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Winex or Cedega is on version 3.2 now, that article is from version 2.

1. Doom 3
2. Cedega
   • BattleField 2
   • Half-Life 2
   • Far Cry
   • Other games
3. Some sort of non-gaming application that uses a graphics card. Having trouble thinking of one now, but I know they exist somewhere ;)

WoW runs flawlessly under Point2Play http://www.transgaming.com/

Cedaga costs $5 per month, it seems. Is there a free option?

Just a note, a glance shows you have a dual boot for WoW. WoW runs flawlessly under Point2Play http://www.transgaming.com/

Be sure to read the forums. The game will run fine using DirectX emulation, but OpenGL mode is much faster. Using OpenGL mode I get faster framerates than I do on a XP pro system using the same settings and hardware. YMMV.

Sure, WINE will lag in features and bugs, but once the API infrastructure is there it's just laziness on the part of game developers to not test on that particular configuration when they release updates.

And what would really be cool(er) is to give them a XPDE session that incorporates their original Windwoes XP profile, yet run every application with WineX. I would love to have the crack accompanied by a webcam feed of them seeing the Linux kernel boot spit all that l33t matter on their screen, and then seeing that their favorite appzzz are like running sooo slow (thanks WineX). Let's start a anticipatory poll on what we would see and pundit from the webcam feed...


1) 8( "Oh no, that hotfix musta got rid of me blue screens of death with more detailed info!"
2) 8D "Finally! Now I'll know Micro$oft's secrets kept on muh compooter."
3) :O "Pan Pan Pan; WTF yo, my console line printer can't take this! Who the hell makes a win virus backwards compatible wit 286? I need to send my pen-pal in Soviet Russia a warning by skipping with 2 meter @#!*&^!"
4) -Z- "Mein Furher, thy boot is mein commnand."
5) (*o*) "From my parents basement in New Jersey, into CowboyNeal's mouth I stab with this bratwurst and dorritos!"

Maybe it's a marketing strategy? Laptops are known to have issues with Linux, and lots of people still have the impression that is hard to get it working with strange hardware. So, when people see a Laptop from HP running Linux it's going to be a shock! And many will associate this with "Linux is Ready for the Desktop"(TM). Then the Linux Desktops will start to appear. Putting that aside, am I the only one who thinks they should include a copy of CEDEGA(http://www.transgaming.com/) with those machines?

I've been running various incarnations of fedora/ubuntu on my desktop/laptop (respectively) for a few years. I'm not a HEAVY DUTY gamer on the PC (turn on the xbox for that) but I do occasionally play games on it.

Half Life 2 was the last one that I really played a LOT. The graphics were amazing and the gameplay awesome! No windows installs in my home though, I found Cedega to be more than up to the task of fulfilling my gaming desires. You might want to check it out: http://www.transgaming.com/

A good video game here and there is worth paying for; you know?

Doom, Quake, Unreal, Neverwinter, Americas Army... oh, and anything in Cedega

Like Wine (The Windows API emulator for *nix variants) with Cedega (ex WineX) and CrossOver Office, there is always a space for the development over open source software from enterprises with restricted licences.

Im sure its been said elsewhere, but I think this is one of the big hurdles that Linux faces. I use Windows almost exclusively. Ive tried a few Linux distros in the past, but there were two things that always sent me back.

First was the games. All the popular games, therefore more money and time dumped into them, are for Windows. I know what Transgaming is doing, Ive even had a subscription there before too. But its too slow. I think OpenGL is partially to blame for this. Theyve always been slower to adapt than Microsoft is with DirectX. DirectX has done a good job of becoming all encompassing too, with video, audio, network play, etc.

Second, is the pain that it is to install almost anything. Skipping over figuring out which version of the file you need (distro, version), now you have to download these packed files which you have to unpackage first, whose instructions are written for a command line. Whens the last time you had to bust out pkunzip to install a program in Windows? The youd have to use Notepad to edit a file. Youd be lucky to find 1 in 10 computer users that even know of a program that will compile C ("What the hell is 'C'?"). RPM is merely OK.

You know, "Wine Is Not An Emulator" WINE? Copy over a few of the files off an old Windows 98 CD + some fonts 'n' libraries and you can be playing "World of Warcraft", "Half-Life 2", "GTA: San Andreas", or whatever else you'd like. And if that fails, just get Cedega for $5. They're for linux, but they work just as well on a Mac. I know, I've tried.

I know you're just kidding, but Half-Life 2 does run on Linux too. :)

Counter-Strike, CS Source, (Steam et. al.), Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2 all work under Cedega. If you don't believe me, try This.

