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Linspire To Run Windows Games
Ken writes "Aviran's Place reports that Linspire and TransGaming released Cedega for the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, allowing Linspire users to play hundreds of popular Windows-format games right out of the box."
You can play the games right out of the box, assuming that you can get functional drivers for your video card. For all of us who use ATI cards for games, this is not so exciting.
Not really interesting.
Cedaga costs $44.95 and you also need Linspire Five-0 which costs $49.95 so that's almost $95.
I'd rather have a dual-boot system with Windows than some sort of emulation software that may not boot a quarter of my games.
Yes.
Even if it didn't, sol is an excellent replacement.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Cedega doesn't stop working when you unsubscribe, you just don't get new versions. So that means if you just want to get a version you would have to pay $15 and get all the updates for 3 months. You could buy a subscription once a year and spend only $15 a year, which is a lot less than most people spend on games.
...It's a gateway to thousands more user problems. While my hat is off to the Transgaming team for their countless hours of time, effort and dedication to the winex project, and gaming on linux in general, it's far from a good solution. Certainly not one I would unleash on the clueless.
Most games don't play well, or play with really annoying issues. For example, many in-game videos do not play properly in Cedega, and if you can't skip them, you might be sitting there a long time waiting for them to finish. A good example of this is Black and White, where the opening video can't be skipped, and plays at about 3fps.
There was (may be fixed now, I don't know) another issue where you couldn't install games spanning multiple CDs without copying the contents of those CDs to the hard drive. So now you're involving the commandline, and/or file managers in order to install a game. Not quite as point-and-click easy as windows.
Many games which rely on Directplay for their multiplayer functionality do not work at all. Warcraft 3 is a good example of this. Works great single player (assuming you skip all the in-game videos) but fails horribly in multiplayer.
Lastly, most copy protections are not recognised under Cedega/Linux, forcing the user to go out and find a crack for their game.
The solution here is not to run Windows games, but to find more ways to convince major game developers that they should release ports to linux directly. All this Linspire/Transgaming thing is going to do is frustrate people who just want to play games. It will unquestionably leave more with a negative opinion of Linux in general.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Actually, if you're using an ATI card you won't be doing too badly. They are making linux drivers which seem to be improving over time. There are issues with the drivers and they aren't as good as the NVidia ones, but then again even my windows ATI drivers have done some pretty funky things before.
Now, for other craptacular cards such as the various intel, etc brands... you're going to be in trouble indeed. Many laptops and onboard video sets use them. They don't perform well in windows, and - in my experience - are even more troublesome (and unsupported) in 'nix thus far.