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WineX Install Goes Sour for LinuxWorld Editor
jg21 writes "LinuxWorld's gaming industry editor apparently grappled with TransGaming's latest WineX release, now renamed Cedega 4.0, to such an extent that she "lost" half a day of her life. A trip to the Dark Age of Camelot site for a 7-day free trial ended in tears and installing Diablo II didn't go much better. Dee-Ann LeBlanc may have coedited Linux for Dummies, but she suffered more black screens than a multiplex during a power outage. Is the problem simply that she uses Fedora Core 2 - can't someone help her out?" Are these one-off problems, or symptomatic of a bigger issue?
Fedora works fine - why dont you actually try it instead of super-imposing your impressions of RedHat 6 onto a wondeful distro...
Linux is partly about freedom and choice, and I am delighted with my choice. Surely unconstructive distro bashing should be a thing of the past by now?
Fedora (unlike Mandrake, Suse, etc.) *is* a distro for geeks. To a geek, a problem to be solved is a challenge, not the end of the world.
:)
In Windows, however, problems *can't* be solved...
The Tlog - a technology blog
I can copy /dev/mem and use strings/grep to search my entire RAM remotely (using ssh) for an IM I received. Of course, you'll just consider that a "nifty hack".
If you can't acknowledge the benefits of a Unix-style system, well...I guess you'll never understand why most of the web runs Apache.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Don't be surprised when I, as a fairly avid gamer, don't switch over to Linux any time in the near future. With Windows, you put in the CD, and it works. No fooling with emulation or anything. With Linux, in order for it to work, you have to tweak WineX, and maybe even then it won't work.
Fun story: A friend tried to run my copy of SkiFree through Wine. If he tried to use the keyboard (or maybe it was the mouse, can't remember), it would crash.
I understand that as the emulation gets better, or perhaps as Linux gains a critical mass of people and game developers start making their games such that they'll run on Linux natively, this will stop being an issue. That time is not now.
[Pre-emptive "but, but, but, dual boot" response: why bother? I have WinXP running, it's stable (I don't think I've *crashed* my system in about 6 months, and those were hardware problems), why should I reboot repeatedly to do things that I can do with Windows already?]
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
When we play emulated Nintendo games on other consoles or our PCs, there's always some glitch. If the sound cuts out or a character's animation begins to loop, that's just the way it goes. Come back after the next revision and see if the emulator has been fine tuned to handle that specific game. She admits trying only two games with Cedega before writing the experience off as too frustrating.
The difference is that TG claims they work well when in fact they don't work for shit. Second, she isn't just a "gaming industry editor" she's as much a Linux snob as anyone else here.
And that's different that the unconstructive MS bashing how?
One thing I've learned around here, regardless of whether or not there's a reason to bash, a large percentage of the population will.
Note, I wasn't saying you bashed MS, just that it happens constantly and often times for no good reason.
My Tech Posts on Twitter
I met Dee-Ann LeBlanc at a recent Linux conference and after a few minutes it became clear that (1) she is very much the stereotypical gamer and (2) she is very good at sounding like she understands the technical side of Linux.
It's very much like the candidate in a job interview who knows some basics but then starts throwing out terminology to give the appearance of knowing what they are talking about. To a non-technical person it all sounds very impressive but a real techie can see through it pretty quickly.
Someone who writes for a magazine with a technical audience like LinuxWorld should at least have some deeper understanding of the technical side of things. As an earlier comment said, this installation journal is written from the perspective of a recently switched Windows user who does not have a technical background. I doubt that's who Transgaming's main customers are.
She writes "If I have to do "Linux Guru" things to get a mainstream product working, then there's a serious problem." Sorry, but this is not a mainstream product in the conventional Windows-user sense. It is a mainstream product in the conventional Linux-user sense.
Linux desktop users tend to be technically oriented and those that aren't tend to be using it for basic things like Web, e-mail and office applications, not games. Games are among the most complex and demanding pieces of software anyone can run on a computer and some people are bound to have problems, especially when emulating Windows.
Too many of her complaints of a "wasted afternoon" are about Fileplanet and Gamespy, their download times and registration issues, which have absolutely nothing to do with Cedega.
Now I'm just wondering who the ghostwriter was that provided the technical information for the Linux books where she appears as the sole author. It seems obvious that her co-writers and the "et al" on some of those books are the source of the technical information they contain.
It also makes me wonder what the value of those Red Hat certifications she has are.
Are you blind?
I have been a PC gaming snob for many years. Only recently have I begrudgingly started playing consoles more.
Walk into any gaming store. Software Etc. used to have entire walls dedicated to PC games. Niche genres like flight sims, other military sims, point-and-click adventures, hex-based strategy, etc, used to live quite comfortably.
Today, PC games have almost no shelf space. Entire genres are dying out.
If you're sitting there saying nothing is changing, you are truly deluding yourself. PC gaming has taken major, major hits.
Actually, I've done a lot of articles and interviews on Linux on the backend, talks with people like Ryan Gordon who do the Linux ports of many of the existing games that run natively, and Timothee Besset who does the Id Linux ports. Perhaps a bit of investigative journalism on your part might have noticed that. ;) A good chunk of LinuxWorld Magazine in April was dedicated to all of this stuff.
Author of "Linux for Dummies 5th Edition" and many other books articles, courses, and more
As much as people love consoles, I just don't get off on them.
My hands hurt after using the controller for too long.
My tv is high def, but still isn't as nice as my computer screen.
the graphics just don't compare to what my computer can do.
I have more options for multiplayer online games, such as mogs , etc that i don't have with the console.
I don't have a keyboard with my console to communicate with (though, xbox live is a nice step in the right direction).
Also, i like going 'away' somewhere in my computer room to escape the madness for an hour or two to blow things up.
i guess it just comes down to culture or what your used to, i just can't see myself abandoning my windows games either to an xbox anytime in the near future, unless the landscape of the games change dramatically.