Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

WineX 3.3 Out - Now Supports Steam

Posted by timothy on from the making-things-work-together dept.

AstroDrabb writes "WineX 3.3 has been released, with more impressive support for your favorite Windows games from within Linux. According to the Release Notes, Valve's Steam content delivery system, including the latest versions of Half-Life, CounterStrike, Day of Defeat and other mods, is now supported. The list of games supported by WineX is getting pretty impressive. So head over to Transgaming and sign up for a subscription to help further development."

85 comments

  1. Not very impressive.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They wasted valuable time adding support for a 7 year old game and I still don't have any quality games to play on linux.

    1. Re:Not very impressive.. by randomdef · · Score: 0, Troll

      maybe the 7 year old game is quality? maybe? just maybe? no, you are right, it must suck.

  2. I continue to be impressed with OSS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Flamebait

    This is just the stuff to get my friends to switch over to Linux. They can't be stuffed to move from Windows, because currently it supports all their games, comes free with their machines, and is user-friendly and familiar.

    Way to knock off another barrier, Transgaming.

    1. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Huh?

      Your friends have a OS that "currently supports all their games, comes free with their machines, and is user-friendly and familiar." and they want to dump that to pay $5 a month for a service that helps them play those same games on a different OS than the one they have, when they can just stay with their current OS and save that money?

      Wow, you have stupid friends.

    2. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Huh?

      Your friends have a OS that "currently supports all their games, comes free with their machines, and is user-friendly and familiar." and they want to dump that to pay $5 a month for a service that helps them play those same games on a different OS than the one they have, when they can just stay with their current OS and save that money?

      Wow, you have stupid friends.

      Only reason I think folks like that actually run linux is for the bragging rights!

      I don't think they are all that interested in an open-desktop or making it a server.

    3. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by Quarters · · Score: 1
      Well, WineX, in it's current state won't support all of their games with 100% compatibility. That is, unless your friends only play:
      * Warcraft III (and Frozen Throne) * The Sims (Mandrake Gaming pack) * Hoyle Card Games 5 * Max Payne * Diablo II * Kohan

      If your friends like a game made after 2000/01 then they are better off staying on Windows.

    4. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by FoolishBose · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Windows doesn't actually come 'free' with the machine. The cost is passed on the manufacturer who include it somehow into the general price of the computer. Now an open-source OS on the other hand, may truly be a 'free' piece of software for the consumer.

    5. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The Sims (Mandrake Gaming pack)

      And two notes on that: First, it doesn't include any expansions, so you're limited to the original Sims game, and second, they've made no apparent effort to patch the game despite multiple Sims patches since the release of this edition.

      That's skipping the minor detail that it will no longer run on a modern distribution, so if you want to run it you're almost completely stuck with Mandrake 8.1 (or a comparable distribution from the same time period).

    6. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by KangTa · · Score: 1

      They can't be stuffed to move from Windows

    7. Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he was referring to piracy, not OEM, when he said Windows comes free with his friends' PCs.

      Anyway, didn't you know - Windows *is* open source :-)

  3. Steam :) by captainclever · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anyone know of a good howto or guide to getting Steam working in wine?

    Surely i cant just copy the install over and run the exe.. or can i?

    --
    Last.fm - join the social music revolution
    1. Re:Steam :) by revmoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, you'd need to run the command "winex steam.exe" or whatever, but yes, pretty much.

      --
      I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
    2. Re:Steam :) by va3atc · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually if WineX is anything like Wine there is a nifty winefile program that comes with Wine that acts like a file manager.

      So if you drop to the terminal prompt and just type winefile, and you can now openly browse all configured volumes including your CDROM.

      --
      Candle burns its brightest in the dark
  4. Support development by 77Punker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think it's a better idea not to buy WineX and support native ports by buying native Linux games instead. Supporting WineX just lets them talk about their "compatibility technology"(or whatever they call it now) more and more, while developers use that as an excuse to make Windows only games.

