OK, so you decided to go safe OS way, if you don't want to leave your windows programs you need wine. Wine is compatibility layer used to run windows programs under linux, adobe suite, office suite, you name it, wine probably can run it with more or less "hacks". Wine installations are contained in so-called wine prefix, which is in most cases hidden directory in your home.
Download yourself from thepiratebay or other friendly software distributor MOHAA Warchest Edition from GOG, or buy it, then install wine with
sudo apt-get install wine. After you are done with installation go to your download process and launch setup.exe of warchest edition, normally it executes .exe through wine automatically, but it may be needed to go into
properties -> launch/open with -> wine. You will go now through standard mohaa installation.
Now magic begins -
Nvidia Graphic cards:
- You need to install nvidia linux driver for you graphic card or you will be kept at crashing screen forever, google suggests that on cinnamon
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall is the easiest and least painfull way to go, but there is also traditional
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends nvidia-driver-440 way. I'm not sure though if nvidia-driver-440 is latest, you will need to do your research and check what driver is right for your GPU. After installation of driver you should reboot your system.
- After reboot, download that file:
http://bugs.winehq.org/attachment.cgi?id=44390 - and open your terminal, type
wine regedit . Window will pop-up, choose import option and import file you have just downloaded.
- Now you are ready to play, open terminal or cd to your mohaa location in wine prefix, and type
__GL_ExtensionStringVersion=17700 wine C://Path_to_your_install. Althought as I mentioned there will be shortcuts created to game and its extensions on your desktop, you can open them with Kate, Nano or Whatever and I think under exec line add that glExtension bullshit before
wine C://Path_to_your_install and save, so you don't have to type that for your whole life in terminal to launch 2002 game.
I dunno how to explain it in easier way, if you decided to go linux you have to do a lot of research anyway, getting familliar with filesystem and how some things work and whatnot.