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• FLGRX 3.7: Screensavers work fine, but that's about it.
• FLGRX 3.9: Winex still crashes, UT2004 still crashes, but Neverwinter Nights runs fine, with a few bugs.
• FLGRX 3.11 (what I use currently with a mobility FireGL T2): NWN runs beautifully with all the bells and whistles (1024x768 at 32 bit). UT2004 runs okay at 1024x768x32 with some high quality textures and dynamic lighting @ ~28 FPS (UT2004 used to crash a lot on my ATI-based setups, but it seemed to stabilize with the UT2004 3323 patch). Winex still barfs on me
• FLGRX 3.14.1: This is the latest and greatest(?) driver you can get for SuSE. Prelminary testing shows Alien Swarm runs decent now, but Winex still barfs on me. I will try the Doom installer later today, and respond with my own benchmarks on a 2GHz T42 Thinkpad with 2G and a 128MB Mobility FireGL T2.
• 
  If you just follow SuSE's instructions at the link I provided, you should be fine.
  
  Solomon Chang

http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=111 7

Apparently not.

You dont need to be a transgaming subscriber to run Doom 3 under linux. You need to use the CVS version - which is available free for download from the transgaming website Here

Still ... would be nice to have a native version sooner!

Nick ...

IAmTheRealMike:

Thanx for the post. Your post is exactly the reason why I love codeweavers (installed their free RPMs quite some time ago, run some big windows app under them without a hitch!) and despise transgaming. I mean, can you take someone serious who writes bollocks like cross-pollination == technical synergy?

Best wishes,

Tels

Actually, CS has been broken since the last update to Steam, unless you install it via point2play. Weird. But all the other games I play work like a charm. Check out Transgamings site for the full list (maybe wait until the slashdotting wears off...).

http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=117 1

It is very possible to play windows games on linux, and I do it a lot. I think the meme that linux can't play games is wrong. It won't play all games, sure. But it sure plays a lot of good ones.

Oh, come on, give the man some money

imo tbh you can't be GPL compliant, use and compile 3rd party GPL code, and charge people money for it without the expressed consent of the contributing authors.

Your opinion, if I understand this sentence, is incorrect. The only requirement the GPL makes is that you make the source available, with the same rights. Therefore, he can charge all he wants for binaries, as long as he releases the source he used to get them. See the GPL

Don't believe me (and are too lazy to read the GPL)? Here are some "intuitive" proofs:

• RedHat sells linux binaries, along with much much GPL software, without the express consent of every contributor.
• SuSE sells linux binaries, along with much much GPL software, without the express consent of every contributor.
• Transgaming sells specialized Wine binaries on a subscription basis, without the express consent of every contributor. This is perhaps the best example, as they also provide the source in a manner similar to what should (probably) be done with xchat.

In summary: to make the mess go away, Zed can probably just post the xchat windows source tree in CVS, caveat emptor. Won't stop someone else from compiling it, or even selling it, but then same deal with Transgaming, and they're doing pretty well. IANAL and all.

Transgaming already has a subscription service for their product Cedaga. And I do see a lot more companies moving to this model. Open source is gaining momentum, and the "support subscription" model is probably going to be one of the only ways that these companies can make money off of it.

The StarForce games I've looked up in Transgaming's search page don't work for a variety of reasons -- a few of the failures seem to be related to copy protection issues.

That said, I'm glad to see the list that was posted where there are cracks available. Maybe that will 'fix' the problem?

With plain jane Wine, I was able to play American McGee's Alice -- though a crack was necessary to eliminate a message that asked me to "please unload all debuggers". (Alice uses Safedisc and is handled natively with Cedega.)

That said, I mostly play native games under Linux and don't use Wine/Cedega at all. There are plenty of them.

The StarForce games I've looked up in Transgaming's search page don't work for a variety of reasons -- a few of the failures seem to be related to copy protection issues.

That said, I'm glad to see the list that was posted where there are cracks available. Maybe that will 'fix' the problem?

With plain jane Wine, I was able to play American McGee's Alice -- though a crack was necessary to eliminate a message that asked me to "please unload all debuggers". (Alice uses Safedisc and is handled natively with Cedega.)

That said, I mostly play native games under Linux and don't use Wine/Cedega at all. There are plenty of them.

Transgaming is a Canadian-based company so the DMCA, although not totally immune to them, does not apply to them directly.

