Slashdot Mirror


Transgaming releases "WineX" 4.0 "Cedega"

visy writes "Transgaming has opened a new site at today and are announcing WineX 4.0, now dubbed Cedega after a unique variety of grape. Transgaming claims Cedega allows "Windows ® games to seamlessly and transparently run under Linux, out-of-the-box, with outstanding performance and equivalent game-play". Will we see a new era of game compatibilty?"

475 comments

  1. WINE by ChupaThePirate · · Score: 4, Funny

    does that mean that wine is now an emulator? ;-O

    --
    arrrrr
    1. Re:WINE by dmbtech · · Score: 0, Redundant

      WOW, the transgaming server is so conjested i can't even access the home page until i reload about 50 times, where then i get a apache bandwidth error.

    2. Re:WINE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      WOW, the transgaming server is so conjested i can't even access the home page until i reload about 50 times, where then i get a apache bandwidth error.

      You're new here, aren't you?

    3. Re:WINE by Technician · · Score: 1

      does that mean that wine is now an emulator? ;-O

      Who cares? I'm more interested in all the Windows games that won't run on Windows. Will they run? All too often Windows games won't run on most Windows PC's. It's a challange sometime trying to find the right combination of hardware and software configuration to get a game to run. I have several LAN games that I can't play on my LAN simply because there is only one machine in the house that will run it. If they will run in WINE, that's a great move.

      --
      The truth shall set you free!
  2. New era by PhilippeT · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Will we see a new era of game compatibilty

    Or a new era of litigation
    --
    A psychopath can't tell the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath knows the difference - he just doesn't care.
    1. Re:New era by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, but it COULD be considered a circumvention device.

      "We made this game to play on Windows and X-boxen... now these Linux geeks have, totally without anyone's permission, made them play on everything including E-Z-Bake ovens! Which, in addition to being totally contrary to our intent, is in breach of the law!"

      And so, as the grandparent says, a new era of lawsuits must ensue.

    2. Re:New era by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really. For one thing you still need to own the original to install the game. Its not their doing nor its intent if someone uses a burnt copy. Secondly this program doesnt break anything thats encrypted so its not circumvating anything

    3. Re:New era by Alexis+de+Torquemada · · Score: 1

      You would have written "You know your in trouble" instead?

    4. Re:New era by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well done. So..the parents sig is actually, 100% correct (apart from the 120 char limit)? Well, uh, nicely spoted.

    5. Re:New era by EzInKy · · Score: 1

      "We made this game to play on Windows and X-boxen... now these Linux geeks have, totally without anyone's permission, made them play on everything including E-Z-Bake ovens! Which, in addition to being totally contrary to our intent, is in breach of the law!"

      And so, as the grandparent says, a new era of lawsuits must ensue.

      Making programs that are limited to a particular operating system is the very reason for this exception, isn't it. Besides, Transgaming doesn't bypass copy protection, they pay for the rights to do use it.

      "`(f) REVERSE ENGINEERING- (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title."

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    6. Re:New era by scubamage · · Score: 1

      Actually this question was answered for us already (at least in the USA) in the court case of Sony v. Bleem. It was ruled that Bleem could continue operations, and sell their software publicly since they didn't not copy any proprietary Sony code. This should fend off Nazism from Redmond for now, but then again that ruling was also in a pre-DMCA world.

    7. Re:New era by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      Except that Bleem died shortly thereafter!

    8. Re:New era by the+unbeliever · · Score: 1

      That's because Bleem was a sub-standard product that rarely, if ever, worked.

      WineX actually functions as intended.

    9. Re:New era by alienw · · Score: 1

      Or a new era of litigation

      Don't worry, Apple hasn't gotten involved yet.

    10. Re:New era by fsterman · · Score: 1

      I think that these screen shots and the entire DC Homebrew community would disagree with you:
      http://www.dcemulation.com/pay-bleemcast.htm
      If Bleem! wasn't constantly getting sued (and eventually out of existence) by Sony they could have gotten to their original plan of 100 games in one CD. But the games they did get to work, which was only the beginning, were amazing.

      --
      Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
    11. Re:New era by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fortunately TransGaming is based in Canada.

      Yes, they can still get sued but not as badly as if in the US.

    12. Re:New era by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, since you took the time to ask: The parent post changed his sig after my reply. It now employs the correct contraction. This is a win-win scenario.

  3. City of Heroes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anyone care to discuss how well City of Heroes runs under Wine and it's offspring?

    Some friends have been trying to get me to get a PC for this game, and I'd rather run Linux on it as opposed to Windows.

    1. Re:City of Heroes? by BJH · · Score: 1

      Mods: The parent post was not offtopic. Please remod appropriately.

      BTW, I am also interested in how well City of Heroes may or may not run under Crossweavers, Wine, and/or WineX.

    2. Re:City of Heroes? by Morklebb · · Score: 3, Informative

      Feel special.. New Features ============ Cedega 4.0 ---------- * TransGamers can now enjoy playing Battlefield Vietnam, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies and Hitman: Contracts.

      --
      Once upon a time my dog said this too..
    3. Re:City of Heroes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sweet!

    4. Re:City of Heroes? by SoVeryWrong · · Score: 1

      You forgot World of Warcraft (was on the e-mail I got from Transgaming)

    5. Re:City of Heroes? by TrevorDoom · · Score: 1

      I just bought CoH yesterday to give it a shot with the new WineX and it runs like a champ.
      Supposedly there's some manner of cursor-related bug, but the only such bug I encountered was when I was switching between CoH and the console...and the cursor turned into this blurry mess of pixels, but moving the mouse over a target to have the cursor repaint as a different color fixed this issue.

  4. Support Codeweavers by digitaltraveller · · Score: 2, Informative

    I buy Codeweavers products. They give back to the community, unlike Transgaming.

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

      Yeah, They should definately be punished for trying to turn a profit!

    2. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "The issue of contributing back to the community always shadows every open-source project. Transgaming does contribute back, but there are restrictions. You can see them in the statement from Transgaming's webpage:

      "The source code to TransGaming WineX (minus copy protection related code, for now) is available through VA Linux's SourceForge website. You can examine and modify it to your heart's content, you can watch the changes we make as we go, and you can participate in detailed development discussions on our mailing list. The only thing you can't do is redistribute WineX code for any commercial purpose. The WineX code is licensed under the Aladdin Free Public License, which prohibits commercial use of our work. If you wish to use WineX commercially, please contact our sales team to arrange for alternative licensing arrangements.

      Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com. Until then, we will periodically submit selected portions of our code for integration with the Wine project.""

    3. Re:Support Codeweavers by etymxris · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The only thing you can't do is redistribute WineX code for any commercial purpose.
      That's not software libre.

      Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com.
      Yeah, they've been saying that they were going to release everything from the beginning. Remember the beginning? As soon as they got enough money, they were going to distribute it for free for everyone. Well, after many bought into that, the promise changed. They liked making a profit. Nothing wrong with that, but people don't like being deceived, even when the initial promises are so ill conceived.
    4. Re:Support Codeweavers by datadriven · · Score: 1

      Does anyone know if crossover will/does run with X.org on slack. Photoshop stopped working on wine when I upgraded to slack 10 rc1.

    5. Re:Support Codeweavers by mahdi13 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Are you saying that the CVS is incomplete? The only code that is 'removed' from the CVS is the CD-Copy-Protection code that is licensed and they are not allowed to distribute in a 'free source code' manner...

      Only the binaries that they distribute under their subscription includes this code. Is it so bad that
      A) they are trying to make ends meet (pay the bills)
      and
      B) keeping themselves from getting sued out of exisitance?

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    6. Re:Support Codeweavers by Dave2+Wickham · · Score: 1

      Works fine for me on Xorg, Slack 9.0 (CXOffice 3).

    7. Re:Support Codeweavers by ospirata · · Score: 0

      "Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license"

      One of the main excuses at USSR to suppress individual rights was to "consolidate" the Soviet Union, against capitalism. They said all individual rights would be given back when they were safe of the any "western" threats.

      As we all know, the individual rights came back only with the fall of USSR, about eighty years later.

      My point: do not thurst these promisses like "when the right time comes". There will never be the rigth time to Transgaming. If they reach "subscriptio goals", their goals will get bigger.

    8. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My bet is that Transgaming defined "our subscription goals" as "our current # of subscribers + 1,000".

      Don't hold your breath for that source code release.

    9. Re:Support Codeweavers by FuzzieNorn · · Score: 0, Redundant

      CVS WineX is *not* under a Free Software license.

    10. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SO WHAT

    11. Re:Support Codeweavers by FuzzieNorn · · Score: 4, Informative

      SO WHAT

      So they promised to release it under the Wine License and then didn't. (incidentally, I'm a subscriber..)

    12. Re:Support Codeweavers by SQLz · · Score: 5, Informative
      I buy Codeweavers products. They give back to the community, unlike Transgaming.

      Go to Wine website, download the full change log, and grep for @transagaming.com, then come back here and post an apology.

    13. Re:Support Codeweavers by cloudmaster · · Score: 2, Funny

      I like being deceived, especially by a company that makes producs that I have absolutely no use for (like someone who makes software that'll make my computer do things that are *way* cheaper and faster on a console game system).

    14. Re:Support Codeweavers by dewke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How is this "interesting"?

      Transgaming gives back. You're free to download their cvs product, install it, play games. If that isn't "giving back" I don't know what is. Hell you can read the source code if you wanted to.

      Oh, I get it, because you actually have to *pay* for the licensed version, that's not "giving back". Well, welcome to the real world. Everything is not free.

      --
      Oderint dum metuant
    15. Re:Support Codeweavers by AndrewRUK · · Score: 4, Informative
      The only thing you can't do is redistribute WineX code for any commercial purpose.

      While the license says that, consider what happened when Debian wanted to package it and include it in non-free. Transgaming asked Debian not to, with a threat to change the license to stop Debian distributing any future versions. Quoteth Gavriel State, Transgaming's CEO:
      If Debian goes ahead and packages WineX despite our request, we will have to evaluate how that is affecting our financial situation, and determine whether we should change our license to restrict any future binary-packaged redistribution, regardless of commercial or non-commercial intent. It would certainly be our preference not to have to do so.
      http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/05/msg02 463.html
      Gentoo removed WineX for similar reasons.
    16. Re:Support Codeweavers by dirk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The only thing you can't do is redistribute WineX code for any commercial purpose.
      That's not software libre.


      You're right, it's not. But neither is the GPL "FREE software". Free means without restraints, and the GPL does include a number of restraints (you MUST include source being one). Free is public domain or the BSD license (which basically is no restraints, you can do as you want with it). If you're going to be picky about your definitions, be picky about all of them. I have no problem with the GPL, it's your work, release it how you want. But don't claim that it is "more free" than this license. Restrictions are restrictions. I support FREE software, where there are no restrictions more than "Free software" where you get more rights, but also restrictions if you want to use those rights.

      --

      "Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
    17. Re:Support Codeweavers by Rushuru · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Alright

      wget http://source.winehq.org/source/ChangeLog

      I count 14826 changelog entries
      $ grep @ ChangeLog | wc -l
      14826


      226 of which are from a transgaming employee
      $ grep -i @transgaming.com ChangeLog | wc -l
      226


      And 1701 for codeweavers
      $ grep -i @codeweavers.com ChangeLog | wc -l
      1701


      So Transgaming gave back a little after all. But not that much. I browsed the top transgaming changelog entries and they concerned relatively minor stuff, like fixes for alsa audio support.

      Sorry but I'm still convinced that Transgaming has been a bad wine citizen (the fact that the licence permitted it doesn't change my opinion), and that they were deceiving the community when they said they'd give back everything to wine after they reach a certain number of subscribers. I guess they have reached that number since they have not yet filed for bankruptcy.

      --
      !
      ^_^
    18. Re:Support Codeweavers by Greyfox · · Score: 2, Informative
      I haven't been able to pull an update off the sourceforge web site in ages. Apparently they've moved the source code to their site and require you to agree to a license to get to the instructions on how to download it (CVS server names and passwords etc.)

      Winex used to run Lotus Notes better than the wine package Debian's unstable branch, but as of the last time I tried it, the one Debian had was about even. I'd like to think that by the time I end up on another IBM contract they'd have come to their senses about Lotus Notes but I'm not particularly optimistic.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    19. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it so bad that

      A) they are trying to make ends meet (pay the bills)"

      Why don't they get a job?
    20. Re:Support Codeweavers by scubamage · · Score: 1

      There's very little difference between this liscence and the GPL, actually. The major difference is that the GPL allows redistrobution, where this doesn't. Remember... free as in free-speech, not as in free-beer. Open source projects can charge as much money as they want for their products, so long as they allow the source to be available to the user base.

    21. Re:Support Codeweavers by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      I this really true? Is the CVS really no longer available to the public? Wow!

    22. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How much time do you think they'd have to code with full time jobs...?

    23. Re:Support Codeweavers by blackdragon7777 · · Score: 1

      Because maybe this IS their job.

    24. Re:Support Codeweavers by Prior+Restraint · · Score: 3, Informative

      The question of whether GPL or BSD is more free depends on who we're talking about. BSD is more free if you're a developer, because you can basically do whatever you want with the source. The GPL is more free if you're an end-user, because you're always guaranteed not to get locked in to any particular developer to do your maintenance. It's apples and oranges.

      Finally, the BSD license is not public domain, and people really need to stop making that rather ridiculous comparison. If you don't include the proper copyright notice, you are not allowed to redistribute BSD-licensed software.

    25. Re:Support Codeweavers by blackdragon7777 · · Score: 1

      He didn't say that the BSD license is public domain. He only stated that public domain and bsd license are free. With that said I have to agree that the GPL is very limiting to me.

    26. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      1. So Transgaming gave back a little after all. But not that much.

      What would

      1. $ grep -i rushuru ChangeLog | wc -l

      show? (Full disclosure: Mine would be 0.)

    27. Re:Support Codeweavers by gokeln · · Score: 1

      So, I avoid doing business with liars. Especially ones that want to trick us into believing their philanthropists when they have ulterior motives.

      --

      There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late.
    28. Re:Support Codeweavers by Fizzol · · Score: 5, Informative

      They said they would realease the code when they reached 20,000 subscribers not once they had enough money. Last I heard they had 3,000 or 4,000 subscribers. Also the Wine license has changed since they made that promise.

    29. Re:Support Codeweavers by Fizzol · · Score: 1

      DIdn't they release thier entire 2D Direct Draw system back to wine?

    30. Re:Support Codeweavers by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The GPL is not about the freedom of the user. The GPL is about the freedom of the software. For better or for worse it is intended not to benefit the users or the authors, but the software itself. The GPL keeps the software from being "caged" by an individual developer by forcing changes to be contributed back if the software is widely released.

      The fact that the users of the software get all the source code is a side benefit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    31. Re:Support Codeweavers by Mold · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, it's still public. It was moved to transgaming.org because of stability issues with Sourceforge.

      The CVS page links back to transgaming.com though, for the actual download instructions, and it seems to be down right now.

    32. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The CVS is indeed incomplete. The CVS is not used for winex development; it's only there to placate the community.

    33. Re:Support Codeweavers by thebagel · · Score: 1

      Don't forget Install Shield support.

    34. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing wrong with that, but people don't like being deceived, even when the initial promises are so ill conceived.

      This is a company we are talking about afterall. Promises mean jack shit unless its in writing as an official document (i.e. not some "promise posted on a website").

    35. Re:Support Codeweavers by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      But don't claim that it is "more free" than this license. Restrictions are restrictions.

      I call bullshit. That's like saying a switchblade and an AK-47 are the same thing because "weapons are weapons." There is clearly a difference in degree here.

      The difference is that with the GPL, the rules are "you can do anything you want as long as you ALSO do X" while with the Alladin license it is, "you can do anything you want EXCEPT Y and Z." Since the GPL's ANYTHING is a larger set than the Alladin's (ANYTHING - YZ), the GPL is indeed more Free than the Alladin license.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    36. Re:Support Codeweavers by Fizzol · · Score: 1

      No, it's not true. I just downloaded and installed from CVS, and cvswinex works just fine.

    37. Re:Support Codeweavers by dubious9 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry but I'm still convinced that Transgaming has been a bad wine citizen (the fact that the licence permitted it doesn't change my opinion),

      Transgaming is a commerical venture. They need to secure a line of income. They do this by restricting access to precompiled binaries, amoungst other things. To get it easily you have to pay a nominal subscription: $60 a year. Now that's not alot. Without this subscription they wouldn't have a profit model and would probably desinagrate.

      Would you rather have them not do this venture at all? Or do you have another profit model that would alleviate what you criticize? For me the community benefits from their work: I can run Windows games under Linux. The OSS'ers may complain that they don't have full/libre access to the code, but if they had that, there wouldn't be a transgaming anyway. What do you want them to do?

      and that they were deceiving the community when they said they'd give back everything to wine after they reach a certain number of subscribers. I guess they have reached that number since they have not yet filed for bankruptcy.

      So just because they haven't yet, they're not going to? And they lied about it? Face it a pure software company just doesn't have a OSS profit model. Name one. Red Hat? Services, not software. Mozilla? Not a commerical entity, but backed by them. Come on, what would you have them do?

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
    38. Re:Support Codeweavers by Greyfox · · Score: 1
      If I follow the instructions on the sourceforge page I get some sort of error or other. A bit of googling reveals that the CVS repository has been moved to a transgaming server due to sourceforge "stability issues." When I tried to get to the CVS instructions from the Transgaming web site, they present you with a license agreement to read and agree to first. The first few paragraphs are fairly standard legalese designed to make the reader tune out, then they ask for your first born child or something. I forget exactly, it's been a while. I seem to recall thinking "That's obnoxious, maybe I'll try apt-get install wine instead." Since that seemed to work fairly well, it wasn't a big deal.

      Apparently if you google around a bit you can find a link directly to their CVS instructions without the legal agreement, though who knows how long that'll last now that we're talking about it.

      All in all, Transgaming kind of creeps me out in a vague sort of "They're saying X but they're doing Y" sort of way. Not that it's a big issue since my desktop hardware is too slow to play games and wine sets my laptop on fire unless I throttle the CPU to 1/2 its normal speed (even then it settles out at a toasty 64c.)

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    39. Re:Support Codeweavers by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 1

      It is probably worth noting at this point that the licensed version is the one that contains the proprietary code that complies with CD copy protection methods. That code is for sale, not GPL, and overcomes hardware abstractions and such that get in the way of the Win32-based copy protection validating a CD. Once the proprietary code is involved in the build, the product as a whole can no longer be considered GPL. That's my understanding - slap me down as the facts may dictate.

      I don't blame them at all for having to charge for that, since they have to license the technology themselves. Running CVS leaves that code out, and frequently means having to go find a no-CD crack for a game that you legitimately own. Of course, that's a whole 'nuther can of worms.

    40. Re:Support Codeweavers by RagManX · · Score: 1
      The difference is that with the GPL, the rules are "you can do anything you want as long as you ALSO do X" while with the Alladin license it is, "you can do anything you want EXCEPT Y and Z." Since the GPL's ANYTHING is a larger set than the Alladin's (ANYTHING - YZ), the GPL is indeed more Free than the Alladin license.
      Well, except you could also phrase your statement as:

      "...with the GPL, the rules are "you can do anything you want EXCEPT you can't do anything without ALSO doing X" while with the Alladin license it is, "you can do anything you want EXCEPT Y and Z."

      So really, they are both "Do anything EXCEPT" licenses. Just because you can linguistically mangle the definition and make them sound significantly different doesn't mean they are. Both are approaching free, but both also have restrictions that stop short of really being free.

      RagManX
    41. Re:Support Codeweavers by toolshed7 · · Score: 1

      You people kill me. Why does everything have to be free. Yeah it is open source, but programmers cost money, marketing cost money, their freakin website cost money.

      If they provide a product, and is better than what you got. Pay for it or steal it. I dont care. But dont cry when someone is trying to make money. Just becuase it is opensource, does not mean it should be free.

      if this open source movement is going to beat windows, it has to make money somehow. Remember money is what makes the world go around, this aint the bs star trek world. So, once again shut up, and pay the $5 and help the movement by making open source profitable.

      Take water for example, it is free but you people still pay to drink it out of plastic bottle. They just wrap up in a better way, than drinking out of hose.

      --


      Deserving got nothing to do with it.....shuffle
    42. Re:Support Codeweavers by Eskarel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Transgaming provides a service. The question is whether that service is worth the money or not. Wine could quite easily have added directx support on their own, they didn't, anyone else could have gotten a group together and worked on getting it done, no one did, transgaming provides the ability to play most windows games on Linux, no one else has done so. If they want to charge a little bit of money for that, and people are willing to pay for it, good for them.

    43. Re:Support Codeweavers by Prior+Restraint · · Score: 1

      He didn't say that the BSD license is public domain.

      No, and I probably focused too much of my grief on the issue toward dirk specifically, but the comparison of the BSD license with public domain gets made all the time on Slashdot, and most people who parrot it don't realize the analogy only works on the most superficial level. The limitations imposed by the BSD license are incredibly minor, but failure to conform to them sets oneself up for some serious legal trouble, given the state of copyright law in many WIPO countries.

      Finally, and this is a whole other can of worms in itself, I question whether it's possible to release source code into the public domain anymore. The rewrite of copyright laws in the 1970s (I forget which year) made copyright grants automatic at the moment the work was created. There's no clear procedure for getting the legal system to recognize the fact that you don't want that copyright. Now, code written before this law was changed needed to be registered, so some older stuff might be truly public domain (such as--perhaps--the old Unix source code at the heart of the BSD lawsuit).

    44. Re:Support Codeweavers by entitude · · Score: 1

      Sorry but I'm still convinced that Transgaming has been a bad wine citizen (the fact that the licence permitted it doesn't change my opinion)

      This is exactly what open-source software is about. They have the *choice* to release their software under a free license. They do this with large amounts of their code that *they* wrote, and *they* maintain. If they released all of it, assholes like you'd never pay for a subscription (you probably don't, anyways), and they'd never make a profit. Don't even try with that "profit is evil" bullshit, either; they're real people, with real needs that require real money to pay for. This is a capitalist world, not some dream world where everyone else spends all of their time working on things that they give to you for free.