If you want to play games then dual boot, the GNU/Linux community was built around sharing, and if companys don't like that then they can keep out, I do not want to see our community of sharing and helpfulness become dominated by companys that call you a pirate if you share and try to punish you for it.
After reading this http://www.transgaming.com/gavstates.php I will never again promote transgaming! Wine will soon be able to run WoW but if you want to play proprietry games then use windows...being anti-microsoft just because they are rich or something is stupid! Any company that would declare you a criminal for sharing with your friends or anyone can please stay out of the GNU/Linux community, if transgaming are more concerned with making money than with improving society then they should go and make windows software.

"You're screwed if you want to play games though."

Wrong. You may be joking but so many people still buy the "Theres no games for Linux" line that I'll bite. Aside from native Linux versions of games Like UT and other big name FPS theres services like Transgaming's Cedega that will allow people to play most of the big name titles:

"Cedega support hundreds of the top Windows games on Linux, including such blockbuster hits as Max Payne 2, GTA Vice City, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Vietnam, WarCraft III, Diablo II, Half-Life, just to name a few; MMPORG games such as City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest and many many more are also supported."

Then there's the notion that playing games on Linux just takes too much work. As if getting games to run well with Windows OS, sound and video hardware, and various drivers isn't a major pain in the ass.

It's called Cedega by Transgaming. I use it to play WoW, and it works very well. The minimap will occasionally stop working inside buildings/caves/instances if you have it open when you enter it, but that's not a big deal.

• This package was removed from portage tree due to the request from Transgaming. Here is an extract from their email:
  
  The primary reason for the WineX CVS tree being publicly available under the Aladdin Free Public License (AFPL) is to give outside developers who have an interest in the project the ability to track our most current work, and to assist us with code or testing. Our work is very complex though, and only a limited number of developers have the skills required to contribute. The intent of the public CVS tree is *not* to provide a 'free' version of WineX that can be used without paying for it.
  
  We want everyone with an interest in the project to contribute, whether they contribute code, or money to assist us with our development efforts.
  
  We felt that the AFPL was a good compromise to allow that to happen, which is why we chose it.

In your October 2004 interview with VNUnet.com you deny that Microsoft must compete with Linux in your operating systems, going so far as to say that 'nothing could be further from the truth.' With this in mind, why does Microsoft not aid in the development of API's designed to enable Linux-based operating systems to run Microsoft applications? If the Linux community and Microsoft are not competitors, as you claim, it seems to follow that collaboration on such projects as Wine (Win32) and Cedega (DirectX) would do nothing but benefit the community overall, and do much for future interoperability.

I know everybody here is talking about native Linux games, but you should't discount emulated games through Cedega/Transgaming too quickly.

My machine is a P4 2.6 with 1 gig of memory. I've been quite happily playing World of Warcraft now for 2 weeks. Right before that I was playing Doom 3. The games just seem to work. I don't have to mess around with a lot of configuration settings.

I haven't been playing games for very long, but their list of supported games is looking quite nice for someone who doesn't know any better.

Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux. That's when the Linux gaming market will really take off.

WTF does a "stable desktop" have to do with gaming support? There's X and there's ALSA. Why should a game developer worry about what WM I running?

Kinda the point of running Linux as a desktop is the ability to run things how you see fit. Thus, the desktop environment is modular. So, developers just need to write in interfaces to specific pieces ( X, OpenGL/DRI, and ALSA ). How hard is that? That's essentially what the Transgaming folks do; write a software layer to interpret DirectX calls to ALSA and OpenGL.

BTW, all 3 of those titles you mentioned are listed as running "perfectly" using Cedega (formerly WineX http://www.transgaming.com/). I can't tell you how well they really run since I haven't re-upped my subscription (gotta melt the ice cube the credit card is in).

I know this strays away from the current discussion, just thought you might interested to know that you can actually try them out on Linux

5 bucks a month is pretty cheap for outstanding features.

No no you guys are right linux doesnt run games, dont even try. just stick to windows. please. It'll at least keep #linuxhelp clean.

1. "Computers are great for playing games. Why would anyone want to use them for anything else?"
   (Paraphrased from an unknown Mark)
   
   
2. And the game runs well on Linux with many versions of WineX/Cedega.
   

Highly recommended.

- shazow

Any attempt to reverse engineer this will certainly not be helped along by Microsoft and given the complexity of the DirectX libraries, which include routines for sound, 2D and 3D drawing, feedback devices, and many others, the task would be extremely difficult at best.

Pay Valve, start steam, play game, done.

How is this any different under Linux, exactly? That's exactly what I did, now it takes me maybe 10 seconds to select the icon from my panel and be searching through servers.

and you cannot tell me that my framerate will be as good under Linux - because it will not be.

