough, and except for not (currently) knowing where to get WUbuntu and the upstream Wine, it sounds like something I can handle unsupervised, provided that there are no unexpected gotchas. Finding those two pieces of software should not be beyond my skills either.

Right now, though, I need a nap, because I stayed up too late last night. Again, thank you.

 

[JCitron]

• "Patches will be installed to the following folder".
• "To continue, click next. If you wish to select a different folder, click Browse."
• An editable text widget containing "No target selected."
• A button "Change Targets..." (note: not "Browse"). This opens up a directory selection browser.
• A button "Next" that is disabled.

This is your Trainz update.

- The following folder is the folder where your Trainz program is located.
Just hit next.

- No target selected...
Browse to your Trainz install location and choose the .exe for TRS22PE
Click Next.

- Change Targets...
You'll need to login using your My Trainz login.
Click on Change Stream...
Choose the TRS22 PE. (I'm assuming it's there because I don't see it and only see what versions I have available to me that I have installed).
Click Next...

Install should happen.

Note: The initial DBR will be hidden. Show the log to reveal the progress. (We found out the hard way).

Note2:

You can run the patch-installer separately and go through the same process as you do with the Launcher open. Sometimes, this is actually better for some reason. The same interface will appear only without the launcher running.

 

[wilts747]

Re: #61 Sorry didn't mean to mislead you with poor explanation. What I meant was, as I had with Wubuntu, perhaps it would be prudent, and wouldn't take too long, to reinstall Kubuntu from scratch, backing up the system along the way, then should it go wrong you only need to go back one step and try again. Appreciate the coffee comment, likewise true Brit here, tea only. Good luck.

Edit: Any backup software is OK and most distributions have something that will do the job. How much space have you got and how are you connected, i.e. USB2, USB3 etc

Peter

 

[MasterTracklayer]

Yep. I managed to figure out most of that myself, when playing with my Win7 install of Trainz22.

Except for a couple things: The update stream was TRS22 --no PE--although it was present both with and without "Beta", and "Install should happen" didn`t. It stops at "Checking for available patches."

Update: Playing with the minimize window feature, the window restores with the text ""No patch currently available for this product." Knowing that Content Manager has this problem, I should have tried this sooner. The buttons at the bottom include "Back" (enabled) and "Apply Patch" (disabled). Clicking on Back produces...

...a return to the series of dialogs that got me there. Exiting the program and restarting it does the same thing, as well. Can`t figure how to get past "No patches." Ideas?

@wilts747, that`s ok, as I understand now. A fresh install of KUbuntu would be awkward on the grounds that I have highly customized my install. I could experiment with an alternate install, as I am set up to boot multiple installations (save of course only one at a time), but the comments regarding back-up space are the same. I do not /know/ that I have enough, unless I purge the temporary Win10 experimental install that refuses to Activate and will thus probably stop working eventually. I expected to purge it anyway once I discovered that it failed to register that this was hardware that had had a registered Win10 before I got it. (JCitron, this is my tower machine I`m talking about, not the second-hand laptop I`m writing this on.) Anyway, I suppose that I could do a fresh install there (and probably have room for back-up on the same SSD). My current KUbuntu has a ton of updates waiting, probably accumulated during the time I`ve been trying to get Trainz working well-enough on the laptop.

Anyway, I am again at a loss for what to do, but at least I have gotten farther than previously. Ideas?

 

[JCitron]

If you are attempting to patch the Linux install, I highly recommend doing a fresh Trainz install there. Get everything installed and running as is then update that version. Once updated, copy over your database and content, and "connect" to that database. You may have to run a DBR but that'll be done on the Linux install and not on your own laptop version.

Make sense?

Since I don't have PE version installed, I have no way of knowing what's available or not for that version. I've just downloaded it now and will check and see what the patching options are.

I can understand why this is confusing. Choose TRS22 for the updates since there's nothing specific for Platinum, and there wasn't for me anyway when I checked. Build 123801 apparently is the latest version.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

Yes, I`m attempting to patch the Linux install. It already is a fresh install. I can`t get anything "installed and running" because the update /attempt/ is compulsory, i.e., running the game launches directly into the update attempt, and as if that isn`t enough, it turns out that there /is/ no update to install, the only visible way out is to exit the program, and restarting it just does the same thing all over again.