    1. Re:Support development by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WineX is also a closed source fork, and doesn't give back to the WineHQ community. As well they charge money for what many people contributed to a free software project. Why would anyone support them?

    2. Re:Support development by 00420 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I understand your concern, but I look at it this way. WineX may be the final thing that convinces some Windows users to switch to Linux, which is what Linux needs right now.

      Once Linux has a large userbase companies will want to make Linux ports of their software.

      Of course, this isn't to say that one shouldn't still support any company that is already making Linux games.

      --
      Have you tried Linux yet?
    3. Re:Support development by Per+Wigren · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "WineX may be the final thing that convinces some Windows users to switch to Linux, which is what Linux needs right now."

      No, what we need is more programmers, more contributing powerusers, more people willing to understand the importance of the Free Software model. We need quality, not quantity. Quanitity is just a bonus.

      We welcome the normal users but saying that we need them is going too far...

      Besides, anything keeping the XYZ23B3D.RAR, XYZ23B3D.R00, XYZ23B3D.R01, XYZ23B3D.R02-kiddies away from Linux is a good thing.

      --
      My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    4. Re:Support development by Seahawk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Games on computers is a niche market allready. I would think that most games coming on the PC platform will HAVE to be Linux/Windows compatible to have any chance of earning money in 5 years.

      Hint: Console game revenue is MUCH larger than PC game revenue allready.

    5. Re:Support development by @madeus · · Score: 1

      No, what we need is more programmers, more contributing powerusers, more people willing to understand the importance of the Free Software model. We need quality, not quantity. Quantity is just a bonus.

      We welcome the normal users but saying that we need them is going too far...

      I think the point the poster is making that without a larger user base it's going to be a lot harder to attract those who will contribute and ultimately improve what we have.

      I think many people would disagree with you and and have different 'views' on what Linux needs, I certainly would not agree it 'does not need users'.

      If it did not have a user base as large as it does, many of those who develop for Linux would instead have developed for other platforms, such as FreeBSD, and Linux would be a very minority operating system (as opposed just a miniority operating system) without the software they have contributed (GIMP, Gnome, KDE, Abiword, Gnumeric, and other more fundamental programs and libraries that came before them).

      If you want to propigate Free Software and understand it's importance I'd argue you very defintely need to get it into the hands of ordinary users and that telling them they are not needed (and indicating we don't really care about them) is ultimately detrimental to the proliferation of the Free Software model.

    6. Re:Support development by @madeus · · Score: 1

      That's a very good point. It's amazing how many developers do make games for PCs, considering how much revenue they can get for console games, and people do seem to forget that.

      Even an X-Box only title can easily sell more copies than a Windows PC title, and it's no harder to make games for the X-Box than for a PC (and it many ways, it's easier, though I'm not sure I'd say the same about doing a PS2 title).

      ID, for example, have said they fully expect to make far more money from console version of Doom 3 than the desktop PC version (even though the desktop PC version will be far superior due to having better interface options and support for vastly better quality high resolution anti-aliased graphics).

      The Macintosh platform has had this problem for years, and I would say the Linux marketshare is going to have to approximately double or even quadruple for it to really start showing up on developers radars (though I think Epic's work in providing a Linux and a Macintosh client for their excellent and much licensed engine is a great help in showing that's it's possible).

    7. Re:Support development by RexxFiend · · Score: 1

      erm, no it isn`t and yes they do.
      You can download the source for the latest version if you want, you just need certain proprietary, closed-source libraries for it to work correctly. RTFL(icense)

      --

      A crash reduces
      Your expensive computer
      to a simple stone.
    8. Re:Support development by palironsat · · Score: 1

      That's exactly what first caused me to switch over to Linux - I was angry at WinXP for being dumb, when a buddy of mine showed me WineX, and how it would run EverQuest nearly flawlessly on Linux (I was starting up with SuSE 8.2 at the time, after a couple of years away from my Linux Experiment).