      --
      ----geppy -
    45. Re:Support Codeweavers by Rushuru · · Score: 1

      What I would have them rather do is not say they'd give everything back to wine if it was not their intention, or if what they truly meant was 'We'll give back to wine... in 15 years'.

      Now regarding their business model, it can be argued that they're actually a service company. A large part of the popular games they support run just as well in wine, like Warcraft III and Half-Life / Counter Strike. A big chunk of what Transgaming provides to its customers is an easier to install and to configure wine, just like codeweavers with crossover.

      --
      !
      ^_^
    46. Re:Support Codeweavers by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Nobody would complain if they realeased under the old wine license. Wine would just incorporate their old-MIT-license chagnes and re-release under the LGPL.

    47. Re:Support Codeweavers by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Substitute MS for Transgaming. For $60/year it is cheaper just to run windows. And I'm sure that Windows is more Windows-compatible than WineX...

      They could try the MySQL approach - relase all code under GPL and offer an alternate commercial license. Companies couldn't link closed-source software to their libraries without paying for the software. GPL'ed windows software could use it for free. Your typical at-home user could also use it for free if the license were suitably worded.

      If they priced the license correctly a company could afford to use this as a way to play their game in a console-like environment (full game and linux OS on a CD - no compatibility issues). I'm sure there are commercial applications.

      In any case, my main objection is that they're standing on the shoulders of the wine developers without giving back. If they built their own windows emulator and wanted to charge, that would be fine. But they didn't build their own - they borrowed somebody else's...

    48. Re:Support Codeweavers by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Don't even try with that "profit is evil" bullshit, either; they're real people, with real needs that require real money to pay for.

      Uh, most companies do not exist for the purpose of feeding and clothing employees. If the company could get away with it they'd fire every one of them and give every last dollar to the shareholders.

      In a very small company the employees are the shareholders. However, if a company like transgaming got control of all windows emulation on linux, eventually the original developers would sell out, new developers would be hired, and 30% of every dollar sold would make whoever bought the software rich...

    49. Re:Support Codeweavers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what was the transgaming reaction when debian try to include this compiled cvs in a non-commertial way ???

      "We noticed that you intend to package our AFPLed WineX package for release in debian (presumably non-free). We would really prefer that this not happen, for a number of reasons." 2. " We would prefer not to have to change our license to explicitly prevent the distribution of binary packages, but if we have to we will do so."

      http://www.kerneltraffic.org/wine/wn20020530_124 .h tml

      So what you was saying about open source ???

  5. Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Seriously, instead of trying to get a buggy emulator to work why don't you just install the games on a Windows partition.

    1. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by etymxris · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Seriously, instead of trying to get a buggy emulator to work why don't you just install the games on a Windows partition.
      I know this is a troll, but it is a question many ask in earnest. The answer is simple. Some people wish to enjoy at least a small portion of the cornucopia of applications developed for the Windows platform without supporting what they see as an evil company.

      Even if TransGaming is not software libre, those who would use it have already made the choice to give up some of their freedom of use in exchange for enjoyment--very few games that would require WineX are themselves libre. However, one may wish to support the developer of a game without supporting an evil organization that they are associated with.

      An analogous situation might be, for example, going to a live performance of a band rather than buying their CD in a store, as, presumably, the live performance gives a minimal amount, if anything, to the RIAA, while giving plenty to the band.
    2. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by carnivore302 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I know this is a troll, but it is a question many ask in earnest

      Why would it be a troll? I think the original poster is raising a valid question.

      Some people wish to enjoy at least a small portion of the cornucopia of applications developed for the Windows platform without supporting what they see as an evil company

      I get so sick and tired of this anti Microsoft lobby. Microsoft is not an evil company, it's a company. Period.

      But to answer the original posters question: there are reasons why someone would insist on running anything in linux:

      It's the place where you might do most of your work. Maybe you have only one computer and rebooting frustrates you because it is slow.

      You might feel safer from viruses etc.

      But really, that's all I can think of. Me, I have four computers. Most run linux exclusively, but one is reserved for the few things I do in windows. Crossover and Transgaming or really no issues to me. I have a much better chance of getting windows programs and games working on windows than on linux, so why bother? Because I am supporting an evil company this way? Get real.

      --
      Please login to access my lawn
    3. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Your lucky, if you only have one computer to play with rebooting can be frustrating, stops you from being online and playing games at the same time. Something which is possible with winex, as your free to keep on skipping between the virtual desktops. That incidentally a feature I hate in some linux games, they block the virtual desktops so I can't do something else inbetween when I want to.

      Quickshot

    4. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Because I work with it, live breath eat with it, I damn sure well dont want to have to futz with it on my computers at home. Evil company or not, I tire of dealing with the issues I deal with every day at work. So yes I'm more than happy to "futz" with transgaming winex at home instead of having a windows partition. For me linux with winex is and has been in particular the last six months a nirvana of computing. Futz really, I download point2play and click install for when i want a game patch installed, OMFG wheres my windows disk. I tire of the "linux is to hard to bother with crowd", I'll continue using what i want in my house and telling others how i like it, you can continue telling me what a pain it apparently is

    5. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by etymxris · · Score: 1
      I get so sick and tired of this anti Microsoft lobby. Microsoft is not an evil company, it's a company. Period.
      Well, any such moral judgment is going to be largely subjective. Maybe you see nothing wrong with Microsoft's actions. I do, and in this context, it's really not necessary to take things further. After all, the original poster was only asking why people would be motivated to install WineX. So, whether Microsoft is indeed an evil company is one question. But that many see Microsoft as an evil company is not a question, it's a fact.
    6. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by carnivore302 · · Score: 1

      I think we agree here :-)

      I have the pleasure of having a job in which I work with linux almost exclusively. I love it, but the one thing I don't want to hassle with at home is installation, tweaking etc

      At home things should just work as fast and easy as possible, without looking at long term solutions. I might be an insensive clod here, but for me money is no issue. If I have the choice between spending two days google'ing, reading howto's and editing config files versus buying a new computer with win2k installed, I'll go for the latter. I can tell you my girlfriend really appreciates this approach. I'm a lot less grumpy now :-)

      --
      Please login to access my lawn
    7. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Karn · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is not an evil company, it's a company. Period.

      So what's your position on companies that break the law because it is cheaper than abiding by it? I guess you think that is ok, since all companies would do this, right?

      Personally, I think we should hold companies (and the people who run them) to a higher set of standards.. I mean, they could at least honor the laws, even if they don't honor the spirit of them sometimes.

      --


      Why do I keep typing pythong?
    8. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by JJahn · · Score: 1

      I'll give you even a better reason...

      What happens when you want to play some of your MP3's (or Vorbis or whatever) while you're playing a game? Well if you have your music on your linux filesystem, you're probably out of luck. You can have a shared FAT32 fs, but then you need to guess how much space you should assign to that and its a pain in the ass to get working at first anyway.

      Of course you can work around that, but then maybe you want to check your email quick under Windows without booting Linux...now you have to setup your email client there, or live with webmail. Its just not worth the struggle when its easier to just stick with Linux or Windows, not both. I personally tried using just Linux, and then a dualboot, and as much as I like Linux and using open-source software in general, I had to go back to Windows because of annoyances like I listed above. Although I still use as much open-source stuff as possible (Firefox, openoffice, Cygwin, and so on)

    9. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Some people wish to enjoy at least a small portion of the cornucopia of applications developed for the Windows platform without supporting what they see as an evil company."
      If MSFT is evil, that removes your moral obligation to it, thus freeing you to use a war3z copy of its product.

    10. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Alexis+de+Torquemada · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is not an evil company, it's a company. Period.

      Microsoft is not an evil corporation, it's a corporation. "Evil corporation" is a tautology...

    11. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by sloanster · · Score: 1

      Seriously, instead of trying to get a buggy emulator to work why don't you just install the games on a Windows partition.

      Well, I'd rather not have to dual boot (ruins my 500 day uptimes), and in any case having a windows partition is a bit of a security risk. I used to run windows, but switched to linux, because I prefer the whole unix way of doing things. linux provides all the power and flexibility I crave, and the freedom is just the icing on the cake.

      I play games, probably a bit too much of the 3D FPS, and I make a point of buying native linux games. I have no interest in buying any microsoft-only game, but prefer to keep my wallet closed until the game is available natively for linux.

    12. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Zan+Lynx · · Score: 1

      Because I don't want to reboot.

      I don't want to reboot because on my system, rebooting takes 3 minutes. ECC scrub and memory test on 2 GB takes a while. I just want to play the game, not wait 3 minutes to reboot and then 3 minutes to reboot again.

      I'm probably also running P2P apps like BitTorrent, or FTP downloading huge files. I don't want to shut all that down to play a game.

      I can play Master of Orion 2, Warcraft III, Civ III and Knights of the Old Republic in WineX. Quake 3 and UT2004 run native in Linux. I have all the games I need right there.

    13. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by DrPascal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most people aren't willing to "leave their comfort zone" and just go Linux, and I'd say that most of them (that were willing to try Linux in the first place, but not stay) are gamers.

      If you're a PC gamer, don't whine about Linux not working for you... stick to Windows. Most friends I know use their PC as an appliance. It lets them talk on Aim and play games.

      I never understood people's missionary attempts to "recruit" people to Linux. Who cares? Stick with what you like, try something else when you get tired of it.

      --
      DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
    14. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by dorlthed · · Score: 2, Interesting

      First of all, don't feed the trolls. Second of all, that's fine and dandy if you've got four up-to-date computers, one of which you can dedicate exclusively to Windows. I, on the other hand, use one computer because:

      1) I pay my own electric bill
      2) I don't have the floor space for more than one computer
      3) It's hard enough hauling ONE computer back and forth from school
      4) I already have lots of RAM, a good CPU, and a fast video card in my Linux desktop machine. I'm not going to pump more money into a second computer with lots of RAM, a good CPU, and a good video card when I already have one. Likewise, I'm not going to run my Linux desktop apps on a slower second computer because I've already got all the apps I like on a computer that runs them fast and efficiently. Besides, I'm not getting a second computer for the other reasons above.

      So, as it is I do a lot of rebooting so I can play the games that don't run in WineX. However, I'd like to keep that rebooting to a minimum so that I don't have to switch back whenever it's time to listen to MP3s, surf the web, check my email, or God forbid get some productive work done. Hence, I spend $5 for a WineX binary which runs at least half of my favorite games almost perfectly, without the need to reboot. And my electric bill is maneagable. Sounds like a good deal to me.

    15. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by entitude · · Score: 1

      The whole point in not buying a Microsoft product is that you are taking the moral high ground, and standing up for what you believe in, by not supporting what you believe to be an immoral corporation.

      By using a "war3z" copy of anything, you completely void your "moral high ground" policy, and you simply become a thieving hipocrite, which makes you just as bad as Microsoft.

      --
      ----geppy -
    16. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by gehrehmee · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is not an evil company, it's a company. Period.
      Hey, maybe they should make a slogan based on that! "Buy Microsoft Products! We Don't Kill Baby Deer!"

      My questions:

      1. How does suggesting that we not buy Microsoft products imply that we think they're Evil?
      2. How else can we stop Microsoft from actively making our lives more difficult (not to mention costly)?
      --
      "You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
    17. Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you don't become a thieving hipocrite at all. A copyright violator, sure. But how is that hypocritical? I don't hate MS because of copyright violations, I hate them because of their abusive monopoly tactics that have held back progress and destroyed consumer choice. By using an illegally obtained copy of windows, I don't suddenly start bullying OEMs into not offering other OSs, or intentionally locking out competing browsers from websites I run or anything like that. I just get to play games without supporting MS. I feel that is moral, and wether you like it or not, that is completely valid, as morals are subjective.

  6. Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's really a shame I won't ever get to use this, since Transgaming forced Gentoo to pull the packages for WineX from their distro.

    Will Transgaming ever learn to work with the open source community instead of mearly tolerating its existance as an annoying necessity to business?

    1. Re:Too bad by strange_harlequin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To be entirely fair, Transgaming didn't force gentoo to pull the packages, they asked them to pull the packages and gave their reasons. The gentoo developers respected that and complied.

      You (and I) may disagree with Transgaming's reasons, but saying that they "forced" gentoo to pull the packages is unfairly implying harsh measures on Transgaming's part.

    2. Re:Too bad by xoran99 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just because you can't emerge it doesn't mean it can't be installed the old fashioned way, right?

      --

      Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)

    3. Re:Too bad by gspr · · Score: 4, Informative

      I understand what you're saying, but Gentoo hasn't pulled all WineX packages from Portage. Transgaming forced them to remove the packages that fetched the open part of WineX from CVS and built it. If you are a Transgaming subscriber and use their binaries, there are still ebuilds for you.
      I see your point though.

    4. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's trivially easy to grab the WineX CVS sources with a custom ebuild. Just search forums.gentoo.org and it'll be in your face in less time than it took you to write that gimmie, gimmie, gimmmieeeee MOOMMMY message *sighs*.

    5. Re:Too bad by srwalter · · Score: 5, Informative

      Transgaming only forced Gentoo to remove links to their CVS archive, which is publicly accessible. Their business model is based upon selling subscriptions to end users who want their product. The CVS repository is only there for developers, and they encourage developers to use it. Transgaming's argument is that having an ebuild that pulls from their CVS undermines their business model by giving end-users a free (as in beer) option to get releases.

      Now, if they really wanted to be jerks, they could have just shut down their public CVS access. Seems to me, however, that politely asking (they didn't sue or anything) Gentoo to remove the ebuilds in question was a much nicer alternative. Could you explain what's wrong with this, exactly?

      --
      Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4
    6. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Transgaming asked Gentoo to remove WineX from their portage tree because it was defeating the purpose of having a free cvs version (for developers and experienced users) and then a fully supported commercial version. The Gentoo ebuild allowed people to install the a working cvs version with one command for free... which definately was not the intentent of the CVS version. If you really dont feel like paying for the software just use CVS... it may not be as easy as emerging it but it is still pretty dang easy

    7. Re:Too bad by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I've been wondering... IF Wine is a LGPL-ed product, then how can WineX exist without source code? I might be horribly wrong here, but doesn't the LGPL, like the GPL, force the creators of derivative works to make the source code available? I know they can just sod it all and only include sources with every CD they sell, that'd their right. But the person receiving that source code has the right to distribute it then, iirc.

      Then again, it's the LGPL, so there might be something involved here that I'm not aware of. Mainly dealing with libraries. But I don't know if WineX uses just the Wine libraries or not. If they'd actually use a single line of Wine code ( instead of just using the libraries ) in their own sources, though, it'd be a LGPL-ed work, right?

    8. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The original wine licence was more like the bsds, so when they got pissed off with people not contributing back they changed it.

      WineX is a fork of the old code.

    9. Re:Too bad by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Yeah, many people agree with you about Transgaming, and I understand and mostly agree. However, the original Wine license allowed them to do this, so there's really no point in complaining.

      Transgaming has chosen a business-model that requires them to keep their source closed. I'm not sure they have a viable alternative for running a for-profit business.

      So, I think the answer is absolutely no, they will never work with the open source community. They will continue to sell useful software to those willing to buy it.

      Personally, I see Transgaming as a necessary evil, for a lot of people. They are helping many ditch Windows completely, while enabling them to still enjoy their #1 hobby.

      But I still don't particularly like them :-/

      --
      Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
    10. Re:Too bad by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 0, Troll

      IF Wine is a LGPL-ed product, then how can WineX exist without source code?

      Ask BSD people. And also ask them why BSD is much better than GPL :->

    11. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Too bad they didn't do "functionally the same thing" - if you'd taken the trouble to have a browse through Wine's source code, you'd see a slew of contributions from Transgaming.

      This is *my* observation, and *directly* related to the parent in the interests of clearing up an instant judgement/misconception.

    12. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ebuilds are trivial to write.
      If you can't then find an old copy of the winex ebuild and modify it.

    13. Re:Too bad by G-funk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Am I the only one that thinks that many corporate giants are not evil's kinsmen and don't ride a pale horse, and occasionally get things correct?

      Here? Pretty much.

      --
      Send lawyers, guns, and money!
    14. Re:Too bad by Etyenne · · Score: 1
      Transgaming has chosen a business-model that requires them to keep their source closed. I'm not sure they have a viable alternative for running a for-profit business.

      Well, you do understand that code to most of WineX is indeed open; everybody is free to grab it from their public CVS server and build it himself. Their business is not about keeping their source code closed (except the part to deal with game's copy protection scheme; they have no choice, it's licensed and/or NDAed), it's about selling convenience. I don't think their business model is really good either as they are walking a very fine line; packaging software is easy, their competitive advantage is thin. More power to them if they can generate enough revenue to keep chugging. I personnally appreciate their work, and will buy their package (even if I am proficient enough to compile it for free).

      For the record, they do send a lot of patches upstream to Wine, so your part about them not working with the Open Source community is, well, plain misinformation.

      --
      :wq
    15. Re:Too bad by SQLz · · Score: 5, Informative

      The main problem was that people were downloading the CVS version (which did not contain any of the main features of WineX) and then giving others the wrong idea about WineX, namely that it didn't work. Not to mention, CVS is a developers tool for version control, not a method of mass distribution.

      Hardly any games ran with the CVS version at all anyway. You need the commerical version to do anything.

    16. Re:Too bad by Jeedo · · Score: 1

      It's because WINE hasnt always been LGPL'ed, it was one under the X11 licence and the WineX fork was based on that codebase.

    17. Re:Too bad by Alexis+de+Torquemada · · Score: 2, Informative

      Microsoft did ask the wxWindows developers to rename their project, stating that pepole might confuse it with Microsoft Windows, and there wasn't much of a fuss about it. Ok, but then that may partly be owed to the fact that MS paid them a monetary compensation.

    18. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "And also ask them why BSD is much better than GPL :->"

      Because BSD is truely free.

      It doesn't impose any moral obligations to you. It tells you that you would do well for yourself by contributing back, but we are not going to force you to be nice.

      Its like gifts to family members. Your aunt buys you a crappy sweater for your birthday, and for the next 10 years, every time you see your aunt you are obligated to wear it. Wrong size? Too bad. You can't take it back. You can't get your money for it and get something you really want.

      Too many people are too damn selfish.

      The GPL is the same. Its *VERY* selfish. Its giving a gift and then telling you that you have to wear it everytime the gift giver comes around.

      Rationally a gift should be given because you want to give it. If someone doesn't like it or wants to give it to someone else or just get the money and buy crack with it, who the fuck cares. Once you have given it away, your obligation is over and you should have inner peace knowing you did the right thing.

      BSD doesn't force you to take on a religion to use their code. It doesn't ask that you vote in the next election in one way or the other. It doesn't tell you Santa Claus doesn't really exist, nor does it require you to crucifix an easter bunny every spring. It gives you a gift and says see that I am doing right by giving this to you and please do the same, but I'm not holding you to the same ethical standards that I hold myself.

      Are their instances this can be abused?

      Gawd no...you've fullfiled your obligations and while some morally retarded motherfuckers would claim that if even one doesn't follow your lead, you are taking your ball and going home. How is that a choice??? There can be no instances of abuse when you expect nothing out of the other person.

      In a sense, it is the most perfect license there is.

      Then again, I love GPL for my own stuff...it means competitors can't work against me. They can't release a product of mine and add new features and not give them back to me. Its free development work. And as I'm still considered the expert in my field, folks still buy my consulting from me and the few times a competitor has used my work against me, it only took a fews to surpass what they had done because they really didn't understand the theory behind the practice.

      I'm no enlightened hippy, so I do what I can to protect myself. But I going to give all the respect to those that are willing to give with all their hearts and not look back. Maybe one of these days I will be...but not yet...for now, I'll hang with the commies -- and I mean commies as in the rule of Stalin -- because their iron fists protects my livelyhood.

    19. Re:Too bad by Some+Dumbass... · · Score: 1

      I just have this feeling of eerie double standard when it comes to open source. Microsoft sends a cease and desist letter (which is corporate for 'would you kindly remove 'x'') and the mighty winds of geek fury are raised. An open source developer does functionally the same thing, and it is laid in the 'it was justified' category.

      You (correctly) put the words "An open source developer" in that last sentence, not "An open source developer's lawyers". That's the difference. It's the difference between a request and a threat.

      It's also why the word "functionally" is so deceptive. You can die of old age or by being beheaded, so they're "functionally" the same. Anyone other than me think that there's a difference between them anyway? :)

    20. Re:Too bad by gaijin99 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I think you're misinterperating, and making a C&D sound nicer than it is. A C&D is not a polite request to stop, it is a statement that if you do not immediately comply with their demands then they will sue you. Essentially its a threat, not a request. When you get threatened by a corporation known to use lawsuits to crush competition, not to mention a legal budget that is bigger than you really want to think about, I'd argue that its different from getting a non-threat letter saying "would you please stop that? Here's why we don't want you to keep doing this".
      Am I the only one that thinks that many corporate giants are not evil's kinsmen and don't ride a pale horse, and occasionally get things correct?
      I don't think that they're evil necessarially, but they are powerful, and mostly uncontrolled. If you get in the way of their profits they will do everything they can to crush you (see entries under MS's use of SCO against Linux for a nice example). That isn't evil, any more than its evil for a polar bear to eat a penguin. But the penguins don't like it.

      To totally sidetrack, and leave animal analogies behind, I simply think that corporate power is being alowed to run amok, the current trend towards more and bigger mergers is probably a bigger threat to capitalism than communism ever dreamed of being. I view any concentration of power as a potential threat to individual liberties. Government concentrations of power were pretty closely monitored (until 9/11 and the USA PATRIOT act anyway, these days it seems as if anything goes), but corporate power is largely ignored by those who worry about liberty; despite the fact that corporations can trounce your liberties as much as the government can. On a total side note, I'll add that corporations aren't the only group to worry about, guilds, unions, etc are also potential threats. A group has more power than an individual, thus any group can *potentially* be a threat to individual liberty. There are occasional extremely powerful individuals, but they're the exception not the rule. I'm not a fear case who goes around seeing threats to my liberty everywhere, I just have a healthy degree of concern.

