Slashdot Mirror
Playing Nice: Reviews of CrossOver Office, WineX 4
JimLynch writes "One of the more common questions experienced Linux users get asked by those considering migrating from Windows to Linux is, "Will my Windows applications run under Linux?" Thanks to the folks at CodeWeavers, the answer to that is yes--for some applications, anyway." And Dan Dole writes "Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich reviews Cedega (WineX 4.0), give it a 20/20 score & Editors Choice Award.
"The release of Transgaming's newest version of WineX, renamed Cedega, was met with considerable enthusiasm and interest in the Linux community last week. So much so that their server was inaccessible the day of release. Cedega is claimed to be much improved, offering the ability to play recent games released for Windows "seamlessly and transparently" under Linux. They provided me with a copy, and I was curious to see if it lived up to the hype.""
If only they'd develop native versions....
FP?
The moral of the story is: "Always remember to mount a scratch monkey."
I'm usually critical of WineX, but hopefully it will work well with all of my games so I can get rid of my Winblows box :)
This isn't true, it's never been true, and it likely will never be true.
The truthful answer to the question "Will $WINDOWS_APP work under linux?" is "Maybe, ummmm.. sort of.. depends.. uhh... i dont really know"
It's not even a troll or flame, though it will be modded as such, no doubt. Everyone on slashdot knows it's true.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
and another site gets the /.
Does anyone have the text??
Evolution or ID?
I'm forced to wonder if an application developer could put enough logic in their code to prevent it's running under Wine. It'd be an interesting attempt to prevent 'unauthorized' distribution of their product if they only authorize it's use under Windows.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'm not going to beat around the bush on this one, I'm not a fan of Linux. That aside, however, I don't see things like Wine gaining so much ground that it becomes the next Windows alternative that can run all your windows apps.
I will say that technologies like this do give light that Linux definitely needs to improve its "out of the box" usability. It's all about support, and IMHO, I feel that this is more of a "Look Ma! I can run some WinApps.."
... and now cedega. Gotta say, it's pretty painless on gentoo.
/usr/portage/distfiles, ran the emerge, then done.
:D
Per the ebuild instructions, I registered w/ transgaming, ponied up my 20 bucks (or whatever), downloaded the file, copied it into
I was playing American McGee's Alice 20 minutes after starting my first "run a Windows(tm) game on linux" adventure. Even impressed the Mrs.
Cedega is claimed to be much improved, offering the ability to play recent games released for Windows "seamlessly and transparently" under Linux.
So they crash most of the time?
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
So WineX puts some kind of software layer between the application and Linux? I hope game performance dosnt take a hit.
From my experience, none of the windows emulation pakcakes ever works smoothly. You end up having to perfom bad "hacks", and live with partial functionality, which runs slowly and the whole time you have to live in dread of the inevitable memory leak crash.
wait, nevermind, that is almost exactly like using a windows app on windows.
My linux emulator will run seamlessly and transparently when I switch to linux.
"Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse. " --Oscar Wilde
"Will I have to deal with annoying dependency problems that take me hours to install the most basic of programs?"
:(
So far that answer is still yes
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
1) They don't accept debit cards & thats all I have.
;)
2) They don't charge in . I'm sure my bank will charge me extra, for converting to a foreign currency.
Tell then I'm stuck with normal wine & half-life....well thats not too bad
The truthful answer to the question...is "Maybe, ummmm.. sort of.. depends.. uhh... i dont really know"
Yes, you are a troll. This point was essentially covered by the other part of the *same sentence* which reads, "...for some applications, anyway." You're a troll for taking the quote out of context--even out of the whole sentence!!!
till then I will have to browse all my l33t lunix websites from my windoze box.
ttyl, bbl
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The LinuxLookup.com review touches upon this point:
The only downside I see is philosophical rather than a problem with Cedega itself. There aren't many Linux versions of popular games available. By making it so easy to run the Windows versions, there may not be much of an incentive to develop for Linux.
