shmerl: FYI: Planescape Torment EE is using obsolete libssl1.0.0:i386 which is missing in Debian testing. You'd need to copy it from Jessie (libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libcrypto.so.1.0.0) and bundle with the game and modify start.sh to load it with LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

immi101: curios ...
at least on arch and gentoo the latest openssl 1.0.2 release still gives you libcrypto.so-1.0.0, while on debian it gives you libcrypto.so-1.0.2, thus creating an error for everything depending on libcrypto.so-1.0.0.
weird ...
I don't recall any ABI breakage that would require a soname bump.

shmerl: I'm not sure why they removed it, but I suppose there was ABI breakage, and they decided not to support 1.0.0 at all anymore.

immi101: if the game isn't using SSLv3 directly (and i'm not missing anything), you might get away with just symlinking libcrypto.so-1.0.2 to libcrypto.so-1.0.0

ssokolow: To be honest, this situation has me really annoyed because I feel like I should be able to help... but I have no experience with Mint's file manager because I got into Linux early enough that, by the time Mint got invented, I was happily using stuff much further on the power-user/greybeard end of the "ease of use vs. light on system resources" spectrum.

That said, two things I'd suggest are:

1. if you don't mind installing a second file manager for testing purposes, that's one thing you could try to narrow down where the problem is. If another file manager works, you know it's something in the desktop.

(Not necessarily the file manager, because some desktops spit up the responsibilities. For example, KDE is made of a whole bunch of pieces communicating over D-Bus.)

I use PCManFM and, when I double-click an executable .sh file, it pops up a dialog with "Execute", "Execute in Terminal", "Open", and "Cancel" buttons. (I've attached a screenshot as an example.)

2. As part of the "Is it plugged in?" checking:

a. Copy and paste the exact permissions the file has (run `ls -l` in a terminal in the folder containing it and look at the left-most column) here as part of the "Is it plugged in?" checking.

On mine, that'd be this example line:
-rwxrwxr-x 1 ssokolow ssokolow 51M Apr 29 2016 gog_bit_trip_beat_2.0.0.1.sh

b. Run `mount` in a terminal, find the line with the longest matching prefix for the folder containing the installer, and confirm that it doesn't contain "noexec" in the parentheses at the end.

On mine, that'd be this line:
/dev/sdh1 on /mnt/buffalo_ext type ext4 (rw)

c. If you don't want to install a second file manager, you could instead try running it in the terminal by typing or pasting the full path to it, case-sensitive. If that works, that also indicates that it's something in the desktop.

(NOTE: If you don't want to use the full path, you have to prefix things in the current directory with ./ to tell the system that you're not expecting a command searched up from the PATH. That's another protection against exploits based on social engineering.)

Nemesis44UK: My question is, can I remove the original file manager (Thunar?) and just have PCManFM as my standalone file manager?

Nemesis44UK: Hi,

Thanks for all your good advice. I installed PCManFM and after a bit of jiggery pokery, it opened both of my executable files without issue. You solved it for me, so thank you very much.

My question is, can I remove the original file manager (Thunar?) and just have PCManFM as my standalone file manager?

ssokolow: That breaks down into three question:

1. Does Thunar serve any other purposes besides being the file manager?

Not that I'm aware of. While LXDE uses PCManFM for both the file manager and the desktop-drawing (via the --desktop, --desktop-off, and --desktop-pref options), Xfce has xfdesktop for doing desktop drawing.

2. Does Xfce support setting something other than Thunar as the file manager?

I haven't used Xfce in a very long time, but it should. These days, most things which need to look up the file manager do it via the file-type association on a special "inode/directory" mimetype.

Also, check your control panels. For example, KDE 4 (which I'm still on) hasn't fully switched over and uses that and their old approach of having an entry in the control panel for selecting preferred applications for various roles.

(Tip: For other file-association situations, such as the last time I used Skype, an application may not be obeying your account preferences at all. Under Debian-family distros, there's an extra layer of system-wide defaults controlled by the update-alternatives command.)

3. Does your package manager support removing just part of a desktop?

Xfce is typically installed by installing a metapackage which depends on all of the pieces. In the worst case scenario, removing Thunar could remove the metapackage, which could then cause your package manager to suggest that the entire desktop is no longer necessary and should be removed.

You have two options:

1. Uninstall Thunar, then change the status on all of the remaining Xfce packages from "pulled in as a dependency" to "manually requested". This has the downside that, if the desktop ever adds a new package, it may not get pulled in.

2. Create a fake, empty Thunar package with a really high version number and then upgrade to it. (On Debian-family distros, the "equivs" package provides "equivs-control" to generate a draft package definition and then "equivs-build" to generate a package from it after you've edited it.)

Nemesis44UK: Many thanks for your comprehensive reply, which was spot on. You have covered a lot of things which I haven't even considered. It is painfully obvious that I need to invest in at least a couple of books and try to educate myself. The sheer flexibility of Linux is conversely the thing that may switch off a lot of would-be users.

It's very interesting to me and I'm enjoying the learning curve!

Thanks for your help.