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Running Windows Games with WineX
GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit takes a look at TransGaming Technologies' WineX and puts it through its paces with eight different Windows games. In addition to reviewing: Diablo 2, Starcraft, LinksLS 1998 (Golf Simulation), Dungeon Keeper 2, Populous the Beginning, Black and White, Fallout 2 and Might and Magic 6 under WineX 2.1, we also give you some helpful tips to make your WineX gaming experience as pleasant as possible."
Well you have to buy VMWare, and a copy of Windows. Plus from what I last heard, VMWare doesn't support 3D acceloration.
Wine on the other hand has most of Windows' DLLs reimplimented internally so you don't need a copy of Windows. (But if you have one installed it can use the DLLs that it finds there to help itself along.)
Sheesh, I can't even get the damn thing to run on WinXP and they've got it on Linux!!! What's next, Linux on my Playstation???
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
You're pretty unfairly ripping WineX. With a sample group of 8, statistics and percentages don't mean much. Check out Transgaming's list of games that work - it's pretty long. And the games they used aren't exactly new or anything - they use different versions of DirectX, and Transgaming has been working hard to provide wrappers for the _current_ version of DirectX, not the one from 3 years ago.
What I find funny is that I can't run the original Fallout under Windows 2000, but can run it under Wine/WineX.
Read the page over at Transgaming for your favorite game before speculating on what works and what doesn't.
I am a Transgaming subscriber and I play several games with WineX (however I still have yet to get HL/CS working worth a damn on my machine, but I don't play it much anyway, so I haven't put much effort into it).
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
What on earth are you talking about? WINE isn't illegal in the least! What law do you think they're breaking?
Trademark? It'd be tough to show that WINE infringes on "Microsoft Windows".
Patent? I really doubt it. I can't imagine that there is any patent that could keep you from implementing an API.
Copyright? This was already tried by MS, arguing that they owned the header files, and duplicating the information in them was infringing. It didn't work.
EULA for reverse engineering? The WINE guys at least put up a pretense of clean-room engineering, and I think it'd be hard for MS to prove otherwise. You really don't need to disassemble Windows to implement the Win32 API as documented by MSDN. Finally, the right to reverse engineer is expressly granted in many locales for the purpose of ensuring compatibility. In the EU, this would make even a non-clean room impementation okay. In the US, it's a little more dicy, as I believe the laws only apply to compatibility over a network protocol between two different hosts, but there's still a general trend towards allowing people to produce compatible products.
Look-and-feel? Look-and-feel was an approach specifically shown by MS to not be a valid case for suit in the US legal system when they butted heads with Apple.
MS would have a *hell* of a time trying to prove that no one could implement a compatible product, which they'd have to do to nail the WINE guys. The antitrust guys would have a field day on MS.
Finally, WINE is not an emulator. "Emulator" has a specific meaning in the computer world -- it would reimplement the hardware that the software runs on. This would almost certainly cause a performance hit. WINE carries no such required overhead. At least in theory, WINE can run just as fast as (heck, faster) than Windows.
Given your AC nature, I'd almost say that you're trolling, but I can't quite be sure.
May we never see th