      --
      "Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
    21. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Now, if they really wanted to be jerks, they could have just shut down their public CVS access."

      They don't have a public cvs just to be nice you know. They earn a lot of code-contribution from it. I guess they want the best of both worlds.

    22. Re:Too bad by abe+ferlman · · Score: 1

      so there's really no point in complaining.

      No, there's no point in suing, there's plenty of point in complaining. Like how they promised they'd release everything under a free license (AFPL is not free in any sense that matters and they know it, plus it doesn't include any of the copy protection code which foro most games is a usable/not usable issue anyway.) I gave them my money and they lied to me and I have every right to complain about it. That said, they make an excellent product and it's better than buying windows- but to say that there's no point in complaining is to abdicate all your rights as a consumer.

      We do live in a capitalism after all, at least here in the US.

      --
      microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
    23. Re:Too bad by gaijin99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Since its the Lesser GPL, they have a bit more leeway. Under section 2 of the LGPL they must distribute all modifications to the LGPLed libraries under the LGPL, but they are allowed to simply use the LGPLed libraries alongside closed source work. Additionally, until March 2002 WINE was distributed under the MIT license [1], so as long as they never used any post March 2002 WINE code they'd be perfectly free to modify and not release their changes.

      Brad

      [1] Side note to the snarky BSD poster: which is basically the same as the 3-clause BSD license. So much for the inate superiority of the BSD license, huh? Not that I don't like the BSD license, but claiming that its a panacea is just so much nonesense. I think the world needs both licenses, personally.

      --
      "Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
    24. Re:Too bad by Turmio · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Wine hasn't been under the LGPL from the beginning (which dates far far back to the 90's). WineX is derived from Wine from the era it was still licensed under the X11 license that allows this. The main Wine tree was re-licensed under LGPL partly due to TransGaming's actions (they promised to contribute all their changes back to the main Wine tree but they didn't) and some of the Wine developers wanted to prevent similar from happening from in the future and thus they changed the license to LGPL under which, as you stated, that couldn't happen. Not all developers agreed that Wine should be under LGPL so another fork, ReWind was made that continues to use the X11 license. Interesting is that the LGPL'ed main tree can pull patches from ReWind but not vice-versa. Most contributors to Wine however dual-license their patches so that both trees can benefit from the efforts (and also WineX since TransGaming can use source from the ReWind tree if they want to).

    25. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last time I checked, you can get all non-proprietary code for WineX without any problems. The main restriction is that you can't get access to their copy protection code (due to licensing issues).

      They continually make their code available via CVS (sans copy protection code), and make many contributions back to the official Wine project.

      If you're going to complain that they don't release their sources without looking into it, you have no right to complain.

    26. Re:Too bad by dewke · · Score: 1

      Thats not true. There is a WineX ebuild in portage. You have to subscribe to transgaming and download the binary from them.

      "emerge -s transgaming"

      --
      Oderint dum metuant
    27. Re:Too bad by ajs · · Score: 1
      They don't have a public cvs just to be nice you know. They earn a lot of code-contribution from it. I guess they want the best of both worlds.
      <sarcasm>
      I'm sick of these bastards that make huge contributions to open source software and then don't want to pay hosting costs for thousands of kiddies to download source at install time!
      </sarcasm>
    28. Re:Too bad by Choron · · Score: 1

      I know what you mean but come on, those guys do work hard to improve that program, how do you think they'll put bread on the table at the end of the month ?

      --
      "Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
    29. Re:Too bad by Elenyon · · Score: 1

      Am I the only one that thinks that many corporate giants are not evil's kinsmen and don't ride a pale horse, and occasionally get things correct?
      Yes

    30. Re:Too bad by quintesse · · Score: 1

      I don't know what you have been smoking but this Aunt/Sweater thing must be the worst comparison I've ever seen ;-)

      First, open source software, using GPL, BSD or whatever license is NOT a gift. People are not "knitting this sweater" for you as a gift they are doing it for themselves.

      Secondly, software is not a unique thing, it's something that can be easily copied which is something you can't do with a sweater.

      And finally, I'm sure your Aunt would get mighty pissed if YOU would get rich selling HER sweaters without giving her anything in return!

    31. Re:Too bad by Rushuru · · Score: 1


      I'm sick of these bastards that make huge contributions to open source software and then don't want to pay hosting costs for thousands of kiddies to download source at install time!


      Last I checked, the winex public cvs tree was hosted by sourceforge. So it really must be costing transgaming a lot of money when someone downloads from there.

      --
      !
      ^_^
    32. Re:Too bad by silicon+not+in+the+v · · Score: 4, Funny
      That isn't evil, any more than its evil for a polar bear to eat a penguin. But the penguins don't like it.
      Don't say penguins preciousss. It hurts us, yes it doesss. Say...shark eats fish--yessss, nice fisssshhhh.
      --
      We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
    33. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How on earth is this modded up as insightful? The mods are craaaaaazy today

    34. Re:Too bad by Lussarn · · Score: 1

      Being able to see and use the source does not make it open. Likewise Microsoft shared source != open source.

    35. Re:Too bad by conway · · Score: 1
      Not all developers agreed that Wine should be under LGPL so another fork, ReWind was made that continues to use the X11 license.

      Also, it would be worthwile to note that the ReWind project was started mostly with the backing of Transgaming, and it was their idea. Basically they needed Wine to stay X11 so that they can continue to ship their copy-protection stuff in commercial builds but strip it out of publicly available CVS.
      That, and they are not forced to contribute back to Wine (or ReWind). Makes you wonder..

    36. Re:Too bad by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 1
      Touché!

      However, don't complain about them using the original Wine code under the license it was distributed with, instead complain about their broken promises, et cetera, which you pointed out.

      Cheers!

      --
      Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
    37. Re:Too bad by mobets · · Score: 1

      all you have to do is pay (gasp), download the source tarball, and then put it into the apropriate directory under portage. Gentoo even tells you what to do when you try to emerge it and you don't have the source.

      --

      It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
    38. Re:Too bad by johnnyb · · Score: 1

      Freedom is not the same as not having moral obligations.

    39. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      it's called bigotry.

      ACM Queue open source article on bigotry: article

    40. Re:Too bad by swb · · Score: 1

      To totally sidetrack, and leave animal analogies behind, I simply think that corporate power is being alowed to run amok, the current trend towards more and bigger mergers is probably a bigger threat to capitalism than communism ever dreamed of being.

      It was once said that capitalists would sell the rope the socialists would use to hang them.

      I think we'll just sell it to ourselves now.

    41. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      "That isn't evil, any more than its evil for a polar bear to eat a penguin."

      I know this is off topic but due to my natuarlly high level of pedantic geekyness I just have to point out that that was a really bad analogy. Polar bears live in the Arctic which is North whilst Penguins live the Antarctic which is South and never the twain shall meet. Penguins never evolved to deal with tropical waters and thus will never make it to the North Pole to become Polar Bear food.

      Just had to point that out :-)

    42. Re:Too bad by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Their software allows individual users to drop Windows but in general it provides for the health of Windows itself by encouraging developers to continue to write software for Windows on the premise that other people will do the work of making it work on Linux for them. This is to say that it may be good for individual users but it's bad for everyone.

      Necessary evil? Don't believe it. This is software for running games. If these people just bought linux games instead, we'd have more linux games in short order.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    43. Re:Too bad by Dalcius · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You make sense, but I think your comparison fails:

      "the fact that corporations can trounce your liberties as much as the government can."
      1) Corporations don't back up their threats with guns, as the government does. They can attempt to stomp on your 'rights' on the scale that the government can, but they are not able to force you to do anything.

      "Government concentrations of power were pretty closely monitored (until 9/11"
      2) Not really. Look back to McCarthy, et. al. and the big name court cases. It takes longer than just a few years for the courts to come into play. I would also add to this that you are focused on only a portion of government -> individual regulation, however there is much more that is often monitored much less than the example you gave.

      3) You are absolutely right about corporations being a threat to capitalism. Competition is perfect in theory, but corporations exploit the apathy of the consumer to get around this theory. Competition comes from insistance on quality. And the majority of consumers aren't in the fighting mindset yet. Until the majority care about quality, we'll have to deal with this. I think it's a mistake for the loud minority to run consumer protection through the government -- most of it ends up blunt and poorly worded and costs more to enforce. But, I digress....

      Cheers

      --
      ~Dalcius
      Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
    44. Re:Too bad by tabrnaker · · Score: 1

      hmm, so you're saying they didn't force them. Let's see, basically it can be summed up as 'pull your packages or we'll be forced to change our licence and nobody will have access to it'. hmm, listen, you pay me $10,000 and i won't release those picture's of your spouse screwing some other person.

    45. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But the penguins don't like it.

      It's not so much that they don't like it, just that they are suprised since they live in the southern hemisphere while polar bears reside in the far north. Was this in some kind of zoo or something?

    46. Re:Too bad by alienw · · Score: 1

      Your post, quite possibly, is the stupidest one I have ever seen on this subject. I am sure you have not written a single line of code in your entire life. Otherwise, you would know that programming anything more complex than a message board script in PHP is hard work, and people don't like to do hard work for free.

      The GPL is a fair license -- if I release my code for everyone to use, I expect you to do the same if you use it. The only people who don't like this system are freeloaders who want to take things and not give them back. Somehow, companies like IBM, Novell, and Red Hat have no problem contributing to GPLed projects such as Linux.

      Granted, the BSD license has its uses. Things that need to be standard, such as image loading libraries, TCP/IP stacks, and stuff like that is better off being BSD-licensed. However, the LGPL works even better in this situation by keeping companies from making incompatible closed-source versions.

    47. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      cvswinex plays Steam/Counter-Strike on gentoo no problem... I've been using it for quite sometime now... Just use the cvs instructions on the site and ./configure && make dep && make should get it all going.

    48. Re:Too bad by CaptainPinko · · Score: 2, Funny

      which dates far far back to the 90's

      please don't use the concepts of "far far back" and "90's" together... it makes me feel old. :)
      --
      Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
    49. Re:Too bad by ScottGant · · Score: 1

      Actually, you can emerge it...but first you just have to download the .bin file from Transgaming's site and place it into your /usr/portage/distfiles/ first, then emerge it like normal.

      It's just the downloading part that is out of portage...otherwise it emerges as normal and puts everything where it belongs.

      --

      "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
    50. Re:Too bad by sydb · · Score: 3, Funny

      That isn't evil, any more than its evil for a polar bear to eat a penguin. But the penguins don't like it.

      Not evil, but definitely unlikely.

      Polar Bears - Arctic. Penguins - Antarctic!

      --
      Yours Sincerely, Michael.
    51. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They threatened to change the license of their product if people didn't stop taking advantage of the freedom granted by their license.

      Yeah, that's so much more ethical than a cease-and-desist letter.

    52. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're such a zealot. CVS winex ran most everything. I used it use it whenever wine couldn't handle something to my satisfaction. Then they decided to threaten Gentoo with changing their license if they didn't remove the winex-cvs ebuild. Granted I could have continued using it anyway, but they're such ass clowns that I'd rather just buy a second computer for running Windows software than use their product, least of all buy it. They can go fuck themselves and the muddy horse they came in on.

    53. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're retarded. They _did_ make a threat. They threatened to change the license of their software if they did not comply with their requests about packaging winex.

      I can threaten to kill you without the assistance of an attorney. Get it? Good.

    54. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please provide links to me for your complex software.

    55. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      starcraft - works with source built winex on my gentoo laptop

      warcraft III - only works with the precompiled binary

      in the world of emulation, it's always a mixed bag

    56. Re:Too bad by spundun · · Score: 1
      That isn't evil, any more than its evil for a polar bear to eat a penguin. But the penguins don't like it.
      Okkey I am almost sure that polar bears are only there near north pole. And penguines are definately only existing near south pole. Its going to be a long commute for the bears ;)
    57. Re:Too bad by SQLz · · Score: 1

      but they're such ass clowns that I'd rather just buy a second computer for running Windows software than use their product, least of all buy it.

      They can go fuck themselves and the muddy horse they came in on.

      And your calling me a zealot?! Thats funny.

      Most people copied the .ebuild into their overlay directory or simply checked out the CVS tree on their own. For the majoritity of Gentoo users it was a non-issue. The gentoo maintainers didn't even care, just a few hot heads in the forums who like to stir things up.

      When I said no games work, I meant games with copy protection....basically, newer titles that required the CD in the drive for checks would not work with CVS Wine version because it didn't have the copy protection modules. You know, BF1942 and the like.

    58. Re:Too bad by Poeir · · Score: 1

      Or he's getting a lot more out of his money for going to the zoo than I am.

      --
      Sigs are like bumper stickers.
    59. Re:Too bad by ajs · · Score: 1

      None the less, it's their call, and you don't get to release your code under a permissive license and then say, "those bastards are doing exactly what our license told them they could." It's not only bad form, but it sort of makes you look like you didn't read your own license.

      As for CVS... I don't get to second-guess them on that either. Perhaps they're concerned about getting kicked off of SF.net because of the burden of gentoo-builds, perhaps they just don't want to worry about trying to support (or explain the lack of support to) users who have problems with fresh-out-of-CVS builds. It's their ball, they can do what they like with it. Besides one other company (CodeWeaver) who has made a larger set of contributions to Wine than TransGaming? Granted they forked, but the source available from them makes the technical advances in emulating Windows core APIs available to all emulation projects.

      This is a good thing.

    60. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, penguins would never really be eaten by polar bears.
      They live in different poles of the earth ;P

    61. Re:Too bad by entitude · · Score: 1

      I've never gotten *anything* to work (post-install) under CVSWINEX, which is why I put off buying WineX for so long... Until I realized that CVSWINEX lacks certain features (mainly copy-protection code) that the precompiled binaries available only to subscribers has. Now, I'm a subscriber, and I generally have no trouble getting the games I have to work.

      Just an example of how labeling cvswinex as winex in the apt repositories makes people believe that winex is a really crappy product.

      --
      ----geppy -
    62. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where is your complex software?

    63. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I manage a small programming department doing new and experimental psychometric application development.

      Scripting a message board? I did that as a hobby at one point before I bought an off the shelf commercial one that did more than the free ones (well at the time...)

      I have currently 4 PhD candidates working for me in the fields of Electrical Engineering, Psychology, and Social Work (again, coding isn't a solidary thing that a single programmer can do...you should have a collaborative team that actually knows what the client wants or the software will mean nothing -- I get sick of the lone programmer idea where the application works like shit and doesn't address anyones needs except that one person, but they rant on that its free and if someone wants it to do more, they can).

      I have a few other programmers working for me out of the office -- the 3 are at Duke and MIT and are kick ass programmers.

      We work in C++, PHP (yes, we do some scripting...most of what we do is run through a web interface) and ASP (because some of the components still haven't been converted over from an old mandate). We also have to know a few specialized languages where its easier to program AI type expert systems in a rapid fashion (none of the current languages can do so in any manner that is quick, effective, or meaningful to anyone but a geek).

      So if you don't know what the background of the persons you are dismissing, Shut The Fuck Up. As some of the other ACs have said, where is your complex software. Are you releasing it to hospitals, psychologists and other medical personel? Do you understand what it means to do this?

      I have 4 main competitors in this area...all MUCH bigger than my company. All brutally check the codes I give to my clients. All trying to reverse engineer this. Good for them. By the time they do, they will have also read my published articles explaining what I've done and will need to understand it on their own.

      The GPL means that they can't just take my code and screw me over.

      In a perfect world where I didn't have to beg for every scrap and whore myself out for grants, I'd BSD this as it helps the world. GPL doesn't. GPL means this will always be something the big guys can't profit off of and thus won't deal with.

      All but unimportant code should be BSD'd. Maybe you are too use to dealing with the unimportant stuff. Go make your message board...it means nothing to me because $50 a year isn't killing me for the commercial stuff...

    64. Re:Too bad by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Can you point out one of these working ebuilds for the cvswinex version? I was using it up until the point that gentoo yanked it and deleted all copies of the working ebuilds so that it is not trivial to get it working again. Sure, I could manually install it, but for that matter I could manually install anything in linux, and try to get everything to play nice, and keep an eye out for security updates, and spend 8 hours a day figuring out what patches I need to get x to play nice with y, etc.

      The whole idea of a distro is to NOT require manual installation.

      And everything I run worked just fine under winex. I generally didn't use it for games though. That may be the main audience for winex, but I was just interested in a higher level of general application compatibility.

      On the other hand, in one respect I am thankful for what gentoo did - it forced me to stop and reconsider why I'm not using free software for windows emulation. RMS I am not, but if there is a program that doesn't run in Wine I should be looking to help improve Wine and not looking to solve the problem by paying somebody to come up with what is effectively closed-source software as a solution. Sure WineX isn't closed source, but as gentoo learned, if you try to treat it like open source they complain and threaten to close their source altogeter. Why? Because while they didn't mind people using the CVS version giving them free help with their commercial product, they didn't want the world at large having access to it.

      And this is why I don't like non-GPL licenses. It ends up leading to situations where people settle for good enough instead of putting development effort into truly free software. I admire projects like MySQL where the developers have found a way to profit while at the same time making ALL their code available under the GPL. The MySQL model might be a good one for sustainable open source development.

    65. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would they be "HER" sweater.

      She *GAVE* it to you.

      If someone gives me something and I make a few grand off of it, I might be a bastard, but that is my right.

      If I give someone something, and they make a few grand off of it, no biggie. I gave it away. I'm not pissed about that. If I were pissed, I wouldn't have given it in the first place. What someone else does with something I've given them is their own business. I might be sore about it, but I would never hold them in any contempt for doing so...that would be childish and moronic.

      Just like most of the GPL community these days...

    66. Re:Too bad by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      As for CVS... I don't get to second-guess them on that either.

      You don't need to, just read the email halfway down this bug report. Oh, and this page also contains what should be a working ebuild for anybody who actually cares to use winex CVS.

      Basically, transgaming wanted free tech support from real developers, while making normal users pay for the software. They threatened to make the CVS accessible only to subscribers if there was "abuse". Personally, I think gentoo should have pushed them so that they'd have to cut their own throats by cutting off potential developers. You're either open-source or closed-source - you can't say you want free open-source labor while charging mandatory license fees and also putting restrictions on distribution. It just doesn't work.

      All this of course happened because the Wine team made the mistake of not using the GPL. This is a mistake they have since corrected...

    67. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your entire nonsensical rant hinges upon arguing from authority. Well, what are you an authority on, precisely? Where is your non-trivial software? If you don't have any (quite likely; most Slashdotters have never written anything of any complex) examples, then you're not an authority of any sort and your comment boils down to "you're stupid because I say so, and have a side of I'm an ignorant fuckstick with your order."

      Personally I'm tired of you small-dicked retards that don't actually do anything commenting about reality through your demented philosophy. You don't know shit about writing software, or what people that write software want or expect. Just as an example, you worthless shitfuck, go Google CMUCL. It is more complex than anything you have or ever will write in your entire unproductive life. It's in the public domain.

    68. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok, here's the deal. You can still get Point2Play on Gentoo, and then if you actually have a WineX account you can use it. Point2Play is a fairly nice frontend for WineX, so you can't exactly complain that you can't get WineX from Gentoo.

    69. Re:Too bad by syncomm · · Score: 0

      AFAIK the CVS version didn't have any support for the various copy protection schemes used in most games. So unless people were playing cracked games, I doubt it was working very well for them anyway.

    70. Re:Too bad by ajs · · Score: 1

      transgaming wanted free tech support from real developers

      The first thing an open source advocate will say to a software company thinking of open sourcing their stuff (I've said it myself) is, "you get thousands of people not just complaining, but actually fixing the problems they care about."

      But when a company gives out their source to said developers for free we call that "wanting free tech support"... well, yeah! You're exactly right. Did you have a point?

      You continue, "while making normal users pay for the software."

      Well let's define "normal user" here. I'm a normal user. I don't write code for Trans Gaming, but I can use WineX without buying it... hmmm, developers get it free. I get it free... the only people who don't get it free are the folks who don't know what source code is in the first place.

      And further you continue, "They threatened to make the CVS accessible only to subscribers if there was "abuse"."

      And that's a bad thing why?

      Look, I was the first to say, back in the bad-old Qt days that a restrictive license on top of a source relese doesn't make you open source. Fine, that's said and done. But the bottom line is that it doesn't make you "evil" either. These folks have the right to do what they want and you have the right to not use their stuff if that bothers you. But, complaining about the fact that they won't let you ship CDs that set up your average end-user for download-and-compile is ... well, kind of antithetical to the open source philosophy, not to mention bad form.

      If it really bothers you, go write something better. Wine is still out there, you can go contribute. But, I think WineX is great stuff, and I'm happy to use it and contribute where I can. Open source is ultimately a process, not a specific thing, and Trans Gaming is exploring ways that that process can work best for them... if it doesn't work for you, just ignore them.

    71. Re:Too bad by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      But when a company gives out their source to said developers for free we call that "wanting free tech support"... well, yeah! You're exactly right. Did you have a point?

      Nothing wrong with companies accepting free help from developers on an open source project. That as you indicated is one of the big incentives to open their source. My complaint is about the making "normal" users pay for the software. The last time I checked open source meant that you are free to distribute the software as well as to use it. That is the part that WineX is infringing on.

      "They threatened to make the CVS accessible only to subscribers if there was "abuse"."

      And that's a bad thing why?


      Nothing wrong with it - it just isn't free software.

      If you want to use non-free software feel free. Most people do. Personally, I'd rather work to encourage the development free software than to use non-free software.