Now, not many gaming companies make Linux versions of their games, but suppose Linux gained a significant share of the desktop market. At a certain point, gaming companies will start making Linux versions, whether or not WineX can run the Windows version or not. If only because gamers are more likely to be tech savvy and the same type of people who would probably switch to Linux away from Windows before the less computer literate population does
But you're not necessarily try to get linux to "run all the windows apps."
What you are doing, is trying to get those last few apps that don't exist under linux to run. In my case, that's games, and some DVD authoring stuff which will probably have a linux counterpart soon (I've seen some but the UI is still coming along).
It took me awhile to customize my linux desktop, but I could probably do it again easily enough now, and I'm readying wizards/ISOs to allow others to use a similar desktop.
First of all there are many great Open Source games out there, Frozen Bubble and TORCS come quickly to mind.
Secondly games like Neverwinter Nights and UT2k4 are amazing, not just for the games themselves, but for the mod communities that surround them. Who cares if you can't give Sony $13 or $15 a month to play everquest. Give your money to Bioware and thank them for making a game so open that people have created MMORPG's that can be played freely with their software.
Same with UT. One look at duffer's golf, a complete Golf mod sold me on UT. I'm honestly not that interested in Golf, but if one can be made, and if it's a mod it'll run on windows and Linux, it's just the tip of the iceburg as to what can be done by modding the engine.
These are the companies and the mod communities we should be supporting. Yes there are a few windows games I'd like to play, but I'd rather not give those companies my money, since to them, I'm just another windows user.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Review of Cedega (WineX 4.0) Category Linux Software / Applications Product name Cedega Version 4.0 (WineX) Manufacturer name TransGaming Provided by TransGaming Price N/A Review by Rich The release of Transgaming's newest version of WineX, renamed Cedega, was met with considerable enthusiasm and interest in the Linux community last week. So much so that their server was inaccessible the day of release. Cedega is claimed to be much improved, offering the ability to play recent games released for Windows "seamlessly and transparently" under Linux. They provided me with a copy, and I was curious to see if it lived up to the hype. Cedega is available as an rpm, deb or tgz file. Point2Play is a graphical front end to Cedega and available in the same formats. Point2play comes bundled with all dependencies, a very nice touch, and includes the font installer program (also available as a separate download). I was installing on Slackware 10, so I downloaded the tgz files. A simple #installpkg for Point2play was all that was needed. Point2play retrieves and installs Cedega for you. It also downloads and installs Microsoft Core Fonts with the click of a button. Testing The first thing I noticed was a tab titled "System Tests". There are four tests that help to determine if your system is ready to run Cedega. "Test for Hardware 3D Graphics Acceleration" tests to see if your graphics card is capable of running 3D-intense games and if it has been set up correctly. I clicked, the familiar glxgears box opened, then I was greeted with two green graphs. They gave me an OK for OpenGL Direct Rendering and for 3D rendering speed. "Test for Sound Support" plays a sound, then asks you if you heard it. You are informed that Cedega uses the OSS audio device and told to consult your distribution's documentation if you didn't hear one. Thankfully, I did. "Test if POSIX threads (pthreads) are Required" gave me a confusing pop up box. It said "You are running a distribution of Linux on which Cedega requires the usage of pthreads on (ie. Very recent glibc). Unfortunately the maximum stack size on your distribution is not large enough for some games, and therefore you might have issues." I am then told, "When using Cedega 3.2 or newer, you may not need to use pthreads which can help avoid these problems." I admit ignorance here. I am baffled by the wording. I am being told Cedega requires pthreads, but with version 4.0 I may not need to use them, which can help avoid problems. My yellow graph boiled it down for me, saying "Some Games Might Have Problems". "Test CD/DVD Drive" checks the accessibility of the CD-ROM devices and if they are capable of supporting Copy Protected games. I got the green light showing my cdrom was available. The documentation is outstanding and will be a great help if yours isn't. Background Since I don't dual boot and lack free time, I haven't run Windows