... this is a pretty interesting point. Cedega (formerly WineX) does not have support for most of the new copy protection mechanisms around, and mentions as much in their documentation. This means that you can install and run pirated games in Linux that you wouldn't be able to in Windows.

I mention this not to promote piracy, but because it raises an interesting legal point - Transgaming are technically selling a product that allows you to circumvent copy protection - granted, in a very broad sense. But I wonder how long they'll be allowed to proceed before getting smacked down under the new US laws designed to prevent this sort of thing.

Transgaming is selling a product based on Wine, a totally free software project. TransGaming has added to that codebase, but without contributing most of those additions back to the Wine codebase.

About 30 second son Google shows otherwise. You can hear it from the horse's mouth: http://www.transgaming.com/sources.php. Enjoy your CVS access to the WineX codebase, under fairly non-suck license. Transgaming contributes their improvements to Wine back to the community except for the parts they are legally bound to keep proprietary.

I am not happy about this new trend of "anti-piracy" mechanisms. It really does suck, but at least let's rail them for what they're doing wrong and not for what they are doing right.

You can download and build the CVS version yourself: cvs instructions.

It's not lying.... All they can do is threaten to stop offering the CVS.

In fact, the license says upfront why they provide the CVS and that they would prefer that people not use it to distribute binaries, etc.

It's not lying.... All they can do is threaten to stop offering the CVS.

In fact, the license says upfront why they provide the CVS and that they would prefer that people not use it to distribute binaries, etc.

but the point remains that all machine code is executed right on the CPU

That's not too meaningful. Yes, if the machine code was executed in software, then it would be impossibly slow, instead of just painfully slow.

But VMWare and Win4Lin also execute all machine code on the native CPU- and they provide speed almost indistinguishable from running Windows alone. (Because, of course, they are running the actual Windows, and Microsoft's implementation of Windows is far faster than Wine can ever be)

However, as I mentioned before, over the course of computing history, the term "emulation" has come to imply that an extra software layer is emulating machine language

If a large group chooses to use a different meaning for a word, that's their choice- but they have no right to insist that other people using the original meaning are wrong, as "Wine Is Not an Emulator" does.

Under such a system, the emulated binary will always run significantly slower than it would natively under comparable hardware.

No. Not necessarily. You are talking about "realtime emulation", which again is a specific subset (and again, the most common subset). As the program counter moves through each instruction, it is read, and then instructions to an equivalent effect are executed on the host. But there is also pre-execution emulation, exemplified by UltraHLE, which overwrites each instruction with a native one, once only. As you can imagine, this is supremely faster. (But not compatible with all possible programs on all possible hardware)

I think in general you'll have really good luck, speedwise.

No I won't. I've tried heavy-duty Windows apps under Wine, and also the proprietarialy-improved WineX (now called Cedega). Wine sometimes allows a program to run, but it frequently fails due to incomplete features. Cedega provides enough additional features so that many more programs can actually work (in particular, installers can complete), but the performance never comes close to fooling anyone.

In my own video-game tests, a 500mhz Celeron with an NVidia GeForce2MX with WinXP beat an Athlon 1700 with GeForceFX5700 using Cedega on Linux, by sometimes 60% FPS. (Other versions of Wine were even slower)

but it bears repeating that any slowness is the result of nonoptimal code

The code is nonoptimal because of the emulation. I've examined the technical reasons for Wine's sometimes huge slowness, and it comes down to one main thing. Linux systems are split into more different processes than Windows, so an function that a Windows app expects to have serviced immediately instead takes at least 3 process time-slices as we wait first for the separate server to wake up and respond, and then wait again for the app to reactivate and proceed onward.

You can hardly accuse Wine of "nonoptimal code" for that problem- the only way they could avoid it is to integrate Wine, Wineserver, and XFree86 into a single huge process space. And then it's not so much "running Windows applications on Linux", because your system no longer resembles a usual "Linux" desktop environment.

(The other approach that could work would be to dynamically re-write the application's function calls as it loads, replacing Windows/DirectX things with Linux/OpenGL equivalents. I've never heard of it being tried, though... but if it worked, the application would be very fast, after the initial delay is over)

(the menuing system in Half-Life, in particular, suffers from a problem here, or the opening movies on the Half-Life games)

Note that Half-Life isn't new; in fact, it was released six years ago! And it's overwhelming popularity across that time has made it a focus of Wine's developers (featured on their homepage, etc). Yet, as you mention, Half-Life still doesn't work decently. That's a lesson as to how useful Wine is likely to be.

