Figured I should give this game another go, despite the consolitis it suffered from. Installing it went fine, no error messages, but I got a whole pile when trying to start it. Looks like I may miss some dependency, but I'm not sure what to install.

I'm on Linux Mint 17.1. Hardware should be fine. Nvidia 770 card.


-------------------------------------------
pangaea@thunderstruck ~ $ sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libasound2:i386 libasound2-data:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-image-2.0-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libcurl3:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'libasound2-data' instead of 'libasound2-data:i386'
libasound2-data is already the newest version.
libasound2:i386 is already the newest version.
libasound2-plugins:i386 is already the newest version.
libc6:i386 is already the newest version.
libcurl3:i386 is already the newest version.
libfreetype6:i386 is already the newest version.
libgtk2.0-0:i386 is already the newest version.
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 : Depends: libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 (>= 10.0.2) or
libwayland-egl1:i386
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.




pangaea@thunderstruck ~ $ sudo apt-get install libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libegl1-mesa libegl1-mesa:i386 libgbm1 libgbm1:i386 libwayland-client0:i386
libwayland-server0:i386 libxcb-xfixes0:i386
Recommended packages:
libegl1-mesa-drivers:i386
The following packages will be REMOVED
caribou cinnamon gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0 gir1.2-coglpango-1.0
gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0 gir1.2-muffin-3.0 gir1.2-totem-1.0
gstreamer1.0-clutter libclutter-1.0-0 libclutter-gst-2.0-0
libclutter-gtk-1.0-0 libcogl-pango15 libcogl15 libegl1-mesa-drivers
libmuffin0 libtotem0 libwayland-egl1-mesa mint-meta-cinnamon
mint-meta-codecs totem totem-mozilla totem-plugins totem-plugins-extra
The following NEW packages will be installed
libegl1-mesa:i386 libgbm1:i386 libwayland-client0:i386
libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 libwayland-server0:i386 libxcb-xfixes0:i386
The following packages will be upgraded:
libegl1-mesa libgbm1
2 to upgrade, 6 to newly install, 24 to remove and 46 not to upgrade.
Need to get 218 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17,6 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
pangaea@thunderstruck ~ $




pangaea@thunderstruck ~ $ sudo apt-get install libwayland-egl1:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package libwayland-egl1:i386 is a virtual package provided by:
libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-wily:i386 11.0.2-1ubuntu4~trusty1
libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-vivid:i386 10.5.9-2ubuntu1~trusty2
libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-utopic:i386 10.3.2-0ubuntu1~trusty2
libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 10.1.3-0ubuntu0.6
You should explicitly select one to install.

E: Package 'libwayland-egl1:i386' has no installation candidate


-------------------
Installing a package that would remove that many, including one named "cinnamon" sets off some alarm bells. Any ideas?

I fear you might be out of luck. Wayland is a display server which aims to become the replacement for X, so a pretty crucial bit of technology, and from what I can find, Mint 17 doesn't support it, despite being based on Ubuntu 14.04, which does. It looks like Mint purposefully prevents libwayland from being installed (that's just the support library for wayland, not wayland itself), and so when you manually choose to install it, that causes it to conflict with some crucial Mint packages which state that they're incompatible with wayland, causing a cascade of things being removed.

The two packages being upgraded, and [url=http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/libgbm1]libgbm1 both depend on wayland in their 14.04 incarnations. This suggest that Mint 17 manages to prevent wayland support by purposefully depending on earlier versions of those packages. It's a bit like a house of cards falling apart, here.

From what I can find, Mint 18 does support wayland, so upgrading (or moving to Ubuntu, which is doing a better job here with being consistent with package dependencies) might be an option? Otherwise there's ways to force installation of packages without adhering to their dependencies and conflicts, but that way lies madness.

It might be worth figuring out exactly where in the dependency tree the "conflicts" condition exists which causes all the uninstalls. Could be libwayland-egl1-mesa itself, but could also be one of the other packages to be installed. With that information, you might be able to limit the amount of madness caused by forcing an install of something.

The error message from TW2 shows that you're only missing libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 (you will also be missing libsdl2-image-2.0-0:i386 as TW2 uses that & it depends on libsdl2, but it's not shown in the image as TW2's config tool doesn't use it).

Anyway, as gogtrial34987 said it looks like you'll need to upgrade. 32-bit libsdl2 installed without issue on Mint 18 when I installed it recently and I also checked in a VM running 17.3 & was able to install it in that by installing libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-vivid:i386. Then I installed 17.1 in the VM and tried with that but it looks like there's a conflict there :/

Thanks for looking into this, guys. I'm too newbish with Linux myself to know what's going on half the time :|

Doesn't sound good, unfortunately. Going to Ubuntu is out of the question, and I'd prefer to not have to upgrade to 18 either, as it's probably not as stable as it can be, and will be further down the line (and upgrading from 17.x isn't recommended anyway; too many core changes). If it's possible to get the game working after upgrading to 17.3, that might be an option. Hopefully such an upgrade path should not break anything -- though you never know with these things...

