How to get Championship Manager 01/02 working on LINUX

The Championship Manager series from Eidos has always been one of my favourite games for the PC. The best version of the game as far as I'm concerned was the 01/02 season which was the last version from the Championship Manager 3 series.

The good news is that Eidos have released this version of the game for free. The official download link seems to be broken but you can download the game via http://hotfile.com/dl/17118634/513af0b/cm0102.zip.html.

This is a LINUX blog however and the point of this article is to show how to install and run the game using WINE. This article also shows you how to get the game running without the CD. Annoyingly enough Eidos did not remove the requirement to insert the CD before use even though the game is now free. (I suppose if you are giving something away you probably aren't going to spend too much effort making changes). This is a real problem if you intend to run the game on a netbook without a CD/DVD drive.

To try and prove the point that the command line is also less and less important for LINUX I will also show you how to download the game using minimal command line activity.

First of all you need to download the game using the link above or from the Eidos website if the link is back up and running.

Navigate to the folder that contains the zip file. (If using UBUNTU or MINT this can be found by selecting Places -> Downloads). I am using peppermint so I select the menu and then file manager. The file is located in /home/myname/Downloads.

Open the zip file by double clicking it and extract the ISO into /home/yourname/CM0102. (Or wherever you want the file to be located. This file should not be removed after installation so don't put it in a temporary folder).

Now you will need WINE installed and it must be WINE 1.3 or above.

Open the Synaptic Package Manager which is under the system tools menu. When Synaptic loads type WINE into the search box. If you scroll down then you will see WINE 1.3 listed as an option.

If WINE 1.3 is not listed as an option you probably haven't got the repository selected that contains WINE. As I am running Peppermint LINUX WINE did not appear as an option at all.

To resolve this issue select Settings -> Repositories from the menu. The software sources window will open. Click the other sources tab and tick the icon that says Canonical Partners (Make sure it is not the one marked for source code).

If you don't have an option for Canonical Partners click Add. When the window comes up in the URI enter http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu natty main. Make sure the new repository is ticked and click close to shutdown the Software Sources window. A message will appear telling you that you need to click the reload button so do just that.

Now when you enter WINE in the search box you should see version 1.3 available. Right click the mouse on WINE 1.3 and select Mark For Installation. Now click Apply to install WINE.

The installer will download the required packages and start to install them. Half way through you will get a message that says "Configuring ttf-mscorefonts-installer". You need to accept the end user license agreement to continue. At first it isn't obvious how to select the button. Simply press the tab key and then press the enter key to continue. You will then be presented with the options to say you agree. Press the tab key until the word is highlighted and press the enter key.

Before installing the game it is a good idea to mount the CM0102 ISO file as it will be needed when playing the game anyway. To do this there is a terminal command that can be ran but this tutorial is about doing everything graphically.

Open a browser and navigate to http://linuxappfinder.com/package/gmountiso. Now download the package by selecting the relevant respository. Double click the downloaded file and a terminal will open. Press I to Install gmount-iso. The install will require you to enter the method to connect to root (sudo) and will require the root password.

If all has gone well there should now be a menu option for gmount-iso in your accessories menu.

You need to create a folder to mount the ISO to. Open your Home directory by selecting Places -> Home and then create a new folder (call it CM0102Drive or something memorable). Now open gmount-iso by selecting it from the accessories menu.

Next to the word Image file click the open button and find the extracted CM0102.ISO file. Click the open button next for the Mount Point and select the folder created in the previous step (i.e. CM0102Drive). Click the Mount button. You can now quit the application.

Navigate to the CM0102Drive folder. (Select Places -> Home and then find the folder which contains the ISO). Right click the autorun.exe and select open with Wine Windows Program Loader.

You should now be in the games installer. Select the appropriate language and click OK. Select yes to accept the license agreement. Click next to install the game to the default folder (Or change it by selecting browse and finding a different folder if you so wish). Click either typical, custom or compact to choose which version you want installed. Click Next to continue. Click next to get past the Program Folders screen. The game should now install. At the end you are asked if you want an icon added to your desktop. (Yes if you do, no if you don't). You will now be asked if you want to install direct x and read the readme. Untick the boxes and click finish.

To run Championship Manager select Wine from the accessories menu and select configure WINE. There is a memory problem with Championship Manager unless you run it with compatibility mode set to Windows 98. Within the Applications tab change the Windows Version to Windows 98. 

Within the drives tab click Add and select D as the drive letter (or any letter that is still free). Click Browse and find the path to the CM0102Drive folder created earlier. Click Apply. Within the graphics tab select  Emulate a virtual desktop and select 800 x 600.

To run the game select the wine -> programs -> championship manager 01/02 -> championship manager 01/02. When the settings screen loads select the options you require but.... DO NOT SELECT WINDOWED MODE.

Now select start new game, enter your name, select a team etc. If you are asked to enter a CD into the drive just press OK and it should just continue and you are able to play the game.

Important notes:

1. Windowed mode appears to cause the screen now to refresh which is why I set the virtual desktop to 800x600.

2. To run the game on subsequent boots you need to remount the ISO file using GMOUNT-ISO as described above.

Its quite a long install process but if you already have WINE 1.3 installed then this is probably the longest part and can be used to install so many more Windows games.

If you open the winetricks application you can install a number of different games and applications.

