Trainz on Linux in 2022

[KotangaGirl]

When installing Wine I would suggest following the instructions on the WineHQ website which are a little different for the pedigree of Linux being used (Ubuntu, Debain, Arch etc), and the version. I've also tried Proton, Lutris and the various GE variants but have yet to resolve the page update issue in Content Manager. Peter

Thanks for your response Peter. I'm using a Wine distribution which is packaged for Debian. My daughter made several attempts using other Wine versions without success before she discovered where the Debian distribution we're using had been hidden away not exactly in plain sight. This version seems to work well and I have a couple of other Windows programs that are successfully using it apart from Trainz.

I'm running Debian 12 (Bookworm) and Wine 8.0.2 Thanks for posting the Wine links by the way.

Possibly some of my issues with TRS22 are due to my older model HP Xeon being not quite up to the job of running this version of Trainz. However faults like portals derailing everything they spit out and engines burying themselves deep into carriages when given the 'couple to' command are definitely faults with TRS22 itself. I was having some of these problems (among others) with TRS22 when it was running in Windows and they seem to be worse in Linux.

At present it's just easier to stay with running TANE until I can afford to buy a better computer.

I'm running win 11 on an off lease Del T5810 with a W xeon processor. Dell does their own off lease stuff in Canada and they had a batch of 50 of so to get rid of so mine wasn't expensive. Mine happens to have 8 cores but there would seem to be some around in New Zealand with 4 cores if not 8. The Quadro p4000 that came with it is running trainz quite happily until I get round to installing another video card.

Hi John, - I did have a look at various ex-lease Xeons here in NZ, - only I can't stretch the budget to buying anything that would be of use at present. Maybe later in the new year, but not at the moment.

I've sometimes used cheaply priced Quadro video cards purchased from computer recyclers as well when I couldn't afford anything better and they work well for running Trainz.

 

[KotangaGirl]

I'm still running Debian Linux on my older model HP Xeon and I'm using it both as my general use computer and my Trainz computer as well. Debian Linux continues to run TANE SP4 in Wine perfectly well almost as if N3V had designed it for the purpose. Content Manager is still clunky of course, but once I got used to refreshing it after each search request it hasn't been that much of a problem at all.
I was able to obtain a better CPU for the Xeon which is a processor model that eventually was developed into the i7 processor and that has certainly perked my old Xeon up a bit, - but that's the limit of the upgrades I can make to it now. If I could have afforded it I wouldn't have minded looking for a later model Xeon computer that wasn't Windows 11 upgradable, but of course would be perfectly fine for Linux. Not to worry though and perhaps a project for later when my bank balance is looking better.

In other news I have been able to buy an ex-lease refinished HP Windows 11 computer at a very nice discount in one of the many holiday season sales that seem to happen at this time of year. It works fine and has upgrading potential so it should be good for a few years use. I'm waiting on a graphics card to arrive before I properly put it through its paces.

After using a Linux computer for a month though I'm finding trying to make sense of Windows 11 like utter madness. Too much popup sneaky subscription rubbish and daft social media nonsense. And as for seeing how what used to be easy to find tools are now hidden away in layers of menus I now know where N3V got their ideas from; - or perhaps Microsoft copied them, - who knows.

My present plan is to only use the new ex-lease Windows computer for TRS22 and running the software I need for asset creation that won't run under Linux. Everything else I need a computer for will be done on the Xeon using Linux, - where there's no popups to bother me or tricksy Microsoft messages trying to sell me something.

 

[SirGreg]

I'm still running Debian Linux on my older model HP Xeon and I'm using it both as my general use computer and my Trainz computer as well. Debian Linux continues to run TANE SP4 in Wine perfectly well almost as if N3V had designed it for the purpose. Content Manager is still clunky of course, but once I got used to refreshing it after each search request it hasn't been that much of a problem at all.
I was able to obtain a better CPU for the Xeon which is a processor model that eventually was developed into the i7 processor and that has certainly perked my old Xeon up a bit, - but that's the limit of the upgrades I can make to it now. If I could have afforded it I wouldn't have minded looking for a later model Xeon computer that wasn't Windows 11 upgradable, but of course would be perfectly fine for Linux. Not to worry though and perhaps a project for later when my bank balance is looking better.

In other news I have been able to buy an ex-lease refinished HP Windows 11 computer at a very nice discount in one of the many holiday season sales that seem to happen at this time of year. It works fine and has upgrading potential so it should be good for a few years use. I'm waiting on a graphics card to arrive before I properly put it through its paces.

