At this point I'm waiting for Steam OS to drop on desktop so I'll switch from this damn windows system

Another 2H24 update today to Windows. (And also a Geforce NVidia driver update.)

Another "Nope, didn't make this game work...".

It has been three months sice I bought this game, three months since I contacted support, I couldn't play even a single minute of the game and support didn't answer me. This really doesn't give me confidence in buying any of their other games

To be fair, I don't think this is a GOG-specific problem. Shit happens, especially when Windows is concerned.

One of my Windows 11 laptops that doesn't have 2H24 yet and where Demonicon runs, keeps asking me now whether I'd like to install 2H24 preview. I guess I try to avoid it as long as I can, even though I am a bit interested to see whether Demonicon stops working on it as well if I let Windows install the update.

Next I should check how well the game runs on Linux with WINE, that's one option...

This was a reply from Kalypso support, pasted to Steam forums on 10 Feb:

"Thank you once again for bringing the issue with Demonicon: The Dark Eye to our attention. We truly appreciate your patience and support while we investigated this matter.

We’re pleased to share that we’ve made progress in reproducing the reported behavior and have been able to narrow down its cause. Our findings indicate that the issue is linked to Windows 11 Update 24H2, as it only occurs on systems with this update installed and does not appear on the previous version (23H2).

Unfortunately, this means that resolving the issue is currently beyond our direct control. It appears that this update has affected multiple games and applications, and Microsoft is aware of the situation. We have also reached out to our partners to gather more information about a potential fix. Rest assured, we will keep you informed as soon as we have any updates.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding, and we’ll be in touch as soon as we learn more. If you have any further questions in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out."

So Kalypso is apparently waiting for Microsoft to resolve the issue.

I know this is not the preferred solution, but at least some kind of way to play the game, until someone finally figures out how to get the game run on Windows 11 24H2.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/getting_demonicon_to_run_in_linux/post10

So, I got the game to run on Linux WINE (Linux Mint 22.1 XFCE). While it would indeed be silly to install a whole new OS (Linux) just to play one game, at least there is still some way to play the game.

Maybe this can be considered as a similar "solution" as reverting back to Windows 10, but at least with Linux you can keep using a secure OS that still receives security updates for years to come, something that Windows 10 will not after October. You don't have to give up Windows 11 for Linux, I am dualbooting Windows and Linux side by side on the same laptop.

I have this installed on Windows 7 Pro and it runs perfectly fine, even using a controller (XBox 360).

I'm almost afraid to upgrade to Windows 11 lol, but I did get over my fear of Windows 10 a few years ago, so who knows. =P
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How hard is it to learn to setup Linux Mint? I was looking for alternatives to Win11 (mostly for regular browsing and stuff, not really for games, not yet anyway). Was currently looking into Ubuntu (budgie or something that sounded like that), since I can't really afford to buy a new system right now lol.
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I also hope they find a solution, since it's a fun little game so far.
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From my experience this game (Demonicon GOG version) runs great on Windows 10 and Windows 11 before the 24H2 update, but with the 24H2 Win11 update it totally dies, it will just not run anymore, no matter what.

It is not clear to me yet why that is. Earlier there were suggestions that 24H2 auto-HDR causes these kinds of problems to many games and the solution is to disable it, but that doesn't apply to Demonicon. I don't even have a HDR capable monitor or HDR enabled in one Windows 11 24H2 laptop where Demonicon doesn't run either.

Hopefully someone figures it out at some point so people know what they should be trying to be fixing, but maybe this game is too old and unknown that knowledgeable people would try to find a solution... I don't know if there are lots of other games with the very same problem.

Installing Linux Mint (and most other Linux distros) to an empty PC, or even a PC where Windows is already installed but you have a free partition or drive there for Linux, is just as easy as installing Windows.

In some cases I'd argue it is even easier because you don't have to care whether you are "eligible" to run certain version of Linux, no need to "activate" your copy of Linux, no need to create an online account, no need to repeatedly decline Microsoft's offers to gather all kinds of data from you and give you personalized ads and accept a free two week period of MS Office etc. etc. etc..

Oh and Linux doesn't have similar restrictions like Windows 11, what kind of CPU or TPM or SecureBoot/UEFI you must have before you can install it. (I've been thinking of buying a bunch of older laptops that can't run Windows 11, and turn them into spare Linux laptops.).

Also, daily usage of Linux is not that different from Windows, meaning running your browser or other applications etc. Even your mother could use a Linux PC for her daily chores.

Configuring Linux is quite a different experience from Windows, in some cases it can feel harder or more complicated, in some cases much easier because you are in control and there is no MS trying to force or preventing you from doing stuff, like not creating an online account or not running updates without your consent etc. So don't be looking for a Control Panel in Linux and thinking you will find the very same options there as in Windows, like Disk Management or Device Manager etc.

Maybe the biggest change is that lots of stuff, configuring or even installing new applications, is done in a command line in Linux. Most of them can be done with the graphical user interface as well, but if you google for some instructions online how to do this and that in Linux, people tend to explain them with the command line commands because those are more universal and easier to explain, just type this and this and this command and you are done, instead of "try to find this menu and that tab and click on that checkbox, or go to regedit and find this and that..." etc., especially since Linux has lots of different graphical user interfaces (called "Desktop Environments" in Linux; e.g. I tend to use XFCE but I've used also Gnome and lots of others...).