      Of course, since then, I've stopped playing EQ, and switched from SuSE to Gentoo. I'm sorry to say, sometimes, that I still dual-boot WinXP for a few games (I'm still liking Knights of the Old Republic), but I've also started supporting a few Linux games (Uplink, anyone?), and I'll never go back to Windows for my day-to-day operating system again.

      You can look at the WineX "issue" both ways. I'm not convinced that it's a big enough blip on the radar of the game development companies yet to convince them that they only need to develop for Windows, but it can definitely be seen as such. But, at the same time, I also agree that it can be a big help to get people to switch over to Linux. That's what got me started, and in turn, it got me to get a couple of people started on running Random Distro B (tm) of Linux. Sure, it's not much, but it's a start.

  5. Silver Dollar City by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Funny

    "WineX 3.3 Out - Now Supports Steam"

    Whoah, my great grandfather would rejoice!

    --
    "Derp de derp."
    1. Re:Silver Dollar City by Deraj+DeZine · · Score: 5, Funny

      Judging by how much noise some of my friends' computers make, it would appear that they have already taken advantage of this new-found steam powered computing technology.

      Time to replace that old "turbo" button with a "turbine" button.

      (when you're tired, every joke is funny)

      --
      True story.
    2. Re:Silver Dollar City by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (when you're tired, every joke is funny)

      How dare you insult his funnyness!!1

  6. Direct Music? by FlipmodePlaya · · Score: 1

    Does that have anything to do with getting iTunes/Winamp5/etc working well?

  7. Depressing, in a way... by Quarters · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Supporting Steam is ok, but that's really just a Windows app, regular Wine could probably support it.

    Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine back when the 3DFX Voodoo2 was new and nVidia was pushing their soon to be released TNT2 cards really isn't that amazing to me. In fact, it kind of underwhelms me.

    The mean time between WineX releases is slowing and the gap between the stuff they can support and the stuff being done on current and modern games is always widening. The utopian dream of being able to install any Windows based game you buy off the shelf at BestBuy on your Linux box and run it seamlessly won't, imho, ever become reality.

    1. Re:Depressing, in a way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      again, whats wrong with supporting quality and quality with a fanbase instead of a fragmented society of new games? i'd write support in my product so that i can help out 50% of my users instead of writing alot more to support 20 new games for 20% of the users.

    2. Re:Depressing, in a way... by Distinguished+Hero · · Score: 1

      Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine

      Quake 1, actually.

      --
      Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
    3. Re:Depressing, in a way... by PyromanFO · · Score: 4, Informative
      Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine back when the 3DFX Voodoo2 was new and nVidia was pushing their soon to be released TNT2 cards really isn't that amazing to me. In fact, it kind of underwhelms me.

      Then you really haven't been paying attention. Half-Life has been supported for a very long time. Steam, you know, the part that wasn't based on Quake 2 and didn't come out with the Voodoo2 was king, that is now supported.

      I'm just disappointed these improvements didn't add PunkBuster support, since I've stopped caring about Half-Life anyway.
    4. Re:Depressing, in a way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine

      Quake 1, actually.

      Quake 1 was DOS, half-life is windows... So it would be Quake 2

    5. Re:Depressing, in a way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite an intelligent connection you made there.

    6. Re:Depressing, in a way... by Aarondeep · · Score: 1

      it is a modified quake1 engine. Half-life was in development before the q2 eng was ready

    7. Re:Depressing, in a way... by Quarters · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Actually, I have been paying attention. I know that the Q1/Q2 engine games have been somewhat supported (Working Rating 4 for all HL based games) for a while now. But, even by Transgaming's admission on their website, you're better off playing them in OpenGL mode than the D3D mode.

      WineX 3.3 can't even fully support the version of Direct3D (I'm guessing DirectX 3) used in games released circa 1998. That doesn't bode well for them supporting any game released now.