After using a Linux computer for a month though I'm finding trying to make sense of Windows 11 like utter madness. Too much popup sneaky subscription rubbish and daft social media nonsense. And as for seeing how what used to be easy to find tools are now hidden away in layers of menus I now know where N3V got their ideas from; - or perhaps Microsoft copied them, - who knows.

My present plan is to only use the new ex-lease Windows computer for TRS22 and running the software I need for asset creation that won't run under Linux. Everything else I need a computer for will be done on the Xeon using Linux, - where there's no popups to bother me or tricksy Microsoft messages trying to sell me something.

I had a refinished HP xeon workstation 400, ex-server model using it for 3 years, before i move to Germany i gave it to a friend to send me the Desktop here, the post service delayed so much that i thought that there was a problem during the transportation and i bought a HP Victus laptop, well the desktop arrived also after 3 months of delay!!!What i have to mark about the Desktop is that from one hand you don t have super performance but on the other hand you have supercooling fans and large enough, also great stability and a sufficient power supply.

 

[JCitron]

Annie,

If you are getting Windows 11, make sure it's the Pro-version due to other helpful things you can do. Home has its limitations that you'll find annoying.

I'll send you some instructions on what to kill off on Windows 11. These are things that get in the way with one of them being the One-Drive which Microsoft insists we all must send our documents folder to. The other are those stupid widgets. The problem with the Widgets, for us anyway and not for people who love news and whatnot popping up in their face all day, is they eat up resources that can be better used elsewhere. Using gpedit.msc in an admin prompt allows you to go in and disable them completely.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Annie,

If you are getting Windows 11, make sure it's the Pro-version due to other helpful things you can do. Home has its limitations that you'll find annoying.

I'll send you some instructions on what to kill off on Windows 11. These are things that get in the way with one of them being the One-Drive which Microsoft insists we all must send our documents folder to. The other are those stupid widgets. The problem with the Widgets, for us anyway and not for people who love news and whatnot popping up in their face all day, is they eat up resources that can be better used elsewhere. Using gpedit.msc in an admin prompt allows you to go in and disable them completely.

Thanks very much John. Being able to cut back on all the nonsense will be a big help. That issue with Onedrive wanting to send the documents folder into the Cloud sounds like a piece of advanced stupidity so that will definitely have to go.
I'm fairly certain that I have the Pro-version of Windows 11. I purchased my new to me ex-lease HP computer from NZ PC Clearance which is the major specialist computer refinisher/recycler here in New Zealand, - and much to my daughter and my amusement we discovered that it's an import from the Uk. Easy enough to set it up for New Zealand though and to get it to stop thinking that it's still in Britain.

 

[JCitron]

I'm glad this will be a Pro machine because Home is similar to operating a computer with one hand behind your back when you go to fix things. That's interesting your machine came in from Great Britain instead of being a local one. The voltage is the same, right? If so, at least that part is right. ;-)

These annoying things really do impact performance in subtle ways. The One-drive thing, while good for portable devices with 256 GB SSDs, isn't good for power users like us. I much prefer to use the cloud for sharing and not for backing up or permanent storage. The widgets eat up resources all the time and I felt the performance hit on another machine I use and that led me down the path to find a way to remove it along with other things. The constant network checking, sync'ing of data, etc., can really impact performance.

The other machine is a fairly new i7 with 32 GB of RAM. Running Windows 10, this machine is used strictly to drive my Roland LX-17 digital piano. I don't put it on the web for anything other than for Windows updates, and don't even have a game installed. It's basically a high-power digital controller.

Using Pianoteq software from Modartt, a digital piano can playback any of the provided mathematically sampled pianos. While this software doesn't have a lot of overhead itself, other things can impact it causing stutters, glitches, and huge pauses in the playback. Using Latency Monitor, an audio performance checking utility, I found some built-in utilities causing some things but could never find the other things until I did some good old-fashioned gumshoe sleuthing around and checked the Windows event viewer, processes, and everything else. I ended up disabling Windows Security Auditing for one. (Why is that on for a workgroup, and this machine isn't on the web?) That would kick in every hour and sometimes more frequently, causing pauses. I then noticed the Widgets service impacting the processing and killed that too. The problem has been vanquished but it took me months to do it.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

I prefer Linux myself, though I use KUbuntu because (1) it Just Worked out of the box, (2) had a user interface similar to the Windows 98 that I had been using before Linux, and (3) was accessible to under-the-hood tinkering when I would become ready to do so. I have Windows XP installed on what has lately been my main computer, but WinXP decided that D: needed to have chkdsk run on it. When that finished, I discovered that chkdsk had eaten all of my data, and neither WinXP nor Linux could see the volume on that partition. As @JCitron knows from another post, I started writing a Python script that was able to see the volume just fine, but I lost the NTFS reference document I was using before I could finish the script. I didn`t know that Trainz could run so well on Linux, or I would have tried long ago. I`ve been trying for some time to get The Sims (preferably Sims 3, but really any of 1, 2, or 3) in Linux with distinctly mixed results.

