Linux Install Guide

GWToolbox++ is a Windows DLL, but Guild Wars itself runs well on Linux through Wine, and Toolbox runs cleanly alongside it. The walkthrough below is a short summary — for the full, authoritative reference (including troubleshooting, performance tuning, optional DXVK setup, sound, DirectSong, and more) please use the excellent guide maintained by ChthonVII: guildwarslinuxinstallguide.

If you hit anything that isn’t covered here, that guide is the place to look first.

Pick the right Wine

Toolbox needs Wine’s process-injection features to load the DLL. Which build you want depends on your kernel:

Kernel ≥ 6.14 with a stock distro kernel — official WineHQ packages (wine, wine-devel, or wine-staging) work out of the box.
Kernel ≥ 6.14 with custom/backport kernels — a TkG build (e.g. Kron4ek/Wine-Builds) with NTSYNC enabled.
Kernel < 6.14 — TkG/custom builds with FSYNC or ESYNC, or an older Wine (pre-10.16).
Avoid running Guild Wars through Steam Proton or Lutris. They sandbox the wine prefix in ways that make installing Toolbox (and DirectSong) more painful than it needs to be.

Install 32-bit support

Guild Wars is a 32-bit game. Either:

Add multi-arch packages — on Debian/Ubuntu: sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt update, then install the 32-bit graphics driver libraries that match your GPU (e.g. libglx-mesa0:i386, mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386, libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 for AMD/Intel; nvidia-driver-libs:i386 for nVidia), or
Use Wine ≥ 10.2 with WINEARCH=wow64 to skip the 32-bit packages entirely. (Note: see the pitfall section below.)

Optional but recommended: gstreamer1.0-libav:i386 (and the equivalent 32-bit gstreamer plugins for your distro) for in-game audio.

Install Guild Wars

Pick a dedicated wine prefix so Guild Wars doesn’t share state with anything else:

export WINEARCH=win64        # or 'win32' on older wine
export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-gw"
winecfg                      # creates the prefix, lets you set Win 10 mode

mkdir -p "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/temp"
# download the official installer (GwSetup.exe) into the temp dir, then:
wine start /d "C:\\temp" "C:\\temp\\GwSetup.exe"

# launch Guild Wars once to confirm it works
wine start /d "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Guild Wars" \
              "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Guild Wars\\Gw.exe"

Install GWToolbox++

Download the launcher and run it inside the same prefix — it auto-downloads GWToolboxdll.dll into ~/Documents/GWToolboxpp/.
Launching Toolbox — pick one of:
- Launcher UI — run GWToolbox.exe before or after starting Guild Wars; it finds the running Gw.exe and injects the DLL.
- Silent injection (recommended for scripts/launchers):
```
wine start /d "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\GWToolbox" \
              "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\GWToolbox\\GWToolbox.exe" /quiet
```
- Generic injector — e.g. Injectory, useful if you don’t want the launcher running at all:
```
injectory.x86.exe -l Gw.exe -i GWToolboxdll.dll
```

Common pitfalls

wow64 mode + injection — under WINEARCH=wow64, injecting into a running Guild Wars sometimes crashes the process. Workarounds: install the 32-bit driver libraries instead, or use the launcher’s pre-launch path so the DLL is in place before Guild Wars finishes loading.
FPS-related teleporting — frame rates well above ~144 fps can cause characters and NPCs to “teleport” briefly. Cap the frame rate with the in-game -fps flag (e.g. Gw.exe -fps 144) or via Toolbox’s /fps 144 command.
Don’t run through Steam — see the “Avoid” note above. If you’ve already installed under Proton, the simplest fix is to set up a fresh standalone wine prefix and re-install there.
Performance — install DXVK into the prefix for a big DirectX 9 performance jump, and make sure your Wine build is using NTSYNC/FSYNC/ESYNC. ChthonVII’s guide covers both in detail.

This page is a short summary written to live in the GWToolbox docs. The authoritative reference is ChthonVII’s guildwarslinuxinstallguide — please consult it for anything not covered above, and consider starring the repo if it helped you.