What Linux version is good for X4, and Gaming in general

[Scoob]

Hey all,

Hope this is an ok place to discuss this.

I'm a Windows gamer, currently W10, will be W11 soon but not entirely by choice. I've read that gaming on Linux is getting better and better. However, unlike my past self, when it comes to Gaming I just want stuff to work. I want Steam to work I want GoG to work I want Epic to work. I don't want to have my limited game time to turn into time spent just getting stuff working or running into obscure issues and trouble-shooting problems. I don't mind tinkering a little to get something working well in the first place, but I expect it to work from that point forwards.

I have tinkered with Linux in the past, but on an old laptop - which actually ran worse than a tweaked version of W10 - and it was a disappointment. It looked bad, ran bad, was objectively bad. I can't even recall what version of Linux that was, it was ages ago.

My Gaming PC is just a gaming PC, that's all it's used for, It's not new, but it's decent: CPU: 5800X3d, GPU 3070, 32GB DDR4 3600 RAM, M.2's RAID, all water-cooled. Currently runs X4 and every other game I play well at 1440p - that 8GB VRAM hasn't been a problem with anything I play. Sure, it fills up, but I don't get stutters when it does.

Those of you who game on Linux, what version or flavour of Linux do you use? What would you recommend? I thought about SteamOS - can you even just download that? - or Mint but I'm largely clueless. I have a second PC - Gamer Jnr (old) that's a 4790k, GTX 680, 32GB DDR3 1600, SSDs that's currently a decent retro-gamer (Forged Alliance, X2 and X3). I updated that to W11 and it's working well. However, I was considering that it might make a good test bed for Linux. Can't play X4 on it of course (2GB VRAM GPU) but I can certainly install Steam and try other stuff.

This is very much a "thinking about it, but if it's going to be too much of a headache, I'm out" type thing. But with Microsoft being how they are of late - and me an MSDN subscriber (work) with access to ALL MS software at no additional cost - I'm thinking my Gaming PC might be better off on a different OS.

If people could share their experience with Linux for gaming, I'd appreciate it. Initial set-up, specific efforts required to get individual games working etc., that'd be much appreciated.

For the record, here's a little snap-shot of the sort of stuff I've been playing over the past couple of years, there's more, but these are the ones I have the most time in. Not in any particular order:

- X4 Foundations
- X3 Farnham's Legacy
- X2 The Threat
- Elite Dangerous
- Skyrim AE
- Fallout 4
- Emprion
- Forged Alliance
- Kenshi
- probably others I've forgotten

Not really playing anything modern AAA, but I might want to at some point.

[z1ppeh]

Not really tech supporrt and more a general question.

POP! os is making waves as a decent distro and great out of the box. Ubuntu base and pretty secure. Very small learning curve as it seems theres a lot of noob friendly stuff in it
Nobara is a great out of the box also(dedicated gaming distro). Fedora based with a great base setup. Little bit of a learning curve to transition but nothing too strong.
SteamOS isn't officially supported for desktop yet but it does work with some tweaks, probably not your best first choice until a real desktop distro comes out.

For an easy transition from Windows you could also try Mint, I hear thats pretty noob friendly

Pick a distro that supports you rather than what other people say. Latest driver stuff is important so check inbuilt stuff for this (most are pretty decent anyway but pop/nobara were on my top list becuase of their great support). Then various things like steam / Proton support and a whole ream of other things.

Research research research and then try try try. 'most' distros have a full installer package with little setup needed and work out fo the box on modern (and even your old box is fine) hardware

[Scoob]

Thanks for the reply. Mint is my current first choice, though I've more research to do. I think I need to actually have a play with it - that's what the older PC is for - and see how I get on.

[xrogaan]

As a general answer, you really have only 2 or 3 flavors of distribution. The rest are just not happy with the details.

First thing first, coming from windows, you need to read switching to GNU/Linux mentality. GNU/Linux isn't windows, will never be windows, and you'll get lost for the most technical aspect of it.

Personally, I like stability, so I use a derivative of Debian called Devuan. It comes without firmware and non-free stuff installed or active. So you've got to enable non-free in the repositories and install the various drivers required by your hardware. Stuff will run fine without them, perhaps badly, but leave you with an usable desktop. Addendum to that linux-questions thread: since Debian 12 you also need to add 'non-free-firmware' in addition to the 'non-free'.