      $5 a month to a wine developer will pay for the same amount of development as $5 to a winex developer. The only difference is that the code the wine developer writes will actually be FOSS. No restrictions on distributing the source, or using it as you wish. The company can't go and close the source later, either...

      I'm more than happy to just ignore Transgaming. However, if people care to see really good OSS, I'd encourage them to do the same. Linux wouldn't have gone anywhere if people just used Windows just "because it works well enough". It just isn't good enough at their price for me, and that is why I believe in FOSS... Where I can let my desktop computer have more than 5 file sharing connections open at once. Where my software doesn't have artificial restrictions like allowing only one remote terminal-server connection at a time. And so on...

      FOSS is a movement - and I'm not the only person who disagrees with what Transgaming is doing with Wine...

    72. Re:Too bad by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      If these people just bought linux games instead, we'd have more linux games in short order.

      Feel free to start writing them. Oh, and remember, some of us don't like twitch games.

  7. For those wondering how to pronounce it... by dark-br · · Score: 2, Informative



    Cedega (Se-day-gah) - [noun] - a unique variety of grape used to make some of the finest Port Wines in the world;

    1. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by twoslice · · Score: 0
      Cedega (Se-day-gah) - [noun] - a unique variety of grape used to make some of the finest Port Wines in the world;

      So what they are saying is that it is the finest port of wine in the World...

      --

      From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
    2. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by FauxPasIII · · Score: 1

      >>Cedega (Se-day-gah) - [noun] - a unique variety of grape used to make some of the finest Port Wines in the world;

      >So what they are saying is that it is the finest port of wine in the World...

      Sokath, his eyes uncovered !

      --
      25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
    3. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by iapetus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ironic, really, since WineX makes Ports less likely...

      --
      ++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
      Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
    4. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by CdBee · · Score: 4, Funny

      So we're porting to wine instead of whining for ports?

      --
      I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
    5. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >>Sokath, his eyes uncovered !

      I should unleash the Beast of Tanagra on your ass for such a reference. :-)

    6. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by antic · · Score: 1

      Not yet showing up in Google, but only 45 results for the word "cedega" so far. I expected a bit more competition from viticulturalist sites, but it seems to be a good choice of name to avoid competition.

      "Wine" was a little bit more common (28,100,000 results on Google!), but WineHQ.com is the first result regardless.

      --
      'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
    7. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by antic · · Score: 1

      Oops, 29,100,000 results. Oh, who am I kidding, no one cares -- Google will only show you the first 1000 results for any query anyway.

      --
      'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
    8. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by SQLz · · Score: 1
      Ironic, really, since WineX makes Ports less likely...

      Yeah, To bad 2003 had more linux game ports than any other year in history, and 2004 is on pace to beat that at the same time that Wine/WineX are more popular then ever.

    9. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by Alexis+de+Torquemada · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. If it contributes to Linux's growth, it may make them more likely especially if there is a peformance disadvantage associated with WineX (relative to native Linux games, not Windows). And if there isn't, then at least it makes ports less necessary.

    10. Re:For those wondering how to pronounce it... by LDoggg_ · · Score: 1

      Any idea what language that word is derived from?

      Pronouncing a short 'e' as 'ay' is something I've seen many times, but its usually just when someone is butchering a language like Spanish, French, or Italian. Not saying you're wrong, just curious.

      --

      "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
  8. MIA after before 5 replies by Astadar · · Score: 2, Funny

    I got here with only 4 postings and transgaming was already /.ed... good work team!

    --
    --Coming up with something clever... please wait...
    1. Re:MIA after before 5 replies by mahdi13 · · Score: 1

      I managed to see the newsletter and check it out before Slashdot posted it...phew!

      Of course, they are probably not down...most likely too many people clicked at once cloging their pipe.
      They should be fine by now or soon
      If I offered $50 to whoever asks, I sure as hell know that I'd physically get Slashdotted in seconds!

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    2. Re:MIA after before 5 replies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I managed to see the newsletter and check it out before Slashdot posted it...phew!"

      Last time they sent me the newsletter (first time ever?) I disabled that in my user-account and mailed them to disable it in my other, defunct user-account (smelled like hickupor spam, sending it to defunct accounts). The reason was I didn't like to get 100Kbyte "newsletters" twice.

      Anyway, I now regret this, since their webpage is still slashdotted :/

  9. Saw it yesterday by ktulu1115 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I was curious as to what was going on at Transgaming - they had a large banner on their site yesterday with today's date on it and "Where will you be?". Had a funny feeling something was brewing. :)

    --
    # fuser -v /dev/attention | grep work
    #
  10. Sean Mondavi? by bangular · · Score: 1

    Isn't that what Sean Mondavi wines used to produce their fine line of wines?

  11. Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by neilmoore67 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Will we see a new era of game compatibilty?

    Yes, as soon as games are compatible with platforms other than Windows, not before.

    --
    You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
  12. Impressive, but... by 91degrees · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How seamless is it?

    My main problem with games in X is that I have to change the screen resolution myself. Most applications I'm quite happy with seeing in a window, but games I want full screen, often at a much lower resolution. I also want cutscenes to be displayed fullscreen.

    Does this solve that problem?

    1. Re:Impressive, but... by noselasd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Just about any game I've run using winex starts fullscreen, and
      the games usually allows one to set the resolution.

    2. Re:Impressive, but... by mahdi13 · · Score: 1

      Works fine, just make sure you have the resolution option in your /etc/X11/XF86Config(-4) otherwise you will have problems.
      Most games default to 800x600 when they start, but cover all the bases and add all the common resolutions

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    3. Re:Impressive, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Err... How does this fullscreen differ from mplayers fullscreen mode? Meaning that that should not be impossible.

    4. Re:Impressive, but... by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      I will admit to being a little out of touch with the current version of X .

    5. Re:Impressive, but... by furballphat · · Score: 1

      XF86 version 4 uses a different filename from three because they are incompatable or something.

    6. Re:Impressive, but... by Houn · · Score: 1

      The "secret" is to make sure you have the desired resolutions in your XF86Config file - if the resolution you're going for isn't there, games usually can't switch you to it.

      --
      The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
    7. Re:Impressive, but... by mahdi13 · · Score: 1

      XF86 version 4 uses a different filename from three because they are incompatable or something.That's what the (-4) is for...shorthand

      Current releases will use /etc/X11/XF86Config
      Older versions of xfree after 4 was released use /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
      Versions before 4 use /etc/X11/XF86Config

      The -4 was added so the new configs for version 4 would not overwrite the old version 3 configs. Now that version 4 is mature enough, they have dropped the -4 since most people using xfree-4.2 no longer have traces of xfree-3.x

      Did that make since? If it did, please explain it to me :)

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    8. Re:Impressive, but... by JediLuke · · Score: 1

      I have a flat panel and i can't get anything to run full screen in anything but the native res. its really annoying because diablo 2 only runs in 800x600 max, so i have to run it windowed. and when i run it windowed, if i mouse outside of the window, it disappears, never to be found again. then i have to kill it.

      on my laptop, native res of 1024x768, it will switch to the lower res fullscreen just fine. i've been trying to find a way to make xf86 behave and go below my Sceptre x9s-naga's native res of 1280x1024 :(

      maybe winex 4 will fix this, just have to wait till the site quits being /.ed

      --

      JediLuke
      -Do or Do Not, There is no Try
    9. Re:Impressive, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is public domain code free and GPL code not free?

      Both place restrictions on the user.

    10. Re:Impressive, but... by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Curious..

      I believe my comment was "I'll admit to being a little out of touch with the current version of X".

      You seem to be reading a lot into this statement.

  13. Shared Wineserver by meridian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When are we going to see a shared memory wineserver. This would be the best way to see a significant speed increase in Wine, rather than it having to launch a new Wineserver process for each application run. Transgaming were working on this some time ago but seem to have ditched the idea.

    --
    meridian at tha.net
    1. Re:Shared Wineserver by Papineau · · Score: 5, Informative

      Currently, there's only one wineserver process launched to serve all Wine threads for a given user. What happens though, is that there are at least two context switches for each request to the wineserver. A shared memory wineserver architecture allow a Wine thread to access some data without any context switch, by only reading part of the shared memory of the wineserver. Thus the speed increase.

      At the last Wineconf in January, Gavriel State (of Transgaming) showed a short demo of American McGee's Alice with a partial shared memory wineserver, and the increase in the fps was about two fold (yes, double of what it was with the current design).

    2. Re:Shared Wineserver by Joel+Carr · · Score: 4, Informative

      At the last Wineconf in January, Gavriel State (of Transgaming) showed a short demo of American McGee's Alice with a partial shared memory wineserver, and the increase in the fps was about two fold (yes, double of what it was with the current design).

      Just thought I'd mention that this game is one of the corner cases that is drastically affected by reducing the number of context switches. A shared memory wineserver would not automatically give this sort of performance boost to any game/application. Not that you were implying it would, but just so people know.

      ---

      --
      Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
    3. Re:Shared Wineserver by Papineau · · Score: 1

      Right, I should have mentioned it.

    4. Re:Shared Wineserver by crazney · · Score: 1

      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

      --
      stuff
    5. Re:Shared Wineserver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      How about 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.
    6. Re:Shared Wineserver by meridian · · Score: 1

      It appears that WineX 4 does have the Shared memory wineserver. From an interview with transgaming CEO at http://desktopos.com.at.spry.com/sections.php?op=v iewarticle&artid=23 Gavriel State: "this is the first release to incorporate our ShmServer technology, which can provide a significant speedup for games that make very heavy use of the Win32 Kernels synchronization facilities. This can speed up some games by 50% or more. " Yay!

      --
      meridian at tha.net
  14. New Era? Probably Not by illuminata · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The only way that we'll see a new era of Linux gaming is with direct support from all of the big boys. As long as Linux users have to jump through hoops to get their game running, as long as those games are less than 100% compatible, you won't see much changing.

    People want their games to work, not to pay for something (or deal with cvs) to get their stuff to partially work. Most people with a computer good enough to play DX9 games have a Windows disc anyways and a hd big enough to keep both. Transgaming will never be anything more than a niche company servicing a very small niche.

    --


    Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
    1. Re:New Era? Probably Not by mz2 · · Score: 1

      Exactly. This is one of the areas where major distributors should be aggressive and package these windows compatibility related products with their distro -- it would do good for them and us. Having even a rough outo-of-the-box Windows app compatibility would be a good reason for many people to buy a distribution (and even pay slightly more for it).

    2. Re:New Era? Probably Not by MuMart · · Score: 1
      I doubt WineX is an end-user product. The idea is more likely to get game or distro companies interested in licensing winex and including it with their software in order to be able to say "games supported".

      If proprietary games do succeed on linux in this way, I'm sure we'll see a lot more progress on the open source side of things. That's what happened with Netscape 4.

    3. Re:New Era? Probably Not by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      Like Xandros? They include Crossover Office with their desktop. OTher distros do, too, but I can't remember any off hand. One is enough for the proof, anyway.

  15. A couple of questions... by StressGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    X-gamings site seems to be more fluff than substance. Having a hard time determining what games they support. I've got a couple of little ones and, if I can get games like "Freddy the Fish", "Reader Rabbit", "Blues Clues", that would make it worth looking into for me.

    However, I'm also looking at Crossover Office (or the SuSe "Wine Rack") for office compatability. Can I install both this and Transgaming's software or will they stomp on each other?

    Thanks,

    --
    A goal is a dream with a deadline
    1. Re:A couple of questions... by nunofgs · · Score: 1

      nah, they play nice together. Go ahead and install them both

    2. Re:A couple of questions... by pmjordan · · Score: 1

      As far as I know, WineX is completely independent of any Wine installed, so you should be fine.

    3. Re:A couple of questions... by Joel+Carr · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can install both. Infact, you can install and run multiple revisions of the WineHQ Wine at the same time.

      ---

      --
      Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
    4. Re:A couple of questions... by adam.skinner · · Score: 4, Informative
      I set up MDK10 w/ cvswinex for my daughter's computer. She was able to run Pajama Sam, but not a couple of her other games. So it's pretty much a crap shoot when seeing if a game is going to work with winex or not. However, that's not to say that we haven't seen significant improvements with Winex 4.

      Btw, if you want to get cvswinex up and running, follow the instructions at linuX-gamers.net

    5. Re:A couple of questions... by ecliptik · · Score: 4, Informative

      I run (and pay) for both of these, and they do work well together. Transgaming wine's binary is 'winex3', soon to be winex4 more than likey, and Codeweavers Crossover's binary is just plain 'wine'.

      I am using Debian unstable, and installed winex with their provided .deb and Crossover with ther install sh/rpm package.

      Both wonderful projects and make my GNU/Linux use almost seamless with windows progs.

    6. Re:A couple of questions... by mahdi13 · · Score: 1

      I have Wine, WineX (3 different versions), CrossOver Office and CrossOver Plugin
      They were smart enough to give each directory their own path and commands in /usr/bin/ so nothing stomps on each other at all

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    7. Re:A couple of questions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      1. X-gamings site seems to be more fluff than substance. Having a hard time determining what games they support.

      Click on the link to the left marked games. I'd provide a link, though the site is /.ed at the moment!

      The database classifies each game from 1 (can't run at all let alone even install) to 5 (perfect). Transgaming supports games marked as 5 (a small group), though to be practical most of the games with a 4 raiting are quite playable.

      The games each have comments, so don't take the number to be the final judgement Read The Fine Forum.

      Note: Many (but not most) of the problems running games under Wine or WineX are due to copy protection. WineX supports copy protection and eliminates the need to deal with patches.

      Last year I used WineX to run Civilization III, Diablo II, Black & White, and other games. Do not expect it to run everything, though the list of 4s and 5s is long enough to keep you busy. The only hassle was a bit of jerkyness in CivIII during the intro video...otherwise, it was good.

      That said, maybe you should get a good native Linux game like Savage instead? (Available for Windows too.)

    8. Re:A couple of questions... by theendlessnow · · Score: 1

      I have most all of the Humongous (sp?) games (Freddi Fish, Putt-Putt, Spyfox) running perfectly. Don't know about Reader Rabbit, etc... have had good success with Math/Reading Blaster sw.

    9. Re:A couple of questions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ah, but cvswinex doesn't include the copy-protection code that allows WineX (sorry, Cedega) to deal with games w/copy protection.

      That isn't to say that Cedega doesn't have its problems when it comes to running games - it certainly doesn't run everything out there. However, the "pay" version has a better chance of doing it than the CVS version.

  16. They forgot to mention... by __aahlyu4518 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Windows ® games to seamlessly and transparently run under Linux, out-of-the-box, with outstanding performance and equivalent game-play"
    They forgot to mention that small detail about all the bleeding-edge hardware you need to run the latest games.... THAT will give you the biggest part of the oustanding performance....

    1. Re:They forgot to mention... by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      you'll need those under windows too, so...it should be an assumed point.

    2. Re:They forgot to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's cheaper to buy windows than winex AND the extra needed hardware for the same performance...

    3. Re:They forgot to mention... by nahdude812 · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is not at all true for most games unless the game requires the same under Windows.

      I have played a number of games that actually had improved framerates under WineX 3. It seems all that Windows backend stuff puts a higher tax on the system than most people realize, since the dev team for Windows focuses on making things feel responsive at the cost of overall performance. When it comes time to do purely heavy computations (such as in games), this approach costs CPU time that would otherwise have gone to the computation, ultimately resulting in lower framerates.

      OpenGL games require very little emulation from the WineX engine since most of those calls are 1-to-1 Windows OpenGL to Linux OpenGL calls, and the performance cost is a fraction of a percent for these games. Almost all OpenGL games would perform better under WineX Linux than they do in their native Windows environment.

      Even DirectX games which require a fair amount more emulation since DirectX and OpenGL do not line up on a call-to-call basis suffer very little if any performance loss for most games.

      There are notable exceptions. American McGee's Alice was talked about elsewhere, and this relies heavily on kernel synchronization calls. Because of an architectural difference between Windows and Linux, there's no way to accomodate the same thing directly under Linux (there are other methods to accomplish the same tasks) with out a kernel patch, which is of course very unportable. Early reports state that Alice has a significant performance increase under the new WineX, "Cedega."

      Also, some people are not aware that you must have an accelerated driver for your video card in order to do OpenGL with any level of performance. Basically for most systems, the driver you get by default is a non-accelerated driver, optimized for 2-D performance. The reason for this is that most card manufacturers (such as nVidia) have proprietary drivers which you need to download from the vendor themselves. Nvidia's are available here for 32 bit Intel processors. If you do not run an accelerated driver, you'll see terrible performance as all of the 3d and graphic computations are done by the CPU with out being able to use the video card for any of these tasks. It's akin to trying to run a game in Windows using the "Generic VGA Driver," but the difference is that Windows wouldn't let you do this at all since they have no software based GL emulation layer like Linux does. Linux will at least let you try to play the game.

    4. Re:They forgot to mention... by AugstWest · · Score: 1

      I have a friend who has found that his framerate for Enemy Territory running Wine is faster than running natively in Linux or in Windows.

      Unfortunately, Punkbuster boots you for running an unapproved OS (or some wording like that), but it's still an interesting tidbit.

    5. Re:They forgot to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The most plausible explaination is that Wine's OpenGL disables some image quality features. There's more to games than framerate.

  17. Support Wine by ospirata · · Score: 2, Informative

    Codewearves gives back to community as much as Trasgaming: almost nothing.

    Don't forget that Codeweavers products are closed source, different from Transgaming.

    OK, Winex CVS version is not that compatible as commercial, but it is because of the proprietary parts.

    The only true OS project is Wine.

    1. Re:Support Wine by Dave2+Wickham · · Score: 5, Informative

      They have to release all of their changes to the WINE tree (under the LGPL - they use the current tree), and they do. They also hire developers to work on WINE, and this can get merged back into the public tree (depending on whether it's accepted into CVS).

    2. Re:Support Wine by Zardus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Transgaming doesn't use the current tree, though. They started out way before Wine was changed to LGPL and when the change happened, forked Wine to Rewind to avoid the LGPL. Since then they've been using the Rewind sources.

      I'm against what Transgaming is doing, but they are on sound legal footing open-source-wise, I think.

      --
      You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
    3. Re:Support Wine by Dave2+Wickham · · Score: 1

      Yeah; I wasn't trying to imply that Transgaming weren't fulfulling a licencing requirement.

  18. Is it ok? by Apreche · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm still torn as to whether or not to pay for winex. I tried using the free/cvs version and it kind of worked. Of course, I didn't actually get any games to work correctly, not even simple ones, so it didn't work at all. First off, if I pay for winex and I get version 4.0 can I just never pay again and keep using 4 forever? I mean, as long as there aren't any games that come out for windows that I want (very very few lately) it shouldn't be a problem right? Also, is there a computer limit on winex? If I pay for version 4 once can I install it on 3 linux boxes without paying 3 times?

    All I really want to do is to play Steam and all of the mods and stuff that go along with it, in linux. If I can do it for a really low one time fee and never pay again, then I think this is a good deal.

    --
    The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
    1. Re:Is it ok? by pmjordan · · Score: 1

      If you're lucky, you can. Trouble is, Valve keep changing Steam, as far as I know, so sometimes it breaks, and you need a new version of WineX.

    2. Re:Is it ok? by mahdi13 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, it $15 for the first 3 months (minimum) and $5/month afterwards.

      You are free to cancel after those first 3 months anytime

      You are free to browse and download as often as needed during that time. I don't have a copy of the license available, but I believe it is a per-user license. But I'm not sure...I have it on two of my machines at least

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    3. Re:Is it ok? by aeaas · · Score: 2, Informative
      Once you pay, you get access to their private site, where you can download winex plus their GUI frontend Point2Play (not necessary to use Winex).

      Once you download it you can burn it to cd and use it forever, though you do need a current subscription to download new winex versions using Point2Play or to access the private site. There is no computer limit that I know off, I have installed it on three machines successfully and have never seen something that said I couldn't.

    4. Re:Is it ok? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get a patch for it.

      This shit should be free anyway.

    5. Re:Is it ok? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just download Windows. :-P

      100% game compatibility for free.

    6. Re:Is it ok? by pknoll · · Score: 1
      This is true of games like EverQuest, too (and I assume City of Heroes, which may or may not run under WineX, never checked).

      When EQ patches they may break WineX's ability to run the game, in which case you'd want to be able to patch your WineX to the latest release.

      It's $5 a month to be free from having to keep Windows around to play games. For me, saying that's worth it is an understatement. Besides which, I've never had a problem paying for good software, regardless of its license.

    7. Re:Is it ok? by Sancho · · Score: 1

      Of course, there are still some games that WineX doesn't play well with, right?
      $5 a month... if you've got an older version of Windows lying around, that's less than 20 months worth before it becomes more useful just to buy a damn copy of Windows (look around, you can find copies of Windows XP for less than $100.. I've seen legit copies for as low as $60) and get compatability for every commercial PC game for the next several years.

    8. Re:Is it ok? by pknoll · · Score: 1
      Let me say this again, since you clearly didn't hear me the first time.

      It is worth it to me to pay Transgaming $5/month so I don't have to run Windows to play games.

      If it's not worth it to you, then Windows is an option for you. Trying to talk me into saving money by buying Windows is tilting at windmills, though, I'm afraid, since my issue with Microsoft isn't the money they charge. If what you're trying to do is present an alternative, I think you have it backwards. Most people who play games know about Windows already.

      And yes, there are games it doesn't work with. There's a list on their website that details them, which ones, and what the problems are. You go into the purchase decision for WineX knowing if it'll work for you.

    9. Re:Is it ok? by Valen0 · · Score: 1

      Also, make sure to cancel at least 8 days before your subscription is up. Transgaming automatically charges you 7 days before your subscription expires.

      I had the unfortunate experience of learning this the hard way.

      --
      -Valen
    10. Re:Is it ok? by Sancho · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      No need to get snippy. Most of the time when people talk about "worth" they're talking monetarily. If there's added worth to you for not having to actually /USE/ Windows, that's another thing. I was just pointing out that, talking about money, it can be cheaper to just buy a copy of Windows.

