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."

Comments

Most Importantly...

[nxtr]

Does it play Solitaire?

Cedega and "Out of the box" in the same sentence!?

[cybereal]

Oh come now. Just try to install Warcraft III with Cedega.

I'm serious, that's the only game I was really hoping to play with Cedega when I tried it out. It flopped hard core, yet, WC3 is on their list of supported games with a flag indicating that it is playable.

Lies.

Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[jbellis]

Maybe it's because having to save all your work, rebooting, rebooting again when your game is done, and restoring all your applications to the right state is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME.

Right now, for instance, I have 12 applications open, only a few of which have entirely satisfactory auto-restore-after-shutdown functionality.

Re:Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[advocate_one]

Wow, you keep twelve applications up while you're playing a game?

yes, this is Linux we're talking about here... not ms-windows, where it's obligatory to shut everything else down prior to starting up a game... just in case...

Re:Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

seriously though, i doubt you run your games with all those files/applications going on at the same time sapping your ram and cpu speed...

Spoken like a Windows user. My web browser, mail application, messaging client, calendar, terminals, text editor, image viewer, layout application, and a dozen more have been running non-stop for the last several weeks. Why would I shut them down to run a game? Any system with decent multitasking and prioritization will not use any real CPU cycles or hog the rRAM on applications just sitting open while I'm playing a game.

Note, this is on a couple year old laptop running OS X. The games I usually play are some older ones, like UT2003, Warcraft 3, Neverwinter nights, and a handful of less cpu/gpu intensive but fun games.

Maybe you should use a good OS for a month and see what it is you're missing. I'm very unlikely to ever reboot to play a game, nor am I ever going to quit all my running applications.

Not interested

[Thomas DM]

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.

Please note that

[hyperstation]

using an "it costs less" argument will not work:

Windows XP Pro, via bittorrent: $0
Game X, Y, Z, *and* A, via bittorrent: $0
Total: $0

Re:Windows just isn't that expensive

[mrchaotica]

1. I build all my own desktops, and my laptop is a Mac. Hence, I don't already have a copy of Windows.
2. Windows is not cheap; it's ~$200 retail.
3. Even if I wanted to spend the money, I sure as hell don't want to sell my soul to the Windows Activation scheme!
4. Why should I have to reboot my desktop -- which has an uptime of several months -- just to play a game?
5. Actually, some games run faster under Wine than they do natively. Besides, as long as it's "fast enough" I don't really care if it could be a little faster on Windows.
6. The way to combat the illegal bundling isn't to bend over and take it, but to refuse to submit.

Cedega is not an answer..

[kuzb]

...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.

Wrong solution

[suitepotato]

Pure and simple if the Linux community is going to squak about Windows, bash Microsoft, and copy everything they do, then they might as well quit now. Innovation and providing the end users with what they want is where it is at. Microsoft does it, Linux doesn't. Simple.

TuxRacer proves that decent graphics and speed are possible natively on Linux. Linux based game design and publishing is needed, not using Windows games on Linux. As Linux is proven to be capable of running games of its own just fine, more publishers will port their games natively to Linux. Trying to co-opt Windows apps onto Linux is kludgy and ultimately screams "we're unoriginal me-too hacks". The Linux world needs to innovate, carve its own path, and create not copy. Until then, it isn't going to be getting where we want it to go, which is to be loved for being what it is and not used simply because we are angry with Microsoft.