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?"

Comments

City of Heroes?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Just buy Windows you cheap asses !

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses !

[etymxris]

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.

Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses !

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses !

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Just buy Windows you cheap asses !

[dorlthed]

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.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Too bad

[Ender Ryan]

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 :-/

Re:Too bad

[gaijin99]

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.

Re:Too bad

[Turmio]

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).

Re:Too bad

[Dalcius]

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

Shared Wineserver

[meridian]

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.

A couple of questions...

[StressGuy]

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,

Is it ok?

[Apreche]

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.

Nice Work, But....

[blueZhift]

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!

Not necessarily...

[StressGuy]

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.

Re:What I don't get is...

[gothzilla]

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.

Re:How well does this work?

[gaijin99]

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.

New Win ZPI for Longhorn

[essreenim]

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? ...

Re:New Win ZPI for Longhorn

[Doogie5526]

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.

Re:Support Codeweavers

[Rushuru]

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.

Re:Hey Schmucktard

[Rushuru]

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

Re:Yes, it does

[Badanov]

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.

LGPL vs binary modules

[brion]

Wouldn't the LGPL allow them to link with a binary-only copy protection module?

Re:Yes, it does

[sad_]

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.