Which is a good GNU/Linux distro? Depends on you and what meshes with you. As I said, I like stability. I don't it like my system doing weird stuff every 2 weeks because some software upgraded. Others likes to live on the edge, like the arch linux folks, and only swear with the latest releases of their software. Then there's the Fedora, Red Hat and SUSE family. Know nothing about them beside that Red Hat is on the way out, eaten by IBM.

Since you mentioned windows 10 going EoL, here's a neat resource for you: https://endof10.org/
You may find more support through the various linux user groups listed on that website. There are also events planned to help people like you, where you can go and meet real people with all your questions.

[BitByte]

If you want make tests with different linux distros here's hint:
- If you have Pro version of Windows then you can enable Hyper-V virtualization platform, create virtual computers which won't affect your host OS and you can run multiple machines simultaniously.
- You can register free account to Broadcom and download VMWare Workstation Pro for free to home users. It's very powerful virtualization software and simple to use for build virtual machines.

Personally I prefer VMWare (due my long-term background using it).
Using virtual machines you can make snapshots (save machine state), make tests and see how things work. If something goes wrong you can always return back to previous snapshot as long as you keep it. OS installations are faster as you don't need extract ISO image to USB first but you can use it directly as installation source.
When you find OS that suits to you then you can extract installer ISO to USB and install it to your physical computer.

[EGO_Aut]

I use pop!_os Linux on my old i7-4790&16GB&Vega56
Quelle: YouTube https://share.google/baJcxrQmG6ULcsGwS

The install with USB Stick was easy, it had a Steam package, and preinstalled GPU driver for AMD, NIVIDIA-separate Installation to download
X4 runs much better than on my old Win10

Edit: First i tried steamos, but i did not get it to install-it was not supported on regular PC Installations (~5month ago).

I have only x4 running, i heard that there could be problems with cheat protection Software on various online games.

[chew-ie]

Hey Scoob - glad to hear you think about switching

I moved all my boxes (minus the one I need for work) to Linux now (read: the gaming setup). While I am a seasoned linux user (since .. Red Hat 7.3, so pretty long o,O) me tinkering around with the OS is long gone. So I prefer a distro with the least trouble. Mint is a good choice, but Fedora (Red Hat successor) is as well. I'm using the latter and I'm using my full GOG and Steam library without any problems.

Games from your list which I play as well [on Linux]:

• X4 Foundations
• X3 Terran Conflict (didn't try the other ones, but they should work as well
• Skyrim AE
• Fallout 4

I also play a lot of other "modern" games without tinkering around: Stalker 2, Space Marines 2, Starfield, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Horizon Forbiddn West, Sins of a Solar Empire II, Cyberpunk 2077 ...

In fact I haven't encountered any game which doesn't work out of the box nowadays. The wine layer definately has improved a lot. Usually I'm using Lutris for my GOG games, Steam for the few Steam titles I "own" and for some rare occasions I'm using GOG Galaxy (via Lutris) for those titles who need that client (e.g. X4 Beta).

Happy installing

[SphinxofBlackQuartz]

Thanks for the reply. Mint is my current first choice, though I've more research to do. I think I need to actually have a play with it - that's what the older PC is for - and see how I get on.

Mint is an excellent choice for new and intermediate Linux users. Nice clean interface, easy to use, does what it says on the tin. My housemate uses it on her gaming laptop, and she loves it.

If you like click-to-install simplicity, Ubuntu is also a strong and user-friendly choice... although a lot of folks these days are starting to find it a bit distasteful, due to repeated own-goals from the developer.

[Scoob]

Thanks for the replies all, much appreciated. I've not had time to pursue this further yet, but it's still on my list of projects. My plan is still to have an initial play on an older PC - likely the 4790k system I mentioned previously - to get a feel for things, then go from there. Currently, Gamer is working well on W11, even better after tweaking, as it my "Workhorse" general purpose PC, and several older laptops. I'm actually fairly happy with how Windows 11 is working, after removing and/or blocking various aspects of it. However, none of that it stopping me wanting to tinker with Linux.

[Hector0x]

I was pretty much in the same boat. My only prior linux experience was with mint on a laptop that i only ever used for surfing (basically zero linux skills).

About a year ago i started planning for a new PC in summer 2025. After 7 years of W10 and lacking the TPM requirement for W11 and being fed up with Microsoft i opted for the penguin on a completely new AMD 9800x3d + 9070xt system

My distro of choice is Nobara. Basically a tweaked Fedora with all the necessary libraries and optimizations for gaming and content creation. It's very easy to use (terminal usage is pretty much optional). Steam games run either out of the box or after a quick visit to ProtonDb.com which tells you what proton version or launch command you need to set in Steam.