Yes, it makes /perfect/ sense --to me, but apparently not to the program.

I`ve verified with my (barely) working installation on the laptop that there /is/ no update beyond what I`m trying to install on Linux.

If I had accidentally run the installer for the older Win7-compatible Trainz, the update window would /not/ end on "no upate available", right? I figure that on that basis alone, I /must/ have run the correct installer.

Ideas?

 

[MasterTracklayer]

Edit: Any backup software is OK and most distributions have something that will do the job. How much space have you got and how are you connected, i.e. USB2, USB3 etc

Actually, I don`t drink tea, either. I didn`t see your edit because it wasn`t there when last I saw your post.

I have two SSD drives, approximately one terabyte each. My "portable Linux" is on one of them, which attaches to a system via a USB port. I don`t know which USB version is used, but the physical connector is the original USB connector, not one if the mini connectors. The "boot partition" is on a separate 32gig thumb drive, of which most is free but never touched except for Grub2 updates. (This is why I call my install "portable".) I also run a custom Grub menu script that manually replaces the autogenerated script every time I discover that one has been installed. I`m intending to write my own autogenerator, but haven`t gotten around to it yet. The SSD itself has plenty of room for ordinary daily use, but I just partitioned and formatted the last remaining unallocated space for Trainz, at about 170-ish gig. There is no other partition on the drive with enough free space for my trainzbase(s) to be put there.

The other SSD is mounted internally as a hard drive in a tower. I have a couple of medium-small partitions near the beginning that could be wiped if required, one 50gig partition that a test-install of Win10 apparently made for the private use of Win10, one 64-gig partition created to install the Win10 test into, and the remainder, at circa 800 meg, is unpartitioned. I expect to be unable to activate the Win10 install (which I was told would be no problem because the machine had previously had Win10 on it), which I understand means that the test-install will self-deactivate, which in turn means that the two Win10 partitions ae also fair game to be wiped. Basically, he whole drive is available, /if needed/. I had intended to set up some LVMs there to play with for the purpose of learning the details of managing them, but haven`t yet (which is why I was able to test-install Win10 there). I thought that if I could get Trainz running in the 170-gig partition, I`d give it a bigger playground on the internal drive, but insufficient luck yet.

Is this more-or-less what you wanted to know?

 

[wilts747]

If you had Linux/Trainz installed on a stand alone drive my intention was to try to clone it later today and see how I got on, but your setup is a little more complicated and may possibly be part of the issues you are having. I was always told to keep different OS apart because for example if Windows crashes Linux you can replace Linux, but if Linux crashes Windows you better have the disks handy.

It is perhaps unfortunate that, and assuming I have understood it correctly, everything you are running is accessed via relatively slow USB ports. Generally speaking in the past 10 years those on the rear of a motherboard have been black in colour for USB2 and blue for USB3. Those on the front of a tower case should be the same, that is assuming the builder used the correct corresponding header on the motherboard. Kubuntu is a lightweight distribution and in most instances runs well on low spec computers. I know from my own experiences TRS22 runs well on Kubuntu through Wine. I have however had issues even trying to run the likes of TS12 on old laptops just satisfied the minimum requirements and wonder if trying to run both Linux and TRS22 via such USB ports is pushing technology too far. Others have written that using USB C/portable SSDs can be challenging and we know Trainz still performs slightly better on Windows than Linux. It may be prudent to consider freeing up internal space by moving the likes of data to the external drive and instead install Linux internally where everything has direct access to the much faster PCI bus.

I use swappable hard drives/SSD in all my desktop computers other than my main games machine. That has two motherboard mounted M2 SSDs which I assess via the 'F' key boot menu, Win10/TRS19 on one, Linux Mint/TRS22 Standard on the other. It also has a 4GB swappable hard drive used as a dumping ground for everything Trainz and backups.