games in years. I have been happy with the standard Linux games, including Ksokoban, Kbounce, Ktron and of course Tuxracer and Tuxkart. Recent additions such as Frozen Bubble and the updated SuperTux have a modern feel. I haven't had much experience with Linux ports such as UT2004. I like that Cedega was giving me the opportunity to try out some modern games. Half-Life Uplink My first try was the demo of Half-Life Uplink, downloaded from the Nvidia site. I fired up Point2Play and clicked Install. A box opens asking for the path to the executable, the program title, the Cedega version to use, and two check boxes (big EXE and Run Directory). I found the path, named the program, left the default Cedega as my choice and clicked both boxes. Big EXE supports games packed as one large executable. Run Directory sets the current working directory to the game executable directory. You also have the option to mount and unmount your disk. I clicked continue, and I was transported back to the days of the ugly install wizards. The Wise Installation Wizard popped open, and the game installed without a hitch. The game icon now showed up in my main wi
I've tried cedega as well, and I must say I'm a little bit surprised on how well it works, at least with Debian Sid & new nvidia drivers. Configuration is a snap (just tell them the mount points & drive letters of your windos partitions), and you are pretty much ready to go. One less excuse to boot to Windows - and for many, the last excuse.
.iso's first... ;-)
Now what we need is a good daemontools-like utility that can mount non-iso images without converting to
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
since there are quite a few other versions of wine out there...
has anyone had any sort of sucess running windows apps, particularly office on linux - on a free version of wine, not crossover?
Not if I can actually get DRI to work on my ATI 9200 chipset (annoyingly impossible even after trying the free-closed-source ati drivers)...
my blog
Its never talked about much, but CrossOver Office 3.0.1 does run games. I have been playing Half-Life, Max Payne, American McGees Alice, and Diablo II on it since about ver 2.0. Hardware Acceleration supported. So WineX is not your only choice here.
We already have Neverwinter Nights (and expansions), Quake 1-3, UT2004 (and no doubt all the sequels, because the UT engine supports Linux so well), we're getting Doom 3. Why do you need Windows compatibility? Sure, maybe you can't play your crappy licensed EA games, but all the really serious game developers have seen the light, and activly develop for Linux.
The only Windows games I'm going to want to run are Duke Nukem Forever and Half Life 2. Oh, wait... they don't exist...
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
Actually, one of the things that has kept me from fully switching to 'nix is the game support. Now, however, I'm finding that some of my games regularly freeze in XP (driver issues perhaps), and I'm looking forward to testing WineX to see if they play better. At the least I'd think that they shouldn't freeze the OS.
I don't see this as ever likely happening. Mainly because it would be a classic case of "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face". Why go out of your way to piss off a potential customer base? All most commerical developers really care about about is that their software isn't pirated and they get paid for their efforts. Regardless of whether the app is designed to run on Windows or not, folks would still be expected to pony up a licensing fee. Just because you can now run MS Office on your Linux box relatively painlessly doesn't mean you get a free ride from the folks at the BSA.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
When was the last time that you tried it? I spent last night playing City of Heroes on it. While there are some UI issues (it has a real problem of registering mouseclicks on certain menu options, though it will eventually get them), the game ran at pretty much the same framerate as it does under Windows XP.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Microsoft Office 2000 works all right under wine (be sure to grab the latest, most of the time that resolves issues) for me. Just have to be patient with the whole installation mechanism and deal with some quirks, like the underline being on TOP instead of UNDER.
DRI can be a pain. I have the ATI Mobility 7500 myself. The number one issue was that I kept thinking I could get DRI in 24 bit, but not so. Drop it down to 16 bits and it'd work. Make sure you have Load "dri" and a DRI section which sets Group 0 and mode 0666.
Good luck!
You just have to realize that if he's chopping bits out of other people's sentences, he's just expecting you to do the same to his post:
... will ... troll ... Everyone on Slashdot ...
