debian
Viewing post in i cant use linux for the life of me
The latest stable version of Debian is 12. So yes, the problem is that you're using a very old version of Linux, and it's recommended that you try to upgrade to a more recent one.
Some games will work for you; for example, a game created with Ren'Py 7 will probably work, but if someone is using the latest version of Ren'Py (I think it's 8.4), you'll have problems with those games.
You are running a 17 year old Debian? Letme guess. You obtained a second hand laptop or something like that ;-)
You can try the web version of the game. The developer links to one on the page. It is not on the index. If the game keeps crashing, maybe your hardware is as outdated as your operating system. Or other parts of the operating system are just too old.
It has been a while since I touched a Debian, but it was rather update friendly. But maybe you need to push it to the newer versions, as it tries to keep your system stable by not updating things like the kernel. If you recently aquired the device, you might want to try switching to a new linux distribution. If you are unfamiliar with linux, you might want to try one of the more user friendly distributions. Like Ubuntu. That is also a Debian, but with bells and whistles.
Your things should all be in /home and wherever you saved your downloads or whatever custom folders you created.
If you can make a backup of the data, I suggest you do that and think about installing a new linux distribution from sratch.
You seem unfamiliar with debian, so you might want to take the opportunity to switch to some more userfriendly options. I hear good things about Ubuntu in that regard.
The reason to make a backup, apart from the obvious, if you do an install, your file system might get wiped, if you press certain buttons.
You can also incrementially upgrade your Debian, but that might take some time. The recommended procedure is to upgrade 5 to 6 and then to 7 and then to 8 .... till you arrive at 12.
The commands are different for an upgrade. It is not the same as an update. Updating means, to fetch the newest versions in your update channel. Which might be version 5, stable. Or something like that. What you need is an upgrade from that channel to the next version.
You can google how to do that https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+upgrade+debian+5+to+6&ia=web
But seriously, consider switching to a more user easy to use linux distribution. Debian is not geared towards casual users.