Weird that wifi doesn't work, maybe it's 5ghz on iphone and your laptop doesn't support?
Anyway you could try bluetooth tethering, it could be a bit slower than usb but it's more convenient, just keeping both in the same room should get good signal. I had no problems on android + linux using blueman.
I think mint uses blueberry, dunno if it supports tethering too, but it's pretty easy to switch from one to the other.
Star Ruler 2, the company closed down and open sourced the game, it's a space 4X real time, has pretty good fleet combat and u can design ships, i think wasn't popular because the resource management and card system is a bit weird and harder to understand than other strategy games, but pretty fun after u get used to it...
based.cooking