      A quick search of the Supported Games List over at Transgaming shows that there are only seven (7!) titles that get a Working Rating of 5. Only two of those titles are 3D games and both of those have OpenGL renderers. There are no Direct3D only games that WineX 3.3 supports 100%. The newest game of the seven is Warcraft III, which is fast approaching two years old. The other five games are Direct 2D based and average in age from 3-4 years old.

      Extrapolating out that means that I could reasonably expect to play a game released in 2004 sometime in 2007 if I'm going to use WineX. That's being lenient and assuming they will somehow leapfrog DirectX versions 4-8 and get to D3D 9 sometime soon. If I were to start paying my $5.00/month subscription now I will have paid $185.00 (5 * 37) by the time I can play a game made in 2004. I don't even have a guarantee that there will be another WineX release between now and then to hold me over.

      I can buy an XBox or a PS2 now for $180.00 (or a Gamecube for $100) and know with 100% certainty that it will play any modern game released for it. High polygon counts, pixel and vertex shaders, high resolutions, large textures, etc... It's all there and I can play those games now. Currently on WineX I can enjoy, with 100% compatibility, five 2D sprite based games, a three year old third person shooter (Max Payne), or Warcraft III.

      Check out this paragraph I took from the Business Plan page at Transgaming.com:
      "TransGaming is working with among the largest game developers globally to bring the most popular and the highest demand gaming titles to new platforms. Our core technology has demonstrated that it is the only technology of its kind and allows us to accomplish within a couple of months what would take most other companies as long as two years to achieve. TransGaming's technology is taking the video games industry to new levels and is changing the rules in how multi-platform games are deployed."
      (emphasis mine)

      The newest game they support fully is almost two years old, yet they claim to have technology that allows the translation of games to Linux in just a matter of months.

      At best you can say they've taken two years to get Warcraft III working. By their own admission their library of 100% fully supported games could've been made to run under Linux in half the time if they'd ported them directly instead of working on WineX.

      It's just not that impressive.

    8. Re:Depressing, in a way... by one4nine4two · · Score: 2, Informative

      i don't know how the game's os environment is relevant to its physics/rendering/etc. engine(s), does that make a difference?

      in any case, half-life is based off the q1 engine with some major enhancements from valve, and some features from the q2 engine, so arguably you could say it's based off both engines

    9. Re:Depressing, in a way... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > I can buy an XBox or a PS2 now for $180.00 (or a Gamecube for $100) and know with 100% certainty that it will play any modern game released for it. High polygon counts, pixel and vertex shaders, high resolutions, large textures, etc...

      The PS2 doesn't have pixel shader support.
      It's "high resolution" is 640x448

    10. Re:Depressing, in a way... by zr-rifle · · Score: 1

      Actually Half-Life is based on the Quake (1) engine, heavily modified and enchanced (3D acceleration for example) of course.

      --
      Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
  8. What's the performance like? by skermit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I never decided to "switch" because of two things. I don't have as good of a *nix background as I would like, and it seems pretty daunting to run my own box. The second is that I'm an avid gamer. I probably use my computer for no less than 30% gaming, 30% internet, 20% watching tv-shows/movies, and 20% doing actual work (heh!).

    Such turnkey installations are available, and I guess I can take the plunge with Knoppix boot tests, but with WineX, everything's looking a bit more lucrative.

    My only reservation is performance. If WineX is an emulator of sorts, what's the performance hit that's associated with newer games such as Warcraft 3 vs. the older engine'ed games like Half-life (CS, DoD, etc.). Anybody wanna help convert me?

    --
    -Christopher Wu
    http://www.christopherwu.net/
    1. Re:What's the performance like? by MBCook · · Score: 5, Informative
      WineX is based on Wine, which is actually an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". It's not a full emulator (like running a gameboy emulator would be), it simply intercepts system calls and translates them into the Linux equivelents, the actuall program code doesn't need to be translated. So programs that make very few syscalls (things like, just to take the far end Super Pi, which simply calculates Pi to various accuracies) would run almost identically. On the other hand a program that uses tons of Windows calls (like something that uses Direct3D) would be very slow. Games that don't make tons of those kind of calls (like simple card games, 2D games, etc) should run fine (close to "Windows" speed) as should OpenGL programs (because OpenGL can be passed to the OpenGL subsystem and doesn't need to be translated into OpenGL (or something else) like must happen with D3D).