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Peppermint LINUX

I first tried Peppermint LINUX out a number of years ago. I was always a fan of the quicker less frilly distributions and I had flirted with DSL and Puppy.

I used Puppy for a while but because I had tried MINT out the Peppermint project interested me. The fact is that most of the applications I use are web based and so Peppermint is the perfect distribution for me.

All my documents are written using Google Docs and so to not have the heavy install of OpenOffice on my machine is a sound idea.

For those of you who do not know what Peppermint LINUX is the idea is to have a distribution that has minimal software installed as part of the main install but to use Prism to provide windows to common web based applications like Google Docs, Google Mail and Picasa.

If you use your computer for surfing the internet Peppermint is perfect. It is built on top of the core MINT distribution but with none of the software. It really does load in seconds. The Prism system used to display the applications works well.

The main reason I stopped using Peppermint was that I now do most of my home computing on a netbook and for a while I struggled to get Peppermint to install on the netbook as it doesn't have a cd/dvd rom drive.

For this reason I ended up going back to UBUNTU which is a failsafe as far as I'm concerned. UBUNTU has its critics but it does just work. For me UBUNTU 10.04 is as good an operating system as I have used. I have version 11.10 to try out but that is a project for next week.

Now I have recently heard about the UNETBOOTIN utility and so I have given Peppermint another go and I have managed to install it on my netbook.

The install was great and I was pleased with the fact that it made it easy to keep the UBUNTU partition safe whilst installing Peppermint in a separate partition. Unlike my recent attempt at installing MINT there were no issues with GRUB as my machine rebooted and Peppermint loaded just fine.

Peppermint no longer uses Prism to load the windows as there is now a custom loader which loads web applications into individual browser windows. It works great.

I will now be using Peppermint more regularly as it is the perfect fit for my Acer Aspire One D255 netbook.

UBUNTU is still my main distribution for when I experiment with developing software and for playing games as WINE works really well in UBUNTU.

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LINUX Mint Version 12

For a while now my wife has stopped using her laptop and consistently uses my son's laptop. His laptop was a present from Santa and has a very comparable set of statistics including 3gb of dual core ram, high end graphics card etc. Needless to say it came pre-installed with Windows 7. As laptops go it is pretty impressive.

So what about my wife's PC? Well she said it runs too slow. I tried it out and it was running Windows Vista (which is "The Phantom Menace" of operating systems). I told my wife that there is nothing wrong with the machine it is the operating system that is the problem. To be honest Vista should never have been pre-installed on that computer. It has 1gb of ram and a cpu not capable of adequately running Vista.

I therefore decided to remove Vista and install LINUX. Which LINUX should I go for? On my netbook I am still running UBUNTU 10.04 which I am very happy with although I have just downloaded 11.10 which is a project for next week. 

I regularly read Slashdot and LXER and a couple of articles mentioned that MINT had overtaken UBUNTU as the most popular flavour of LINUX. I have used MINT in the past back at version 7. I did like using MINT but deep down I preferred UBUNTU.

With UBUNTU already running on the netbook and LUBUNTU running on an older PC I decided to try MINT out again.

The main issue I had with the install was that the laptop already had 2 partitions. The first partition was for Windows Vista and was 120gb in size. The second partition was a 40gb NTFS partition used as the restore segment for restoring to factory settings. I had actually used a lot of this partition for storing all my music in MP3 format. With many painstaking hours used to convert 20 gb of music from CDs to MP3 in the bank I definitely did not want to lose this partition.

Whilst installing MINT I thought I had set the partitions correctly with a partition for MINT, a partition for SWAP and the NTFS left well alone.

When the install finished the system rebooted and I was left with a GRUB error. Now this blog is called LINUX for the Layman and I am the layman. I have a lot of Windows application development experience but my home use of LINUX is usually just to do normal home computing tasks. 

The brilliance of using MINT or UBUNTU is that there is always a simple solution to any problem and after a quick trawl through the forums I found the answer to my GRUB problem which involved repairing the GRUB install. 

So with a now working version of MINT 12 I set about trying out the different desktops. The Gnome desktop is set by default and I have to say it wasn't that impressive. The menus had funny characters in various places and the scroll bar looked strange. Again armed with Google I searched for a solution and the best solution offered to me was to use the MATE desktop.

The MATE desktop was really good at first. I set up two panels, one at the top and one at the bottom. I set the wallpaper and all was well. Then I had to try and be clever and change the background colours of the panels. This caused both panels to disappear and despite multiple attempts I have yet to get them back.

On to desktop number 3 which is the Gnome classic. This worked fine but is less configurable than MATE. 

MINT comes pre-installed with the same software you'd find in most other Gnome based distributions but I prefer Chrome to Firefox so I instantly downloaded it. 

Connecting to the internet was a breeze and unsurprisingly my wireless connection was found straight away.

Hopefully some experts who read this post might be able to help with the problems I am having with MATE because I liked it and if someone knows the answer to the funny behaviour of the Gnome desktop and also Cinnamon then I would be grateful for that too.

Will I stick with MINT. Well actually maybe but only because I've taken the effort to set up an account for my daughter and customised it for a 4 year old to be able to play without causing any damage.

As mentioned earlier I have a brand spanking new version of UBUNTU to try out and I have read bad things about the UNITY desktop but I'm open minded and willing to give it a go. That is for another day.

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