Modding outside of steam workshop stuff or setting up non-steam games or programs requires that you get familiar with Wine-prefixes. This is the only "complicated linux-thing" that you definitely cannot avoid as a gamer who likes modding.

Wine-prefixes are basically like folders with a fake windows installation and you can set them up with different DirectX versions, DLLs, NetFramework, etc. and then use them to install windows programs or run game launchers, mod install wizards, etc.

Steam also uses Wine-prefixes under the hood and there are many tools like Lutris game launcher, Heroic game launcher or Bottles which all basically do the same thing.

I'm a normal end user who occassionally needs to do slightly more elaborate stuff. The most "complex" tasks that i did on this system up until now was
- running a modded X3 via a Wine-prefix using Lutris
- installing Optiscaler to turn Expedition 33's official Nvidia DLSS into unofficial AMD FSR4
- producing a video for YT
- installing a native linux version of the RimSort mod manager for Rimworld which was originally made for Ubuntu Linux

Everything worked without issues but it requires a bit of reading and learning.

Nobaras update philosophy sits somewhere inbetween stability and quick access to the newest features, leaning somewhat to the latter, so a bad update can definitely break your system.

In 4 months of daily driving this happened to me once where i couldn't get to the desktop anymore. But just running the updater again via a terminal command fixed it. Since then i'm doing automatic Timeshift snapshots to be able to roll back.
I also experienced full system freezes during gaming caused by the graphics driver crashing on me. This only happened in two specific games and it stopped completely once i used a different Proton version.

Sometimes there us no UI when you need to change certain system settings. For example one game had audio clipping issues and to fix them i needed to change my system's audio sample rate from 48kHz to 44,1kHz. But that could only be done via terminal or by manually editing a config file. There was no setting in the normal GUI like there is in windows sound settings.

Issues like these will definitely come up. Outside Steam its not plug and play and more complicated than Windows. But overall it was pretty smooth for me and i don't miss anything.

The Nobara dev team is small. Support is basically just a Discord but for general stuff most Fedora guides will usually apply too.

I can only recommend Linux if you are willing to learn and have a full AMD system. From what i can read on the forums the Nvidia graphics drivers basically break every other month and the user needs to do manual rollback shennanigans.
If i had an Nvidia card i would probably be back on Windows by now.

For gaming i would not go with Mint. Better go with CachyOS, Bazzite or Nobara. Bazzite is probably the easiest if you're not into modding outside steam workshop

[Scoob]

Thanks for the reply. My plan is to initially play with Mint on an old laptop, just to get familiar with the basic desktop stuff. Then I might play on the 4790K PC. Purely tinkering initially. At a later stage, I might try to duel-boot my main gamer, just for ease of direct comparison between Windows 11 and Mint. It's a bit of a project, which I might have time for over the Christmas break.

I will revisit this thread once I'm ready to proceed. Hopefully it will]/i] feel like a fun little project, and not give me too many headaches lol.

[Shadros]

Linux Mint with Lutris here.

I wanted to play my old X3:Reunion. I love Reunion more than later versions because I enjoy being at peace with all 5 reasonable races simultaneously (basically, all races I can buy ships, weapons and software upgrades from). Which in TC and later seems a bit harder to do. They tend to force the player to pick sides much more than Reunion does, I think. Personal taste, I know. Debatable.

OK, I lost the original DVD years ago. I switched homes twice in the last 10 years in real life. But X3 does not need registry entries to work. The old folder where I installed X3 (and modded the hell out of it, thank you Cycrow!) worked just fine as it was in Win XP, Win 7, Win 8 and later Win 10. I just moved the X3 folder by USB stick between laptops and PCs like there's no tomorrow and it worked every time. No problem for me. Well, no problem until I replaced Win 10 with Mint and Lutris. Of course, letting all NTFS partitions stay as they were and turning only the old C: partition into /root/. (I never installed games in C: or its Program Files folder.) Any other game works better in Lutris than it ever did in Windows. Simply tell Lutris where is it installed and Lutris with its embedded Wine will find a way to make it work.