      So it really depends on the program. I assume you could find out for a specific game by searching google or the WineX forums or support pages (they have pages that list supported games and their status, right? Been a while since I've been to their site).

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    2. Re:What's the performance like? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      must.....use...more.....brackets....

    3. Re:What's the performance like? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      must.....learn...difference...brackets[]...and...p arenthesis()

      asshat.

    4. Re:What's the performance like? by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Performance is a funny issue.. Back in the 1.5 days, CounterStrike ran MUCH better in wine than in windows XP. I'm talking atleast 20fps difference, easily more.

      I've yet to try the new winex/steam as I play counter-strike in leauges and really don't want a VAC bug to ban me for 5 years, both for having to explain 'no I was not cheating' and because I'd have to ditch my 0:1:2496 steamid.

      I'd honestly not want to rely on winex now that Valve is pushing an update once a week over steam, the chances of it breaking are just not something I wan't to think about.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    5. Re:What's the performance like? by AstroDrabb · · Score: 2, Informative
      Huh? Who would mod this up informative? Come on people do a little reading

      Wine consists of a program loader, which loads and executes a Windows binary, and a set of libraries that implements Windows API calls using their UNIX or X11 equivalents. There is no "translation" and no "emulation". A win32 binary should run as fast if not faster as under MS Windows on the same hardware. Some programs I have run under Wine do seem faster and others seem slower. What could cause that? It is the Wine source code itself. Wine has 1,000's of win32 function to write and convert to a Linux world. Some of those function are not complete yet, some have not been tuned yet, etc. It is a huge job and takes time.

      There is no translation as if one massive wine function grabs all the Win32 calls and goes through a massive switch statement and "translates" it to some Linux function. Say a Win32 application calls CreateWindowEx, under Wine that application does the same thing. Wine has a function named CreateWindowEx that has the same parameters as the Win32 version. The application doesn't know and doesn't care.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
    6. Re:What's the performance like? by MBCook · · Score: 1

      That's what I meant by "translation." It intercepts the system calls (library calls, etc) and makes the equivelent Linux call instead. Sounds like translation to me. I also said SPECIFICALLY that is was NOT AN EMULATOR. Your post seems to be identicle to mine, so my guess is that you just missunderstood my point.

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    7. Re:What's the performance like? by Fizzol · · Score: 1
      >On the other hand a program that uses tons of Windows calls (like something that uses Direct3D) would be very slow.

      Have you actually used WineX? I use it to run Everquest and I can assure it's anything but slow, let alone very slow.

  9. Yes, But... by Locky · · Score: 1

    Will it run my Windows version of UT2004?

    1. Re:Yes, But... by Medieval_Gnome · · Score: 2, Informative

      You do know that there will (afaik) be a native port of UT2004, just like there was of UT2003 (it was on cd3, for what it's worth)

      --

      :wq

    2. Re:Yes, But... by shane_rimmer · · Score: 1

      I've been playing the linux demo for the past couple of days, and it runs better than UT-2003 on my system. From what I've seen, they are going to make sure that linux support is listed on the box this time.

  10. What about the REAL Wine, people?! by IntergalacticWalrus · · Score: 5, Informative

    I find it pretty sad that almost everybody thinks that only WineX can run games. Reality check: Wine does have a DirectX emulation layer too! Including Direct3D to OpenGL translation! In fact, the few times I tried running a Windows game under Linux, I had better luck with Wine than WineX (CVS build, from back when Gentoo had an ebuild for it).

    So, please, don't support those monkeys at Transgaming and use the one, true Wine instead.

    1. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by linux_warp · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just FYI: I tried the december wine snapshot, and it would not run STEAM. It had a few fatal errors. So winex supporting steam is a big breakthough.