This
Or you could be angery that NWN was basically unfinished at the realse and refused to work on many systems (Windows systems, there was no Linux at release). Forcing people to either return NWN (if they could) or wait till (what?) the 1.29 release.
Have any software company guarantee their software will work even 90%. Hell, have Microsoft give you any guarantee at all regarding Windows. Go ahead, I dare you. Guaranteeing it will crash on you doesn't count.
I bought WineX so I could play StarCraft under Linux. I thought an old game like that would have no issue being emulated since my machine has a gig of RAM and an AMD 2500XP processor.
I thought wrong. It runs like crap on all 3 of my computers. Save the flame for someone else. If WineX works well for *you*, I'm happy for you.
When WineX 4.x (Cedega) came out, I updated to that, and now StarCraft doesn't run at all.
I purchased a license to Crossover Office several months ago. At first, I figured it'd run rather slow and wouldn't be good enough for production. I paid anyways just to try and support the programmers.
I installed Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. Microsoft Office is practically transparent as to how fast it runs. It loads up very fast and runs very smooth. As far as Photoshop, it runs pretty good as well. There are little bugs with the different windows and the toolboxes, but it works. for the most part.
For production, I dont think Adobe Photoshop is ready yet (version 7 by the way). Office I think is more than ready. I also installed IE so I could preview websites I'm working on in IE natively without having to go to another windows computer. On top of that, I installed the Quicktime plugin and I watch trailers from Apple.com with no lag.
I give Crossover Office a 10/10. Well worth every penny I spent.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
That's an obscure example, but I'm sure I could come up with something more common, say, like printers or scanners.
Bottom line, it's not in thrid party developers' interest to keep supporting older stuff. They want you to buy their new products.
Are you kidding me? Wine is a native implementation of the Windows API (IMO, that's like shitting in chapagne, but that just me).
There's no emulation.
I'll think you'll find that was the slashdotting they recieved.
RegardselFarto
I don't mean to start a flame war here (and I'm a little new to computers), but why is this a good thing?
I mean isn't Linux so much better than Windows that you'd have to be a fuckin' brain dead moron to expose yourself to it. Linux, and every other OS (except Windows of course) is superior in every way. I don't get it. WHY!?!?
Let's see... something's that's inherently insecure, unstable, and poor performing, or... something's that's NOT!
And don't give me that "It's just because Windows is so popular." bullshit, because it a load of crap.
Anyway, like I said, I'm new and not trying to pick a fight. Crongrats to the WINE team.
If you are running something that has been 'certified' on Crossover, it will 'just work'.
They also document what is certified and what is not. So there wont be any question.
I assume its the same for WineX ( I'm not a gamer ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am sure every app ever written for a MS OS still runs fine under WinXP. All those old DOS programs have no problem running in XP.
Now, are you happy?
In the article, the author gives an example of an application that doesn't work properly under WineX ... GAIM. Well, WTF... why the hell would anyone running WineX try to run Win2k GAIM when the app is native to *nix anyway? Just a thought.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I apologize for not keeping up with the requests, we never could withstand a thrashing from Slashdot. Perhaps it's time for me to look into a different CMS with fewer bottlenecks. So, if anyone in community/other site owners would like to share their solutions with me, I'd like to hear from you. Reached me at ty @ linuxlookup.com
So much so that their server was inaccessible the day of release And now, thanks to Slashdot, inaccessible again!
You're confusing things. WineX isn't meant for running "office crap" it's meant for running games and it does so very well.
Listen, you damn fool.
"Vaporware" is defined as a product that has never seen the light of day.
A product that is talked about a lot, but never really exists.
Duke Nuken Forever is an example of Vaporware.
WineX is not. It freaking exists. I use it. I'm a subcriber. And it runs City of Heroes pretty damn near pefect. It also runs Far Cry, and a shit load of other games.
If you are going to troll, at least get your 'netspeak' straight.