I tried:
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-image-2.0-0:i386

But get the same error message, about unmet dependencies. A kick in the teeth really, and disappointing to not get the game working when it's supposed to be supported for Mint 17. Am in the middle of playing Pillars of Eternity, however, so should finish that before risk messing up everything.

It is supported for Mint 17. Go write to support! Seriously, they should be able to help you. Only if you had a clean install of 17.2 might there be other issues.
If you are comfortable downloading a bunch of unspecified libs from some random person: Witcher 2 For Linux - Portable Libraries Patch.

Actually contacted support yesterday, so hope they will sort out the issue. This appears to be way over my puny linux head unfortunately.

Tried some of the commands from here, with "-s" flag for simulate, going back the chain, but it seems futile. Same error message over and over. Unmet dependencies, it's not going to be installed, you have held broken packages.

I've not installed fresh 17.2 though. It's a fresh installed 17.1, which has been updated since with level 1-3 packages.

New possibly desperate attempt. Downloaded and loaded the 17.3 LiveCD from USB, and tried to simulate install the list of Witcher 2 dependencies. Still no luck, same old error message. If that means it would be pointless to upgrade to 17.3 I definitely won't try it, as I'm pleased with how the system works right now and don't want to risk breaking it.

Wow.

Searched and searched and tried this, that and the other, but didn't get anywhere. Then I tried something that is probably obvious to anybody but myself, and went into the Update Manager and enabled level 4 updates. "mesa" shows up, and I tick it. After that it's possible to install the dependencies, and the game actually started. Incredible. Only played a few minutes, but it seemed to work fine enough. Looks a bit overly saturated, and I really can't stand the consolication, but at least it works now.

Support got back to me btw, with not great news, but offered a refund, which was nice of them, but I wouldn't feel right about that.

-----------------------

sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libasound2:i386 libasound2-data:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-image-2.0-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libcurl3:i386
[sudo] password for pangaea:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'libasound2-data' instead of 'libasound2-data:i386'
libasound2-data is already the newest version.
libasound2:i386 is already the newest version.
libasound2-plugins:i386 is already the newest version.
libc6:i386 is already the newest version.
libcurl3:i386 is already the newest version.
libfreetype6:i386 is already the newest version.
libgtk2.0-0:i386 is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
libegl1-mesa:i386 libgbm1:i386 libwayland-client0:i386
libwayland-cursor0:i386 libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 libwayland-server0:i386
libxcb-xfixes0:i386 libxkbcommon0:i386
Recommended packages:
libegl1-mesa-drivers:i386
The following NEW packages will be installed
libegl1-mesa:i386 libgbm1:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libsdl2-image-2.0-0:i386
libwayland-client0:i386 libwayland-cursor0:i386 libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386
libwayland-server0:i386 libxcb-xfixes0:i386 libxkbcommon0:i386
0 to upgrade, 10 to newly install, 0 to remove and 35 not to upgrade.
Need to get 600 kB of archives.
After this operation, 2 388 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Before these sequence of events I had tried to update to mesa ..... ubuntu0.6, as it was supposed to be fixed there. But it wasn't possible, and was sort of greyed out in Synaptic package manager. But that was probably because it was a level 4 update, so "unsafe" according to my settings.

If others struggle with this, you can try to (temporarily) enable level 4 updates and install mesa 10.1.3-0ubuntu0.6. Seems to have fixed it for me.

Nice! Glad you have it working. I'm rather disappointed. I was expecting a bit more than "Sorry, have a refund".

They said more than that to be honest, basically what was mentioned earlier here: Not really a solution of course, so glad I found a way to get it working. Just hope something else didn't break or become unstable that I'll discover somewhere down the road.

Hmm. Not sure if this is due to the above or something else, like installing the latest Nvidia drivers, but TW1 Geralt looks a little... weird?

Dandelion looks like a spent force too.



(The Witcher 1 used to work well before, though I had to play it through PlayOnLinux, and never got far into the game, having completed it many times previously.)

Good to hear you got TW2 running, I'll have to remember that in future :)

As for The Witcher 1, that's a known Wine bug; as long as you're using a more recent Wine version (1.9.5 or later IIRC) you can fix it by starting regedit and adding the registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]
"CheckFloatConstants"="enabled"

Thanks. That worked once I had upgraded to a newer version of wine. Pretty sure I used the install script for PoL, and that used wine 1.7.6.

Sure, but that's the same thing just with more words. Besides the other post specifically mentions it doesn't affect Mint 17 or 17.1, so still disappointed. Important thing is you have it working. I wouldn't expect you will have much trouble with stability.

Hi! Just bumping the thread to say that this solution has worked well for me in Mint 17.3, in case somebody else has the same problem.

Before that, unlike OP, I have clicked yes when asked to remove all those packages, including "cinnamon", and really, don't do it... It has costed me 2 system reinstalls because I have tried with both apt-get and aptitude, to see if the result was different. (Spoiler: it wasn't. Both ways my system got completely broken.)