Brutal Doom on Linux, the easy way

Overview

This guide tries to show step by step how to setup Brutal Doom on Linux without suffering all the obscure nonsense some articles tell you to do (such as compilling a whole doom engine fork from github… seriously?).You’ll end up having a Steam library entry, popping a short list of wad files to load, and will even enjoy a brutal experience with Steam Overlay enabled.This has been tested on Ubuntu 12.10 aka Utopic Unicorn (but should be relevant to any Linux distribution).

How to setup Brutal Doom on Linux (Ubuntu in particular)

You’ll basically only have to do the following:

Install Zandronum
Get your WAD files, Brutal Doom and its Metal Soundtrack
Create a script file, link it with a desktop file and add it to Steam
???
Profit!

Install Zandronum (or GzDoom)

This is the trickiest part of that guide, as Zandronum may not be in your distribution’s default repositories. Zandronum should be packaged on a specific gaming repository however.

Installing Zandronum on Ubuntu (or other Debian-based distributions) is pretty simple, as you only have to add a repository, as described here:
[link]

sudo apt-add-repository ‘deb [link] stable multiverse’ wget -O – [link] | sudo apt-key add –

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install zandronum

Getting game files

You’ll either need Doom, Doom 2 or the two Final Doom WADs to play with Brutal Doom enabled, so you can just buy them on Steam.
Grab Brutal Doom on ModDB…
[link]
…along with the Metal Volume 4 Soundtrack:
[link]
Unpack the two zip files.

Now, time to setup

Create some directories and empty files, by executing in a terminal:
mkdir -p ~/.bin ~/.local/share/zandronum touch ~/.bin/brutal_doom.sh `xdg-user-dir DESKTOP`/Brutal_Doom.desktop chmod +x ~/.bin/brutal_doom.sh `xdg-user-dir DESKTOP`/Brutal_Doom.desktop
Please note that you’ll “frequently” have to access your .bin and .local directories. As they’re hidden, you may have issues finding them and might need to display hidden files in your file manager, or run a simple command that’ll open a new file manager window for you. This may be quite useful if you’re willing to transfer files from multiple (or remote) locations:
xdg-open ~/.local/share/zandronum && xdg-open ~/.bin
Edit ~/.bin/brutal_doom.sh using your favorite text editor, write the following and sve it:
#!/bin/sh cd $HOME/.local/share/zandronum zandronum -file DoomMetalVol4.wad brutal19.pk3
Copy your WAD files, brutaldoom19.pk3 and DoomMetalVol4.wad to ~/.local/share/zandronum.
Hang on, you’re almost done! Edit your Brutal_Doom.desktop file (which should be located… on your desktop!) using a text editor, copy the following (don’t forget to replace USERNAME with your Unix account name!):
[Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Exec=/home/USERNAME/.bin/brutal_doom.sh Name=Brutal Doom GenericName=Brutal Doom Encoding=UTF-8 Terminal=true Type=Application Categories=Game;
You’re done. You may want to rename your desktop file and find a nice icon for it, but you really just have to add it to your Steam Library now (you should see it listed directly).
Enjoy.

Ultimate Doom Guide

Overview

How to setup Brutal Doom on Linux (Ubuntu in particular)