no complaint, I saw that longest journey has troubles with nvidia drivers above 190, but I still got the game and unfortunately it crashes. So I tried getting it to run under ubuntu/wine with different setups (win98,win200,winxp), but no dice, it either crashes or you can't use the ingame dialogue windows. So right now I'm trying to install it into a windows xp virtual machine. I'm gonna report back how that went ,
wish me luck ;)
UPDATE:
virtualbox 3.0.6 - winxp-sp3 VM - works like a charm and even scales down to 800x600, so no stretched fullscreen for me. unfortunately the cursor leaves artifacts behind if you move it over the gamescreen.......will keep trying to fix it.

same problem here with a Nvidia card and the recent driver...the computer freezes shortly after start of the game. I really would like to get the game running without installing VM.

I was able to get the game running but had to use software for the 3D graphics rather then letting it use my NVidia card.
In the preferences.ini file found at %appdata%/The Longest Journey/ change bool_UseHardware=1 to be 0
This is more taxing on the CPU I think but aside from that I don't see any problems with this.
Edit: Looks like this is only functioning properly in window mode as I just tried full screen and it froze on "Please Wait..." So, put this in your preferences.ini: bool_StartFullscreen=0

I just tried this on mine, but the game still boots in full screen and I still the get the same problem I had before. Manually ending the game.

here the game under linux had some problem too
(FC11 nvidia card on laptop)
on cedega it played well but the sprites of the people doesn't show!!!
on wine some shadow of sprite showed but flicker and there is no soud (likely bad wine-pulse audio interaction, not game specific)
after seeing some notes for the windows users i tried to fiddle with some settings of the graphic card and the preferences.ini (the ones in /Documents and Settings/User/Application Data/The Longest Journey in cedega)
what i have now is that the cedega version goes is usable, but the sprites aren't complete and some time flicker...
still working on a better solution.
edit:
the .ini modification that make the sprite to appear albeit with some problem is to put
bool_IsDoubleBuffer=0
instead of =1
there is still at least one problem, in every screen there seems to be a different line, where the part of the sprite over or under it seem is visible and the other part not...
i'll try some other modif but not sure perfect grafic is obtainable.

Thank you all for posting about this problem.
I'm not an adventure game fan but everybody recommends it and I was about to buy it.
Now I know to avoid it unless GOG comes up with a fix, if they can. I need the latest driver for other games.
edit: I should have said that I WANT to use the latest driver for other games :-)

thank you so much for the tip, I never thought of that. Come on everybody, that is THE solution, you don't need a good CPU to run this old game, any old Pentium/AMD chip upwards should be able to play it. It certainly works on my Core2Duo machine without any troubles...and I don't mind playing windowed since the fullscreen version looks very ugly and is stretched on modern displays.

Nnvidia has just put up a new set of drivers (as of Sep.25 2009) so that might help.
Actually if you can run it in software mode you do not lose that much. The Acellerated graphics are nothing to write home about. There are threads here that tell how you can make the game run in software mode even if you cannot choose that from the menu.

I'm using 195.xx nvidia drivers and the game sputters/becomes unplayable right after the "Prologue" screen (when you first see the characters). I'd like to try a solution where I don't have to use older drivers, but I can't seem to find my AppData folder. It's just not there. I've even done a computer wide search.
I'm using Windows 7 Professional.
Any help would be great as I just bought this.

Organize -> Folder and search options -> View -> Hidden files and folders -> Show hidden files and folders
C:\Users\<your username>\AppData

Glad to see I'm no the only one having this issue as well. Using Win 7 64 Home with a nVidia 9500Gt with latest driver. After the "Prologue" credit, the game freezes. Three people sitting by a fireplace, sound and music appear to still be running. The three finger salute is the only thing that can pull me out of it.
I have edited the .ini in the game folder (set to "0") but when I get to the users folder .ini, it only has a few lines shown. No directx listings are on this file.
I was using nVidia 185 previously but upgraded to the newest driver because of this problem. Any other suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I'm having the same problems with the Demo (good thing that I thought in trying it before buying!). I'm on Windows 7 with nVidia 9800GT. Anyone know a fix? I really wanted this game! :(

It should play OK in Software mode.

Well, the DirectX tip from this thread solved my problem. It's a nVidia error.

I have the dvd version of the game on windows 7 & when i originally tested it out on win 7 I found the driver wouldn't work so I just went back to a previous driver.