Peter

 

[MasterTracklayer]

When I got my first SSD was before I got the tower. I had (and still have) a custom-built box computer (similar in shape, but not size, to a cardboard box) with WinXP installed on it, and several installs of KUbuntu which accumulated over the years. One day WinXP decided that my D: partition needed to have CKDSK run against it. Never having had any major problems with CHKDSK, I allowed it. When CHKDSK finished and Windows came up, it couldn`t /find/ drive D, which is where all of /my/ stuff was located. I booted up Linux, and it couldn`t find it either. I located a document detailing the on-disk structures of NTFS and started writing my own recovery program. Everything I looked for was exactly where it was supposed to be. I acquired my first SSD to transfer my working stuff onto while working on the recovery script. It was a dual-mount model, which could go either inside or in an included USB enclosure. Because I had no space available in the box, I opted for the USB enclosure. During the transfer, I lost track of the document that was guiding the construction of my recovery tool, along with some older partitions mostly containing old junk that I didn`t need to keep. Some time after this, my friendly local computer store owner gave me a nice tower case that another customer had abandoned, so I started running my Linux on the tower, still from the USB SSD. I was also given a second-hand laptop by a relative who had purchased a newer laptop. I didn`t use the laptop much until I installed Sims 3. Somewhen around this time, I bought a second SSD and installed it inside the tower as its only hard drive (as it had been given to me without one), intending to install LVM volumes there, to be followed by migrating some of my other storage needs as well. Shortly before Christmas, N3V marketing started sending me e-mails advertising deals on Trainz. Unfortunately, they had all expired before I even noticed that they were there. Eventually one arrived that I noticed before it was too late, and, remembering my earlier Trainz installs fondly, I pounced on it, getting Trainz22PE for the laptop which, alas, is slightly under-powered for the game. It runs, just not well. Well enough, however, for me to engage in my passion for scripting. Naturally, preferring Linux to Windows, I had dreams of installing it there if I could, but I have had poor luck installing Windows software into my Linux system. Around this time, I notice an entire thread full of people whom I thought might be able to help. Having been assured that Windows 10 would recognize the tower, from having been installed there previously, I test-installed Windows 10 there, except Windows did /not/ recognize it. About this time, I decided to ask /here/ for help.

As you can see, my very odd setup developed one seeminglly-logical-at-the-time step at a time. As a result, my current set-up is full of legacy oddities that I haven`t yet bothered to deodify. (Huh, my spell checker actually /likes/ "deodify".) This is where things stand now, except for the attempts (detailed in previous posts and other threads) to get Trainz installed to my liking.

Any ideas?

 

[KotangaGirl]

As you can see, my very odd setup developed one seeminglly-logical-at-the-time step at a time. As a result, my current set-up is full of legacy oddities that I haven`t yet bothered to deodify. (Huh, my spell checker actually /likes/ "deodify".) This is where things stand now, except for the attempts (detailed in previous posts and other threads) to get Trainz installed to my liking.

Any ideas?

No wonder I feel completely confused about what you are doing with trying to get Trainz to run in Linux.

My advice before you attempt to do anything else is to sort your computer out because it's like some terrible rat's nest of a mess and it's a wonder that it's working at all.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

Story of my life, lady, story of my life. Every oddity was created in response to an existing condition that wouldn`t allow a more conventional solution to apply. The various parts of the system all seem to work, and having a portable Linux system is very handy. For most if not all of the oddities (which don`t seem to be interfering with "normal" use), trying to "fix" them means having to deal with something else first, some of which might be very difficult to deal with. The whole thing grew so organically that it is difficult to find a string to pull on that pulling on it without extreme care won`t make matters worse.

 

[wilts747]

I echo KotandaGirl's thoughts indeed. Move everything of value and you wish to keep to any removeable storage you can find. Wipe the towers SSD and install it preferable as a single boot system with your most reliable OS, dual boot if you really need to. Reinstall the programs and utilities you actually use, followed by the data you need from the removeable storage.

Install the likes of VM Virtual Box or similar to allow you to run as many other OS as you like and as development space for your projects. Sort the data left on the removeable storage keeping what you need and reconsidering what you thought you needed. Peter

 

[MasterTracklayer]

Move everything of value and you wish to keep to any removeable storage you can find.