Except for X3 Reunion. The game starts, choosing the modpack works perfectly, Some intro videos are fortunately missing because I got sick of them, the game start menu works flawlessly. Perfect. But as soon as the game runs, if I press F or generally speaking try to look into the cargo bay of any ship belonging to me, the game freezes and stays frozen. I downloaded all sorts of libraries, nothing. I tried every (Wine) trick me and a friend (who has a consulting firm about software and knows a lot about gaming on Linux) could think of. Nothing. The exact same game that worked flawlessly in any Windows freezes every time I press F, like this is the new "Pause" button. Only it does not un-pause.

No problem, X3:Reunion is only 0.99 Euro on GOG. Yupee! Yupee and 2 more days and I could not make the GOG .sh file do anything but take space on my SSD. I went to GOG support, they asked me after 2 days if I still have the problem and when I told them yes, they forgot about me completely. I tried in all ways I knew to make Lutris open the .sh file to no avail. I tried all configurations Lutris website told me to try to make the .sh unpack into a game. Nope. I even tried installing the app that GOG does not offer for Linux, only for Windows and Mac. I took their Windows version of a piece of software and ran it in Lutris, to open the game with it. Nope.

Well, then I went and bought the game on Steam. Another 0.99 Euro, probably will become free soon. I stepped on my heart and I installed Steam (which I hate, it's an enormous bloatware that tries to punish me for having trainers and old school password generators for software I did not even buy on Steam). I mean, I managed to avoid installing Steam since before the Pandemic, but now I had to. (Long live Steamripped website!) Well, X3:Reunion runs perfectly in Steam. With only one problem: Cycrow's Plugin Manager is built for Windows only. When it sees the "X3R_main" file with no extension, it tells me this directory is not an X3 install directory and refuses to work on it. And no other software than Cycrow's Plugin Manager knows how to read an .spk.

So, to search long dead download links and software archives to download again and install manually only half the mods I wanted on the Steam's X3Reunion, (only those who are available in .cat and .dat shape or "Scripts" and "T" folders, not the "only .spk" ones) it took me about one work day. And 2 PMs to plugin creators that still did not answer me yet, any of them.

That's how playing on Linux works and how easy it is to use Steam with its magnificent Proton. Proceed at your own peril. I honestly do not have any reason to think any other X games work any better.

[Shadros]

Mod Details: - I found Ashley's Fabs in a .cat and .dat shape, made by someone else who took over, not Ashley. I'll see how it works with no scripts, as the new mod really had no scripts to install. Good old Ashley's Fabs is .spk only.
- LVs cheats I could only find in their X2 version, not X3, as "Scripts" and "T" and not .spk. The result was it worked to instantly reveal the whole Universe, but not any gates or stations, just the sectors, empty. Giving me a more decent personal ship than the default Discoverer surprisingly worked with no bugs.
- Plugins for increasing the view distance over the range of a Duplex scanner (default visible range) or for removing the useless fog that prevents me from even trying to jump into Orebelt are available only as .spk.
- Player Friendly Equipment Docks are not friendly, also .spk only.
- Cycrow's Scripts are also .spk only, but that was to be expected...
- Fix Flying Wares without which one can't hope to get and sell any loot from a Xenon Sector before they naturally despawn (And they are pretty often GPPCs, very lucrative!) is also .spk only. More trading, less fighting for me... I feel like crying.
- TCS with priorities for turrets instead of fixed commands like "Ship Defense", "Missile defense" or "Attack my target" is also .spk only. Player owned Capitol ships will cry a river and die much faster.

What works on Steam are: - Possibly those Ashley's Fabs that are no longer Ashley's,
- A visual improvement I am very found of, also a .cat and .dat kind of mod that never was a .spk,
- One of the Sector Take Over plugins, the one with less additional features,
- Partially LV's cheats,
- All the useful stuff that existed separately but ended up included in the Bonus Pack,
- The external tools: + Factory Complex Calculator (without which I strongly advice you don't even think about making self-sufficient production complexes) and
+ Scorp's dynamic map and search, very useful for detecting Khaak Invasions (just search for a Khaak Capitol ship that's not in the 5 Khaak Sectors in game, real time) and also for easily determining the Silicon and Ore present in a sector to insert the data in FCC and decide what sector should you conquer and what could you produce in it once you conquer it with STO.

Kind of a sad compromise, playing on Steam instead of Windows or some imaginary functional Wine, don't you think?

[xrogaan]

I tried in all ways I knew to make Lutris open the .sh file to no avail. I tried all configurations Lutris website told me to try to make the .sh unpack into a game.

