Starcraft Brood War on Ubuntu Hardy Heron ( 8.04 )

Since the message that Starcraft II is coming out gets around a lot these days, I start to recall all the good time when I was in crazy about Starcraft. And I did a little more than recalling about it. I installed it on Ubuntu Linux. Now I can click on the Starcraft icon and play the newest version of the game anytime I like on my laptop, UNDER LINUX! My laptop is a Gateway T1616 ( Specifications ). The OS is Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). Here's something you need to do in order to get this: First of all, get your Starcraft disk images prepared. If you have the CD,put it in your first cdrom and type these in a terminal:

sudo umount /dev/cdrom0 dd if=/dev/cdrom0 of=/your_path/Starcraft_Original.iso

If you also have the BroodWar CD, go ahead and do the same thing, using a different name for the image file, for instance,Starcraft_Broodwar.iso Or, you can get the iso images in other ways. You may also need the update patch, which can be found here. Here's what you should get after all, to say the least:

BW-1152.exe Starcraft_Original.iso Starcraft_Broodwar.iso

Install wine. This is easy for Ubuntu users:

sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude upgrade sudo aptitude install wine

Install Starcraft. You need to find a place to mount the iso files, I did this:

sudo mkdir /mnt/starcraft

Mount the original image:

sudo mount -o loop /your_path/Starcraft_Original.iso /mnt/starcraft

Install the original version:

wine /mnt/starcraft/install.exe

Of course you need a CD-Key here. I suggest that you install it with the default settings. Then, mount the Broodwar image, and install it:

sudo mount -o loop /your_path/Starcraft_Broodwar.iso /mnt/starcraft wine /mnt/starcraft/install.exe

Update the game to the newest version:

wine /your_path/BW-1152.exe

The installation of the game is easy enough to be skipped, I think. You should be able to find the game under Start-Wine-Programs-Starcraft now. However, it requires the CD. Start playing the game. Add the path you mount your image files as a device in wine:

cd ~/.wine/dosdevices/ ln -s /mnt/starcraft d:

Here, I hadn't added any wine devices so I used 'd:'. Mount the image file (if it is not mounted yet):

sudo mount -o loop /your_path/Starcraft_Broodwar.iso /mnt/starcraft

And then enjoy the game! Well, this is almost the end of the story. At last here's something for those who don't want to do the mounting work every time they want to play. Edit /etc/fstab , so that the image will be mounted automatically when the OS starts. Add this in a new line:

/your_path/Starcraft_Broodwar.iso /mnt/starcraft iso9660 loop 0 0