escape-beta.tar.gz

If it's genuine Linux game, I can't think why there'd be a .exe file with it.
I'd be very wary of downloading from anywhere but the official repositories.

"Say it with flowers . . . give her a Triffid."

Yeah. Guess I'll delete all the files and folders I just created. Years ago when I tried Linux, there was a lot of tarball command line stuff I had to do, but I don't remember much about it. Right now, I'm just poking around, getting my feet wet, and trying to get up to speed. I'm not too worried about the computer. I just did the clean Mint install and I've still got the DVD so I can do it again if necessary.

(I did get Mint installed just in time for the Firefox 48 update that broke the browser search function in Mint, so I was back in the online forums and back to the command line getting that straightened out. Seems like there must be some Microsoft people working for Mozilla now?)

Then run escape.exe while in an X session.
I'm not familiar with the flow of Linux. So, whatever "X session" means, an extra step needs to be taken?









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Est modus in rebus sunt certi denique fines quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum Goldilocks

So, whatever "X session" means,I have no idea what that means, either. I deleted everything I had downloaded and extracted relative to the game.

Similarly, when I downloaded the Mint ISO to burn to DVD, it was suggested that I verify the ISO image after download thusly:

Import the signing key:
gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key "27DE B156 44C6 B3CF 3BD7 D291 300F 846B A25B AE09"
Browse the main mirror, or choose a mirror near you, and download the ISO image, the sha256sum.txt and the sha256sum.txt.gpg files into the same directory.
Verify the signature on the sha256sum files with the following command (The output of this command should mention that the signature is "Good". Also, if you didn't import keys before on your computer you can ignore the warning "This key is not certified with a trusted signature! There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner."):
gpg --verify sha256sum.txt.gpg sha256sum.txt
Once this is done, the sha256sum.txt can be trusted.
Generate the sha256 sum of your ISO image, and compare it to the sum present in the sha256sums.txt file.
sha256sum -b yourisoimagefile.iso
If the signature was "Good" and the sha256 sums match, you successfully verified the integrity and authenticity of the ISO image.

I downloaded those files into the same folder on my Win7 laptop, opened "cmd", typed "gpg --verify sha256sum.txt.gpg sha256sum.txt" and hit "enter". I was informed that "gpg" was not a recognized command. I deleted all the downloaded files except the ISO and burned the DVD. In my case, all those instructions just as well have been written in Swahili.

If you're seeing a Windows icon, chances are that you're running the X Window System and some form of window manager. (UNIX and Linux are highly modular compared to Windows and the original MacOS, so there are many ways to skin a cat. But X is still the standard engine for a graphical environment.) The icon is a sign that your Linux distro was already configured to associate the .exe MIME type with Windows, and will launch WINE or some other software to provide the Windows environment to the file.

The problem seems to be that the .exe file in this case is not a real Windows executable, and whomever decided to add the .exe extension made a bad choice in doing so.

Since you're not an experienced Linux user, your best bet is to contact the game developer for help, and/or the linux distro's support forum. You're going to need to edit your MIME preferences and/or come up with a way to launch the file as a Linux/X ELF executable, shell script or whatever it is. You may be able to rename the file to remove the .exe extension. Since Linux uses file "magic" codes, it should be able to figure out the file type without any MIME associations.

You'll also need to be sure that you unpacked the archive so that the read and execute flags are set correctly. Something like `r xr xr x' would be appropriate. The write flag (rwx) can be set, but as a rule I set my executables read-only. If you don't have the execute bit set for the user that launches, you're going to have problems, so be sure to check that for all the files.