True... Windows does make it easy. unless you are some huge linux zealot, don't try getting new games to work.

My version of World of Warcraft Beta is running just fine on Linux using Transgaming's Point2Play and Cedega. (http://transgaming.com/) Now, this may be more exception than it is the rule, but you couldn't say that a year ago. The list of new games coming out that work on Linux is increasing every day.

You should give it a try. This latest version might just surprise you.

The game is officially marked as a zero (not working at all) though the forum comments say that's not true.

link to transgaming. This game will also work under wine (I've gotten it working personally), cedega makes things sooo much easier. It's not perfect; battle.net has font issues, but apparently it's not a big deal if you've played battle.net before.

Note that transgaming says that brood war doesn't work, but it does; their game listing is not updated. I just recently installed brood wars in cedega 4 (formerly known as winex)

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

The key here, as usual, is the word "generally". I have to TRY to find hardware that is incomatable with win2k these days.

Generally as in there's more than a 50/50 chance I find hardware with linux support. There's a 1 in 3 chance the hardware has linux drivers on the install discs (unless it's a network device, the chance goes way up then.)

You have GOT to be joking...if you are comparing the feeble OpenGL performance on Linux to windows. please. everquest? planetside? anarchy-online? the sims? star wars galaxies? city of hero's? world of warcraft? Don't make me laugh.

What do you mean the feable OpenGL performance? OpenGL performs better in linux for most things than it does in windows (heck when I was playing half-life in linux it ran better than it did in windows, same stuff for Quake 2, 3, RTCW, and I imagine Doom 3 when it's finally out.)

One popular game finally releases an on-disk linux installer, and now "everything" is compatable?

Any popular game including an installer for linux AND windows in the same box is a very good start. Most other games have installers you can download, or linux versions you can buy. Also, I never said "everything" was compatible, but a lot of new popular games will follow the habbit and release linux binaries, it's a huge step towards a game friendly linux desktop.

everquest? planetside? anarchy-online? the sims? star wars galaxies? city of hero's? world of warcraft? Don't make me laugh.



The Sims works flawlessly in linux (they even sell a linux version), Everquest has a 4, Star Wars Galaxies has a 4 City of Heroes has a 4, Planetside, Anarchy-Online, and World of Warcraft don't work, but more than half the games you mentioned work in linux, they do require the transgaming version of wine (winex or something, might have changed since the last time I checked) which is not free, but the games still work.

Excellent. I personally do not know the Icon for gaim, but I am glad that it is easily recognizable to first time users. For your next test, have your mother and father sit down and pop out a word document, Or possibly your grandmother. Because that is what most of the workforce in office jobs are. 40 to 70 year olds that needed a good deal of training to use windows 95 when it came out, and would cost money and time to do it again for linux. What about when the system crashes and cannot autofsck? Holy hell, what would grandma do then? Or perhaps grandma wants to share pictures of the family, and turns on an anonymous FTPD on the machine without first checking for patches? Hello remote root compromise, my name is timmy. Let's play!

How about my friends mother? Somehow you mentioned all the people in my family who have no idea how to use a computer (although it'd be just as easy to train them in linux as windows since both would be a fresh start.) My friend's mother uses Office at work and when my friend and I installed linux on his second computer (the one she uses when he's playing games) she had no difficulty using Open Office. What about when the system crashes and cannot auto fsck? She calls the company sysadmin, he tells her what to type, she types it, problem solved. Obviously she knows how to follow directions and type, she learned how to use the computer, the rest is just applying skills she already knows. If it happens a lot (and it most likely won't) she'll learn the stuff. I taught my aunt how to change her desktop color depth, which is actually quite hard because there are no on screen instructions to follow, just a lot of memorizing the clicks. With the fsck, the instructions are on your screen already. And what if grandma want's to share pictures and turns on anonymous ftpd? Grandma doesn't know what the hell a ftpd is so why would she turn it on? There is no "WHOOPS! I slipped and accidentall

For no reason I can really discern now, I decided to scrap Windows XP and go with Linux. It could be the great stuff I heard about Cedega, as I'm an avid fan of Battlefield 1942. Anyway, I did resolve to install and use Linux on my main computer, my gaming rig (Athlon XP @2083mhz, 1.25G RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, nForce motherboard).

