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Sorry... but I searched for "linux" and found a forum, a wiki article and a bunch of operating systems related to it. So... which one could I play World of Tanks on?

All of them

Try this.

Playonlinux is a pretty good solution to the WINE problem. It has a database of games that knows which wine version to install, which addons are needed, etc.

Although, if you're using an AMD GPU, you might have some issues. Not sure if the newer AMDGPU driver fixes the glitches/performance issues that the opensource radeon driver has.

Thankfully, many games coming out now have a native Linux port.

There are, of course, lots of older games that do not run on Linux

Indeed. Very good point.

For the older titles, please give GOG a look. They are wonderful publisher of older and some newer titles without DRM. They have released many old titles with Linux support. Perhaps your favourite titles have Linux port there.

https://www.gog.com/

Of course that means purchasing the game you already bought before again...

Finally there is WINE. That is the absolute last resort as using it is not user-friendly at all! I recommend you try Play On Linux. If there is an install script for your game, it will just set everything up for you quite smoothly.

Barring all those options, sorry: Looks like you will either need to find a way to block those mandatory Windows updates or embrace Windows 10.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Running a recent version of Linux Mint with the MATE desktop
http://linuxmint.com/

Create a big 4GB casper file on the USB stick.

Have it mount the existing hard disk and create shortcuts so they can get to their photos and stuff.
Maybe put on http://www.playonlinux.com/en/ to help get some of the old Windows software working under Wine

Bring a new stick with you over the holidays with upgrades.

They may or may not use it (they can just remove the USB stick and reboot to go back to their old getup), but at least you feel good that you've done "your part" without spending more than a few hours downloading and twiddling while you're there, and they don't go running off to all their friends complaining about how you came and now their computer is all different.

Yep, I'm heavily addicted to World of Tanks at the moment.
It's playable under Linux and is straightforward to install using http://www.playonlinux.com/ (though lately I've had to turn torrents off in the WoT updater, or find and download their torrent files separately before relaunching their updater). My frame rate appears limited, but supposedly it helps to configure PlayOnLinux to use a newer version of Wine with the CSMT patch (to offload rendering to another CPU core). Audio still sounds pretty crappy under Linux, which is a lot of the fun with a good subwoofer, so mrrr.

On to gameplay, it's pretty well balanced, and you can have just as much fun at lower tiers than some of the higher ones. The game mechanic and learning curve is quite a bit higher than your average shooter... before you get frustrated, you'll want to read up on how the camouflage system works, since a lot of the game mechanic is more hide-n-seek than twitch-n-shoot (though really there are tanks that you can play either way). Above all, I love how player skill and teamwork is still more important than, say, crew stats (which certainly help load the dice in your favor when you land shots, but aren't the end-all-be-all like in most MMORPGs / RTSs).

PlayOnLinux also makes it pretty easy, and explicitly supports a lot of GOG installers... Currently enjoying Neverwinter Nights from the GOG Insomnia sale on my Linux music production rig. Still, native versions are nice, and I won't buy a game from them if I have reason to suspect a native version is available.

Get Play On Linux http://www.playonlinux.com/en/, (your distro might distribute it). It comes with user contributed install scripts for a variety of games (from CD/DVDs, GoG, Steam, etc), which will download the version of wine with the best compatibility / least regressions for a particular title, install needed runtimes, do all the winetricks magic needed and install the games. I've installed a few old GoG games and some newer ones. I'm playing Skyrim through PoL now and it runs (with DLC, high rest textures, and a handful of mods) just fine. Give it a shot, even if you dont have a GPU that will run the highest end games, you can get most of the classics through GoG and install/play them with PoL.

already own (older games)... would be really stretching it. A Linux version of new big title games would be a gigantic improvement over the current state. Looks like Linux users at least have Steam games to look forward to including... SKYRIM!!!.

Funny how crazy marketing / another crappy OS can remove the chains off the competition. Reminds me of what happened to Apple... oh wait what's going* to happen to apple.

umm, like http://www.playonlinux.com/ ?