++AC
this still allows companys to not port their products over to linux.
it gives them a cheaper option, leting someone else deal with the problem of geting the program working under linux rather then doing it themselfs.
companys act like electricty when it comes to spending, they always go the route of least resistence(lowest cost).
until wine/winex and the equivilent programs are stoped then linux has no hope of geting any native version of any hit game or program, unless it was coded for linux to begin with.
Thanks for the visual.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
No, it just got Slashdotted. :P
Unfortunately I've read some horrible stories on their own website (in the support section and new forums) about people having a bad time getting their already-working games working under Cedega. In fact, I've read an unfortunately large number of posts saying that they've downgraded to WineX because of the number of bugs. I'm not sure whether the editor noticed this but those facts certainly don't merit a 20/20 in my book...
The only difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits.
I've tried perhaps a dozen other apps (including YetiSports) and they all worked with no glitches.
The one feature that CrossoverOffice appears not to support well is trashing your whole system with malware -- you can grant your applications read-only access to your main file-system, or limited write access to particular directories.
Also, the fact the you have to be root to do some things (like open well-known ports) is stupid. Agreed, normal users should not be allowed to do that, but the "all or nothing" situation imposed by the linux policies is far from nice. Some way of assigning previleges for such things to specific groups would be nice. You know, a *real* ACL-based security system.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
I run Red Hat (don't ask me why), and thus first tried the RH package manager, UpToDate. It sucked. Then I tried Ximian Red Carpet -- which is a cool tool, but there are next to no applications on the channels, and what you get is quite old. Finally, i discovered that apt-get will run under RH just find. I never looked back. The only feature i miss is it telling me (like Red Carpet does) which updates are most urgent.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
You're having the typical Slashdot argument. "Emulator X sucks because it doesn't run Software Title Y" "Liar! Emulator X is great! It runs Software Title Z perfectly!"
The point, I believe, of the original poster is that games supported at less than "5" are pretty much crap. I had been subscribing to Transgaming for about a year, from the day they announced Civ3 support, waiting for that support to become decent. It never did, and I let my subscription lapse. I'm sure cedega plays SOME games well. It just doesn't support the games I want it to support well. And "Gee whiz, it launches and sound works" isn't the same thing as perfect emulation. Civ 3 launches and TECHNICALLY works. I was very impressed on that alone for about a year. But I eventually got pissed off at the unusable gameplay, and the unwillingness of TG to improve the situation. BTW, Civ3 is officially supported at the "4" level. So my assumption is that support less than 5 is meaningless.
Why do you need Windows compatibility?
Just imagine. You are a Linux user. How else do you expect to run the Windows version of OpenOffice.org without Wine?
Think of all the great open source software on Windows. Software you want to run. Mozilla. The GIMP. Inkscape.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Now that would be the ultimate in very difficult to implement pointlessness!
Every time you play a windows game, do you take the time first to send the game developers an email saying you would like a linux version that is native? If ya'all million gamers out there did that *every time*, just take the minute or two it would take, along with the other people who run these various apps that "need to be run under wine", just MAYBE you could get native linux versions. Snail mail, fax, 1-800 number, whatever. Don't miss a chance, don't do it once, do it every single time you have to use wine or be forced to boot into something you really do NOT want to use. Why put up with it? Really, why do that? You are the customer, tell them what you want! Just politely inform them, "well, today I wanted to run your ..whatever. Too bad I can't run it under my functional and secure OS choice, oh no, I got to use an emulator thing or run an OS I really don't like or trust. That is really going to make me stop and think next time I need a new game, app, whatever, where it comes from". Polite and to the point. Make an impression by the numbers. It just might work.
Hmmm...
.cxoffice dir and some other related paths and after I tried to reinstall it from my Mandrake 10 Power Pack (retail), I decided to once again try WINE. Can I say "Wine is NOT Exemplary"?
/var/lib or other path that wine is expecting to find it in?"