    11. Re:Is it ok? by IncohereD · · Score: 1

      No need to get snippy. Most of the time when people talk about "worth" they're talking monetarily.

      You must be from the good old USA.

    12. Re:Is it ok? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like some BS to me. They probably do that just to suck in that extra cashflow from unsuspecting customers. Thats where its a great time to dispute that kind of shit on your CC.

    13. Re:Is it ok? by mahdi13 · · Score: 1

      Sounds like they are trying to prevent someone's account from expiring on them; then the customer bitching about it because their check bounced and the account wasn't renewed...makes since to me

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    14. Re:Is it ok? by daft_one · · Score: 0

      In the vein of being helpful... The expression is "makes sense to me" :-)

    15. Re:Is it ok? by Zepalesque · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure you can get their source from cvs any time without paying the fee.

  19. How well does this work? by Deag · · Score: 1
    The site isn't responding but i have a few questions.


    Has anyone used this product in the past? Do all games run seamlessly or is it restricted to certain ones? Will it allow me to get rid of my dual boot? Are they offering full directx compatability?


    It is impressive if it works. But I fear for how well it could work. I remember downloading a game demo from EA recently that required a certain version of Internet Explorer.

    1. Re:How well does this work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come on now. Find/make/edit a nice little browser, w/ no fanciness, and just forge the http header or whatever. It's not hard to convince sites you're running iexplore. But then again, I'm not sure exactly how EA set up the demo (I didn't download it), so I could be wrong.

    2. Re:How well does this work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I only know WineX 3.x: very few games run, but those few games tend to run very well, sometimes with 1-2 restrictions. for instance in GTA3+4 the intro video sequences dont work, otherwise it's 100% like Windows. WineX is not restricted to a limited number of games, you can try any game, but you wont have much success with trying out random titles. Only those games that Transgaming worked on will work really well.

      Concerning DirectX: they dont have the newest Direct3d version yet, and no DirectPlay.

      If the site is back, there's a database with ratings for each game.

    3. Re:How well does this work? by Captain_Loser · · Score: 1

      well, I am a transgaming subscriber and I have been using winex for some time. Today I got cedega and my first impressions are that this works remarkebly well. Cedega isn't perfect though, I still had some installer problems with older games. But battlefield 1942, galaxies and battlefield vietnam ran flawlessly. Will this let you get rid of your dual boot? That all depends on what you play and how far you are willing to go to dump windows. I have been running linux only for almost 6 years now (running gentoo for the past 2) and I couldn't imagine going back to windows. I had to cut back on the amount of gaming I do and make sacrifices in other areas (like cut and paste), but over time linux has grown to the point where I don't feel that windows can do anything I want to do better than linux. I am not the biggest gamer in the world, most of the games that I play already have linux binaries (ut2k4, quake3 mostly) so I don't have very many dx9 games to try, but so far, all the ones I do have work very well, not flawlessly, but close enough for me.

      --
      -=You might be a geek if your computer is worth more than your car=-
    4. Re:How well does this work? by Deag · · Score: 1

      Actually it wasn't the site that required the newest version of explorer, but the game itself.

    5. Re:How well does this work? by gaijin99 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Depends on the games you consider critical. I subscribe, and it does let you play many of the newer games just fine. Warcraft III, etc. OTOH some of the less popular games don't work (Dungeon Keeper and DK 2, StarTopia, etc). If the game is an FPS or one of the other ultra-popular type games, than odds are that it will work, otherwise its a definate maybe.

      Personally, I love it, and I don't regret paying for it [1]. When I want to play a supported game I don't have to boot back to Windows, and that's definately a good thing. I do wish they'd spend a bit more time making the older stuff run though. I vote for it every time I can, but the bulk of the votes always wind up going to the latest FPS candy...

      .

      [1] Put that in your pipe and smoke it, all you "Linux users won't pay for anything" dips.

      --
      "Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
    6. Re:How well does this work? by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 1

      works quite well. my subscription expired because i forgot to send them my new credit card number (old one expired *^_^*) but i'll renew it as soon as get home.

      i have a pet peevee with them thought... no decent support for flight simulator till now. i tried several times with novalogic's f16 and it still not ok. my flightstick is still not properly accepted. in game the rudder axis stays turned to one side, making it impossible to even take off.

      i'll try with IL2 someday. if it works i may consider dumping f16. all i want is ONE combat flight sim to work right.

      --
      What ? Me, worry ?
    7. Re:How well does this work? by Quino · · Score: 1

      You've gotten a ton of replies but: aside from the games (GTA3, Counter-Strike and others were flawless for me), I was amazed at the list of little windows executables that also just worked under Winex (more so, in my experience, than vanilla wine). Winamp, for example, ran flawlessly, from install to sound to even full-screen graphics (visualizer).

      I've even had luck with engineering CAD applications installing/running with zero fuss from my end on my Linux machine at work.

      I'd say check out the list of supported games (since at least those are guaranteed to work, and if you run into issues as a subscriber you get to b#tch and moan on the lists -- Transgaming tends to be pretty responsive in my experience).

      I'm curious to see how great Winex4 is, however, and if it's leaps and bound better then I might just have to give 'em 20 bucks again (Winex3 was worth it to me, still have the rpm laying around ...)

    8. Re:How well does this work? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1

      For DK+DK2 if you have a crash on startup try running it like "wine c:\keeper\keeper.exe", ie use an absolute path. There's a bug in the game that causes it to crash if you run it from the directory it was installed to, ie without a path. Explorer never does this hence the fact that as long as you use the gui it works in Windows.

  20. Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by CrosseyedPainless · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Based on my experiences with winex, not fcking likely. I suppose if you bought games you knew worked with winex, you'd be happy. Picking games you like, and trying to get them to work with winex is another problem altogether.

    Of course, I haven't tried this grape thing yet, but I have a month left on my Transgaming membership. Maybe I will be bitchslapped by reality, but I am low on optimism....

  21. Nice Work, But.... by blueZhift · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Nice work, but hasn't Transgaming heard that PC gaming is dead? :-) Call me back when I can play XBox and PS2 games under Linux!

    Seriously, if Transgaming can make money with WineX, then more power to them. They may only be serving a small niche, but if Apple has taught us anything, it's that niches can be profitable if you're smart. Go Transgaming!

    1. Re:Nice Work, But.... by xannik · · Score: 1

      PC gaming is far from dead. For example Warcraft III: Frozen Throne can only be played on PC. In fact if they designed it for console I would still rather play it for the PC simply because the numerous shortcuts that exist dictate that I need numerous keys to correspond. This is something a console simply doesn't have. Transgaming's subscription model of 5 dollars a month is one of the best I have seen around in the open source community and as you said the fact that Apple is still around provides an excellent example of the survivability of niche companies.

      --

      Go Illini!!!
    2. Re:Nice Work, But.... by Doc+Holliday · · Score: 1

      yes, one of the best xbox, maybe even THE BEST, title isn't available for PC:

      Ninja Gaiden

      And i'm sure there are many more xbox exclusive titles.

    3. Re:Nice Work, But.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone tried Xeon (X-Box emu) under WineX?

      Too many X's there.

  22. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  23. Games are the only reason I still have Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...so anything that helps remove that dependence is a Good Thing(tm). Once I can play every game I want under Linux, my ol' XP hard drive is going to be formatted and turned into another type 83, and I for one won't miss having to run an AV program and two spyware killers all the time.

  24. Too bad it's not by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 1

    Well I suppose we can't complain.... much.
    I suppose the transgaming crowd put a lot of work into this.

    I have noticed though, that games are the one area where open source/FSF hasn't really made inroads. They're aren't a lot of high quaility games for linux and the emulators on it seem to be almost always inferior to the win32 application from whence they came?

    I suppose this is due to the high cost and workload associated with making a modern game. Makes you wonder though? How long until the cost and workload of 'regular' apps strays outside the domain of open source?

    Though I propbobly just whinging because I have to pay. Not something a fedora user like me is used to!! :E

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!
    1. Re:Too bad it's not by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 3, Informative

      The problem with designing most styles of games is that they don't lend themselves to open source tactics.

      Having worked in a few betas, often a 90% finished game is still quite unplayable. Also for a good game you really need a group of people to decide what the goals are for the game and then reach these and release.

      Open source does lend itself to simpler more open ended games like nethack, but games more than anything really aren't much good until they are almost totally finished, and also most people won't play a game through more than a couple of times no matter how good it is

      --
      Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
    2. Re:Too bad it's not by makomk · · Score: 1
      The problem with designing most styles of games is that they don't lend themselves to open source tactics.

      Sounds true. However, surely that is isn't true of game engines. Aren't there some projects to develop open-source game engines? I definately remeber seeing one somewhere...

    3. Re:Too bad it's not by Mant · · Score: 1

      Games also need lots of skills other than programming, more than most other apps. Level design, 2D and 3D art, sounds, possibly stories, CGI cutscence, dialog and so on.

      While plenty of people do 2D and 3D art and levels for mods, trying to get them to work on a game that doesn't exist yet, and they can't see their results straight away, is going to be hard. Even harder if the tools to make the media for the game don't exist yet.

    4. Re:Too bad it's not by idfrsr · · Score: 1

      I would also add this comment, that the biggest hurdles in making a killer game involve the artistic side. Good artwork, level design, sound engineering and story writing make or break a game regardless how good the underlying engine is.

      The parent is correct, but this also plays a large factor. Even getting a game done as OSS would be difficult and would require a few very determined developpers, but without the artists also joining the project it won't really go anywhere. If you can find a group of artists who want to work for free on a OSS game send em my way.

      Personally I think the biggest impact that OSS can make in gaming is engine development. Its defined goals make it easier to complete as a OSS project and once done would allow anyone or anything to make games using it, that would all run on our favorite distros.

      This would also save effort with game developers no longeer (well hopefully...though not necessarily) reinventing each others wheels everytime they make new games.

      --
      "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
    5. Re:Too bad it's not by solidhen · · Score: 1
      I suppose this is due to the high cost and workload associated with making a modern game. Makes you wonder though? How long until the cost and workload of 'regular' apps strays outside the domain of open source?
      Which is more expensive to write:
      a) Prince of Persia 3D (Or whatever its name is)
      b) Microsoft Office

      I'd guess it's MS Office but I'm not sure.

      Writing a modern game with 3d models and a storyline is fundamentally different from writing a normal application. It's more like writing a novel.

      How many open source sci fi novels do you know about?
      --
      Some things are more important than an animated rat
    6. Re:Too bad it's not by tweek · · Score: 1

      "How many open source sci fi novels do you know about? "

      Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow

      http://www.craphound.com/

      FYI, I bought the copy at Barnes and Noble but I could have just downloaded it =P

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    7. Re:Too bad it's not by nahdude812 · · Score: 1
  25. Not necessarily... by StressGuy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Right now, I'm looking at building a new computer and taking my existing one and making it into a computer for the kids. My children are very young so I'm kinda waiting for KDE to do some more work on this "Kiosk" mode. It would be great if Transgaming's software would support thier windows games "Finding Nemo", "Freddy the Fish", "Blues Clues", "Hot Wheels", etc. My son also likes TuxKart, TuxRacer, Frozen Bubble, Tux Pinball, and Pingus. He's kinda into penguins nowadays....I'm sure that's just a coincidence ;)

    Anyway, a KDE-Based Linux box with the ability to run thier Windows games as well would be an ideal solution for me.

    --
    A goal is a dream with a deadline
    1. Re:Not necessarily... by Spacejock · · Score: 1

      KDE kiosk mode - played with it, tore my hair out, installed icewm instead. Icewm has a lovely, simple menu file and a straightforward config file. You can symlink the .icewm folder somewhere else (eg. /home/icewm-shared) and then make the contents rw only on your own username. You edit the menus, they use the menus.

      The above is something I set up on shared terminals at a primary school, it stops the kids messing with the desktop, deleting items, etc.

      Cheers Simon

  26. Native GNU/Linux gaming versus WINE by swerk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Does "cedega" sound like a Final Fantasy spell to anyone else? Stronger than Cede and Ceda...

    But anyway, I used to think things like WINE would hinder "true" GNU/Linux game development, and while that may be true, the games are going to be proprietary anyway, so really what's the difference between running a locked-up native binary and a locked-up WINE-translated one? And in the case of WineX, even the program doing the emulation/translation is non-Free. Folks who don't care that PC games aren't open-source shouldn't complain that the closed binary is for the wrong platform.

  27. Got it by Dreadlord · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was lucky enough to grab the new version before the /.'ing, TG says that this version adds support for some DirectX 9 features, like Pixel Shaders.

    I've tried a couple of new DirectX 9 games, and so far I'm quite happy with the results, first game is Far Cry, it used to work with the previous version, but now the performance is much better, with less artifacts and more effects.

    The other game is PainKiller, it runs quite well too, I had all kinds of problems trying to get this game running with the previous version.

    I know I'm going to be flamed for this post, but I wiped my Windows partition a while ago, and WineX (Cedega whatever) is doing a very good job giving me my gaming needs, it's still much better than having a Windows gaming partition.

    --
    The IT section color scheme sucks.
    1. Re:Got it by stripe · · Score: 1

      What I would really like to know is whether this has 64-bit support. If run a Linux64 on an Athlon can I get a 64-version of Cedega? Can it run with the CD-protection stuff in 32-bit and the rest in 64-bit? Do they have a 64-bit version that can be downloaded? When the 64-bit version of FarCry comes out will it be able to run on Linux64? It would be truly amazing if it could and that version of the game comes out before 64-bit Windows. It means M$'s tardiness in coming out with their 64-bit Windoze with cost them the migration of the high end gamers to the Linux platform.
      Note: Most high end gamers are the ones who set up and/or advise everyone else what to buy for gaming rigs and home systems. Lose them and you start losing your market.

    2. Re:Got it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't buy FarCry due to reading that there are so many limitations (among them the installer not working - which kills it for me). FarCry is good news - I have to give one of the demos a try and mabye even buy it.

      Painkiller is even more good news - I bought it because the demo did run under winex and I enjoyed it - and was sooo disaapointed that the final version had mangled graphics - which looked like a very small glitch (and probably was).

      Now the damn /. crowd has to stop reloading!

      best wishes,

      tels

    3. Re:Got it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      High end gamers run the PC market?

      No. IT Managers in varying sized businesses run the PC market.

      Gamers? Indeed! HAHAHAHAAA!!

      I'm a big time gamer and the person responsible for IT as a mid sized company. I order the purchase of more PC's every week for work than I have every 5 years for friends and family.

      Gamers? hehehehee, that's funny!

    4. Re:Got it by Dreadlord · · Score: 1

      I've installed the game using Loki's Far Cry installer for Linux.

      More installers from Loki.

      Good luck ;)

      --
      The IT section color scheme sucks.
  28. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is there a mod for stating the blatantly obvious or towing the slashdot line. This guy said absolutely nothing new, interesting or insightful. He might as well have copied his post from 16,000,000 other posts just like it.

  29. Re:What I don't get is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can only answer for me: I have only Linux on my machine, and I don't want to install windows. Not even because of the usual zealot reasons, I just dont want the trouble of maintaining a second OS. I also tend to play for a short time, often only 10-20 minutes, between more serious work. Rebooting costs too much time then.

    WineX (i am a subscriber) allows me play for 15 min, and then go on working immediately.

  30. Re:What I don't get is... by gothzilla · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It isn't "necessary" for linux to play games, just as it isn't necessary for an apple or windows to play games. It is what some people want to do though.
    Basically what you're saying is that if I want to run linux AND play games, I should spend more money on more computers and more consoles so that I can have 500 different pieces of hardware to do all the things I want to do. If my computer can do linux and games and I don't have to buy anything else, thats more economical and more money for beer later.

  31. Re:What I don't get is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why is it necessary for Linux to play Windows games? Linux games will come out when people are good and ready for them. In the meantime, frustrated linux users can use one of the many fine gaming consoles (PS2, XBOX, GameCube, even PSOne to some degree).

    I already have thousands of dollars' worth of Windows games. I can't play them on any of the "many fine gaming consoles" you enumerate, and I don't know why I'd want to buy another machine when I already have a perfectly good PC, anyway. Are you suggesting I just throw them all away now I've switched to Linux, or will you concede that I might have a legitimate reason to be interested in something like WineX?

    If computer gaming is something you can't do without, use Windows. Why not devote a small partition to Windows/games, and use the rest for linux?

    Because I might only want to play for ten minutes in my coffee break, and constantly rebooting is really rather a drag?

    If you don't want to play Windows games in Linux, good for you - don't use WineX then. For the rest of us, this is one more step towards making a permanent migration possible. That's a Good Thing, in case you didn't realise.

  32. Re:What I don't get is... by Doogie5526 · · Score: 1
    Well, as you mentioned it saves the $299 (or $199 for Home) but also the more than 1GB an install takes up

    Also, game's loading times are long enough without the time to shut down Linux, close all your applications, and boot Windows.

    Lastly, lots of times I play single player games while doing something in the background (downloading, as one example). Following that basic example, youd have to move the download link (torrent or whatnot) to Windows, then copy the file back it back to Linux... sounds like pain in the butt.

    Adding a whole new Operating System just to play games becomes rather annoying. I'm sure setting up Linux for playing a game is as well. The difference is, you only have to configure WineX once while you'd have to boot to Windows everytime you wanted to play a game.

  33. Re:What I don't get is... by YOU+LIKEWISE+FAIL+IT · · Score: 1

    I agree, to a point. In this house we have OSX boxes ( another game impoverished platform... ) as well as an Xbox, a Gamecube, a PS1, a Dreamcast, an N64, a SNES and an NES, as well as a GBA or two depending on who is home. And they're great fun.

    The remaining problem can be eloquently summed up in one word - Counterstrike ( and don't suggest the XBox version, I need keys and mouse ). Sadly, to totally rewrite Herbert, he who controls the Counterstrike controls the multiplayer gaming world.

    --
    One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
  34. Re:What I don't get is... by vadim_t · · Score: 1

    Booting windows is just a pain in the arse.

    I've got a perfectly comfortable environment in Windows already. It does everything I need to do. But when I want to play a game with a friend, I have to boot Win2K, and hope it loads because sometimes for an unknown reason it will BSOD on startup. Then I find I'm in a rather foreign environment, where the browser is not set up the way I like it, the IM works worse...

    That's why I prefer games that can run on Linux. They make playing so much easier. For example, Neverwinter Nights.

  35. Re:What I don't get is... by kfg · · Score: 1

    Another point to consider: do you think tech support will help you, in the eventuality that the game has random problems?

    Sure, why not? I'll just call up Looking Glass, Dynamix, Papyrus. . .

    Oh, well. Looks like I'm on my own anyway.

    I must admit that I did actually call Microsoft for game support once and they quite pleasantly told me to reboot and if that didn't work reinstall, have a nice day.

    KFG

  36. Here's the slashdotted text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    [posted as AC to avoid karma whoring]

    Toronto/Ottawa -- June 22, 2004 -- TransGaming today unveils the milestone release of version 4.0 of its flagship product, WineX, which has been renamed to Cedega. Cedega allows Windows ® games to seamlessly and transparently run under Linux, out-of-the-box, with outstanding performance and equivalent game-play. Cedega 4.0 includes support for Microsoft ® DirectX ® 9.0, significantly broadening the scope and availability of the latest triple "A" titles for avid Linux gamers. The landmark release of Cedega 4.0 adds support for new blockbuster DirectX 9.0 titles such as EA's(TM) Battlefield Vietnam(TM), Eidos'(TM) Hitman: Contracts ©, and LucasArts' © Star Wars(TM)Galaxies(TM), bringing the total number of games supported under Cedega to well over 300. Furthermore, Cedega features unprecedented support for NCSoft's ® recently released massive multiplayer online game, City of Heroes ® and Blizzard Entertainment's ® unreleased but highly anticipated World of WarCraft ®.

    Cedega (Se-day-gah) - [noun] - a unique variety of grape used to make some of the finest Port Wines in the world; an innovative portability technology developed by TransGaming that allows Windows games to run on Linux.

    "Cedega 4.0 represents an amazing evolution of our Linux product. Thus, it was only fitting to give it a new name; a name that is representative of our product's maturity, complexity, sophistication, and elegance. The new name, Cedega, is meaningful and reflects the significant growth that both the product and TransGaming have enjoyed over the last few years," comments Vikas Gupta, Co-CEO and President of TransGaming Technologies.

    From a technical standpoint, this release sets a new benchmark for the support of games on Linux. "The Cedega 4.0 release contains more technological innovation than any previous TransGaming release and truly represents a milestone in game software portability. Cedega 4.0 supports titles that make use of the DirectX 9.0 API as well as advanced Pixel and Vertex shaders. Cedega 4.0 also includes a new advanced inter-process communication architecture that can double the speed of games which make heavy use of Win32 kernel synchronization primitives," remarks Gavriel State, CTO & Co-CEO of TransGaming Technologies.

    To keep pace with the growth of Linux worldwide and to more effectively meet consumer demands internationally, TransGaming is also pleased to announce the European launch of Cedega 4.0. European customers and subscribers can now pay in Euros, a feature that has been much anticipated and will cater specifically to the rapidly growing Linux community in European countries. Cedega 4.0 includes an updated version of its user friendly interface, Point2Play, with multiple language support for English, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese and German.

    About TransGaming Technologies Inc.

    TransGaming Technologies is a global leader in the development of software portability products that allow game developers and publishers to develop games for one system and deploy them across multiple platforms - faster, cheaper and better than anyone else.

    TransGaming's flagship Linux product, Cedega, supports hundreds of the hottest and most popular games on Linux, out-of-the-box, including hit titles such as Max Payne 2(TM), Battlefield 1942(TM), Battlefield Vietnam(TM), Medal of Honor(TM), Diablo II ®, EverQuest(TM), Star Wars Galaxies(TM), City of Heroes ® and many more. TransGaming has also ported such blockbuster titles as TRON 2.0 ®, James Bond 007(TM): Nightfire(TM), Law & Order(TM), Indiana Jones ® and The Emperor's Tomb(TM), just to name a few.