    2. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by slux · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Much of the support for games regular wine enjoys has been contributed by "those monkeys at Transgaming".

      The copy protection is the part Transgaming cannot release, but other than that they do give back to the community. After WINE changed to the LGPL, they're doing it thru ReWind but I'm sure the changes finally trickle back to the main wine tree if they're any good.

      TransGaming is not such a bad company. I don't agree with what they're doing, I feel it may eventually or has already hurt GNU/Linux as a gaming platform. Still, it's nice to have games such as Warcraft 3 or Half-Life which enjoy a large following and would probably never be ported supported. It helps when someone considering switching just has to have that one game.

    3. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by imr · · Score: 1

      I'm not going into the wine/winex points you raise, but when I tried both winex and cvs winex, with the cvs winex, you had less working games than with the binary winex. So it's hardly a good point to start a comparaison with vanilla wine.
      Let's compare winex and the wine that one can get with its distro of choice and the wine one can get by compilling it.

    4. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by IntergalacticWalrus · · Score: 1

      No, the big problem with Transgaming is that they don't give anything back to Wine. Hell, their license isn't even OSI-approved.

    5. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by slux · · Score: 1

      ReWind is available under the MIT license just like WINE previously was. It doesn't have everything that WineX has, but most of the stuff eventually gets there. WineX itself as a product is proprietary, but it shares code with ReWind.

    6. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In december you need some windows dlls to get steam working using wine from cvs it works out of the box, so what transgaming advertises is nothing special.

    7. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by AstroDrabb · · Score: 1

      What are you talking about? You can get the code from CVS to WineX from here. All of the WineX stuff gets back to Wine except for a few proprietary technologies that Transgamming does not own. Many commercial Win32 games have copy protection crap on them. WineX works with that protection, however Transgamming is not allowed to just release the code to some other companies copy protection technology. In fact, the only two things you cannot get from WineX without purchasing a subscription is copy protection related code and texture compression. The whole focus of WineX is games, and WineX supports far more games then just Wine does. So if you don't need to run any Win32 games, then Wine will work fine for you. Just don't go around spreding FUD about how Transgamming doesn't give back the code, when that is commplete bull.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
    8. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by Penguin2212 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Also, according to the Wine website...

      TransGaming has done extensive work to get copy protection working. They've added support for popular formats such as SecuRom and SafeDisc. In the case of the latter they've licensed SafeDisc LT from Macrovision and incorporated the necessary changes into the core parts of their Wine tree.

      Currently in the LGPL Wine tree you can find support for SafeDisc 1 with SafeDisc 2 on the way. The caveat being that Wine must run in NT mode (configure winver "nt40" in the wine config file).

      D3D/OGL support isn't the only thing keeping games from running in Linux. DRM software is what's causing more problems for gamers using Wine. Wine includes many game-specific hacks for things that the regular CVS wine doesn't support. Presently, I have both installed and use both of them for various things.

      And, just FYI, Gentoo still has a CVS ebuild for wine. Have a look-see for yourself:

      root@athlonxp patrick # emerge -pv wine

      These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

      Calculating dependencies ...done!
      [ebuild U ] app-emulation/wine-20040121 [20031212] -alsa +arts +cups -debug -nas -nptl +opengl +tcltk 9,639 kB

      Total size of downloads: 9,639 kB

      root@athlonxp patrick #

      --

      --
      Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
    9. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by IntergalacticWalrus · · Score: 1

      I was talking about the WineX CVS ebuild. Transgaming asked the Gentoo maintainers to trash it, as it encouraged too much people to just use WineX from CVS, which, according to Transgaming, is only provided to see the source, not actually use it without paying their subscribtion costs.

    10. Re:What about the REAL Wine, people?! by Fizzol · · Score: 1
      > No, the big problem with Transgaming is that they don't give anything back to Wine.

      Completely, totally and absolutely not true.