.dll placements that I am EXTREMELY suspicious as to why this was done. Maybe in the old days, Lotus realized it was too easy to just take the wretched 28-floppy install of SmartSuite for windows 3.1 and w95 and copy the final image from disk to CD or to slave the source as a target disk and then copy the contents over. That is what I did when my machine would crash. I'd go to my backup disk and recover.
I am a Lotus SmartSuite fan and am deeply disappointed that there is not enough demand for IBM and Lotus to port it natively (nevermind the IP matters/excuses)
Growing weary of some "invalid license" rubbish from Crossdresser after I simply deleted my
I struck upon an idea:
"What if I graft my 'win' folder created by the Win4Lin install and place it in the
So, after running WINE and seeing where the config files want to find windoze98, I renamed the WINE-created folder and placed my folder that I have repeatedly used with mainly successful recoveries and reinstalls since 2000 or 2001.
The Lotus SmartSuite installer behaved very normally except for the EULA page and except for the "x" boxes being less than crisp. The features selections went fine, and the the install seemed at the end to hange and wait forever, doing the same in Crossdresser, but not in W4L or native windoze98.
SmartSuite DID install, but the result was a horrid, detestable, crying shame. There are soooo many convolusions of
However, it no longer is so simple, thanks to the damned mainly-anti-piracy registry. I honestly feel the registry is mainly to confound and confute app-snagging pirates. BTW, I PAID for my SmartSuite disks...
ANyway, Unless Lotus, IBM, & CodeWeavers get together and work this out, a LOT of IBM customers who probably would switch to Linux and want to drag along their year 2000, 2001, or 2002 SmartSuite investment will be furious-- furious at themselves for NOT generating demand, and furious that IBM wasn't proctive.
SmartSuite, if upgraded to 2004 standards, could trounce StarOffice and OpenOffice--if, iff, ifff you like Lotus Approach, the end-user, non-developer, non-geek WYSIWYG relational database front end, and if you like Lotus WordPro and Lotus 1-2-3. I do. Hence, I keep upgrading Win4Lin or figuring out a way to make my paid-for copy fo Win4Lin work across upgrades.
The complications with this upgrade hell between KDE, the Kernels and Mandrake and NeTraverse are making me VERY interested in finding out more about loopback or Linux-inside-Linux distros so I could avoid thinking about "which kernel, gcc, libthis.so, libthat.so, kde or whatever" anymore.
I can imagine the hell companies must be going through when they upgrade kernels and find out the one they chose was premature, and not supported by NeTraverse or that they should have been more connected to NeTraverse before choosing a kernel...
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Most of Blizzard's games run near-perfectly - Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Warcraft 2 BNE, Diablo 2 are all virtually indistinguishable from running them on Windows. And Civ3 works very well, with just a couple minor issues that don't affect gameplay at all (font rendering is a little 'off' in places, and the sound sometimes goes a little haywire). I just recently played through Knights of the Old Republic on Linux, and I was able to get through the entire game without a single hiccup.
I game, therefore I am...
And that's the truth of it. What M$ has going for it is momentum. So creating a program that is "merely" good enough isn't going to be enough of a switching catalyst for them to go over to your Open-Office, or $OPEN_SOURCE_ALTERNATIVE.
our product has to be better then that (in the case of Office), and outstandingly better by an order of magnitude if you want to make them switch their Operating Systems along the way... It's an uphill battle all the way.
Anyone worked with color management and PhotoShop with Linux? It's nice that PhotoShop 7 works, but what I really need is support for my printer and monitor color profiles.
Sorry, but does anyone have a review that actually includes: 1. Never games. The games listed pretty much worked fine in previous versions of WineX. 2. Installing games from CD as opposed to downloaded demos? 3. Cut scenes working? 4. MMORPG's such as the latest Evercrack and Dark Age of Crackalot (New Frontiers)? The review was lacking ("Hey, let me try some demos and some games from 1994!") and too short. Screenshots of installation is good, but what about some shots from the actual GAMES (ideally including FPS)... And some mention about the distro the review was performed on etc...