    TransGaming has a research and development center in Ottawa, Canada, with business, strategy, and operational activities conducted at the Toronto, Canada office. TransGaming was recently honored with inclusion on the Branham300 List of top IT companies in Canada for the second consecutive year. More information abou

  37. May be they should get a new server... by Dr.+q00p · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "with outstanding performance"

  38. "Outstanding performance and equivalent gameplay". by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The article promises "outstanding performance and equivalent gameplay." Isn't it pretty much a given that if the performance is good enough, the gameplay will be the same?

    "Yeah, it plays Starcraft fast enough, but for some reason my zealots now have a ranged attack..."

  39. Re:What I don't get is... by mahdi13 · · Score: 1

    Between native released games/ports for Linux, WineX, DOSbox, DOSemu and vmware I have nearly full access to my 12+ year collection of games. It is a little more work to use the older games and some new ones, but to me not having to reboot to play any of these games is a huge plus

    --
    "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
  40. Re:What I don't get is... by agraupe · · Score: 1

    No, I said you COULD buy two different pieces of hardware. The other option is dual-booting Windows and Linux!

  41. I never understood all these complaints by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are people constantly bitching about transgaming? They offer a product that give linux users more options, frankly I don't see what should be bad about it.

    That it is not open source? Sure, you can make a good argument for just using open source on your system. If you want to do that, don't use winex, which wouldn't help you anyway as the games you would run with it aren't open source either.

    That as a hardcore gamer you think you are probably better of sticking with windows? So, stick with windows, but I simply can't see a problem with people that prefer linux and want to play some games that aren't available for linux using winex to play these games on their favorite os. If it works for them, great.

  42. Re:What I don't get is... by agraupe · · Score: 1

    Just to be clear: I have no qualms with playing games for Linux, like NWN which has been ported AFAIK.

  43. What's the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't see what everyone is flipping out about. They make a pretty good product so why not throw them a few bucks? What's it like $5 or something to download it? Jeez, quit whining. So many people who post here are so pessimistic.

  44. Re:What I don't get is... by agraupe · · Score: 1

    I'm being defeated here... I'm just saying that I'm not going to install this, considering it ISN'T GUARANTEED to work.

  45. Get real... by Dog+and+Pony · · Score: 2, Insightful

    but if I have to pay for it

    Let me quote a page that ALL linux users should read and know by heart: "WHAT? You mean to say you own enough hardware to run this stuff, yet you're too lousy to pay 15 bucks for binary packages? Get real."

    (or at least not use it with Portage

    The ebuilds are there. Just pay the money and you can use it within portage with no trouble.

    1. Re:Get real... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep - i can buy the computer in a shop. Never bought things on the web from american companys because i usually need a credit card for that (i don't have one). Can't tell about them, i simple gave up trying to get stuff from the web except some companies where i already know i can pay easily by now.

  46. meet new era by dj245 · · Score: 1
    Will we see a new era of game compatibilty?"

    Hello gamer. Welcome to new era compatability of gaming. New era, but just like old era gaming compatability. The games that run are old, they run slow, and people don't really take it seriously. Compatability is barely the problem, when games do run, they are slow and low resolution.

    The problems that cause this are fundamental and buried in the graphics architecture. Give me new graphics subsystem and I'll give you era of linux gaming.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    1. Re:meet new era by fodder69 · · Score: 1


      Huh, not sure about the slow part, I still managed to frag you last night in UT2004....

    2. Re:meet new era by sloanster · · Score: 1

      The problems that cause this are fundamental and buried in the graphics architecture. Give me new graphics subsystem and I'll give you era of linux gaming.

      Hello, dj245. meet DRI, the answer to your prayers. Native linux games (q3a, ut2004) which run flawlessly, really show off this excellent new linux graphics subsystem. (Well, tee hee, not so new, it's been part of linux distros for a few years, and I've been enjoying it for some time already).

      So, the graphics power is here in a big way, but your problem, dear boy. is just that we need more natively written linux games, not emulation of peecee binaries.

  47. Compatability, finally! by markhagan · · Score: 1

    This is excellent news for those of us who have been trying to convice our friends to give Linux a try but have been shot down due to game incompatability.

  48. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Etyenne · · Score: 1

    Textbook karma whore example this is.

    --
    :wq
  49. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by jarich · · Score: 1

    And banking applications. When my wife can run Quicken and do online bill paying in Linux, then I can move her machine over completely.

  50. slashdotted... by Leoric · · Score: 1

    I am paying for this product, and when thiese guys finally release a new version, you guys /. the server :(

    (I am only paying because I want to play Anarchy Online in Linux, but they will never support it anyway, so I dont know why I bother...)

  51. Yes, it does by SilentReproach · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:

    TransGaming's flagship Linux product, Cedega, supports hundreds of the hottest and most popular games on Linux, out-of-the-box, including hit titles such as Max Payne 2(TM), Battlefield 1942(TM), Battlefield Vietnam(TM), Medal of Honor(TM), Diablo II ®, EverQuest(TM), Star Wars Galaxies(TM), City of Heroes ® and many more. TransGaming has also ported such blockbuster titles as TRON 2.0 ®, James Bond 007(TM): Nightfire(TM), Law & Order(TM), Indiana Jones ® and The Emperor's Tomb(TM), just to name a few.


    I was a subscriber for many months, and quit my subscription. I cited that the only game I was interested in was SW Galaxies, and that until it was supported, I would no longer subscribe. I contributed a chunk of change, and now I'll have to put my money where my mouth is and re-subscribce to run the game I want.

    --
    Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
    1. Re:Yes, it does by Badanov · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I was a subscriber for many months, and quit my subscription. I cited that the only game I was interested in was SW Galaxies, and that until it was supported, I would no longer subscribe. I contributed a chunk of change, and now I'll have to put my money where my mouth is and re-subscribce to run the game I want.
      You and me both.

      I subscribed for almost 18 months myself and begged and pleaded for any information concerning the Campaign Series of games.

      I came to the conclusion after those many months of hacking and praying that Wine was really a losing proposition espcially in regards to Windows games, not simply because of the technical aspects but for the very paradigm Windows game manufactueres operate under.

      For years and years the only way anyone could play any DOS game was in single person mode, and while that improved somewhat with the advent of email and with the even more recent advent of online play, most of those extensions, to call them what they are, are based on a the DirectPlay product made by Microsoft.

      In my experience, no element of Wine has ever dealt properly with DirectPlay and while it would seem that dealing with DirectPlay, making it better for actual use, it is still a terrible implementation for multiplayer use. MS can't seem to get it right, so it is impossible to ask Wine to do it either.

      Now, I am not crapping on MS's product. It is the best they could do, but they have zero incentive to improve this most awful element of their product line given that they are the Big Kahuna in OS software and they are spending huge sums of money and effort trying to bump Linux off server/desktop sales.

      That is why I came to the conclusion that the only way anyone could possibly hope to play a decent game in Linux is to write a decent game in Linux; one that is multiplayer as well as able to serve as many players as the OS/platform can handle. It doesn't seem to be a lot to ask, except there is a lot of effort, espeically on my part to learn the programming in graphics, and in Unix sockets programming to create a decent military game in Linux.

      Transgaming broke my heart, but it really isn't their fault. Wine can never be up to the task it has set for itself, but that is okay.

      Neither can Microsoft.

      --
      Dawn of the Dead
    2. Re:Yes, it does by TrancePhreak · · Score: 2, Informative

      Microsoft actually does work on DirectPlay, if you read the release notes for DirectX 9.0b you'll see that they made big changes in the underlying code for it. The interface remained the same, but enhancements to how it does things were made.

      The second thing I'd like to note is that not many games use DirectPlay. The last one that comes to mind is Dungeon Siege, which did indeed have horrible online play.

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    3. Re:Yes, it does by sad_ · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I was a subscriber for many months, and quit my subscription. I cited that the only game I was interested in was SW Galaxies, and that until it was supported, I would no longer subscribe.

      i think that you did the best thing. you canceled your subscription and stated why. i would not be surprised if they keep some kind of stats on that so they know which games need to be supported before losing more customers. ofcourse you can also vote if you are a customer, but i think that voting mechanism is not really fair, for a company money talks.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  52. 2 Games by MattBurke · · Score: 1

    There's only 2 games I have a Windows machine for:

    Counter-Strike
    Eve Online

    Neither of which work under wine/winex. You'd think that given CS is the world's most popular online game, they'd have made running it a priority?

    I tried running Eve the other week from CVS. Still falls on its face because it uses DX9.

    WineX still has a long way to go before I'll be paying for it.

    1. Re:2 Games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      CS has always worked in WineX / Cedega.

      Steam has worked since like WineX 3.2 or something.

      CS has also pretty much always worked in WineHQ, and steam sort of does.

    2. Re:2 Games by marcushnk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      actually both those games work rather well under Cedega 4.0 :-)

      --
      "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
    3. Re:2 Games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      seriously? eve works? I tried it from cvs like 3 days ago and no dice, but if it does.. one less windows user here.

    4. Re:2 Games by nahdude812 · · Score: 1

      You'd think that given CS is the world's most popular online game, they'd have made running it a priority?

      It's interesting. I hear this phrase applied to a lot of different games. Everquest, Mu Online, Final Fantasy, Counter Strike, and probably a few others.

    5. Re:2 Games by absurdhero · · Score: 1

      CS runs almost perfectly for me under wineX 3.2. Every other mod I've tried runs fine as well. Are you sure your machine is set up right? Have you tried the official packages? I haven't found many games that *don't* run under wineX.

  53. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Mant · · Score: 1

    While games and other apps are part of it, much as I hate to say this having app compatibility is not a silver bullet and doesn't guarantee Linux being the dominant desktop OS.

    Things like inertia and useability also have to be considered.

  54. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Etyenne · · Score: 1

    You fail to take into account that fabulous force called "inertia". Even if all reasons holding back Linux on the desktop (LotD) are solved and it achieve feature/quality parity, people will still continue to use Windows massively. Something about the comfort zone. For people to switch, you would need bring some pretty substantial advantages, not just parity. If people choosed software on quality and features, the world would have switched from IE to Mozilla/Firewhatever a loooooong time ago.

    --
    :wq
  55. Really Open Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (Score:-5, Troll)

    I'm not sure of how can Winex be considered opensource. The CVS mostly don't compiles unless
    heavily tweeked (is this done by purpose?). Transagaming leached wine's code and gave nothing back (and this is most probably the reason wine became GPL). And WineX cannot be included in Debian/Gentoo. Maybe they keep their source code on public CVS just because they want to look like "opensource friends" and want to get free contribuitions?

  56. dont complain.. by techefnet · · Score: 0

    people please dont whine..winex/codega is really good, but you cant expect it to work with everything! i havent tryed the newest but had the one before that, and on my 3ghz it really felt like windows when i tryed running game.. people that complain about linux cant run your windows games: you cant just expect that linux will support games written for other oses...

  57. Literally lol - their front page. by Gannoc · · Score: 1


    Two articles on the front page:

    "Software Ubiquity - A Dire Need"

    "Cross Pollination = Technological Synergy"

    Its like an parody page of a dot.com site. ;)

    1. Re:Literally lol - their front page. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup. I always cringed at their old site - too many darn graphics even with DSL slow it down. The new one looks even more bad :-( All flashy graphics and no real content on the frontpage :(

      Tels

  58. It's Slashdotted by ciryon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's the info from the site:

    Toronto/Ottawa -- June 22, 2004 -- TransGaming today unveils the milestone release of version 4.0 of its flagship product, WineX, which has been renamed to Cedega. Cedega allows Windows ® games to seamlessly and transparently run under Linux, out-of-the-box, with outstanding performance and equivalent game-play. Cedega 4.0 includes support for Microsoft ® DirectX ® 9.0, significantly broadening the scope and availability of the latest triple "A" titles for avid Linux gamers. The landmark release of Cedega 4.0 adds support for new blockbuster DirectX 9.0 titles such as EA's(TM) Battlefield Vietnam(TM), Eidos'(TM) Hitman: Contracts ©, and LucasArts' © Star Wars(TM)Galaxies(TM), bringing the total number of games supported under Cedega to well over 300. Furthermore, Cedega features unprecedented support for NCSoft's ® recently released massive multiplayer online game, City of Heroes ® and Blizzard Entertainment's ® unreleased but highly anticipated World of WarCraft ®.

    Cedega (Se-day-gah) - [noun] - a unique variety of grape used to make some of the finest Port Wines in the world; an innovative portability technology developed by TransGaming that allows Windows games to run on Linux.

    "Cedega 4.0 represents an amazing evolution of our Linux product. Thus, it was only fitting to give it a new name; a name that is representative of our product's maturity, complexity, sophistication, and elegance. The new name, Cedega, is meaningful and reflects the significant growth that both the product and TransGaming have enjoyed over the last few years," comments Vikas Gupta, Co-CEO and President of TransGaming Technologies.

    From a technical standpoint, this release sets a new benchmark for the support of games on Linux. "The Cedega 4.0 release contains more technological innovation than any previous TransGaming release and truly represents a milestone in game software portability. Cedega 4.0 supports titles that make use of the DirectX 9.0 API as well as advanced Pixel and Vertex shaders. Cedega 4.0 also includes a new advanced inter-process communication architecture that can double the speed of games which make heavy use of Win32 kernel synchronization primitives," remarks Gavriel State, CTO & Co-CEO of TransGaming Technologies.

    To keep pace with the growth of Linux worldwide and to more effectively meet consumer demands internationally, TransGaming is also pleased to announce the European launch of Cedega 4.0. European customers and subscribers can now pay in Euros, a feature that has been much anticipated and will cater specifically to the rapidly growing Linux community in European countries. Cedega 4.0 includes an updated version of its user friendly interface, Point2Play, with multiple language support for English, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese and German.

    About TransGaming Technologies Inc.

    TransGaming Technologies is a global leader in the development of software portability products that allow game developers and publishers to develop games for one system and deploy them across multiple platforms - faster, cheaper and better than anyone else.

    TransGaming's flagship Linux product, Cedega, supports hundreds of the hottest and most popular games on Linux, out-of-the-box, including hit titles such as Max Payne 2(TM), Battlefield 1942(TM), Battlefield Vietnam(TM), Medal of Honor(TM), Diablo II ®, EverQuest(TM), Star Wars Galaxies(TM), City of Heroes ® and many more. TransGaming has also ported such blockbuster titles as TRON 2.0 ®, James Bond 007(TM): Nightfire(TM), Law & Order(TM), Indiana Jones ® and The Emperor's Tomb(TM), just to name a few.

    TransGaming has a research and development center in Ottawa, Canada, with business, strategy, and operational activities conducted at the Toronto, Canada office. TransGaming was recently honored with inclusion on the Branham300 List of top IT companies in Canada for the second consecutive year. More information about the c

    1. Re:It's Slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What would we do if we didn't have karma whores like yourself?

      Oh yeah thats right, not be able to read the article.

  59. Scared for a minute by Ieshan · · Score: 1

    I read that and I got all scared inside, and then I realized that the offensive motto was "Where do you want to go today?"

    Whew. That was a close one.

    1. Re:Scared for a minute by ktulu1115 · · Score: 1

      That's funny - Same thing happened to me when I first read it on their website.

      --
      # fuser -v /dev/attention | grep work
      #
  60. One question? by guybrush876 · · Score: 1

    How easy is it these days to install NVIDIA or ATI drivers in Linux? I'm a Linux occasional user, and the last time I installed it in my home computer the instructions for the driver install were a little complicated and being a bit lazy never took the time to do it, since then I deleted linux partition( to make more room for games :)). So before entering in the emulation department I think a few basic steps should be made in the user friendly department before gaming could be widely used in Linux.

    1. Re:One question? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just installed nVidia's amd-64 Linux driver from their website. It installed flawlessly, and I now have very nice 3-D acceleration on a 64 bit box under Linux. After downloading and installing the driver, I then had to change a couple of settings in my XFree86 config file. Just follow the instructions in the nVidia read-me, they are very straightforward and will walk you right through it.

    2. Re:One question? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ATI was a pain for me and didn't work properly, Nvidia was the opposite. Best place to look is each of their linux forums.

    3. Re:One question? by dyefade · · Score: 1

      wtf? installing nVidia graphics drivers requires running a single file. you don't even have to work out which file.

    4. Re:One question? by guybrush876 · · Score: 1

      I took a look at their website and in fact it's a lot more easy to instal now, not a double click but near, so maybe i'll give it a try now that i have a bigger HD.

    5. Re:One question? by sloanster · · Score: 1

      Actually, if you run suse, it is one click... open yast, and click on the "install nvidia driver" checkbox in the online update, or during the install. Then go to video setup and check "enable 3D acceleration" and you're done - no manual file editing required.

    6. Re:One question? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      some distros install them automatically.

  61. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Gannoc · · Score: 2, Funny

    This guy said absolutely nothing new, interesting or insightful. He might as well have copied his post from 16,000,000 other posts just like it.

    Well, we have "redundant", but we need something which is "The opposite of insightful"

    I might suggest (-1 Banal)

  62. Will WineX 4 play Lineage 2? by fizz · · Score: 1

    I wonder since it plays ncsofts city of hero's if Lineage 2 will run. I Went back to windows beceuase the games i did play were dx9 and wouldnt play (star wars galaxies, lineage2, guildwars (e3 for everyone).

    I might actually get a subscription now..

    1. Re:Will WineX 4 play Lineage 2? by cliffmeece · · Score: 1
      well, I subscribed and City of Heroes won't even install for me. Others are having the same problems, and people who have go it installed are reporting some pretty serious bugs.

      I feel kinda misled at this point...

  63. They Didn't Sue? by Inhibit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Excuse me, but how on earth would you sue someone for accessing a public CVS archive for the purpose of downloading a CVS build? Remember now, you (the user) access it with an ebuild, not the Gentoo group.

    What would the argument be, exactly? "You're honor, we only meant that CVS tree for people that wanted to do free work, not everyone else. That's why we made it publicly available"? They essentially threatened to pull the CVS tree if Gentoo didn't remove their ebuild. Real nice. HUGE believers in OSS and "giving back" to the WINE project.

    --
    You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
    1. Re:They Didn't Sue? by johnnyb · · Score: 1

      I think the point was that Transgaming made a nice request, and Gentoo was congenial and complied. I don't think there was any threatening of court action.

    2. Re:They Didn't Sue? by srwalter · · Score: 1

      Again, you're showing your lack of understanding of the situation. As another poster stated correctly, my intent was that they weren't being obnoxious about it.

      So far as being firm believers in OSS, I think the work they are doing makes great strides for the ability of ordinary people to run Linux, which is great by my book. They make a great product, which they based legally off the wine project in accordance with wine's license, and further agree to release /all/ their code once they reach their subscriber requests.

      I think if you ever used WineX, you'd think their efforts are well worth-while and well worth paying for, and the fact that it will eventually be free to the Linux community is just icing on the cake.

      --
      Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4
    3. Re:They Didn't Sue? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      I've used open source software that I thought was worth paying for, and indeed I have accordingly donated money to the developers.

      However, Winex is not OSS - not by any true standard. To the slight degree that it is somewhat open they threaten to close it if anybody uses it in a way that is not advantageous to them.

      What makes you think that WineX will ever be free to the linux community? I suppose it will be in 500 years when copyrights eventually expire, but what legally-binding commitment do we have? If could see arguing this if the license stated that the GPL applies to a given release as of a date two years in the future, or something like that. I understand that transgaming has implied that they'd like to give back. Well, I'd love to solve world hunger, personally, but you'd be foolish to think that I'm going to be able to deliver on that one on my salary...

  64. New Win ZPI for Longhorn by essreenim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So my wuestion is about Avalon.
    In 05/06 Window$ will release a new OS with a brand nre API - Avalon - based on a completely new file system/table... WinFS (or whatever its called)

    I've no doubt they will make this the most convoluted file system ever seen with no chance of proper reverse engineering or even emulating.

    So, shouldnt we be pushing for new and smarer ways to develop more sophisticated OpenGL render engines faster and better so Linux can compete eith Window$ in gaming rather than living off M$ scraps? ...

    1. Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn by Doogie5526 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      WinFS actually sits on top of NTFS (for backwards compatibility)... and I also think this was one of the many new technologies that are planned to be dropped from Longhorn (which is still many many years away).

      I think the point of this is to shut people up about, "The only reason I haven't switched is because I play games." After that, with more people on Linux, a Linux native version of a new game gets released, and it gains more support. Finally, more and more publishers look at making Linux versions.

      Hopefully, this will be set in to action before Longhorn is released (you know, right after Duke Nukem Forever).

      One more thing, I believe most games don't use too much anymore of the Windows API than the winmain() function (to run the app in windows). The rest is engine code or DirectX/OpenGL. So I doubt it will be that much of a problem when the day comes.

      I'm pretty sure it's still spelled "Windows" and "Microsoft." If they did change the name to "Window$," I'm pretty sure there'd be a Slashdot story on it.

    2. Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn by aldoman · · Score: 1

      You are assuming Game Developers will use Avalon and WinFS.

      A very small amount of users will use Longhorn for the first 1 year or so. After that it will become more prevelant but really it's not going to ever get enough in the next 3-5 years for game devs to stop Win32 support.

      Oh also, how many games need a metadata filesystem or new window drawing controls (yes I know it's more, but essentially it is just that)?

      Also, with one of the court injunctions MS has had, it has to open ALL APIs up. So it will be easy to reverse engineer.

    3. Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn by shaitand · · Score: 1

      According to Micrsoft(TM)* it's illegal to use those words. So don't go talking about the viewing portals in your home or you may have a lawsuit on your hands.

      *Microsoft(TM)* is a Registered trademark of Microsoft(TM)*. This is a recursive notice.