Have you tried Play on Linux? http://www.playonlinux.com/

And yes, Wine is an option, but with the amount of tweaking needed to run most titles, it's a pain in the butt and beyond the average desktop user

Have you heard of PlayOnLinux? For games it supports, it will take care of installing DLLS and tweaking configs for you. It's basically a substitute for manually using Winetricks and regedit.

I don't use it myself but it does mitigate your complaint. It's frequently mentioned in the comments on the Wine AppDB.

• a) A redesign of the web site would be good. Any modern Wordpress theme looks better than the site.
• b) a new logo, the LGP looks very old-fashion, it's like a logo for an old book publisher.
• c) the site is very slow to load;
• d) they should invest in Wine development, or in the development of Play For Linux;
• e) why do I have to log-in first if I want to buy a game? There are lot of sites where I can just buy their stuff without a registration. Make a basket style like in every other shop website.
• f) there is no FAQ section. There should be questions answered like, what Linux distribution the games can be played, is there DRM protections, can I download the games, how long an order will take, etc;
• g) the site is sooo slow...

I don't always play games, but when I do I always choose PlayOnLinux.

Stay thirsty my friends!

Just the other day i discovered Play On Linux which fits this need.

While games are a primary feature it includes support for many of the common apps as well.

In addition to apps with built in support you can find scripts in their forum for recent versions of Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and the like

.

One of the easiest ways to manage Wine versions and installing games: http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

My god, Wine has no use whatsoever

roflbullshit.

You must've never tried it.

Here, this makes it easy: http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

It has a lot of games. Compatible with hundreds, it appears.

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

But installing them is still round-about.

Have you tried http://www.playonlinux.com? I believe I saw a predefined setting for GTA.

There are a handful of options; many are actually quite good/enjoyable. Several that I've found quite enjoyable are Battle for Wesnoth (decent storyline and enjoyable turn based strategy with cute/good 2D graphics), Freeciv (Civilization clone), Freecol (Colonization clone), Open and Alien Arena (decent FPS games, more humorous most of the time than the original Q3A, and people still play online), Frozen Bubble (sadly addictive), Teeworlds (2D FPS based on the Q3 engine, IIRC, with some really humorous animation/gameplay - think multiplayer Kirby, but with guns). Vegastrike is very, very similar to the Privateer games from the early 1990s (which I absolutely loved), and is decent fun (albeit not as polished). There's also a Railroad Tycoon type game out there, can't recall what it's called. It really depends on what your flavor is: there are a lot of high quality games out there which are absolutely free (high quality, in terms of gameplay; the graphics do tend to be slightly lacking compared to modern contemporaries, but they're still at least close.)

A top games for linux google turns up a fair amount of information. It all depends on what kind of games you like.

Alternatively, there's also PlayOnLinux, which is a great project enabling very easy installation and playing of many popular Windows games (some of which run markedly better under Linux, ironically). Short of concurrency issues with Fallout 3 (making it essentially unplayable), the actual -performance- of Fallout 3 was better under linux was better for me than it was under XP or W7.

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

If you technically have some older Windows games this little wizard-repository-for-wine sets up games for you.

If you want something newer, noiz2sa is really neat. It's a 2D shooter, but... I'll let the reader find out what's neat about it.

http://tremulous.net/files/

Tremulous is a very unique FPS. Two sides: Humans and wall-climbing aliens. Check it out.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Wesnoth is a hexagonal turn-based-strategy. I find it quite fun, though at times the random number generator can be annoying. (Don't ask...)

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

If you've got any relatively new Windows games, check out PlayOnLinux. It manages multiple versions of Wine, and the installation of games. I've got it on an Ubuntu box, and it works great for stuff like Diablo II - old classics. ;) Apparently it also works quite well for a bunch of newer games - the list of supported ones is about 200 long.

And if you're looking for flash based games, there's two sites that are absolutely the best:
http://www.miniclip.com/
http://www.armorgames.com/

Honourable mention - Penumbra. (The survival horror series, with native linux versions. Around $10 each, but right now they seem to be bundling all three.)

Wine is making a lot of headway, but a neat helper program allows you to install things easily and with a pretty good GUI called http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

It uses scripts that has their own format to install Wine with a special setup that's taken care of by PlayOnLinux and the script. I think it's a great idea, and all that's needed is more scripts.