megutil VS CNC-Ultimate-Collection-Fixed-Launchers

C&C: Tiberian Dawn/Red Alert: Here, you have options, since EA released the game for free. Option 1: CnCNet's installers. These actually even come with Linux versions (don't get too excited: they're just wine wrappers) and are generally easy to work with. There are Lutris installers that wrap them, and it's overall very easy (just make sure you add ddraw to your dll overrides in wine as native,builtin). However, if you're a diehard Linux exclusionist... option 2: Vanilla-Conquer is a project that uses the GPLed code from C&C Remastered to rebuild the original C&C executables with cross-platform support. It works... okay, allegedly, but it would probably work better if I could get it to run: In order to make Vanilla Conquer play nice, you need to have an unmodified install of C&C Gold/Red Alert, as they would have come on-disk: The installs from the CnCNet installers won't cut it. And sure, EA put up those disks for free, you can just download them, but... well, the installers are temperamental at best. I couldn't get an install off the disks because the installer kept complaining that I didn't have the disks inserted. So good luck with that. You might have the best luck with the game data in C&C Remastered, but I didn't really test that. Option 3: C&C Remastered. Yeah, it means putting $20 in EA's pocket, but honestly I'd say they deserve it for this. C&C Remastered is a really, really good release, it runs flawlessly through Proton, it doesn't install Origin in your prefix, and it has full mod support thanks to game code and a map editor that are both GPLed (please, someone port that map editor to linux... I might learn C# just to do it myself). And it has substantial control improvements over the originals (right clicks! Oh, how I missed you), and a remastered soundtrack, which is honestly worth the $20 in and of itself (hence why one of the very few programming projects I completed was writing a tool to rip it from the game files). If you want to play multiplayer, CnCnet or Remastered are the way to go... or you could play OpenRA, but honestly OpenRA is less a recreation and more a new game that plays like C&C and uses its assets. Still a great time though.

Medstar's launcher (Command-Line Parameters Exclusive to The Launchers)

There are 3rd party launchers that patches and handles The Ultimate Collection games but those are for the Origin version and I'm not sure if they even work for the EA App version.

I've never used it, but maybe this can help you: https://github.com/Medstar117/CNC-Ultimate-Collection-Fixed-Launchers

Command & Conquer Generals/Zero Hour: Unfortunately, we are now out of the realm of games that can be entirely fixed by a simple EXE swap out of hand. Fortunately, there are still fixes. Like all games in The Ultimate Collection (Ultimately inferior, more like...), Generals is compromised by terrible EA DRM. Unlike RA2, you can't entirely remove it, but for it and all subsequent games I'll discuss, the best way to handle things is to used the Fixed Launchers Installer. This beauty applies registry fixes and replaces the executables with slightly patched versions that remove a bit of that pesky EA DRM. You still need to have Origin installed in the prefix (I tried to avoid that, believe me), but once you've run the fixer, you no longer need to launch the games through Origin (and in fact should avoid doing so), or their launchers, and can just launch the EXEs directly. Furthermore, you don't need to keep Origin running. Oh, and mods work again. So that's all lovely. The other fix required for Renegades and Zero Hour is gentool which is a d3d8.dll replacement (add that to your DLL overrides...) which fixes the multiplayer, allows for playing at higher resolutions, offers rudimentary anticheat for online play (in that it verifies and checksums the loaded content) and so on. Never leave home without it.