Win4lin is much closer to Win-OS/2 (red spine) than vmware. Win4lin replaces all windows drivers with it's own which interface directly with linux, and patches windows for compatability (run a diff on kernel32.dll). This is much how Win-OS/2 on OS/2 red spine (used an existing windows 3.1 copy) worked, only Win-OS/2 patched windows in memory, not on the disk like win4lin does. The linux kernel patches are to provide the DOS functionality much like the OS/2 dos system did. I even heard that some people managed to boot an unmodified version of Windows 95 in an OS/2 dos box, so win4lin shouldn't be that much harder.
I wish to put my old vortex card into a Linux box in order to get hardware sound mixing, can you tell me the best place to get the drivers from? Sourcefourge?
Be who you are and say what you feel, because the people who mind don't matter, and the people who matter don't mind.
"Try it and see" with _commercial_ games? Yeah, that's got to be a great plan. Might as well spare 100$ for Windows, even if at the expense of blowing 40$ for each game which doesn't work. Or doesn't work well. Or seems to work, but after 10 hours you hit a brick wall compatibility-wise. Or works only until you update some library.
;)
Why, with only 5 such games you've already paid $200 to save $100. We really need more such financial plans
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against WineX or anything. Au contraire.
I'm just against the idea that "try and see" even starts to cut it when we're talking commercial programs. (Except for those who pirate games on p2p networks, in which case "trying" yet another game costed nothing. I wish they died a very slow and very painful death.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, I know Wine has been achieving essential Windows functionality for at least 6months ago.
How so?
Well, one of my flatmates workmates - he's a programmer, and they're all working on Linux - received an email attachment he couldn't open, so ran it under Wine...
This is the essential problem that Linux is going to have to face soon. Most of the reason's Windows is so virus ridden, isn't because of the system, it's because of the user's doing very stupid things.
Actually, I'll correct that - most Windows users are not stupid, just ignorant - the workmate was stupid, he should have known better.
But my point, changing to Linux won't make a user any less ignorant.
---- I've fallen, and I can't get up.
The question he asked was "will it work?" To answer that requires an experiment. It can be tried on SOMEONE'S computer SOMEWHERE before you buy it.
My example was I 'tried it to see' with commercial software that worked fine. In my case, I already had the license, and by the way, the commercial developers were glad I 'tried it' and let them know it worked.
And btw, this is not about playing games on Linux just to save $100 on Windows. I moved my systems over to Linux not to save that money, because I already had Windows. The real issue, imo, is this: I run Linux, and I want $COOL_APP, which was COMPILED for Windows. Can I still use it? That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Sometimes, life is not as complicated as we try to make it.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
...he he..woooooohooo, hahahaa.*chuckle chuckle*
/. today, sure it's going to be released in september, just like it was going to be released last september.
That's probably the funniest thing I've read on
Look at it this way, I'm going to leave off upgrading my home rig until half life 2 is actually released, that way my graphics card may actually be able to run it.
I'm using the Mesa DRI driver and I can't get Battlefield 1942 to work with Cedega.
;-)
I have to give credit to Transgaming, Gavriel State himself dropped in on my forum thread and gave the reason why, which I thought was cool of him. (BTW, if you had experience with the old message board on Transgaming's site, they've now switched to phpBB - Thank God.)
The reason is because the driver doesn't expose the 'GL_ARB_vertex_program' OpenGL extension. I could use the official ATI driver which does have that extension, but Gavriel says there's a bug in that which makes it not work with BF1942 too well, and they're working with ATI on it.
Come on open source guys! Our 3D drivers are already more _stable_, let's make them more _capable_ as well so the card companies just shrug their shoulders and decide to endorse the open source version.
Here's a Screenshot of Mac-On-Linux which allows users of PPC enabled Linux Distros Yellow Dog Linux to run Mac OS on their computers. This ss shows a PPC Linux user with Mac OS open and Virtual PC running on it, and DOS running on Windows. Just add a few emus and you're all set.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. -Deke