  11. Re:WineX by superpulpsicle · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Linux gaming is like the last car to qualify for the race, the ground needed to catch up is so grand... there is no way in hell it'll ever come in first. The best drivers are still up against the odds.

  12. mmmm torrenty goodness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    torrent!

  13. Ultimate Wine cvs automation script by dan_bethe · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Check out this script for automated management of the cvs source of all Wine versions and branches, including WineX. I'm just trying it out now for the first time.

    I do feel somewhat bad replying to a commercial announcement, with a freeloader announcement ;-> But there are a lot of unemployed hackers out there, and a lot of people who'd test it out and give WineX a louder voice. Do support free, commercial software if you have the means.

  14. Great. by Night+Goat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can now run Steam in Linux. Too bad I can't run Half-Life in Steam because some dick used a keygen and my legit key came up, and now I can't register my key. This is the exact reason why key verification via server hurts customers far more than it does software pirates. Fuck you Valve, you had better fix this before Half-Life 2 comes out. I'm not buying if Steam is the only way to play.

    1. Re:Great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you contact them about the problem or just complain yourself silly on slashdot?

    2. Re:Great. by Seahawk · · Score: 1

      Or maybe you got your key stolen because of not updating your windows installation?

      I have NEVER seen the problem you are compaining about from people i KNOW have a serious security policy on their computer.

      On the other hand I have heard stories like yours often from people I know have no clue about security, and hom install all kind of junk on their machines.

      It might be a coinsidence - but I have seen it enough times that the odds of that should be low!

    3. Re:Great. by MooCows · · Score: 1

      The odds are low, but it does occur.

      Another very real possibility might be that Steam f-cked up again, and 'stole' his key.
      In the early days of 'the non-beta version' *snicker* Steam I've heard this happening various times.

      --
      The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
      30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
    4. Re:Great. by Night+Goat · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the biggest issue I have is that there doesn't seem to be any mechanism in place to allow me to verify my key. It may have been stolen, I've had the game since '98, so there certainly is the possibility that someone over the years had swiped it, but really, I shouldn't have to guard the key like a mofo. Over six years, it's certainly possible that someone copied the key off my CD case. Not much I can do about that.

    5. Re:Great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got two real, legitimate, completely authentic Half-Life CD keys, one from my first copy of Half-Life bought in early 1999, another from a copy bought in mid 2001 after I mislaid the first CD.

      I've played online a fair amount, and I've never had a single problem with either of them. If I had discovered a problem, I'd have got in touch with Sierra's technical support, or failing that, Valve directly.

      Sometimes, I wonder how many of the complaints about copy-protection, cheat-prevention and suchlike are real. For instance, imagine the Valve Anti-Cheat system identified someone as using a cheat program, and banned them as a result. If that person was one of these fabled false-positives, are they more likely to kick up a fuss and claim that Valve is the Worst Company Ever, or would they politely explain to Valve what really happened through their VAC contact form?

      If you do have a legitimate CD key and are being prevented from playing, tell Valve. They can't do anything if they don't know. Steam's got a page full of support stuff if you need it.

    6. Re:Great. by aliquis · · Score: 1

      in any case he should be able to play the game he has actually purchased.

    7. Re:Great. by Seahawk · · Score: 1

      Not if he got his key stolen because HE didn't have basic security on his machine.

      Bad, but not useless analogy:

      If you buy a new car and it gets stolen because you didnt locked it, its definately not the manufacturers fault :)

  15. no descent, no tomb-raider, no NFS by dh003i · · Score: 1

    means I'm not buying it. I don't play that many games, but I'm dedicated to the ones I do play.

    --
    social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
    1. Re:no descent, no tomb-raider, no NFS by Rysc · · Score: 3, Funny

      No NFS? What are you smoking? Linux has had NFS for years.

      --
      I want my Cowboyneal
    2. Re:no descent, no tomb-raider, no NFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      means I'm not buying it. I don't play that many games, but I'm dedicated to the ones I do play.