    4. Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn by Doogie5526 · · Score: 2, Funny
      lol. Technically, because they own the trademark doesn't mean I can't use the name. I'm just not allowed to market something that could be confused (by a layman) for the trademark. Though they can lose that trademark if the word becomes common language (like Xerox or Kleenex), that's why they always say Microsoft Windows.

      On that note, I plan to open a junkyard called Windows.

    5. Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know, your comment loses all credibility once you replace all your S-es with $ signs. It's just retarded, get over it already and comment without sounding like a zealot.

    6. Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn by essreenim · · Score: 1

      Anonymou$ coward
      How's that?

  65. Re:What I don't get is... by Doogie5526 · · Score: 1
    I wasn't really trying to beat you or anything. Just informing you on why I made that choice. (I notice that a lot of Slashdot replys are ment to reem people and wave as much as possible how wrong they are)

    In response, the games you buy aren't guaranteed to work even if you meet the hardware and software requirements on the box (just last week my friend bought Jedi Knight 3 and it wouldn't read on his CDrom... because of the copy protection. I doubt he's getting his money back and because of this I'm pretty sure he sees this as more reason to download the game instead of buying it).

  66. I might give that a shot.... by StressGuy · · Score: 1

    thanks

    --
    A goal is a dream with a deadline
  67. Hmm.... by wellard1981 · · Score: 1

    ...it's been /.ed, and there was me wanting to update my subscription details. *sigh*

    I've been using Transgaming's WineX for a while now, and I can quite happly say what a wonderful achivement it really is!

    I can play all my games under it, including Call of Duty, Farcry and more.

    To get the official binarys, you need to be a subscribed member, and I'm quite pleased that I did. It works as it should and it does the job.. and the support for InstallShield is good.

  68. Flamed? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

    Dude, this is Slashdot.

    If you say you've wiped your Windows install, you are going to be lauded, and held on high.

    Burnination only occurs if you were to say that you wiped your linux install, put Windows ME back on there, and then went out and keyed Linus's car.

    Okay, maybe not that far, but you get the point.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    1. Re:Flamed? by Dreadlord · · Score: 1

      Yeah I know Linux is the popular OS here, I said "because of this post", not "because of wiping Windows".

      Some may flame me for using WineX because TG doesn't give back to the Wine project, or because TG asked Gentoo devs to remove the CVS ebuild (I'm a Gentoo user BTW). They don't realize that the only other option I have is installing Windows.

      --
      The IT section color scheme sucks.
  69. From a Gentoo Fanboy comes an easy answer... by UncleRage · · Score: 1

    [Assumption]
    You are running Gentoo, you have compiled your kernel with module support, your system is installed and you have already installed XFree86/X.org...

    In other words, you've got your Gentoo installation going... ;)
    [/Assumption]

    At this point, it's pretty much a simple emerge.

    # emerge nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel

    In all fairness, there are a few other steps, loading the module (# modprobe nvidia) and updating X. But the entire procedure is pretty damn simple, really.

    =)

    --
    #SickNotWeak
  70. It'll only run on X-86 Linuxes by callipygian-showsyst · · Score: 1

    so Mac Linux users are still SOL when it comes to game playing ;-(

    1. Re:It'll only run on X-86 Linuxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you can also run MOL- http://www.maconlinux.org/

    2. Re:It'll only run on X-86 Linuxes by sloanster · · Score: 1

      They are SOL in more ways that that - I keep looking into mac linux, then find out that there is still no support for accelerated video, which immediately kills the idea - if macs had decent video support for linux, I'd buy several immediately.

    3. Re:It'll only run on X-86 Linuxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I know! If macs were better, I'd own one!

    4. Re:It'll only run on X-86 Linuxes by msh104 · · Score: 1

      you can't seriously want to play windows games on a mac could you? that's way to much emulation, you'll never make a single frame.

  71. Re:Hey Schmucktard by Rushuru · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh, sound in a game is minor?

    Until you stop bitching and contribute or run your own open-source business, shut up.


    yes, native alsa support is not a big deal, since a) most people still use OSS, and b) Alsa OSS emulation works perfectly fine

    --
    !
    ^_^
  72. Other DirectX stuff? by ewanrg · · Score: 1

    For myself, the only Windows program I still run frequently is Listen.com's Rhapsody. This allows me to access a ton of music through their streaming service for a monthly fee.

    Trying to get this running under Wine or WineX (yes, I do know how to use CVS thank you) has been nigh on impossible. I'd love to hear that someone who has paid for this has gotten it running, so I could justify the subscription fee for WineX.

    TIA,
    Ewan

  73. Gaming Editions by 4lex · · Score: 1

    I just hope to see "gaming editions" on the rise again. Bundle the best hardware detection (or, best, pre-install) with Cedega, some basic productivity tools as usual (OOo, mail, www), keep a low-profile WM like XFCE4, put in every great free (as in speech) game, a lot of free (as in beer) demos and maybe some discount on a set of popular propietary games which will run (either natively or through Cedega), and there you have a nice linux distro (or box) that runs enough games to be fun and enough software to be productive. No viri, no spyware, no problems! Of course, real gamers will need their Windows boxes, as well as PS2, Cube and XBox, but for a lot of people this would be "good enough".

    --
    My journal. Mainly about freedom.
  74. Does it support EAX in SB cards? by antdude · · Score: 1

    The last time I played Diablo 2 and other older games, EAX wasn't supported and the performance wasn't so great compared to Windows on an Athlon 2200 XP system. Has this this been resolved?

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    1. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe this has been resolved and I just don't know about it, but one of the main reasons I don't use linux on my desktop machine is because of poor SB card support. My audio sounds crisp and full under Windows, but it's flat and ugly under Linux using emu10k1 drivers. As far as I know, EAX doesn't work at all. Maybe someone else knows of a way to get these cards to perform as well as they would under Windows.

    2. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can use openal for EAX support in Linux http://www.openal.com

    3. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by nahdude812 · · Score: 1

      D2 has played fine for me under WineX, make sure you have an accelerated video driver. If you have an nvidia card, you won't by default, you'll have to get the driver from nvidia.com.

    4. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by antdude · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I was using NVIDIA driver. Note that this was about 1-2 years ago in Red Hat Linux 7.2. I wasn't impressed so I stuck with Windows OS. Also, did you get 3D sound and EAX support? Mine were greyed out IIRC in WineX.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    5. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by nahdude812 · · Score: 1

      I don't recall having any issues along this line at all, though it's been ~6 months since I played any games from Linux.

    6. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3D Sound works just fine in Painkiller - and I don't remember having EAX problems - but then I have only an integrated sound card and I don't even know if it can/could do EAX...

    7. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by antdude · · Score: 1

      EAX adds echos, reverbs, all kinds of sound effects. Like in Half-Life, walking on metallic floors sounds like a metallic floor.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    8. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by msh104 · · Score: 1

      It's on the voting list if I remember right. don't know about the status. I do know that they have a brand new alsa backend for sound, so I wouldn't be suprised to see EAX very, very soon.

    9. Re:Does it support EAX in SB cards? by antdude · · Score: 1

      Thanks! :)

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  75. Not Linux. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, this doesn't help any games run on Linux. It helps them run on particular Linux machines that happen to run x86 processors.

    That still leaves Linux on PowerPC, Linux on Alpha, Linux on SPARC, Linux on ...

    Wake me up when people are building on Linux directly from high-level code or on top well-supported libraries that hit the hardware equally well on each Linux platform. Until then, we're no closer to real Linux games.

  76. I've said it before and I'll say it again... by Greyfox · · Score: 1
    Oh wait... I didn't say it... some bankrupt Linux company CEO said it. Also a bunch of people who used to run OS/2. If your OS is only used to as a better launcher for Windows, Microsoft will improve Windows to the point where it's just stable enough to keep the majority of people and you'll never get any market share. And as soon as your OS dies they'll go back to... whatever it is they do when they're not facing direct and dangerous competition. Evil world domination stuff, I suppose...

    We seem to still have a few companies porting games to Linux, so I guess the scene isn't terrible. I still lament the days when some kids could get together and hack out a game like xtrek without having to hire bunches of artists and music people. Modern game developers seem to have forgotten that if you have great gameplay you don't need great graphics.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  77. My experience stopped before it started by tyrantnine · · Score: 1

    I recently uncovered my Baldurs Gate II CD collection I'd bought a few years ago and realized I'd never gotten more than halfway through the game and decided to a swing at it again. I figured, this is a fairly old game with no required use of 3D, let's see what I can do to get it running on Linux (I dual boot) and I'd never used Wine.

    I found Transgaming's version of Wine and figured, this seems like this would be the fast, easy way to go - and found a page which listed BG II as basically "mostly working" with Transgamings version of WineX - with the notable exception the expansion pack (Throne of Bhaal) did NOT work. Then I ran into the fact to just make the attempt to getting Transgamings Winex to work "fairly well" with this 3 year old non-3D accelerated title, I'd need to fork over $5/month. Needless to say after spending half an hour tracking this info down, I just rebooted into windows and installed it there.

    I might consider paying $5/month for something I used very often, but a one off shot at a 3 year old game - I don't think so. Honestly it'd take a rather high level of gaming to justify even considering it, and my impression from researching the ability to run BG II left me with the impression there would likely be a lot of issues with plenty of games out there. Anyway, emulating games doesn't seem to lend themselves to a subscription based model at all, but what do I know.

    1. Re:My experience stopped before it started by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't bother - at least with Winex 3.3.x BG (sue 8.2 on the same hardware I have now) would not run very good - there was an annoying chop every other second. Meaning while it did run, it was unplayable. (Of course, I also had forgotten how horrible 640x480 really look).

      Icewind dale I could never get to install.

      Maybe with kernel 2.6.x (Suse 9.1) and Winex4.0 it runs better - hm, once the /. does stop I will try this :)

      Cheers,

      Tels (at bloodgate dot com)

  78. Stop the license belly-aching! by LilMikey · · Score: 1

    Knock off this CVS access FUD. Yes, TG told Gentoo and others to remove links to their CVS archives not because they don't want people to peek around at their free code but because... CVS GIVES THEM AN INCOMPLETE PRODUCT!

    The special sauce in WineX isn't Wine or the wine-derived code... it's the binary-only, proprietary, closed-source DirectX shared objects owned by Aladdin. The WineX CVS is little more than plain old Wine with a nip and a tuck. In fact, Wine alone will do MORE than WineX CVS without the shared objects because, absent DX sos, it's useless.

    So all the Gentooians go pluck the CVS version of WineX thinking they're getting real WineX, the damn thing doesn't do, well, anything at all and they're forever soured to WineX and possibly Linux in general. Removing that option is good for Transgaming and the community in general and isn't, believe it or not, a nefarious plot to stop people from easily getting what's freely available anyway.

    --
    LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
    1. Re:Stop the license belly-aching! by cubic6 · · Score: 1

      I use CVS WineX, and you couldn't be more wrong. It runs DirectX absolutely fine. The proprietary parts are the CD Copy Protection code and their slick game installer/manager. If you bypass the first with a crack and can manage to install the games manually, then CVS WineX works just as well as the real deal. Stop with the FUD about "binary-only, proprietary, closed-source DirectX shared objects".

      --
      Karma: Contrapositive
  79. how got is it for the gamers-community?.... by scheuri · · Score: 1

    I am subscriber of WineX for a while now and I download and install every new release.

    Everytime I do so, there is a thought crossing my mind.
    It says: "why do you support this?".
    The question is not originated from my opinion that WineX still have a long way to go to support really all games, especially the newer ones, and have a good way to install these (still have my troubles).

    it is merely founded on the idea of motivating the gaming industry...

    why "serving" them with emulators so that they dont need to port the games ("hey, linuxuser, dont whine, you got wineX")?
    Just a second later, the question is:
    would have they ported the games if winex doesn't exist??

    in my opinion its a full circle of "do it" and "dont do it".
    I would love to see more games ported to linux as I see it as a future desktop OS...but the mere thought of companies like EA makes me shudder and lets me download the newest winex again...

    my 2 rappen
    scheuri

  80. 100% incorrect by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 1
    You are very misinformed. Their code is not open by any stretch of the imagination. You cannot modify it, distribute it, or include it in anything else, ie. their code is unusable by the open source community, including the original Wine project.

    And no, AFAIK, they do not send a lot of patches upstream. They said they would, but have so far failed to send any patches that are of significant value.

    --
    Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
    1. Re:100% incorrect by Etyenne · · Score: 1

      Just checked, and indeed the most interesting bit are covered by the Alladin Free Public License. Some part are covered by the LGPL, though.

      As for the patches stuff, I would be interested in knowing what they did and did not contribute back. I kind of recall having read the WineHQ implementation of DirectX contain no Transgaming code, but that they contributed some other stuff. I guess "a lot" is relative.

      Thanks for the clarification.

      --
      :wq
    2. Re:100% incorrect by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 1
      Thanks for the clarification.

      No problem. They had me fooled before too. I subscribed right away, because they were talking the talk, but then nothing ever came of it.

      I'm not surprised though, as I don't think their business model would work otherwise. It's rather unfortuneate. They've done some good work, and their developers seem like alright guys, not making good on a promise tarnishes their rep.

      They seem to be branching out; perhaps if/when their WineX product becomes only a small part of their business, they will contribute more back to Wine.

      Cheers.

      --
      Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
    3. Re:100% incorrect by Etyenne · · Score: 1
      I'm not surprised though, as I don't think their business model would work otherwise.

      I don't agree here. I would buy their packages just for convenience (5$/month ... peanuts) even if the whole thing was LGPLed.

      Gotta think about this license thing a little more before I take out the credit card, though ...

      --
      :wq
    4. Re:100% incorrect by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 1
      I don't agree here. I would buy their packages just for convenience (5$/month ... peanuts) even if the whole thing was LGPLed.

      I would too, so perhaps you're right. I guess they don't think so, though. In fact, if they didn't break their promise, I would still be paying the $5 / month just to support them.

      Gotta think about this license thing a little more before I take out the credit card, though ...

      Well, they do have a good product... I would consider spending the money again, but their broken promise would weigh heavily into my decision.

      --
      Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
  81. WineX as told by a disappointed user by Matt+Ownby · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    I have been messing around with warcraft 3 in WineX since the Reign of Chaos BETA and it has NEVER worked "properly" for me.

    Oh sure, I can play the game... but I have to do the following steps:
    a) delete my ~/.transgaming directory each time I want to play
    b) log out of Gnome 2.4/Sawfish and start a barebones window manager (otherwise the startup splash logo stays in the middle of the screen permanently making the game unplayable)
    c) forcefully kill the winex process after warcraft 3 is finished (because it won't return to the command prompt otherwise)

    (and incidently, hard drive access in war3 under winex is significantly slower than windows... it is pretty hard to micro when every time you click a unit it takes 1 second to cache in the audio for that unit! maybe instead of adding new games, some time should be spent optimizing?)

    I subscribed to winex for 6 consecutive months once, not to mention 3 other non-consecutive months and I feel like their support was utter crap. Sure, warcraft 3 is playable, but having to quit my window manager is almost as bad as having to reboot to windows in the first place. Also, the fact that alt-tabbing doesn't seem to ever work is ridiculous (I don't care what software limitations there are... with the source code to X available, it should be possible to make this work, dangit).

    Admittedly, the last version I have tried was an early version of 3.x ... that was the last time I was a subscriber. I gave them so many chances and I was disappointed beyond belief that I had to jump through so many hoops to use a commercial product.

    Big thumbs down for WineX.

    1. Re:WineX as told by a disappointed user by slo · · Score: 1

      Couldn't you run it in a separate X server (allow flip flop between game and desktop)? I found this worked quite nice for Neverwinter Nights.You maybe don't need a window manager at all to run the game. This and the other problems could be scripted around. All for only a moderate amount of pain.

  82. Obligitory correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    gaijin99 wrote: That isn't evil, any more than its evil for a polar bear to eat a penguin. But the penguins don't like it.

    Polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere; penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere. The only way a polar bear will eat a penguin is if they get out of their pen in a zoo.

    s/polar bear/leopard seal/g; and your analogy holds, however.

    Yes, I know I'm being pedantic. I'm still right. So there :-P

  83. Nice by Democritus2 · · Score: 0
    currently on their site:

    Slashdotted

    Looks like we're being slashdotted. We apologise for the inconvenience; please come back later.

    -- The TransGaming web team.

    --

    no god is good

  84. I like your comment by Programmer_In_Traini · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I like your comment...
    why "serving" them with emulators so that they dont need to port the games ("hey, linuxuser, dont whine, you got wineX")?


    Computers aren't very different from anything really and no matter how much of a need there is for standard, there never will be really a standard.

    Have you ever dreamed installing a big block hemi in your shiny WRX impreza or Ford Focus ?

    If that's the case, keep dreaming, it'll never happen. Because chevy stuff are for chevys, ford stuff is for ford stuff. They're not compatible and there isn't a lot we can do to change it.

    Computers, like I said, aren't very different. Don't try running windows programs directly in linux, you won't get very far (well...we all know that).

    But! in computers we have the advantage of being able to change that somehow by creating "emulators".

    Companies won't create a game for all possible platforms, it would cost way too much so they aim for the most popular ones - such as ...dare i say....windows.

    Linux isn't a profitable platform yet, because not enough people use it to profitably make programs for it, not to mention no company will be willing to release their game in an open source manner, because yes, it would inevitably come down to asking them to release their latest game in an open source because that's what Linux is all about.

    And besides the whole "profitable" side of it, think of WineX as the bridge no other sector could create.

    Think of it as the ultimate option given to the consumer to finally choose the game HE wants and play them on HIS platform no matter what the game is intended for.

    To come back to my chevy/ford example. I doubt we'll ever see any kind of device to allow us to put a hemi engine in my ford impala. It's because cars are bound by mechanical pieces, physical pieces. There are space constraints, tons of fittings would be inserted everywhere.... not a very reliable technique.

    Software on the other hand, is an abstract product, something you can't touch see or smell... or taste (?) :D

    We must use that advantage to build bridges that allow us to use what we want, on the platform we want, where we want.

    I applaude WineX for their initiative and you be damn sure I'll buy their product once it is matured.
    --
    If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
  85. Re:What I don't get is... by ardent · · Score: 1

    Maybe it was 199 a few years ago but Newegg has them for sale for 87$ Check it out. At 5$/month, if you play for more than a year, its cheaper to go with the dual-boot. And if you don't have 1gb to spare in this day and age...

  86. Real time performance by Archfeld · · Score: 1

    data from a source other than the publisher ? Sounds ever so promising, maybe a little too sweet, but I can't help but hope :)

    --
    errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
  87. You forgot to mention... by Svartalf · · Score: 1

    That you won't see even remotely the same level of performance with WineX on the same bleeding edge hardware. Typically, you don't need bleeding edge to be able to play the game under Windows- middle of the line usually will do. However, you'll need near bleeding edge or right on the cutting edge just to be able to play the silly thing under WineX in many cases.

    There IS a distinction there.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  88. Re:What I don't get is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Counterstrike is one of those games that just needs to roll over and die. I feel sorry for all those losers I see in LAN game places playing that old shit in this day and age. its like the losers who still played pacman or pong religously 10 years after its release. yes, it was good in its day but for fucks sake get over it already

  89. Thats why... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I support companies that actually care, even if it's just a little, about their customer base. Bioware (Neverwinter Nights) and id Software (since doom!) allow the users to download linux clients for their games, which usually run as well as their windows couterparts. Apart from blizzard and valve (cant help it :) these two are the only companies which have ever received a dime from me, and thats how it's going to remain.

  90. How much is this going for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Would someone who had a chance to visit the webstore mind posting the price?

    Thanks in advance.

  91. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by blackdragon7777 · · Score: 1

    I hope you aren't using a sound blaster live based sound card. If so then you are limited to only one sound at a time in linux. For example if you get a sound from gaim right in the middle of a song switch in xmms, xmms will complain that you don't have a sound card! I'd just stick with windows if I were you.

  92. X2 - The Threat? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 1

    The only game lately that I've been hankering to play (enough to add a dual-boot box to my Mac/XBox menagerie) is X2, the most recent (and best according to most reviews) iteration of the all-time classic Elite.

    Is it supported yet? In multiplayer?

  93. SuSE Plug by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 1

    Not to be an advocate.... But... I do love SuSE

    If you get the SuSE Wine Rack, ($39.99)
    You get,
    Codeweavers Wine,
    Codeweavers WinePlugin (doesn't exist anymore, integrated into Codeweavers Wine)
    Transgaming WineX,

    Integrated into SuSE, and with updates through YaST.

    Pretty cool, and cheaper to boot.

    I don't mind the $5 month plan, either, and I was subscribed to it for some time.

    Its hard to make money with few customers, and they, for the most part, produce a product that works pretty damn well.

    If transgaming could get several major distributors to license WineX for inclusing into their distribution, or get several major gaming houses to fund WineX development, I'm sure they would GPL it.

    They really are good guys, but if they want to have a team working full-time to produce software, someone has to feed them.

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  94. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Nuclear+Elephant · · Score: 1

    Quicken 2002 works great in wine. And if you don't want to run wine, check out a program called MoneyDance, which is a native Linux application (actually I think it's Java) that does online banking flawlessly.

  95. Explain to me... by sterno · · Score: 1

    Can you explain to me how Transgaming is supposed to make money if they don't put some restrictions on the distribution of their software? This isn't something for the enterprise market where they could make money on consulting and support, this is for Linux gamers. Linux gamers are the kind of people with the technical know how to completely abandon the commercial package in favor of downloading and compiling themselves. That doesn't lend itself to making money.

    Now you might say these are greedy corporate gluttons or some such, but really, are they making a lot of money here? I kinda doubt it. It seems like they are making enough money to pay people's checks so they can afford to continue this work.

    The contribution that they make to the community is somewhat indirect. They are making it possible for those of us who are gamers to get completely out of the world of windows. No, they aren't purists, but unless somebody's going to start funding developers to do this work out of the kindness of their heart, I don't think they can afford to be purists.