My sister got herself a new computer and gave me her old one. It turns out to be a Dell laptop running Win10. The first program I installed on it after I got it was Sims 3 (Medieval), soon followed by Sims 3 (regular). Just before Christmas, I splurged and bought myself a copy of Trainz22. I fondly remember Trainz 2009/2010 from the two-pack I bought on CD, and I had been running one of the Auran Trainz releases before that. @JCitron, if you could contact me with some hints on what and how I can kill some of the doze in Windows 10, I`d appreciate it. ATdhvaannkcse. (Thanks in advance; look at it.)

The Sims is helpful for people with Asperger`s Syndrome because it helps to satisfy some of the social needs without offending neurotypicals. Trainz is important to be because I have long been fascinated by railroads, both real and model, but especially model, and Trainz is the only *model* railroad simulator I have ever been able to find. It also gives my compulsion to code an outlet.

Edit: Corrected an offensive spelling of a brand name. Also the Auran Trainz release turns out to be Trainz 2004, a release by N3V. Other minor edits.

 

[JCitron]

If the drive is inaccessible in Windows after a chkdsk, then something was seriously wrong with the data. To access this in Windows, you may need to use a third-party utility such as ISOBuster

IsoBuster

Recover data quickly! Recover data from CD, DVD, BD, HDD, Flash drive, USB stick, media card, SD and SSD with IsoBuster - The award winning, highly specialized and easy to use Memory card, CD, DVD, Hard Disk, SD, Compact CF, MMC, card data recovery software. IsoBuster supports all optical disc...

www.isobuster.com

 

[MasterTracklayer]

If it is any kind of payware, I can`t afford it. Given a document detailing the structure of an NTFS filesystem, I should be able to resume developing my Python script. Until then, the recovery is dead in the water. I have no need to repair the volume; my intent was to copy off anything I could to a partition on another drive that was created, and is still available, for the purpose. Everything that my script knows how to look for is perfectly intact, and the volume had appeared to be perfectly healthy before the reboot. I just don`t know until I look at the data, and my guide seems to gave gone on permanent vacation before I was able to see any actual content.

 

[blueodessey]

This is an update from my previous post in August.

Last night my old CoolerMaster computer suddenly stopped working and it's toast. I don't have the money for either a new motherboard or a Win 11 compatible computer so out came the HP Z200 Xeon computer I'd been using for Linux experiments and it's now my everyday computer. It's going to be somewhat of a learning curve having to use different graphics software for doing texture work, but I think I'll cope with that Ok.
I wasn't much impressed with Steam since the only version of TRS22 available is the new SP3 version. Running any of the other Trainz versions I'd previously purchased were slow to load and did not impress me much, - so I gave the version my daughter and I set up under Wine a try and this was just so much better in every way. Downloading my purchased DLC via the Content Store wasn't a problem. The thing looks brain dead, but it does actually work so it's best to leave it alone to get on with it.

PLL running on Medium settings in TRS22 build 117665. GTX1050 4Gb Video RAM, Xeon® CPU X3450 @ 2.67GHz, 16Gb RAM. It's not going to set the world on fire, but it will do.

Hello Kotanga Girl,

Sorry so late to see these messages, we had Covid in Dec just before Xmas, what a mess. Anyway, I am still trying to catch up on this New Forum, miss the old one, but am slowly warming up to this one.

Now back on track,

I have wanted to switch over to Linux for years, just had it on back burner.

Never liked it in Windows, for lots of reasons. Now with this new info, and I have some older Computers when I get time, I have to fire one of them up and see if I pull this off with TRS2019,

Not upgrading to 22 for probably another year. I usually like to let newer versions iron out for a while with Errors and Problems.

Take care and thank you for making all the Cool Assets for us.

Happy New Year as well.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Hello Kotanga Girl,

Sorry so late to see these messages, we had Covid in Dec just before Xmas, what a mess. Anyway, I am still trying to catch up on this New Forum, miss the old one, but am slowly warming up to this one.

Now back on track,

I have wanted to switch over to Linux for years, just had it on back burner.

Never liked it in Windows, for lots of reasons. Now with this new info, and I have some older Computers when I get time, I have to fire one of them up and see if I pull this off with TRS2019,

Not upgrading to 22 for probably another year. I usually like to let newer versions iron out for a while with Errors and Problems.