Gotta chuckle at that one. That`s where everything already is, except for the laptop and the unimportant stuff on the tower`s SSD. My most reliable OS? the Win10 seems pretty stable, but is apparently not an option for the tower. That leaves WinXP, which ate my data drive, and KUbuntu, which seems quite happy where it is. Wipe the tower? Nothing much of interest there, so not a big problem. Dual boot? I had XP and KUbuntu happpily dual-booting on the box until XP ate all my windows data and non-system software. I can dual-boot with KUbuntu and Win10, but the expected pending demise of the unactivated install makes that seem not worth the trouble. With my current set-up, I can take the thumb and external to most any computer and run them there. I`m running that way on the laptop right now, copying a large chunk of Trainz data to the external drive, in the hopes of using it there eventually. Before Trainz came along, I had been intending to create an array of LVM partitions on the tower`s SSD and eventually migrating my workspace there. The arrival of Trainz pushed that off the top of the priority list. One way to do what you are suggesting is to push that back to the top of the priority list. I also have another reason to do as you suggest: The data copy aborted about halfway due to insufficient space. Apparently I need a bigger place to host Trainz. Wiping the tower and migrating there is starting to look more attractive, and I can keep my "portable Linux" too. I think I can handle most of that, but I could use some spot advice here and there, starting with the recommended size for the boot partition, followed by some tips on installing and using LVMs. Thank you. The one significant issue with the tower? The motherboard audio "card" seems to have died, so no sound. I might be able to pick up a decent used card, though.

 

[wilts747]

The recommended partition for Windows 10-11 is 64GB but personally I would at least double that. I would not create virtual drives until I need them and know what space each one actually needs.

Any software or utilities you can freely download tomorrow consider deleting to free up space then download the latest and reinstall as needed.

Assuming your data is safe, do you know anyone who would lend you some removable storage or even a laptop with some space on its SSD.

Freecycle.org is a world wide recycling organisation where people give away and/or request something they or other no longer need for free. Go on line as there may be one operating in your area if not something very similar. Go look for anything free containing storage including local recycle centers, at most they can only ask you to leave. While your at it perhaps also look for a sound card as well

Peter

 

[MasterTracklayer]

I thought that I had made it clear enough that the current Win10 on the tower is disposable. I was seriously considering alloting it 0.00KB. I`m more concerned with eventually resurrecting my XP system, which I cannot do without adequate documentation on NTFS on-disk data structures. As for the virtual drives, the whole point is that I DO not and CANnot know what each one needs, and they can easily be enlarged at need, until I run out of space. With traditional partitions, enlarging a too-small partition is a bit more problematic. I definitely /want/ them, and they are best set up before too many traditional partitions get in the way.

My download speed is relatively slow by today`s standards, so redownloading something that I already have is a distant second choice at best. apt-get update apt-get upgrade and graphical equivalents suffice for latest-and-greatest for most of my software.

I don`t believe that I will /need/ any such. Everything Linux that I want to keep is already on an external drive, which I do not intend to erase after the transition. Everything on the tower`s SSD is disposable. Why a third drive?

My friendly local hardware dealer is a very nice guy, and just might consent to give me a customer`s old sound card on-the-cheap, as they say. Not open until Monday.

As soon as I have a recommendation for the size of a boot partition, I can get started on preparing the tower. A small system partition can follow that, if needed, with enough content to bring up the LVMs. (Can Grub 2 boot directly into a LVM root?) Once the LVM system is set up, the remainder is just drudge-work.

 

[wilts747]

With Trainz in mind, over the weekend I have taken the opportunity to download, install and try out the latest Linuxfx distribution ‘Wubuntu’ (Windows Ubuntu).

Linuxfx has been around for some time, until now using the Cinnamon desktop, with the aim of facilitating the migration of users from Windows. For those who have tried it I guess it has had some degree of success but likely no more so than the many other prominent distributions such as Ubuntu, Mint and so forth. In use, Trainz runs no better or worse through Wine than any other leading distribution and in keeping with Windows it might be argued that Linuxfx even contains a few too many unnecessary application, represent bloatware.

Wubuntu comes in two desktops, Plasma Edition (Win 11) and Cinnamon Edition (Win 10) each cloning their respective version of MS Windows. Downloading them, creating and live USB drive and installing them was little different than any other Linux distribution with the exception of removing any reference to ‘win or windows’ from the downloaded file name before writing them to USB. I learnt the hard way that many Windows and Linux utilities for writing ISO files to USB thumb drives will treat what they believe are Windows ISO’s differently that other ISO’s.

