How to extract GOG installers on Linux?
this is more useful than you think
Date: 2023-10-01
In the past few years I have been playing some of my old favorites, but in new clothes. Games like Return to Wolfenstein, Caesar III, Quake, XIII and many others. The gaming community take care of these games, and mods them to run on newer machines.
However to play these games, you still need the original data files from the game itself. I usually buy games from GOG, because they are DRM-free, and doesn't depend on any system.
From GOG you can download nice executables, however you don't need to install via Wine to get those nice data files for your modernized mod.
My latest usecase was the original Gabriel Knight, which I just recently bought, because I want to play it and stream it. While it uses ScummVM, it has no Linux support and installer. But of course ScummVM only needs the data files to run the game, so I just used innoextract.
Here comes innoextract
What you need is innoextract, which can extract the setup files whereever you want. To install it, search in your package manager, or just install it via terminal:
For Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt install innoextract
According to their website, innoextract exist for most major distributions and their is also a binary. Or you can just compile it from source.
How to use innoextract?
I recommend putting your installer files in a separate directory, and in terminal enter that directory, and execute innoextract like this:
$ innoextract setup_gabriel_knight_-_sins_of_the_fathers_1.1_(20239).exe
This will extract it into that directory where the installers are. However innoextract won't create a directory, that's why I advise making a temporary one.