Admittedly this does depend, mine is the same, however if you look in the Transgaming website and/or forums, you'll see many/most people actually run at a far better FPS, I can't remember why exactly, but there's a reason behind it.

I want to play my game and NOT take the extra "20" min involved - for each game I play that is 20 min too long.

Y'know, I meant it's a maximum 20 minutes to install Cedega (that's if you're a real Linux newb, if you know what you're doing it should be more like 5mins finding/doing the download, and 3 minutes installation time), it's not 20 minutes set up per game.

I strongly suggest you look up the Transgaming Website so you can dispell some of these myths you've picked up, or which used to be true.

Gee whiz folks, we've got UT2004 with a NATIVE PORT, we've got Doom 3 with a NATIVE PORT (excellent port thank you ID), HL2 plays under Cedega (you need a brute of a CPU tho.) Lots of games with nice installers: Check out http://liflg.org/ for installers for the best games.

People cry that it's too hard to get your video to work; I'm really sorry you were too cheap to get the GeForce Go 5200 and got the Intel "Extreme" integrated graphics and now your pixel shader games look crappy. Nevertheless, UT2004 and the UT2004 DEMO play under linux with the DRI drivers.

Stop complaining, Loki is gone, but http://icculus.org/ is still around, and several of those guys WORKED for loki. If you want it EASY, you want GAMES then either USE WINDOWS or buy an X-Box. If you prefer Linux and are willing to expend the time and energy (and reap the rewards of what you learn) then USE LINUX and play the games that work well, there are a bloody AWFUL lot of games that work, work well and aren't that difficult to set up.

Take a little time, subscribe to http://www.transgaming.com/, make a little donation to http://liflg.org/, buy products from http://www.nvidia.com/ and shut up & enjoy the games!

Cedega. http://www.transgaming.org/ http://www.transgaming.com/ Works great for me and no need for Windows at home ... I played Everquest with Cedega up until November of 2004 and then moved on to World Of Warcraft. These games play flawlessly. It's not free for the packaged version but the CVS installs are. I pay $5 a month to support the project and well worth every dollar.

Cedega/WineX (based off Wine) is more or less what you just described. It's not exactly free ($5 a month) but it plays most high-profile games with decent sucess. There's also a free CVS version, but from what I've heard it's not as up to date or complete. However, if you're looking to play a game that has never been that popular, good luck. It may work, but chances are some API feature isn't implemented yet.

Why can't someone port the Direct3D API to Linux? This would save a lot of hassle of porting the games to OpenGL.

Well, with Cedega (formerly WineX), they basically have...

Still, with porting to OpenGL, you get the benefit of not having to use a runtime Direct3D-to-OpenGL translator (which is essentially what Wine/WineX/Cedega uses), and you're also a step closer to the OpenGL-only Mac.

It seems to run on WINE for me, but I've only ran it for maybe 3 minutes now. I'm using TransGaming's Cedega (formerly WineX) version of WINE to run it though, so I'm not quite sure if it works with plain WINE.

-b0lt

Cedega runs HL2. I'm not sure if WINEHQ WINE does, but it's possible. No need to run Windows just for HL2.

The problem is anti-copy protections. This guy uses software such as Daemon Tools that emulates what is needed by those algorithms. The Linux driver doesn't do that.

However TransGaming is known to solve the copy-protection problems with their Cedega product, but for a limited list of supported games.

Well, ALSA has 3D audio support for Sound Blaster Live! cards (I get 4 channel sound from my DVDs when played with Mplayer using the alsa audio output on my SB Live! 5.1).

And since version 2, WineX has been able to translate DirectSound 3D into ALSA's 3D API.

Does Diablo 2 use DirectSound 3D or just EAX?

Cedega is a non-free version of wine with directx capabilities. You can browse their supported games here.

Of course not all games now-a-days require wine or cedega in order to run on linux. Games like unreal tournament and doom III include fully functional linux versions.

There are several open source games developed for but not limited to linux. torcs, flightgear, tuxracer are some examples.

Projects like libsdl are making cross-platform game development easier.

Probably the biggest problem you'll encounter is building drivers for your video card. I've heard it argued both ways but as I understand it, both nvidia and ati drivers are ass-pains in linux. Nvidia's drivers are free as in beer, not speech. If you don't really care about free-software principles and philosophy then this is not a problem for you. ATI's drivers I understand to perform less than ideally. If you haven't already purchased your video card, I would encourage you to do extensive research beforehand.

In reality, linux distributions have few differences. Any recent, major distribution should be able to accomodate gameplay. I myself use debian unstable for amd64.