Both editions look good, and should you not be familiar with Widows 11 the Plasma Edition could just fool you that its the real thing. Desktops, colour schemes, icons, etc. all look the part. The majority of applications are of cause Linux but have been well selected to shadow those of Windows. Microsoft Edge, Copilot and One Drive are included. However the way much of this interface has been produced, particularly with Plasma, I believe it has been achieved through the use of applets frequently making the response to a mouse click very sluggish. Another annoying aspect of both editions is the inclusion of a PowerToys clone. This is a time limited program that they want you to purchase/donate to, to enabling you to upgrade to the professional version of either editions. This in turn make me wonder if this is the first step to becoming a paid for program. What I couldn’t understand was the requirement to install Virtual Box Guest Add-ons for the system to run efficiently. It was easy to find but not knowing on which version of Ubuntu, Wubuntu had been developed, not quite so easy to identify the actual file needed to install it. Fortunately after downloading a handful only one would actually load, but still I have no idea what difference it made.

The good news is that not only do both editions include Wine 9.0 by default, by just running any Windows .exe or .msi file the respective application will load as if it had been in Window, this included TRS22. Those of you who have tried finding the location in which Wine has installed Trainz will know it can be at best trying. Wubuntu gives you the choice including ‘Program Files’ and ‘Program Files (x86) folders found in any Windows installation as an option. Unfortunately while loading TRS22 to route and/or sessions went without issue, it did not run well, in fact I crashed it more often than not.

So have I been wasting my time? I don’t think so. Windows 10 is currently supported until the third quarter next year and in the world of Linux a lot can happen in that time. The ability to just load a Windows program and not have to learn a new interface is in itself a blessing, unfortunately today Trainz is a step too far. Wubuntu has potential and is worth watching assuming it doesn’t become a paid for program in the future. Already I’ve seen the issues of lagging reported in the Linux press, which I hope will result in future updates. In the mean time I’ll stick with Mint, I hope you have found this interesting.

Wubuntu website is at: www.wubuntu.org

Peter

 

[MasterTracklayer]

That sounds interesting, possibly worth a try, but I would definitely want to uninstall as much of the bloatware as possible, and probably /want/ to uninstall some of what cannot be uninstalled without compromising the system. I also do not much care for the crashes, although crash-to-desktop is not as bad as crash-the-whole-machine. As for desktops, the Win98/WinXP model suits me far better than the more recent Windows versions, and a fair bit better than the Gnome style. KUbuntu achieves that admirably. I am currently inclined to stick with KUbuntu for the time being, as I know my way around it fairly well, and can (eventually figure out how to) do most of what I want it to do for me.

That said, if you can tell me a (free) Linux distribution where Trainz is nearly guaranteed to work, I`ll gladly give it a try, even if I dislike everything else about it.

 

[KotangaGirl]

As I've mentioned before I'm running Debian 12 Bookworm with KDE. I'm using Wine 9.0 and Lutris. I have TANE SP4, TRS19 SP5 and TRS22 build 117655 running via Lutris. Trainz runs very well given the limitations of my eight year old HP Xeon tower computer and I don't have any issues with it.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

I`m running what I believe is the latest LTS KUbuntu, with the latest Wine available at the Ubuntu repository, and what was the latest Lutris when I downloaded it a few days ago. Trainz22PE 123801 is apparently successfully installed, but seems incapable of proceeding beyond determining that there are no updates to install. I`m considering installing an older Trainz and seeing what happens when it finds that an update is available, but not now. Too tired. Do you use Grub2? How large is your boot partition? How much free space does it have? Same questions about your daughter`s KUbuntu system, if the two of you don`t mind.

I`ve been noticing your Trainz name. There`s a television show character whom I like whose name is Katana Girl, after the Japanese blade of the same name. What does "Kotanga" mean?

 

[KotangaGirl]

Answers:

There is a way to prevent that update menu from turning up when installing with Lutris, but I can't remember how I did it now. Considering that I only did it three times that's pretty poor.

No I don't use Grub or Grub2.

My boot partition is 4.5 Gb, 3.3 Gb free space. My daughter is away at the moment, but I can ask her when she gets back.

'Kotanga' is a faux Maori word that sounds nearly the same as coat hanger. I'm from New Zealand and when I first signed on with Trainz and the forum a few years ago now I had a 3ft 6in gauge layout named the Kotanga Tramway so I made KotangaGirl my login name. I haven't modelled the NZ railway scene for a while now and the Kotanga Tramway is archived away and hasn't seen the light of day for years, - so I guess the clue as to my login name isn't so obvious anymore.