So I installed Gentoo. I'd done installs (with mixed success due to the old geForce ti200 I had had in my box at the time flaking out when trying to startx) of Gentoo in the past, and I decided I liked Portage and the support and documentation at the Gentoo forums and main website.

I will admit it. I'm a geek at heart. My first computer was a C64, followed by an early Apple model and then an Apple IIGS. Then I had a 286 that was perhaps 12 or 25 mhz. At that time I learned DOS by sitting in a chair in my room one day and reading the DOS 3.3 manual. Reviewing the commands and trying to understand what they might be used for - really ending up priming myself to know where I could look for more information. So now that I've installed Gentoo with no easy reversion plan should I grow discouraged, I've really enjoyed setting up my system and dealing with the problems I've been encountering. I've only been using it for less than a month now, and I'm still learning, but I like it. And it's not just the OS that I like, or the desktop manager (I was using XFCE4, but I settled on KDE - my rig is phat enough by far and I end up using some of the programs anyway. And the interface far surpasses XFCE, though it is an adequite light DE) - it is the fun I'm having with something new, something with it's own problems and benefits and abilities.

In many ways, linux is easier to use than Windows. Installing applications with Portage (or any package manager with the correct dependancy handling) is very easy, though not without snags. But, thanks to the great Gentoo forums, I've usually been able to find someone who's dealt with the problem I'm having before and am able to wrestle out a fix.

I think one of the reasons I chose to install linux is because I think it *is* the future for the PC desktop. Once you get around the growing pains, the bottom line is that it's free (as in beer, non-programmers don't really care about free speech), pretty stable, and relatively easy to use. It comes with everything you could ever need on a computer "built-in" to many distributions. And when it gains momentum, and gets to that place where there are distributions that non-geeks can install and maintain on any relatively new computer (I'm quite impressed by Xandros 2.0, that really did work out of the box with no issues at all on my athlon/nforce/integrated GF4 system), I think we'll start to see a slow exodus at first and then gain large market share as more applications are able to run native on Linux.

Dreamweaver
Works under crossover office. Also see NVU, Bluefish, and Quanta for great native GUI HTML composers that run natively.

Warcraft
Frecraft or under TransGaming.

Neverwinter
Runs natively

EQ
Runs under Trans Gaming

Dreamweaver
Works under crossover office. Also see NVU, Bluefish, and Quanta for great native GUI HTML composers that run natively.

Warcraft
Frecraft or under TransGaming.

Neverwinter
Runs natively

EQ
Runs under Trans Gaming

It's the OS all your Windows applications and games won't run on...

No, it just got Slashdotted. :P

Unfortunately I've read some horrible stories on their own website (in the support section and new forums) about people having a bad time getting their already-working games working under Cedega. In fact, I've read an unfortunately large number of posts saying that they've downgraded to WineX because of the number of bugs. I'm not sure whether the editor noticed this but those facts certainly don't merit a 20/20 in my book...

Wake me when you play Far Cry

Oh my!

Cedega 4 release notes, from their high-bandwidth site.

Includes game-specific information and a basic changelog. Much more interesting than their release announcement.

* The previously slow path for client to server communication
has been redesigned for more speed. By improving on the
previous prototype design, we have been able to get a 5 fold
speed up on certain operations. We call this functionality
Accelerated Interprocess Communication and it allows some
games such as American McGee's Alice to achieve much higher
performance.

Well what you are saying is sort of wrong.

Wine[X]/Cedega uses only one wineserver for a single user (under normal situations) no matter how many wine programs are running. That has always been the case.

What TransGaming have been working on is a shared memory wineserver, so there isn't so much overhead with context switching and stuff like that.

Anyhow, it has been done, and is now available/active in Cedega 4.0

From the release notes:
* The previously slow path for client to server communication
has been redesigned for more speed. By improving on the
previous prototype design, we have been able to get a 5 fold
speed up on certain operations. We call this functionality
Accelerated Interprocess Communication and it allows some
games such as American McGee's Alice to achieve much higher
performance.


(get them here).