      Descent 1
      Descent 2
      Descent 3

      As for NFS the previous poster Rysc says Linux has had NFS for years.

      Now Tomb Raider I don't think there is much demand for, its not even listed in the Wine Application Database

    3. Re:no descent, no tomb-raider, no NFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're dedicated to Tombraider?

    4. Re:no descent, no tomb-raider, no NFS by imr · · Score: 1

      Why do you stay anonymous to say you love the descent games?
      They are among the best action games ever. even with keyboard only!

  16. Why not get the real deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    One has to wonder: If Linux users have to jump through all these hoops to emulate the play of a real game, why not just get a real OS to run it on?

    You know, I hear if you retrofit a motorcycle with 2 extra wheels, add an additional drive train, pound some steel into an extended body frame and overhaul the steering and electrical systems, you can emulate having a car! (Or you can just get a car to start with and not have to deal with that stuff.)

  17. Don't forget to support your friend Icculus.. by msimm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Winex is neet and all and I'll give them credit for not adding game support for games that are actively being ported to Linux. But if your trying to decide between a couple of games try to get the one that has a Linux port before chosing one with emulation (ok, wine is not emulation..ygmp).

    Between inhouse porting and Icculus a lot of the major releases are coming out with native Linux ports. The developers are doing their part to support a Linux market that we've been clamoring about it for ages, so...buy something from ID Software or try out Savage, Neverwinter Nights, MOHAA or Unreal Tournament. Or save a little money and try America's Army. I'm playing a hell of a lot of Postal 2 STP and its *addictive as hell* and I haven't even touched Tribes 2 in months. Supporting WineX is just begging to go back to playing Tetris clones and Solitare natively under Linux. ;-)

    --
    Quack, quack.
  18. European Air War by tqft · · Score: 1

    Has anyone got European Air War working under any version of Wine?

    http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=7 70
    Rating: 0 out of 5 [ Does not install and does not work. ]

    I would really like to hear that you have.

    --
    The Singularity is closer than you think
    Quant
  19. Painkiller demo also works.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    perfectly under Winex 3.3 (needing 470 or so MB of memory, so make sure you have at least 512, better more system memory! Interestingly enough, Winex 3.1 used about 767 MB of memory, killing my system due to excessive swapping - ouch.)

    The only trick was to untoggle the "clipspace fix" bit, because that made a lot of objects dissappear.

    The game demo works just fine (cudos to "People can fly!") but if there are many physics interactions, it slows down. I guess I have to upgrade my hardware..

  20. Re:WineX by ChaoticLimbs · · Score: 1

    how did that get modded down? So it was cheerleading. Why should that affect my karma?

  21. Look how Corel handled it! by mabhatter654 · · Score: 1
    Corel set a great bar for this type of situation...no wonder MS paid them to "lie down". When Corel ported WordPerfect to linux they made heavy use of Wine upfront...and saving them selves lots of work too!

    In the best possible world, Game developers would develop and test their games under Windows & Wine from the go. It would save time and energy porting stuff over, as well as "unoffically" supporting Linux. The situation right now is that a program that runs under Wine should also run properly under windows. And if they take into account the things that don't work in Linux from the start of the project, the "port" could consist of simply replacing or "gracefully failing" the parts that are windows only [like .net]

    Of course it would be nice if there was more emphisis on SDL. Then all the platforms would be covered...and people could simply "port" to windows for gee-wizz factor rather than using proprietary DirectX. What's needed is to get game makers to understand that DirectX gaming is a LIBILITY to MS! When MS feels like pulling the plug on support it'll just die off...so they better start porting NOW rather than later. Also, Linux is a free platform to develop on...Using something sane to develop on like say Debian Stable would actually save them time in messing around with all the silly windows querks...until the fun part of the game is done!!

  22. Re:WineX by ChaoticLimbs · · Score: 1

    You can tell by the moderation in this thread that linux gaming is rather an emotionally charged topic for slashdot's members.