FFXIAH.com

Disclaimer
This is all done at your own risk. I do not condemn, condone, encourage or discourage the use of third party tools, all information contained within is theoretical only. ;)

A few, caviats before we start.
The right shift, and the right ctrl buttons do not behave as expected in a windows installation.
The text is a bit off, but still readable in the default fonts used in windower.

I am no expert, I got to this point through trial and error.

I have yet to test this on other versions of linux, but I am using Manjaro 21 with non-free nvidia
drivers.

Requirements

• Lutris and all runners installed within Lutris.

• Wine

• Winetricks

• Playonlinux

• Time

• Patience

Step 1

Install Final Fantasy XI vanilla your preferred way in the default wine prefix.

If it is your first time doing this, lutris has an automated process for doing so. The installer may

hang at some points in the process, it will automatically install or ask to install dependencies as

it goes. Go through the final fantasy xi install process as normal.


Step 2

To install Windower 4, we need to get our hands dirty.

Launch winetricks and select the default wine prefix.

Choose to install a Windows DLL or component.

First we want to install dot net 4.52. This will automatically install any dot net dependencies for

this version of .net.

This will take some time and generate various prompts, just push on through in the affirmative

and follow the installer through to conclusion on each time it pops up.

The next thing is to install some vc runtimes.

You can install vcrun2010 through to 2015 in one fell swoop, just tick all 4 of those and click ok.

This will make you jump through similar hoops to the dot net installation process, again, it can

be quite slow to get going and will prompt you over and over during this process. Just push on

through in the affirmative as before.

The last vcruntime is 2017, and it will sulk about this one and refuse to do it. Giving you

instructions to force the installation if you really want to. This is the correct course of action.

Once all the dependencies have been installed, it’s time to close down winetricks for now.

Next up we need to run playonlinux. Once launched click on tools and choose manage wine

versions.

Select the amd64 tab, scroll down the list and select 5.0-rc4-staging. Click the arrow pointing to

the installed wine versions side. This will download and install this version of wine to

playonlinux.

Once that is done, you can close playonlinux. we’re done with this program.

We’re almost there, if you’ve come this far.... You must want to see where this rabbit hole goes....

Open your file browser and navigate to “/home/usernamehere/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-amd64/”,

Open a second tab or window of your file browser and navigate to “/home/usernamehere/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/”.

Now, Copy the folder named “5.0-rc4-staging” (and all of its contents,) from the first file browser

window or tab that is showing the directory:

“/home/usernamehere/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-amd64/” to the second

file browser window or tab that is showing the directory:

“/home/usernamehere/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/”.

At this point, if you have lutris still running, you need to close it and start it up again.

The new runner you added won’t show up until you have done so.


Step 3a

If you have a copy of your windower 4 folder from a windows install, you can copy that folder to:

“/home/usernamehere/.wine/drive_c/”.

If not, go to step 3b.


Step 3b

If you have a copy of your windower 4 folder in “/home/usernamehere/.wine/drive_c/”, skip to

the next step. If not, please download the latest stable release, and copy the file to

“/home/usernamehere/.wine/drive_c/”.

If lutris is not running, please start lutris. Right click on final fantasy xi and choose duplicate.

Under the game info tab, change the name to Windower 4 Installer.

Change the runner to “Wine (Runs Windows games).

Leave the other sections unchanged in this tab.

Switch to the Game options tab and browse to the recently placed “windower.msi”, and select it.

Change the working directory to “/home/usernamehere/.wine/drive_c/”.

Everything else can remain unchanged under the game options tab.

Under the runner options tab, choose the wine version as 5.0-rc4-staging.

Enable DXVK, Enable VKD3D, Disable dgvoodoo2, Enable Esync, Enable Fsync, disable both

anticheat options. Disable virtual desktop for now.

Once all this is done, click save.

You can now launch the windower installer by right clicking the “game” you just set up, and

follow the windower 4 installation process as you would on windows.


Step 4

Now that you have final fantasy xi in lutris under games, and Windower 4 in place within your

default wine prefix: From Lutris, right click the picture/icon/blank box with a title, and select

duplicate. Once it has been duplicated, right click the duplicate and choose configure.

Under the Game info tab, change the name to Windower 4 Launcher.

Change the Runner via the dropdown box to “Wine (Runs Windows games)”.

Release year is 2003 if you wish to add it, identifier is final-fantasy-xi (this make the picture

pretty if it isn’t already there....).

Switch to the Game options tab and browse to the recently installed “windower.exe”, and select it.

Change the working directory to “/home/usernamehere/.wine/drive_c/windower4directoryyouchoseduringinstallation”.

Everything else can remain unchanged under the game options tab.

Under the runner options tab, choose the wine version as 5.0-rc4-staging.

Enable DXVK, Enable VKD3D, Disable dgvoodoo2, Enable Esync, Enable Fsync, disable both

anticheat options. Disable virtual desktop for now.

Once all this is done, click save.

You should now be able to run final fantasy xi through windower 4 on your linux desktop/laptop.

In theory, you could go through the same steps to run this on the steam deck, I don’t have one

and therefore have no way to test it currently.