David

He claimed that Linux could not run any games except for WineX, which he falsely claimed to cost money (most of it doesn't), then he falsely claimed that the games that work under WineX refuse to run sometimes (nonsense, Linux is much more consistent in its behavior than Windows), and then, which was the important part of his post, he went on to call Linux users "idiots" and release some pretty unfounded FUD about Linux security. E.g. which "Joe Blow" user would compile security patches himself instead of simply using his distributor's update function?

He has a point that Windows is still better for gaming, but apart from that he's a troll,

Where's my Warcraft 3?

Where's Command and Conquer Generals?

WineX or if you're talking about old Warcraft DosBox.

I'm looking forward to support for True Crime now that it's out on PC, as well as Driver 3 when it comes out, though I'm still trying for 100% completion of Vice City between rounds of America's Army, which is a pretty damn good game out on all top three major OS's.

That's what they make WineX for. :)

That has to suck... or maybe we're just smart enough to have our web browsers lie and say, we're running MSIE 6.01 WindowsXP, 1600x1200 24bit color.. eh? :)

XP is better as an emoticon anyways.

Here's teh offtopic part, and a shameless plug for a really awesome Window Manager. Try XPde out. It's really awesome at the look and feel of windows, especially when you want to move someone over to Linux without telling them.

Now I know that sounds evil, but hear this story out. My sister wanted me one day to fix her "slow" computer. Turns out that she has 100's of spyware, literally, running on her computer. Not to mention trojans and viruses. I did a backup of her documents, put them on a zip disk and virus scanned that on my comp, just to make sure. Then I installed Slackware Linux, and used XPde (quite successfully I might add) as the WM. Installed Gaim, OO.org, Mozilla, software firewall, gimp, and misc games (frozen bubble rocks!) Total install in just around 250mb. No crashes, no viruses, nothing and it's locked behind a NAT that allows no incoming/outgoing ports except what's specified for IM services and outbound httpd traffic.

She didn't know she was running linux for a few months until she went to install a program! (Insert WineX installation at this point. Went well too!)

My point. Most people dont care what they use, and if the conversion is successful (I do many like this, only with people I really *KNOW* and trust me), they'll learn to champion linux to people who are easily intimidated by "techies" and zealots who want to install linux for you because MS is "7!^3" (evil)

To summarize this success story by my sisters quote: "Windows SUCKS!, where's my cute penguin?"

----zoloto

First of all, nuking Microsoft would help, if only all copies of Windows were destroyed in the process. Unfortunately, people are so willing to cling to something so obviously inferior that they would stick with Windows long after all copies of its source (and therefore all future development) was gone.

Second, when was the last time you used Linux? How far did you get? My mother can and does use Linux -- and she's a financial planner and an idiot at computers. My grandmothers haven't tried, but I'll bet money that they can. Unification is not always a good thing -- competition is good -- and there's enough of it to get by.

Game support? I can play ut2004, quake3, half-life + mods via steam, starcraft, tribes2, stepmania (a ddr clone), just to name a few. For more than I can name, check out winex ($5 a month), tons of native games, need I go on? In fact, I think I'll keep a copy of this rant somewhere to reply to anyone else who thinks that Linux can't play games. It's about as retarted as thinking that Linux has no GUI (and I know people who used to think that!)

Hardware support? Every piece of hardware that I have ever tried has worked, out of the box, including some things that never worked on Windows. No driver installation, often no configuration, if it's usb I just plug it and it works. Third worst hardware issue ever: had to go look online for a step by step guide that involved editing a config file. Second worst hardware issue ever: certain hardware which is not generic and requires specific Windows-only, proprietary software did not work -- namely, SharpSync (laptop-to-pc sync via usb 2.0, I do just fine over ethernet, thank you) and the X-Port (to back up PS2 games via usb -- you can back those up over a network with PS2 Linux). Worst hardware issue error wasn't Linux's fault -- dying hard drive.

In all issues but the last one, the rest of the system worked just fine. Rarely has a driver-related issue ever crashed anything other than the driver in question -- and you can reload those without rebooting. And when that has happened, it's been with Nvidia's proprietary drivers, which are direct ports from Windows (and thus would probably happen in Windows anyway).

Etc? What else is there? After reading this, if you still don't want to go test Linux for yourself (or at least do more research before you whine about it), I think it's obvious that there are people in the world who will never even try Linux, not even if everyone they know says it's better than Windows in every way imaginable. Maybe a virus should be written for those people?