As far as performance, it really boils down to hardware. My advice is to install the linux distribution of your choice. Once you get glxgears to run, give ut2004demo a try, and if you like the way it works, then stick with linux.

One thing that bugs me is the limited audio enhancements in gaming. No EAX support since CL doesn't make Linux drivers nor share it for driver creators. Even with Transgaming for old Diablo 2, I could not enable EAX/3D sound for my old SB Live! card.

Has this been improved yet? I don't play games in Linux these days.

As for gaming on Linux, a nice stop-gap measure until true native support is implemented (at the code level) is Cedega (formerly WineX). It currently supports Half Life 2 (for all you cutting-edge gamer types), among many others. They frequently add games to the compatibility list, and they add old favorites as well as bledding-edge titles. Well worth the $15 (but I'll bet you can even leech off P2P if you're that damn cheap). I recently bought Windows CDROMs of Medal of Honor and Battlefield: 1942 and installed them on my Linux box with no problems. I realize those aren't exactly hot off the press games, but to see them install and then actually work was truly beautiful.

Go on, check it out.

Cedega (from Transgaming) is good for games and Crossoveroffice is good for office-apps. I hope they soon merge their code into wine.

Yours, Gery

Wine is the name of the opensource project (that started the whole thing).

Then theres a fork of Wine made by Codeweavers called Crossover Office (and originally Crossover Plugin). The Codeweavers product is aimed at (you've already guessed if you don't know) office/productivity software support, like Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, Windows Media Player and more recendly iTunes. Codeweavers gives their improvements back to the community (I'm not sure Transgaming does).

Of course the product we are talking about here is TransGaming's Cedega, which is yet another fork from the original Wine project (was previously called WineX). They of course support games, directx and proprietary safedisk copy protection schemes.

Both products apparently try to avoid stepping on eachothers toes (so to speak). And both products approach licensing very differently (after forking from Wine proper, Transgaming had a bit of scandel about not giving back, old story).

Personally, I think its pretty funny loading up IE or Word under Linux. Its also pretty nice being able to use Photoshop and Dreamweaver without having to dual boot.

Cedega currently supports DirectX 9.0b - the support was added about two versions (e.g. 4 months or so) back.

The last version (released several weeks ago) speed up quite a few 3D operations etc. You can read more about it here.

If you want to know which games work in it and which don't, go here

HTH,

Tels

Transgaming claims they got DirectX9 support since the release of WineX4 (Cedega):
Here's the news item:
http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=119
Although this is some time (and Cedega Releases) ago, most DirectX9 games do not work with Cedega but only few selected Titles.

There was a version of the Sims that was ported to Linux.

It is $15 for a 3 month subscription. It does renew but you can either cancel the subscription or use a one time credit card number to sign up.

Here's the Transgamming forum.
291 votes in less than a week? Well seems they have some users who want it.

Take care,
-Gav

"Cedega allows Windows-based games to run on Linux, out-of-the-box, seamlessly and transparently. With Cedega, TransGaming does not require any access to a game's source code but, rather, runs the Windows executable on Linux. In simplified terms, Cedega loads a game's binary into memory on a Linux system and then dynamically links to code that provides an implementation of the Win32 APIs that the program is using."

-- http://www.transgaming.com/products_linux.php

"Cedega allows Windows-based games to run on Linux, out-of-the-box, seamlessly and transparently. With Cedega, TransGaming does not require any access to a game's source code but, rather, runs the Windows executable on Linux. In simplified terms, Cedega loads a game's binary into memory on a Linux system and then dynamically links to code that provides an implementation of the Win32 APIs that the program is using."

-- http://www.transgaming.com/products_linux.php

Cedega is not Open Source software. We make no bones about this. Some of the code is available under the AFPL, and we release other portions under the X11 and LGPL licenses to share with the ReWind and Wine community occasionally, but our core technology will not be released. You can read more about some of the related issues in my column here.

As far as Final Fantasy XI goes, we have not done any work on it, and I have no idea whether or not it works. We do our work based on our users' votes, so if you're interested, subscribe and vote for it!

Steam and Half Life both work. Half Life 2 has been consistently voted #1 on our lists for several months, but as it's not released yet, we can't really talk about support for it at this time.

Finally, benchmarks can vary significantly depending on the application and the system. Some titles run as fast as they do in Windows, others are slower (some significantly so), and we sometimes get reports of a title running faster under Linux for some users. You can check out our forums for more info on what works well.

Take care,

-Gav

This is not a troll post. I don't think Linux will dominate the world as long as some games, like The Sims 2, doesn't work. Check out Transgaming for more information.