You no dot need lutris to run a bash file. Lutris is not made for that. What GOGcom gave you is an installer, that you run from cli. It'll launch a GUI asking you where to install the files and whatnot. The X3 family of games are native. You don't need proton, wine, nor lutris to play them. The only unknown, from me, is whether modpacks works properly. They should though.

So what I gather is that you were given bad informations on how to play games, which made you confused.

[chew-ie]

So what I gather is that you were given bad informations on how to play games, which made you confused.

I'd say so, too. If there is some ancient .exe installer from mod compilations they can be run within a wine prefix. (Lutris offers a command for that in the GUI). I did so e.g. with Gothic 3 which I'm revisiting this holiday season. I installed various community patches & content packs which came with an own *.exe. Works like a charm

[Shadros]

So what I gather is that you were given bad informations on how to play games, which made you confused.

I'd say so, too. If there is some ancient .exe installer from mod compilations they can be run within a wine prefix. (Lutris offers a command for that in the GUI). I did so e.g. with Gothic 3 which I'm revisiting this holiday season. I installed various community patches & content packs which came with an own *.exe. Works like a charm

The one and only Plugin Manager only recognizes a folder containing an .exe with the Windows install's name as the game and only mods that. The problem is not installing and starting the Plugin Manager, it's making it admit a file with no extension and a slightly different name is the game executable and the folder it is in is the game's folder. Steam uses 2 files as programs, X3R_config for the initial options menu including the mod pack selection and X3R_main for the game itself. None of them having any extension, because Linux does not care about extensions so why not? Plugin Manager looks for an X3.exe file and won't find it in a Steam install. As far as the Plugin Manager knows, I might be trying to mod a photo album folder with it. And it definitely does not accept that. It was built very strict.

It does not care all the files it actually interacts with are not the .exe, but the "scripts" and "t" folder and the ,cat and .dat files, all present in the Steam install of the game too, just like in a Windows install. Once working, the Plugin Manager can make use of the .spk files, the format most mods are published in, specially for being used with the Plugin Manager. Plugin Manager is a very robust and powerful tool for solving any mod conflict, revert mod installs if they don't do what the player wants etc. But only if Plugin Manager agrees that what I have is an X3 Reunion game folder and works on it, of course.

Not that it matters, but I have an impressive collection of .spk files in a dedicated folder, probably bigger in total than the game itself, built over the years. If I could use those, I would not need to manually install any mod at all.

[Shadros]

I tried in all ways I knew to make Lutris open the .sh file to no avail. I tried all configurations Lutris website told me to try to make the .sh unpack into a game.

You no dot need lutris to run a bash file. Lutris is not made for that. What GOGcom gave you is an installer, that you run from cli. It'll launch a GUI asking you where to install the files and whatnot. The X3 family of games are native. You don't need proton, wine, nor lutris to play them. The only unknown, from me, is whether modpacks works properly. They should though.

So what I gather is that you were given bad informations on how to play games, which made you confused.

WTF is a "cli"? I might be Linux illiterate, please help me. If you meant the Terminal, OK, but tell me what to write in it because it definitely does not speak the DOS language I know. I have about 30 years of DOS and later Windows experience, 1 month of superficial Linux experience, so I need a bit more specific help. I'm good at configuring things, making backups and replacing files, editing config files by hand or copy-paste, even a bit of coding in Visual Basic, but I do not know C or Java syntax.

I interpret what you're telling me is like "GOG gave you a .rar archive but there is no rar or zip software to use. Unpack it by hand in the DOS prompt." I'm not that good. Tell me what to install to handle .sh files for me in a more human interface if there is any program for that. Or at least tell me the exact command with the right parameters to copy from here and paste into a Terminal window.

Edit: I will try to mark the .sh as an executable in Linux and double click the .sh.

[adeine]

WTF is a "cli"? I might be Linux illiterate, please help me. If you meant the Terminal, OK, but tell me what to write in it because it definitely does not speak the DOS language I know. I have about 30 years of DOS and later Windows experience, 1 month of superficial Linux experience, so I need a bit more specific help. I'm good at configuring things, making backups and replacing files, editing config files by hand or copy-paste, even a bit of coding in Visual Basic, but I do not know C or Java syntax.

I interpret what you're telling me is like "GOG gave you a .rar archive but there is no rar or zip software to use. Unpack it by hand in the DOS prompt." I'm not that good. Tell me what to install to handle .sh files for me in a more human interface if there is any program for that. Or at least tell me the exact command with the right parameters to copy from here and paste into a Terminal window.