Take care and thank you for making all the Cool Assets for us.

Happy New Year as well.

Hello Blue, - all the very best for the New Year and 2024.
COVID is no fun. I caught it back in August 2022 and it took until November 2023 before I started to feel well again. I hope you will have a better experience with it than I did.

I'd used Linux for other things and from time to time I would rejuvenate an old laptop I'd picked up somewhere for cheap by loading Debian Linux onto it. It wasn't until my CoolerMaster computer died that I decided to see how well Trainz would run on Linux. I haven't tried running TS2019 on Linux yet, but TRS22 worked more or less Ok. It's just a pity that TRS22 is still an experimental buggy mess or else I would spent more time on trying to get it to work better.
I think you're very wise to leave TRS22 for another year since it might have the worst of the problems fixed by then.

I've had a break away from asset creation due to not being well so hopefully 2024 will see me coming back with a few new ideas.

 

[blueodessey]

Hello Blue, - all the very best for the New Year and 2024.
COVID is no fun. I caught it back in August 2022 and it took until November 2023 before I started to feel well again. I hope you will have a better experience with it than I did.

I'd used Linux for other things and from time to time I would rejuvenate an old laptop I'd picked up somewhere for cheap by loading Debian Linux onto it. It wasn't until my Cooler Master computer died that I decided to see how well Trainz would run on Linux. I haven't tried running TS2019 on Linux yet, but TRS22 worked more or less Ok. It's just a pity that TRS22 is still an experimental buggy mess or else I would spent more time on trying to get it to work better.
I think you're very wise to leave TRS22 for another year since it might have the worst of the problems fixed by then.

I've had a break away from asset creation due to not being well so hopefully 2024 will see me coming back with a few new ideas.

Good Day KotangaGirl,

Thank you, well Covid is nothing mess with, I have some friends that say the same, depending on how bad their Covid was, it took weeks, sometimes Months to feel a bit human again.

Unfortunately for me, I threw my lower back out, and this morning at 4AM, MR Sciatica awoke me out of sound sleep with left leg almost cramping out on me, all the way to my foot.

I got out of Bed and walked off, 3 hrs later after stretching, crept back into bed, trying my best not wake up Mr's Blue, because she has a hard time sleeping sometimes for various reasons I think Insomnia.

At least now, my leg calmed down, Plan on see my Chiropractor to get my old bones back in alignment. I have 3 pinched @ L9-11 I believe, and sometimes, they just give me heck. Being in my 70's doesn't help either, but I do my best to stay as fit as healthy as I can.

Thanks for info on Linux I run TRS2019 so I would be interested to see if it works for you under Linux, I'm thinking that OS overhead should be head over shoulders much lower than all the Junk Windows has going. I think I remember that any given time there are over 200 operations going in the background regardless of what the User is going.

In closing Annie, I pray to our Lord, look over you and help you feel better.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Good Day KotangaGirl,

Thank you, well Covid is nothing mess with, I have some friends that say the same, depending on how bad their Covid was, it took weeks, sometimes Months to feel a bit human again.

Unfortunately for me, I threw my lower back out, and this morning at 4AM, MR Sciatica awoke me out of sound sleep with left leg almost cramping out on me, all the way to my foot.

I got out of Bed and walked off, 3 hrs later after stretching, crept back into bed, trying my best not wake up Mr's Blue, because she has a hard time sleeping sometimes for various reasons I think Insomnia.

At least now, my leg calmed down, Plan on see my Chiropractor to get my old bones back in alignment. I have 3 pinched @ L9-11 I believe, and sometimes, they just give me heck. Being in my 70's doesn't help either, but I do my best to stay as fit as healthy as I can.

Thanks for info on Linux I run TRS2019 so I would be interested to see if it works for you under Linux, I'm thinking that OS overhead should be head over shoulders much lower than all the Junk Windows has going. I think I remember that any given time there are over 200 operations going in the background regardless of what the User is going.

In closing Annie, I pray to our Lord, look over you and help you feel better.

Back pain is no joke, - having suffered with it in the past you have my utmost sympathy Blue. I hope your Chiropractor is able to get everything back into alignment again for you and give you some relief.

I'll give TS2019 a try in Linux fairly soon and report back.

Thank you very much for your kind thoughts and prayers.

