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