CLI is an abbreviation for 'command line interface', so terminal applies. On Linux, this is typically bash (bourne again shell) by default, though other shells exist. You can find a guide to get you started here. In this case, running the script is as easy as going to the directory the file is in and executing it by typing ./script-name.sh (. is current directory) provided the file permissions are set as executable. Tab completion for commands and filenames is available in bash.

If you prefer the convenience of a GUI you can use Heroic launcher with your GOG account, which allows you to install your games as you would through Galaxy. You will be given a choice as to whether to install the Linux native version (where available) or the Windows version (through Proton/Wine).

[Shadros]

WTF is a "cli"? I might be Linux illiterate, please help me. If you meant the Terminal, OK, but tell me what to write in it because it definitely does not speak the DOS language I know. I have about 30 years of DOS and later Windows experience, 1 month of superficial Linux experience, so I need a bit more specific help. I'm good at configuring things, making backups and replacing files, editing config files by hand or copy-paste, even a bit of coding in Visual Basic, but I do not know C or Java syntax.

I interpret what you're telling me is like "GOG gave you a .rar archive but there is no rar or zip software to use. Unpack it by hand in the DOS prompt." I'm not that good. Tell me what to install to handle .sh files for me in a more human interface if there is any program for that. Or at least tell me the exact command with the right parameters to copy from here and paste into a Terminal window.

CLI is an abbreviation for 'command line interface', so terminal applies. On Linux, this is typically bash (bourne again shell) by default, though other shells exist. You can find a guide to get you started here. In this case, running the script is as easy as going to the directory the file is in and executing it by typing ./script-name.sh (. is current directory) provided the file permissions are set as executable. Tab completion for commands and filenames is available in bash.

If you prefer the convenience of a GUI you can use Heroic launcher with your GOG account, which allows you to install your games as you would through Galaxy. You will be given a choice as to whether to install the Linux native version (where available) or the Windows version (through Proton/Wine).

So far, at least I managed to check it is marked as an executable in Linux and double clicked it and now it does something that will take a while. But, hey, at least it does something. You might have saved a life here.
Windows mindset. I never imagined a download with a strange extension is actually an executable, not an archive in the classic sense of the word. Though I have worked so much with "Install.exe" or RAR executables in the past. If this gives me a game folder with the X3.exe file in it that does not freeze when opening a cargo bay, I can use the Cycrow's Plugin Manager on it and it solves all my problems. If it gives me a game folder with the X3R_config and X3R_main files with no extensions or something else, I'm right where I was yesterday.

I wonder what Cycrow's Plugin Manager would do if I just copy the X3.exe from the old windows install I have into the Steam game folder. Does Plugin Manager actually use and alter the .exe file or does it just modify the .cat, .dat, "scripts" and "t" files and folders, using the .exe just to recognize the game folder? Because if it actually alters the .exe, I will then have a game with the untouched Steam executables with no extensions and the rest of the files modified, which could be bad.

[adeine]

So far, at least I managed to check it is marked as an executable in Linux and double clicked it and now it does something that will take a while. But, hey, at least it does something. You might have saved a life here.
Windows mindset. I never imagined a download with a strange extension is actually an executable, not an archive in the classic sense of the word. Though I have worked so much with "Install.exe" or RAR executables in the past. If this gives me a game folder with the X3.exe file in it that does not freeze when opening a cargo bay, I can use the Cycrow's Plugin Manager on it and it solves all my problems. If it gives me a game folder with the X3R_config and X3R_main files with no extensions or something else, I'm right where I was yesterday.

.sh files are often what you find in place of .exe files on Linux, as binaries are usually without extension. So you have a shell script to start the binary with any options that may be required.

The Linux version of X3 I'm pretty sure will not give you an .exe file for the same reason. With X4, for example, the entry point is 'start.sh' in the X4 directory but the actual game binary is X4/game/X4.

If you need the .exe, you want to install the Windows version through Proton/Wine (though I remember reading X3 requires some manual setup to work properly):

1. Install the native Linux build.
2. Copy these from the game folder: mov/ and addon2/.
3. In Steam → Properties → Compatibility, force Proton and let it install the Windows build.
4. Paste mov/ and addon2/ back into the Windows install with overwrite.

Result: the game is fully stable under Proton; all audio/voices work and the gamepad works (Deck/ROG Ally).

In case of GOG with Heroic, you should be able to just pick the Windows version when prompted for Step 3. Not sure if this is still up to date or all that is required for things to work through Proton/Wine.