For context - I’m working on getting an emulated Everquest server up and running, but hitting dead ends (probably due to my newness to Linux in general) and seeking some guidance from the community on what I’ve tried and best path forward.

My ultimate goal is to get it running on SteamOS - I have it fully operational on my actual server machine running Ubuntu, but trying to get it working here so I can just connect locally (i.e on a plane) so I don’t need to connect externally. Here is the situation and obstacles;

I've been trying for a minute now to get EQEmu setup on the SteamOS side of the house for ease of launching with client, but running into obstacles in several different directionns, and wanted to see if someone had some guidance on best path forwarrd.

First Route - VM - Linux Mint - Docker - I have a successful server up and running via Gnome Boxes with a Linux Mint guest OS - then docker and akkstakk running on it.

The obstacle - I can't seem to bridge the connection of the guest OS with host OS (guest can ping host, host cannot ping guest). If I can bridge (no pun intended) this gap, it'll most likely be the route I go

Second Route - Distrobox - Ubuntu When running Distrobox directly on SteamOS - I'm trying to get the linux install running - however there is a multitude of issues with permissions being denied. This is likely due to SteamOS' immutable system. To bypass it, it is possible to offset this via turning off read only. However, I don't want to pursue that route, as anything written to the file system gets wiped on update to the OS.

Third Route - WINE - Lutris - SteamOS Another route I've tried is utilizing WINE with the windows installer. I think this could help bypass some of the restrictions of the system while having it run on that.

Obstacle here: Running the .bat file yields the following message - mariadb-10.0.21-winx64.msi: File Not Found Installing MariaDB (Root Password: eqemu) LOADING... PLEASE WAIT... "sh" isn't a recognized shell. Please open an issue at https://git.rootprojects.org/root/pathman/issues?q=sh warning: couldn't access "C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.0\bin": CreateFile C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.0\bin: Path not found. PATH not changed.

I tried manually executing mariadb and perl, but it still hangs up at both. I see that i ntuser, it's still not finding them.

So all that to say, trying to find a way to make this work. I'm the closest with the VM, but can't figure out the connection there. Distrobox would be a mess of troubleshooting, and WINE I feel could almost work if I could get the PATHs to work (maybe).

Any input or guidance is widely appreciated for such a niche request.