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10 Points About Transgaming's Cedega/WineX
jvm writes "Attempting to raise the level of the discussion, Dan 'theoddone33' Olson has put together a list of ten critical observations that every potential Linux gamer should consider before buying Transgaming's WINE-based product Cedega (formerly WineX). Dan invites credible rebuttals to the points he's raised. The debate over the value of Cedega/WINE as a solution for the nascent Linux gaming community continues..."
I purposely built a linux box as a firewall between my other Windows machines and the internet. If I was running linux machines and wanted to play Windows games, I would have built a Windows machine for that purpose too.
Of course the best solution is a XBox, as it (hopefully) carries many Windows-also titles.
So if Cedega's fees are higher or close to a XBox or a Windows license, it won't be too attractive at all.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
ID games will be releasing an Linux binary for Doom3; Unreal Tournament has been Linux compatabile for awhile now, as is NeverWinter Nights. When I use a Linux native version, it sends the manufactures a message that Linux is a viable gaming platform. When I use Cedega, I don't send that message.
/.-er can fill in the details?
Transgaming has also prevented at least one native port from making it to market, as I recall; I believe it was one of the Kohan series. Perhaps another
Ati on linux http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/03/ 1313221&tid=152&tid=106
I decided to try out TransGaming's Cedega product shortly after it was released. In addition to their modified wineserver, they have come out with a game manager, Point2Play. This tool has made it _easy_ to install and configure games.
I think that the fact that TransGaming has been able to successfully negotiate with vendors providing copy-protection and other proprietary code for use with Cedega is a big step towards making Linux a more predominant gaming platform. (I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of my titles, such as Warcraft III, ran better with the Cedega emulation!)
While I prefer the idea of native Linux builds of games, there are also many (older) titles that simply will never be ported over. The best thing that we can do at this point is to vote with our wallets. For now, that means TransGaming will keep getting my subscription!
That is very true, however its a truth about WINE, not necessarily about Cedega. WINE is also very useful for its debugger, which is an extremely good reverse engineering tool along the lines of SoftICE. As well as winelib, which is a library that you can use to assist you in porting Windows code to Unix. I've used both, and had great success with them. Cedega on the other hand is a toy strictly for playing games. And WINE isn't limited to 16 bit applications.
The article raises some good points, but is focusing on the wrong things - Lets face it, transgaming wine/x is a neat hack, and what it does is very cool.
I am a pretty regular gamer, and have wasted far too much time on 3D FPS titles like q3a, RtCW, ut2004 etc - and I have the doom3 linux version pre-ordered. I use linux, and really don't have any plans to set up a pc just for gaming, as the games I like are available natively on linux. I feel that the market should decide the success of transgaming - if you like it, feel free, but count me out, thanks!
The reason I'm not interested in in running windows games in linux via wine is that if we take that to its logical conclusion, there will be no market for native linux games - idsoft has it right, their games are written in a portable fashion, and have pretty much the same performance on linux/X11/DRI as on the simple pc GUI used by ms windows. Let's face it, once a gamer plays native linux games, he will be dissatisfied with the emulated variety, and it would be a real shame if that's all there was.
All in all, the wine solution is a nice hack, and useful as a temporary kludge, but we are sunk if that becomes the norm and all game development becomes ms windows centric, and we become the new OS/2, inhabiting a shrinking niche and dying a slow death. Fsck that! The native linux gaming market is the thing we need to support with our wallets, if we want to see it thrive.
Subject says it all.
I purchased it for 6 months. I was slightly disappointed. I am totally surprised that you can not install IE on it and there is not likely to be supported from what I read. Some games, like everquest, require IE for somethings. I was able to find winetools for wine to install IE 6.0 quite easily, why is it sohard for cedega to do the same thing?
Why should you use Windows for *anything* just because you want Windows for games?
...) platform development has some great advantages for the extra effort involved.
I run Linux, and I think it's much better in every way. I'm happy to purchase native linux binary games, but I am not happy to purchase WineX or games that integrate Transgaming's WineX code to run Windows binaries on Linux.
For older games, I can just use Wine, and it doesn't cost me anything. For newer games, why would I pay money to be a second-class citizen?
Dual (or triple or
In summary, I want to fund *Linux* gaming development.
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
Totally agree on this point.
I have approximately 300 business's that I support, Almost ALL (99%) run windows configurations of some sort. Why ? not because of games ? Not because of office support, but because here in australia, Since the introduction of the GST it is practically IMPOSSIBLE for a business to run without using either Intuit's QuickBooks / QuickPos / QuickFuel, or MYOB Accounting / Premier / etc.
Most of these companies are not in a position to switch to linux until these products can work under linux. (Whether native or emulation)
The only real way for them to switch to linux ? When they have approximately a 10pc peer network that can be moved to a Terminal Server + Linux Clients + rdesktop. This is only a recent option as Quickbooks & MYOB only just recently started 'officially' supporting terminal server.
The problem here, You are still throwing approximately $4k (AUD) at microsoft to enable your clients to run a free OS *sigh*
Games may drive alot of home users, Corporates can consider porting / developing Linux native products. Small business Dont care about games or OS (windows or linux) *primarily* and only wish to Be Safe(tm) on the internet/email and run their accounting software.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
I use Cedega for some games, like CoH and SW:Galaxies en BF:Vietnam. Hmm, for the price of WinXP ( Non-OEM ) I would pay around 150-200 euro's, Cedega costs me about 50 euro's a year, so I can use it for 3 years before it starts to cost more. It isn't perfect, not all games run and sometimes it takes some work to get a game up and running. But it's good enough so I don't need a dual boot system for it. I can now join in for a "quick" game of BF:Vietnam without closing my browser, my editor, my 4 SSH terminals, my Kopete IM, my E-mail. I want games, I don't want windows, and I do REGISTER my games and add to it that I'm playing it UNDER LINUX, and would like to see a native port. I get to play most games, Cedega get's some money, and the game companies ( hopfully ) get more and more registrations stating there running on Linux. And I hope that one day someone says, hey, 10% of the registrations states they want a native Linux version, maybe we should look into it? Sure a lot of companies might say, nah, it runs fine through that Cedega thing, but my bet is that a lot will also say, those people aren't getting the 100% game experience, that gives us a bad name, let's make sure it runs 100% for those 10% userbase. Another great point is that I now am able to get my Dad on Linux, because he wanted to keep windows for EQ only. And I know a lot of people that just want to play that one racer, that one flightsim. Sure they won't be able to play the latest version right away, but mostly, give it a month or 2.
Like many of the posters in this thread, I have also tried WineX/Cedega a number of times in the past few years. While it does work for a few games, it's nowhere near the level needed for true gaming on the Linux platform.
My wife was using Cedega to play Zoo Tycoon last night in fact, I needed Linux to be up for some other work I was doing. Unfortunately, about 1 hr into the game it crashed for some unknown reason. Also, it didn't help that the text boxes were unledgable and all the dollar amounts were in a comma delimited format.
Emulators don't win platforms -- software wins platforms. When OS/2 tried to win users with a Windows emulator, the viability of a native OS/2 wordprocessor was obviated by the mere presence of this emulation tier.
Honestly - someone should take something like SDL and start building a suite of commercial games for all the major platforms.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com