Cribbage - Linux Installation

Unfortunately I did not take into account cross platform considerations when writing Cribbage. Therefore to make it run on the Linux platform would require rewriting over half of the program. Thankfully since Cribbage is a relatively simple windows program, it can be run easily using wine on Linux.

In order to run cribbage on wine, the first thing that you will need is a copy of cards.dll cards.dll is a library that comes with every version of Windows that contains the graphics for Microsoft's built in Solitaire game. Cribbage uses this library to display its cards, and therefore without it Cribbage can not run. Althougth recent versions of wine do come with a builtin cards.dll, it is incompatible with the Windows version and if used with cribbage, cribbage will draw the wrong card images.

There are two ways of obtaining cards.dll, the first (and preferred) method is to take it from a copy of Windows directly. It is found in the C:\Windows\System32 folder on Windows 2000, XP or NT4 and the C:\Windows\System folder on Windows 95, 98 and ME. If at all possible try to get a cards.dll from Windows XP since it has nicer card graphics. The only problem with this method is that you need access to a windows machine to do this. If you do not have access to a Windows machine then fortunately there is an open source version of cards.dll that is distributed with the ReactOS Operating System. I have tried the ReactOS .dll and it does not have the same problem that the wine .dll does. You can get it from Reactos.com or simply download it from the Cribbage Downloads page. The only problem with the ReactOS version of the .dll is that the cards are not the same size as those found in the microsoft version and as such the card graphics will bump into other parts of the GUI when you use the ReactOS version.

OK now that you have a copy of cards.dll you need wine if you don't have it already. I will assume that you can get wine by yourself (and if you can't there are tons of resources already on the Internet which can help you.) I personally used Crossover Office 4.1 during my testing since I had access to it. Since Cribbage uses HTML Help, it might be beneficial if to install IE4 or later if you want access to the help files. If you don't care then it will load fine without IE.

OK now down to business, the Cribbage installer appears to run just fine under wine, so simply load up the installer and install the game normally. After that is done, copy your cards.dll file to the directory that wine installed Cribbage into, (for me that was /opt/cxcoffice/support/dotwine/fake_windows/Program Files/Cribbage).

Now we need to edit the wine configuration a little bit, open up the wine config file in your favorite text editor (which for me was in /opt/cxoffice/support/dotwine/config). Now add the following lines to the end of the file:

Note that if you are using a copy of cards.dll from Win95/98/ME use win95 instead of nt40 for your version.

Almost done, now if you are using Crossover 4.1 in multi user mode like me, then you will need to add a symbolic link to cards.dll in you home directory since every user is given thier own fake windows directory. to do this issue the command:

If nessesary you can change the directories since that assumes you installed Crossover to the default location. Ok finally you should be able to run the game without problem via wine, enjoy!