Annie

 

[KotangaGirl]

My now standard 'Cattle for Hawes' test run in S&C after loading TS19 build 117009 into Linux using Wine.
I had some minor issues with using PlayOnLinux to do the initial install, but it all worked out alright in the end.
To make a proper test of it I downloaded the on-line installer from MyTrainz rather than using the off-line installer that I had archived away. TS19 didn't want to run until I patched it to build 117009 and after that it was fine.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Dintdale on test in TS19 Build 117009. Medium settings in Linux using WINE 9.0.0 . Previously I was using WINE 8.0.2 obtained from the Debian WINE repository, but it's now been upgraded to 9.0.0 and all is not good as I'm getting strange corrupted artifacts randomly flashing across my monitor screen. It's worse in TANE than it is in TS19 and TRS22 is only slightly better.

 

[wilts747]

Have you ever thought of using Lutris. I have found it is advantageous to still install Wine first as there are a few files it doesn't seem to have which some games benefit from but within Lutris you can choose which version of Wine you use for a particular game.

I've yet to play with version 9 but I'm wondering if the experimental Wayland Drive will be any benefit to Trainz. Peter

 

[KotangaGirl]

Have you ever thought of using Lutris. I have found it is advantageous to still install Wine first as there are a few files it doesn't seem to have which some games benefit from but within Lutris you can choose which version of Wine you use for a particular game.

I've yet to play with version 9 but I'm wondering if the experimental Wayland Drive will be any benefit to Trainz. Peter

Thanks for your helpful advice Peter. Version 9 doesn't seem all that useful how it is at the moment, - so I was starting to think about alternatives. I'll take a look at Lutris as being able to choose the most suitable version of Wine sounds exactly what I might be looking for.

 

[KotangaGirl]

This is a snap I took during a quick test on the Potteries Loop Line in TRS22. Debian Linux with Wine 9.0.0 set up via Lutris.
I cleared everything out of my Trainz folders, uninstalled Wine, Winetricks and Play on Linux because it was all a right old mess and loaded everything back in clean from scratch again. A slight learning curve with using Lutris, - and I decided that because I wanted to give it a good test I'd start with installing TRS22 first of all. So far it all seems to be very good. I'll try out installing TANE next.

Edit: I'm wondering about the Wayland Driver as well. From what I've read about it so far it certainly looks like it's an interesting possibility.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

I just did a search for threads with Linux in the title, hoping to find this one. Not counting one in the Suggestion Boxcar, this appears to be the most recent thread on the topic.

As noted above, I run KUbuntu on my Linux machine, and I`d like some guidance in installing Trainz there. Is anyone both willing and able to help me? Should I start my own thread?

 

[KotangaGirl]

I just did a search for threads with Linux in the title, hoping to find this one. Not counting one in the Suggestion Boxcar, this appears to be the most recent thread on the topic.

As noted above, I run KUbuntu on my Linux machine, and I`d like some guidance in installing Trainz there. Is anyone both willing and able to help me? Should I start my own thread?

Hi, as noted above I'm running Debian Linux with Wine 9.0. I run Debian Linux mostly because that's what I used to use to bring ancient laptops back to usefulness again back in the early 2000s so I'm familiar with it and as well as that because I happen to like it. My daughter uses KUbuntu, but she's not using Wine or anything else to run Windows software or games.

I tried using Play on Linux at first, but it's a buggy mess and difficult to get working properly. It also makes poor use of the computer's resources so it doesn't run particularly well.

Back in January Peter (Wilts747) suggested that I give Lutris a try and what a difference. It is an amazingly efficient piece of software and works very well as an interface between Wine and Trainz. I'm running Linux on an older model HP Xeon computer running a CPU that later became the prototype for the i7 so it's definitely not the latest thing. Despite that it runs TRS22, TRS19 and TANE surprisingly well via Lutris whereas on my first attempts at running Trainz on Linux didn't do anything like so well. Though back then the fact that it worked at all seemed like enough of a victory.
Winetricks works nicely with Lutris and is useful at times, - though I'm certainly no expert at using it.

I have a reasonably good ex-lease HP Windows 11 computer now, but I'm still running Trainz on Linux which ought to tell you that it's worth persevering with. After running Linux exclusively for the past couple of months I find Windows 11 nothing short of annoying to use and a blot on the face of operating system technology, - and if I didn't need a Windows computer for content creation I more than likely wouldn't bother with it at all.

I'm no great expert with computers and largely self taught and I've found getting Trainz working in Linux to be fairly straight forward without too many puzzling moments. Using Lutris you can load in Trainz via either an on-line or off-line installer just the same as you would if you were running Windows. You will need to find the Wine distribution for your version of KUbuntu before you make a start though.
The only downside with running Trainz in Linux is that Content Manager doesn't function all that well and will need to be refreshed every time you do anything in it. It's somewhat of an annoyance, - but it can be worked around and it doesn't bother me all that much anymore.