LINUX and games

[navyholdi99]

You all will have to pardon my ignorance...but I'm really interested on putting Linux on my 5660. I've done some UNIX in the past back in college...but it's been four years since I've touched it. I'm sure it'll come back to me after awhile, though. I've been doing a lot of reading tonight and it's really peaking my interest.

What about games, though? I'm a huge gamer...how do they perform with Linux? I tried searching the forums but nothing came up...so sorry if it's already been asked. Do you have to play them through a virtual machine (I don't even know if I'm using the context correctly there...sorry!!)? I'm talking about BF1942, JKII, MOHAA(S), AAO and the like. Would it be worth double booting with windows for gaming alone...or can Linux hack it by itself? Online gaming work, too?

Sorry for the noob questions!! Any info would be great! Thanks guys!

- NavyHoldi

[Yale2006]

Originally posted by navyholdi99
You all will have to pardon my ignorance...but I'm really interested on putting Linux on my 5660. I've done some UNIX in the past back in college...but it's been four years since I've touched it. I'm sure it'll come back to me after awhile, though. I've been doing a lot of reading tonight and it's really peaking my interest.

What about games, though? I'm a huge gamer...how do they perform with Linux? I tried searching the forums but nothing came up...so sorry if it's already been asked. Do you have to play them through a virtual machine (I don't even know if I'm using the context correctly there...sorry!!)? I'm talking about BF1942, JKII, MOHAA(S), AAO and the like. Would it be worth double booting with windows for gaming alone...or can Linux hack it by itself? Online gaming work, too?

Sorry for the noob questions!! Any info would be great! Thanks guys!

- NavyHoldi

Um, my CS teaching assistants complain about this ALL the time: Linux has a very scarce list of big-budget games. Personally, I play Chromium once in a while. Some of the better known linux releases include Quake III and Unreal Tournament.

Cheers.

[denkc]

You should be able to find some info on playing windows games using linux online somewhere, but if you're going to use Linux, WINE is the windows emulator that should be able to open a few of the windows programs, not just games.

[Yale2006]

Originally posted by denkc
You should be able to find some info on playing windows games using linux online somewhere, but if you're going to use Linux, WINE is the windows emulator that should be able to open a few of the windows programs, not just games.

OH, c'mon! You know WINE leaves -A LOT- to be desired.

Cheers.

[dirtboy]

http://www.linuxgames.com/ for news

http://www.tuxgames.com/ for purchase

[skot]

You can get current games for linux from www.tuxgames.com, BUT you have to pay for them--wish everything could be free for linux ;)

[Skye-Taltos]

Basically, dual-booting is your best option if you're a gamer. Me, I do XP Pro and SuSE 8.1.

You can f*** around w/ WINE all you want, but you'll barely be able to get much running, much less try to Lan with it.

[denkc]

Originally posted by Yale2006
OH, c'mon! You know WINE leaves -A LOT- to be desired.

Cheers.

Well...I couldn't get it to work. So...agreed.

[laclasse]

Bah, i run CS, Half life, Alice in Wonderland, SoFII and Max Paine under wine, and winex ( commercial version from transgaming). Original Linux version i run are Q3Arena, UT(linux installer for the Windows CD avalaible), UT2003, SoF I Loki version, flightgear, tuxracer ;), and trying the NWN client for linux, still not working btw. Tony Hawk Pro Skater III is really a pain to make it work, and haven't succeed yet.


Agreed, Yale2006, wine is still not a perfect game launching pad, and far from ir. Numerous problems of compat, fonts, screen size can be observed all over, but remember this is pure reverse engineering, and there for running Max Paine on linux is quite an achievement from the Wine team ;)

If gaming is really your concern, then yes you should dual boot, as no platform is better for games than windows. But hey dual boot ;) especially if you are 'Unix fluent', you will have fun ;)

[Yale2006]

Originally posted by laclasse
Bah, i run CS, Half life, Alice in Wonderland, SoFII and Max Paine under wine, and winex ( commercial version from transgaming). Original Linux version i run are Q3Arena, UT(linux installer for the Windows CD avalaible), UT2003, SoF I Loki version, flightgear, tuxracer ;), and trying the NWN client for linux, still not working btw. Tony Hawk Pro Skater III is really a pain to make it work, and haven't succeed yet.


Agreed, Yale2006, wine is still not a perfect game launching pad, and far from ir. Numerous problems of compat, fonts, screen size can be observed all over, but remember this is pure reverse engineering, and there for running Max Paine on linux is quite an achievement from the Wine team ;)

If gaming is really your concern, then yes you should dual boot, as no platform is better for games than windows. But hey dual boot ;) especially if you are 'Unix fluent', you will have fun ;)

Well, it seems to me like it would be a much better idea to get someone to write some video-card wrapper drivers for VMware. I mean, the way WINE works, it's essentially this giant balloon with a lot of holes and filled with water, and you have to keep patching it all over the place. But as soon as you move one hand from one hole to patch another one, the water comes out through there. So it just looks to me like a severely misguided effort. Instead, with VMWare you a running a much cleaner system, without any crap leaking out [or well, for the most part]. I don't know if it would be at all possible to do any of that in VMware, due to its abstraction layer, but given that linux has gotten "thousands" of developers everywhere, they really should give it a try.

Oh, and Alice was such a good game!... I played it all the way through at least three times. It wasn't overhyped at all, as some people might have you believe.

Cheers.

[BazooDJG]

http://www.transgaming.com

This is WineX a windows emulator made for the purpose of gaming.

[laclasse]

Yep the binary version of winex can be obtained against a subscription of 5 USD/per month, or you can download the cvs version of the developpement one for free ( via cvs ) and try to compile it on your machine.

The real benefit of the commercial version is the support for InstallShield6.0....So it is a must for Max Paine. If ya really want to try hard windows games on linux, i recommend having both, the built one, and the commercial one, for example Half Life/CS runs better on my machine with the dll cvs version than with winex. Damn still no go with THPS3......

[BazooDJG]

I s'pose the only UNIX THPS3 runs on is mac os x then... :P. Going to enjoy my short-lived moment in the sun.

[Yale2006]

Originally posted by laclasse
Yep the binary version of winex can be obtained against a subscription of 5 USD/per month, or you can download the cvs version of the developpement one for free ( via cvs ) and try to compile it on your machine.

The real benefit of the commercial version is the support for InstallShield6.0....So it is a must for Max Paine. If ya really want to try hard windows games on linux, i recommend having both, the built one, and the commercial one, for example Half Life/CS runs better on my machine with the dll cvs version than with winex. Damn still no go with THPS3......

Yeah, good luck with that.

Cheers.

[GrandMasterLee]

I use it to play about 10 different games. Winex 3.0 will finally support more newer games. Even if not officially supported, Winex let's most Directx based windows games work fine. Even if transgaming's "support" stance is not very high.

I like winex, I pay 5 bucks a month to support them, because they give back to the wine project. I don't mind funding some open source development, even if some of it can't be allowed to be free. The end result is that the wine project still benefits. Same with CodeWeavers Wine. Why do you think that the default wine tree can now run microsoft Office.