I realize that there are circumstances where you need a copy of Windows (my laptop techsupport insisted that I install Windows to verify that a "CRC error" from my hard disk is not a Linux problem), but most of these could be phased out. My dad, for instance, only boots into Windows to use Quicken -- and that's because he doesn't want to learn GnuCash, and it's likely that it's missing a few features that he needs.

But to say that Linux is not a viable solution for the home user desktop for the reasons you mentioned is -- well, provably wrong.

How has the switch to LGPL affected contributions to the project, both positively and negatively? When the switch happened, there was a lot of noise from groups like Transgaming who needed to license proprietary technology from third parties, and the formation of the ReWind project. Has there been a noticable effect on contributions to WINE from outside groups as result of the licensing change?

- Stealth Dave

That's what WineX is for..

Apparently Tuxgames is sold out of the letfover Linux versions from Loki's firesale, and there's nothing on ebay. Looks like T2 won't work in WineX as well.

Sometimes you just don't get a break being a Linux gamer. Maybe if every third Linux gamer hadn't pirated the Linux version in the first place (since everything in Linux has to be "free", right?) things would be different. But there's so much legal detritus floating around, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to see a free Linux version.

-B

Can this run my digital camera? Can I run the Sims on this?

And the answers for Linux would be: Probably, and Yes.

Well you're wrong.

WC3,GT3, MOO3, and others DO work on WineX.

WC3 w/ Screenshot
GTA3 w/ Screenshot
Masters of Orion III w/ Screenshot

Do a little research before posting FUD!
Sure a few don't work but many do.

Well you're wrong.

WC3,GT3, MOO3, and others DO work on WineX.

WC3 w/ Screenshot
GTA3 w/ Screenshot
Masters of Orion III w/ Screenshot

Do a little research before posting FUD!
Sure a few don't work but many do.

Well you're wrong.

WC3,GT3, MOO3, and others DO work on WineX.

WC3 w/ Screenshot
GTA3 w/ Screenshot
Masters of Orion III w/ Screenshot

Do a little research before posting FUD!
Sure a few don't work but many do.

I'm not at my home PC now (Debian unstable), but it supports my SB Audigy with ALSA. Knoppix should be able to pick it up, too, I'm constantly amazed at the amount of iron it recognizes (embedded laptop soundcards, even!). You might not have an up-to-date version?

As for CS on WINE: I use winex (transgaming) for games, and yes, CS works on it. I have, in fact, personally run it a year ago or so.

Without DirectX, few games ever make it to Linux. Thats because DirectX is much more than just a 3-D gaming API. It has other features that make games easier to develop for.

OK genius, what do you suggest is done about this? Shall we all ask Microsoft to port the DirectX API to linux? I'm sure they'd love to do that. If not, how about an independent reimplementation? Well, seeing as DirectX is a proprietary API with lots of Windows-specific dependencies and is changing with every revision, it's not an easy task. Although plenty of games work perfectly under WineX.

As other posters have mentioned, there is also OpenGL which works on both operating systems and more besides, and is an open standard with free, already completely working implementations.

I'm completely unfamiliar with any of this legal stuff, but could Microsoft really prevent the independent implementation of a specification?

Of course, there already is an independent implementation.

Wow, what are the odds of that? I just got the LiDE30, and yeah, it works flawlessly as long as you have the right permissions to access the device (I think you need to give the user access to /proc/usb/[something] where your scanner is)

Anyways, you probably could run OfficeXP under wine somehow. I personally doubt it would run under normal wine, but winex (transgaming) would most likely run it, but I can't check here (nasty web filter) It should be on the software compatability list at http://transgaming.com.

Another option seems to be CodeWeavers which claim to support office XP, but the price is a whole lot higher than winex, and you probably would want winex anyway for running your games.

Good luck with your linux

To quote:
"Moving full Steam ahead, this month our stellar Dev Team has unleashed WineX 3.3. Make sure you download it now and receive support for the highly anticipated -- Valve's Steam! Not only can you now play Counter-Strike, Half-Life, and Day of Defeat with the latest version of WineX, you also have access to other cool mods and extra features. "
transgaming.com

And if you haven't tried kdevelop 3.02, I suggest you do. It can't do quite everything visual studio does, but it's REALLY nice, orders of magnitude less bloated, has a good ui and some auto-completion. It serves all my needs quite nicely, but then I'm not a professional developer.