    --
    This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
  96. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Jumpin'+Jon · · Score: 1

    You mean, like Xbox2?? :|

  97. You must be gay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  98. They'd go after CodeWeavers first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After all, CodeWeavers' Crossover is what allows MS Office to run on Linux, so Microsoft has a lot more justifications to stop CodeWeavers.

    Unless, of course, you believe that Microsoft is actually helping CodeWeavers, as some have suggested, in order to lock Linux users into MS Office.

    1. Re:They'd go after CodeWeavers first by shaitand · · Score: 1

      I'd believe option 2 bob. If windows were to lose significant market share to linux then COffice is a godsend to Microsoft.

      It's hard to say how much of Microsoft's profit is from office rather than windows (the numbers are usually grouped together and compared to server + server apps). But I'd wager it's quite a bit. Considering their massive cash surplusses, it might even be enough by a hair to keep them in business if they lost their desktop monopoly on windows.

      Coffice is perfect for them, allowing them to reach another platform without the PR damage porting would do.

  99. Additional games support? by PatJensen · · Score: 1
    Other then the press release, I can't see any other information on what new games are supported as the site is /.'d. The two games that are really holding me from running Linux on my desktop full-time are Unreal Tournament 2004 and C&C Generals Zero Hour. Anyone know if the new DX9 support will allow these games to run?

    Pat

    1. Re:Additional games support? by shadowofdarkness · · Score: 0

      How can Unreal Tournament 2004 be holding you back since there are native Linux binaries for it.

    2. Re:Additional games support? by Nosf3ratu · · Score: 1, Informative

      Huh?
      UT2004 runs on Linux natively. Read: "doesn't need an emulator," and "runs really good."

      Where the hell have you been for the past six months?

      --
      The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
    3. Re:Additional games support? by xchino · · Score: 4, Informative

      "The two games that are really holding me from running Linux on my desktop full-time are Unreal Tournament 2004 and C&C Generals Zero Hour."

      I guess you didn't pay for UT2K4 or you might have seen that it supports linux on the box. The Linux install binary sits right next to the windows binary in the root directory. It plays better on my Linux partition than it does on my Windows. C&C I don't know about and don't play, but ut2004 has NATIVE linux support, which beats playing a game under wienx any day

      --
      Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
    4. Re:Additional games support? by PatJensen · · Score: 1

      Word. I thought the support was only for dedicated server. How about that... a native Linux game release!

    5. Re:Additional games support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PatJensen. Go out and buy UT2004. You will get a native Linux game that runs wonderul. No need for WineX.
      Support the companies with native game clients such as UT2004, Neverwinter Nights, Quake,.......

    6. Re:Additional games support? by msh104 · · Score: 1

      don't forget Savage! I loved that game. www.s2games.com

    7. Re:Additional games support? by ChaoticLimbs · · Score: 1

      Your post is a joke, right? UT2004 comes with linux binaries and they're triple sweet just like UT2003. With NVIDIA drivers, it seems faster on Linux than Windows on my machine (when I boot to IceWM).

    8. Re:Additional games support? by Duty · · Score: 1

      Wonderful? I've been hearing some really unkind words about UT2004's OpenGL renderer, in either OS.

  100. Injunction by essreenim · · Score: 1

    Yes I hear about that, but that only applies in the E.U. - my neck of the woods.

    And..unfortunately, it also means that MS can probably end up charging money for its API's specs they give out. This could have nasty implications for Linux running Transgaming-like emulators etc. without paying a high cost and as I understand it Transgaming's API is already not free...

  101. Subscription goals? Any concrete numbers? by kandresen · · Score: 1

    Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com. Until then, we will periodically submit selected portions of our code for integration with the Wine project.

    Anyone having concrete numbers of the subscription goals? - A goal must typically follow these 3 criterias:

    1) Be measurable (Concrete numbers subscriptions must be presented)
    2) have a deadline (no company will run a loss project forever without reaching their goals)
    3) The goal must be achivable by the organization, not based upon external unknowns.

    To me it seems like Transgaming goal is not a real goal.

    1. Re:Subscription goals? Any concrete numbers? by Fizzol · · Score: 1

      >Anyone having concrete numbers of the subscription goals? 20,000

  102. LGPL vs binary modules by brion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wouldn't the LGPL allow them to link with a binary-only copy protection module?

    --

    Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?

    1. Re:LGPL vs binary modules by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but it wouldn't support their brain-dead business plan...

      LGPL allows free distribution of the code. Transgaming has told gentoo that if they continued to make it easy to install from CVS that they would block CVS access. Apparently the winex license does allow limited non-commercial distribution. They indicated that if any non-commercial distro actually took advantage of that they would change the license to something more restrictive.

      Transgaming basically wants to own their code, and make people pay to be able to use it. But they do want the free support and development benefits of OSS.

      If I were a developer and came up with a better mousetrap for Wine I'd just license my improvements under the (L)GPL and be done with it. Most developers don't write so that commercial companies can gobble up their source and make the open version obsolete...

  103. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Similar things will happen to Windows 3.1 too. Please use ALSA under Linux.

  104. LineageII works under winex with unoffical patch by Mongoose · · Score: 1

    Here's the thread that started it:

    http://boards.lineage2.com/tm.asp?m=243940

    I forget the main URL for the patch download, but you can get it from irc on freenode's #lineage2linux.

  105. Re:What I don't get is... by Doogie5526 · · Score: 1
    I had listed the retail price... well, because it was the retail price. I'm sure a lot of people would use pirated versions anyway.

    1GB to spare is sort of a lot when you're planning a whole partition just to play games... I had only set aside 10 when I was dual-booting to XP(I crapped a brick when Unreal Tournament 2004 installed to ~6GB)

  106. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My sb live value card can play 12+ (32?) sounds simultaneously in Linux.

  107. Mod parent up. by BumpyCarrot · · Score: 1

    Up up up!

    --
    Do you see what I did there?
  108. So Star Wars Galaxies is now supported eh... by JBoogie · · Score: 1

    /doh

    I can't get on transgaming.com to download the new Winex. :( :( :( Thanks /.

    /cry

  109. Awesine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.transgaming.com/

    Slashdotted

    Looks like we're being slashdotted. We apologise for the inconvenience; please come back later.

    -- The TransGaming web team.

  110. you guys are amazing by sams2100 · · Score: 1

    For just one moment, drop all that bloat in your brain about how everything should be free no matter what and you have the right to everything. The real world still works on money. A business cannot start up, hire code monkeys, and pay them money to write code if they do not have any money coming in.

    So with that in mind, why should transgaming give all their work back to WINE? I'd love to see you get enough funds to pay for code monkeys and other business expenses without actually selling any sort of product. At least Transgaming is giving something back... sure its not a lot, but more than they have to give back.

    If for some reason you feel that Wine should be as good or better than WineX, because Wine is open source and free and all that good stuff, then why haven't you contributed yet to Wine? What have you given back to Wine??

  111. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are several ways around this. Use ALSA instead of OSS, for starters. Another option which I used on an old laptop with OSS sound is in KDE is to use ARTS. Most apps support it, and for those that don't, use artsdsp in front of the app:

    artsdsp gaim

    Although, I think gaim supports it directly...

    It's not an issue if you have ALSA, even with an el-cheapo motherboard AC'97 bs going on...

  112. Knoppix-like CD/DVD w/ Game and Thumb Drive??? by MS_leases_my_soul · · Score: 1

    I am a Linux idiot, but I want to join the fun. I have enjoyed my Knoppix CD.

    Is it possible to build a Knoppix-like CD-R or DVD-R that would have Linux, WineX, and the Game so that you boot from the CD right into the game?

    If so, could you save game to a thumb drive?

    I could definitely see a benefit of having a CD-R or DVD-R that I could boot up, play my game, save to thumb drive, and reboot to get back to Windows. Copyright issues would require this to be a "roll your own" solution, but could it be done? If so, how does a moron like me go about doing it?

    1. Re:Knoppix-like CD/DVD w/ Game and Thumb Drive??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, is possible
      I have livecd games with winex: quake3, alice,return castle wolfenstein,JK outcast,warcraft3,duke nukem:manhattan project.
      The livecd is Slax. This livecd offers a file system with pseudo write support of CD to memory. More in: http://slax.linux-live.org

  113. Is it JUST for games? Can I run SmartSuite?? by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    Hi,

    Some office suites seem to use OpenGL or some card-related code. I know there was a tech support issue regarding redrawing some widgets in one of the SmartSuite applications. It was traced down to refreshing or something in the video processor board.

    That said, I want to know if Transgaming's software would support running Lotus SmartSuite.

    Is there anyone who's tried to load ms office or Lotus SmartSuite or some complex app that is not specifically a game?

    Or, would I be better off using Win4Lin 5.0? It's time for me to upgrade from W4L 3.0, since it is not supported beyond 2.4.18, which I use with KDE 3.1 via 2 or 3 layers of MDK upgrades (8.2, 9.1, 9.2...Now, I need to dump the legacy kernel and go clean-current...)

    Thanks!

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  114. TransGaming Wine Contributions by gavriels · · Score: 4, Informative

    Indeed, Cedega is not software libre. We've never claimed that it was. It's a commercial product that includes components dereived from Wine and ReWind.

    Despite that fact, and despite the fact that we have not yet reached the 20,000 subscriber number in our original plans, we have contributed and we continue to contribute to the Wine project in a number of substantial ways. These include major contributions or rearchitectures of: 2D DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectInput, DCOM, RPC, the WIDL IDL compiler, and wininet code, including SSL support. Additionally, we continue to maintain the X11 licensed ReWind tree, we've contributed code for a DIB renderer, and the Shared Memory WineServer.

    Overall, we've contributed tens of thousands of lines of code under Open Source license term.

    In particular, our DCOM, RPC, and WIDL work - required for use of InstallShield based installer - is extremely substantial work, and we are actively continuing to contribute that work to Wine and ReWind. We have probably spent as much engineering efforts on this as we have on our closed source Direct3D support.

    If you want to see some of what we've contributed, just browse the wine-devel and wine-patches mailing lists.

    -Gav

    Gavriel State, Co-CEO & CTO
    TransGaming Technologies Inc

    1. Re:TransGaming Wine Contributions by Ryu2 · · Score: 1

      Why is the Direct3D stuff closed source? Direct3D has nothing to do with "copy protection support", now, does it?!

      --
      There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  115. Selling Windows just got harder by wkitchen · · Score: 1


    customer: My geek friends are always telling me how great Linux is, and how they hate Windows. This machine with Linux pre-loaded looks like it comes with more software and seems to be a pretty good deal.

    salesman: Yes, but will it be able to play the games you like? You can be certain that this Windows machine can.

    customer: I read an article about a software called "Cedega" that allows "Windows ® games to seamlessly and transparently run under Linux, out-of-the-box, with outstanding performance and equivalent game-play"

    salesman: Yes, but can it run Windows games out-of-the box? And what about performance and game play?

  116. no new era here by shaitand · · Score: 1

    Transgaming has been concentrating on DX8.1 when the should have been primarily focusing on DX9 the minute it came out.

    As a result they'll be halfway through working on DX9 when DX10 comes out.

    1. Re:no new era here by msh104 · · Score: 1

      It's a good thing for them to fix up directx 8.1 as well. or we will end up having half working versions of everything. also note directx 8.1 and 9 share much code. so working out things in the right order also seems to be the right way of doing stuff.

  117. What are you talking about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Counter Strike has been running under wine for years and years now. In fact IIRC people were running CounterStrike under Linux via Wine well before Transgaming and Codeweavers even existed. I'm talking like 3 or 4 years ago. So what the heck do you mean when you say that CS doesn't run with Wine when clearly it does and has for many years. Google if you still don't believe me. Just one example from April 2001. Sheesh. Your not one of those people who just says they would use Linux if X app were available are you? Most people who say that are just flat out lying.
    http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &threadm=3AC763FE.4ED0C9BC%40gmx.net&rnum=2&prev=/ groups%3Fq%3Dcounterstrike%2520wine%26hl%3Den%26lr %3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN%26tab%3Dwg

  118. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by lowe0 · · Score: 1

    There's a big difference between "it runs" and "it runs flawlessly without waiting for a compatibility update" or even "it runs with all the advanced features such as pixel/vertex shaders or 3d sound."

    If it's already to the state where I can pull a brand-new release off the shelf and get the same user experience as Windows, then I'm interested. Otherwise, count me out.

  119. Re:Will we see a new era of game compatibilty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On the other hand, I have some windows games that will ONLY play on linux with winex3 . Namely, Master of Orion 2 and Star Trek Birth of the federation will not even run on my windows 2000 partition and work "flawlessly" (the games themselves still have bugs, but they are actually significantly better) For instance both of the games back when they would actually run on windows for me after a hundred turns or so would get extremely slow, but on linux there is never any slowdown. Don't ask me to explain it :-)

  120. They are liars and thieves. by shaitand · · Score: 1

    Transgaming promises to release their code under the wine license. They have never done, and they've also removed all mention of the promise.

    The promise was specifically tied to the number of subscribers. That was my only motivation for subscribing (I'm not a gamer). I imagine there were others who subscribed for the same reason.

    It can be said they never reached that number... maybe, maybe not, only they know. But their developers have posted in their forums that WineX will NEVER be released under the wine license because it conflicts with their "interests".

  121. So Cool! Great Job! But..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...can it play Duke Nukem Forever? Now that would really be something, if Wine could get DNF to run!

  122. Re:Hey Schmucktard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    2.6 kernels use alsa as the default. Alsa's OSS emulation does NOT work perfectly fine. It works fine for playing sounds under linux, but many games, even native linux ones like Quake2, have issues with alsa.

  123. Don't replace your previous WineX install... by praedor · · Score: 1

    Cedega is broken. I have several games that work in WineX 3.3 but when I "upgraded" to cedega, error city. No worky. I think I'll go back to straight wine. WineX is dicked, will continue to be dicked, and it adds nothing to the desire to run windoze games in linux. You're better off with the WineHQ versions.

    --
    In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
    1. Re:Don't replace your previous WineX install... by Fizzol · · Score: 1
      >You're better off with the WineHQ versions.

      Excepting of course that WineHQ dosen't play any of the games that I use WineX for. So, no it isn't better.

  124. Release Notes!!! by crache · · Score: 1

    From the members section; the release notes: (note the installer support, new cd switching fix, as well as the infamous fix they used "alice" to represent) http://crache.org/cedega-4.0_releasenotes.txt

  125. The release notes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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

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

  126. Am I dreaming? by LilGuy · · Score: 1
    First the claim that linux can now run any windows games - seamlessly no less - then I notice this at the bottom of the description: ( Read More... | 286 of 386 comments | games.slashdot.org )

    Weird day.

    --

    You're nothing; like me.
  127. Re:What I don't get is... by msh104 · · Score: 1

    Indeed, I can play 90% of my dosgames under dosbox (granted, it needed a dual and mp 2200, but who cares :p) and more and more Windows games start to work for me under wine and winex. wine is overall better when it comes to directx 1 to 7 games. winex becomes much better at directx 8/9 games every release!

  128. wine and winex by Truekaiser · · Score: 1

    imho are just crutchs.
    they allow companys to say "sence they are doing it for us, why should we even bother to spend money to make a native version?"
    the only way to get a native version of the game is a letter/email writeing campaign.
    or nicely point out that linux has hosted the majority of servers for the game, it worked with epic and the unreal series.

  129. /.ed. Mirrors please. by gazoombo · · Score: 1

    Transgaming got hit hard by this one. Any mirrors would be appreciated. I didn't get to the article in time.

    --
    John Hancock
    1. Re:/.ed. Mirrors please. by Ziviyr · · Score: 1

      Its not nice to mindlessly hourly sync.

      --

      Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
  130. You damned dirty /.'ers by phamNewan · · Score: 1

    How am I supposed to try it out when all of you are trying to do the same thing?

    On a serious note, I have recently standardized all of my computers to SuSE 9.1, with the exception of one that duel boots to Win2K. If I can get Warcraft III to function at the same level on linux, as it does on windows, my family will allow the Win2K install to die, and I will finally be M$ free.

    Say what you will, but games are critical to all of us, hence the absolute destruction that the transgaming webservers are suffering now. I have been a subscriber of Transgaming for more than a year now, and have never really tried it out yet since it was not yet there, if it works now, life will be good.

  131. The Irony!! by SkankhodBeeblebrox · · Score: 1
    from http://transgaming.org/cvs/
    "TransGaming.Org CVS

    As of November 2003, TransGaming's WineX CVS has moved from SourceForge to our own servers. We hope this will provide a better experience for our users."
    Anyone ever see SourceForge get /,'ed? :)
  132. Does it work? by ciph3r · · Score: 0

    Does it 99.1% of the time?

    --
    -ballpark
  133. In addition by Nurgled · · Score: 1

    In addition, rebooting is annoying. I tend to leave certain programs running constantly and rebooting the system disturbs that.

    We run multitasking operating systems for a reason!

    For lots of things, VMWare and similar can provide a hack solution until a real solution arises, but VMWare isn't designed to run games.

  134. CVS Version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is the CVS Version up-to-date with this release? No witty comments about the nature of CVS please.

  135. My eyes are bleeding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Open source does lend itself to simpler more open ended games like nethack, ...

    I need some more Columbian Military Marching Powder to kill the pain: someone just said NetHack is simple! Have you looked at even the platform compatibility of NetHack? We're talking thousands of light-years of idustrial programming just to put a huge dynamic maze game on anything from a watermelon, to a Monochrome text display, to a PDA, and to a supercomputer.

    You just wait until they ammend the gameplay to be real-time with a first and second and third person perspective.

  136. Some games by Humongous run natively by Trisk · · Score: 1

    ScummVM, a virtual machine that runs games developed for LucasArts' SCUMM engine, has been adding support lately for older games (Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, etc.) released by Humongous Entertainment. (http://www.scummvm.org/demos.php has some examples). ScummVM is extremely portable and runs on everything from most unix systems to game consoles and palmtops.

  137. Moot point.. by Sporkinum · · Score: 1

    It's a moot point as far as I am concerned. I can't get 3d support to work properly for my Radeon 8500 using ATI's drivers. I can't get my CMI 9738 sound to work properly either. Both drivers work, but just don't work nearly as well as they do in windows. Not only that, getting the drivers to even work at all was a pain in the butt compaired to the ease of install on windows.

    Until drivers install and work as well in linux as they do in wondows, it will never be mainstream.

    Transgaming's WineX 4.0 is useless without good drivers on the linux side.

    --
    "He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
    1. Re:Moot point.. by sloanster · · Score: 1

      Until drivers install and work as well in linux as they do in wondows, it will never be mainstream.

      I think you mean windows, but in any case, linux drivers are dead simple in my experience, either they are included out of the box, or install with just a mouse click or two, and no reboots, in contrast to microsoft windows. Of course, many vendors target only the windows-using masses, so they really need to improve their linux support. and linux users, at this point in time, need to be a bit more picky about hardware - it's not difficult, but you have to have your eyes open and not just buy whetever is being hyped.

      For instance, for video cards, nvidia is a good word to know - in suse linux, it was a couple of mouse clicks to install the nvidia drivers, even easier than in windows. For sound cards, sound blaster is a good name to know, the sound cards tend to just work, no human intervention required.

      Judging by how nicely my movies, music and video games look and feel on linux, I couldn't be happier with the quality of the drivers - but I understand the need for more, and hope to see that trend continue.

    2. Re:Moot point.. by Sporkinum · · Score: 1

      So I guess I'm supposed to toss out my perfectly good video card and disable my onboard sound just because there are no good linux drivers?

      I'm cheap. That's why I am running the hardware I am. By the way, I didn't say my drivers didn't work, they work, just not well. They were easy to install, but difficult to get running. As an example, hardware openGL is slow as molasses, and sound only works with OSS, not Alsa, but has no volume control. Volume works in Totem, but in nothing else. Little things like that drive me nuts.

      --
      "He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
  138. DAoC by bannerman · · Score: 1

    Has anyone tested Dark Age of Camelot/Trials of Atlantis on Winex4 yet? I would be able to make the switch 100% if I could run DAoC.

    --
    I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
  139. OT European Air War by tqft · · Score: 1

    Could you please flick this to someone who can answer it - does European Air War work under the new release?

    To the best of my knowledge there is no widely played Air War game for linux and EAW is widely played and cheaply available.

    If so please have them email me or reply to this.

    Many thanks.

    --
    The Singularity is closer than you think
    Quant
  140. IL-2 Sturmovik! by Apostata · · Score: 1

    If this game works under Cadega (WX4), they have a new subscriber!

    --

    This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
  141. Re:What I don't get is... by mahdi13 · · Score: 1
    granted, it needed a dual and mp 2200, but who cares
    You know, you can hit F12 to step up the CPU power to the emulator in DOSbox? Here's a quick list of performance tweaks to use while it's running

    CTRL + F7 = Decreases frameskip
    CTRL + F8 = Increases Frameskip
    CTRL + F11 = Slows down the game
    CTRL + F12 = Speeds up the game
    --
    "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
  142. Sort of off topic: WinXP == Linux by wallsg · · Score: 1

    I'm currently running WinXP Pro. I've played with Red Hat and Mandrake in the past, but in order to move to Linux I need to be able to:

    1) run Microsoft Money 2004

    2) run Outlook 2002 or fully equivalent

    3) sync the above (all of it: Notes, Tasks, Contacts, Calendar, and Inbox) with Axim Pocket PC running Pocket PC OS 4.20 (not interested in reflashing to Linux).

    I already run Open Office 1.1 since I can save in Office-format and use the files on my Pocket PC. Aside from the above there's nothing that's really keeping me from running Linux. Until Doom 3 comes out.

    Any luck?

  143. Bittorrent link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For those that don't want to pay for something that'w supposed to be free, Here's a Torrent

    It's over 20MB, but it has RPM, DEB, and TGZ packages, plus the Transgaming font installer.

  144. Re:Hey Schmucktard by kundor · · Score: 1

    Alsa's OSS emulation works better than native OSS does, in my experience.