Don't be afraid of the command line, you'll notice quite soon it is actually much easier and faster to follow command line instructions where you can mostly just copy and paste commands from the instructions to your command-line, instead of trying to follow some Youtube video how to configure something in Windows. You'll learn to appreciate it, or die trying.

Running Windows games (and other apps) with Linux WINE is a varied experience, like the other thread suggests. Sometimes it is easy peasy, not much different from running the same game on Windows, sometimes there are quirks you have to overcome (like in this case, maybe I was missing some libraries so Lutris refused to install the game at first, I have to look into it more...).

And depending on the game and your system, running the game in Linux WINE may have some performance penalty, which is kinda expected. That's why I am trying to set up a FPS counter for both Linux and Windows so that I can more clearly estimate what kind of, if any, performance penalty there is to run Demonicon on that ancient Dell XPS laptop where I am testing this, Linux Mint 22.1 vs. Windows 10 Pro on the same laptop.

Judging by just playing, the Windows version feels more consistently buttersmooth, but it isn't like the Linux WINE version is overly jerky or anything. Maybe a few more hiccups here and there which are amplified by the fact I am running the game on an old non-gaming laptop apparently released back in 2016 (8GB RAM, 4-core CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M etc...). With my newer Lenovo Legion laptop with a 8-core CPU, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA RTX 3080 I am not expecting to see any performance penalty running this 11 years old 3D game in Linux WINE vs. Windows 10.

You're starting to learn what my friend learned: Mint sucks for gaming. That "LTS of an LTS" really bites them in the arse in some obvious ways. You also won't have access to Gamescope until next release, and it's going to be a weathered, obsolete version, which means if you file a bug against, the maintainer will simply smack you with a ping-pong paddle and tell you to yell at the packaging team.

(They switched to Pop OS with COSMIC, I myself avoid Debian like the plague because I'd go batty without a steady stream of updates.)


Great for Grandma's computer, when you want to administrate nothing and worry about less.

Thank you for all that good info. I mainly want an alternative to just a few things like these:

Hotmail and Gmail accounts - to check my emails and stuff.

Crunchyroll - for my Anime needs. =P

Hulu and Netflix - I don't subscribe those yearly, but rather twice a year each. Not enough time to to watch things for yearly subscriptions.

Amazon - Like them or not, they are still needed by me for some shopping and it's usually a quick delivery and easy to refund if needed. Also, Prime Video has some cool stuff and ofc some free games from Prime Gaming doesn't hurt. =P

GOG - for obvious reasons lol and GOG Galaxy for offline installers, it's awesome for that, at least for me.

That's really about it.

I don't plan on playing games on it, since I will have an offline Windows 10 at some point and I already have an offline Windows 7. (though there's a small chance I can turn something on in my bios to allow for the free Windows 11 update, still need to check that)

If that solution is available, then I can try out Windows 11, otherwise I just need a secure way to sign in to the sites I mentioned above.

Oh, I do plan to put this alternative OS on a fresh SSD. Some reason dual-boot kept failing with my particular computer.

Again, just for browsing, streaming and downloads if I buy something (GOG) or to securely pay for something online. With Windows 10, I have Norton 360 that hasn't failed me yet, though the latest update kinda ticks me off lol. That even have a process in task manager called Norton Overseer that shows up sometimes lol.

I may call on the GOG community as October gets closer, so I hope I can count on all of you for help, if I need to transition to Linux or something. :)
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EDIT: I am not sure if you pointed the reply to me or the other guy, but since I take everything personally, I presume the former:

Do you mean because default Mint/Ubuntu repositories offer older versions of stuff? That is why I e.g. installed WINE 10 from the Winehq repositories to Mint, not just from Ubuntu/Mint repositories (they offered WINE 9).

I chose Mint at least for this experiment because I knew from experience that installing the proprietary NVidia drivers is quite easy on it. Back when I did the same on a RHEL-based Linux, it was quite complicated and I had to write instructions of my own how to achieve it, combining information from various sources (none of which worked as is) and lots of trial and error. Plus, getting Steam to work on it was oddly complicated compared to Mint, I only got the flatpak version of Steam to work on it back then.

To me it would appear that if one uses the latest hardware that need brand new drivers, then it probably makes sense to try some distro whose kernel is updated more recently. I considered a rolling update Linux earlier like Manjaro, but I didn't find instructions how to get it run beside Windows 11 (bitlocker enabled) in dualboot mode. IIRC, at least back then it was very hard if not impossible to get Manjaro to run in dualboot in a system with SecureBoot on. With e.g. Mint or Rocky Linux 9 (RHEL) there is no problem.

Since this laptop is still kind of an experimential sandbox for me, I could try the same with e.g. Fedora, is it easier or harder to get Demonixon to run on it.

(Then again what the world situation is etc., I don't like RHEL affiliations with IBM... :))

On Fedora, it's 3 steps in practical terms, plus they're quite the torch bearer of the immutable desktop if that's of any interest to you.

https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

Just gotta check the modeset gets set in the command line, but indeed!