How can I start the Linux version of the game?
Unfortunately as we are still in development we only support recent versions. I have added a note about requirements on the itch page. We'll review these later in development to include as many distros as possible, but as we don't have a 32 bit machine to test with, it is unlikely we'll ever build for that.
Once we start supporting a platform, we can't stop supporting it, and we are committing to solving all problems with that platform. We can't do that unless we have hardware to test on. Compatibility modes like you mention are useful tools, but they are never the same as the real hardware, and there remains a risk of platform specific bugs slipping through.