Like with the original Quake, I created a custom launch script that blanks the mouse cursor and adjusts the X11 gamma as well as providing a nice menu for selecting the mission packs.
Rather than featuring multiple different binaries as Quake did to launch the various different rendering options, Quake II instead accepts command arguments using the "vid_ref" variable to just the one application. SVGAlib can be used for both software rendering from a console as well as hardware acceleration on 3dfx cards, with the "softx" and "glx" renderers working instead through an X11 window on any graphics card. That said, I did find I had to copy my system’s libGL.so.1.2 file to the Quake II installation directory twice named as both opengl32 and libGL.so in order to get OpenGL acceleration to work reliably. Installation was much the same as with the first Quake, with the port now done by David Kirsch still having most of the same limitations as Dave Taylor’s original Quake port, although Quake II does at least have better support for mouselook. This time the mission packs were included on a separate CD-ROM from the main game, but that disc only holds the soundtrack for Ground Zero, meaning that music tracks unique to The Reckoning are absent.
In the same vein as Quake: The Offering, the next game in the series got a similar treatment for Linux with Quake II: Colossus from Macmillan Digital Publishing, containing Quake II as well as it's two mission packs The Reckoning and Ground Zero. Continued from Part 5: Quaking in My Boots