Cedega 5.0 Released

kormoc writes "Transgaming has released a large update to Cedega. This release (5.0) changes how the entire product works, merging the GUI with the actual program, as well as implementing features such as pixel shadier 1.4 support, in order to get games such as battlefield 2 working. The release notes list all the new improvements as well as the newly supported games. This seems to be the best release to date and expands the feature set to work with a large number of new games."

Comments

Pixel Shadier?

[plover]

features such as pixel shadier 1.4 support

So exactly what is a shady pixel, and how does a pixel become shadier? Are there degrees of shadiness?

Let's say you have two pixels: one pixel threatens people on the sidewalk for money, and the other pixel runs a numbers racket. Which one is shadier?

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[panth0r]

Maybe one of the pixels graduated to becming a "gangsta"? While the rest are all just "thugs" tryin' to keep up da image, yo!

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[ee96090]

I must be geek because I find this post so damn funny :)

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[SmittyTheBold]

It's just the next, more powerful revision in the series - just like some companies ::ahem:: offer "Good, Better, Best" configurations of products.

The old stuff was Pixel Shader. The new stuff is Pixel Shadier. In the future, we'll have Pixel Shadiest, then we'll move on to some other measure of graphics-processing prowess.

Come on, this is all basic marketing.

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[eno2001]

No. I think you are thinking of the rather out of fashion "Slim Shadier".

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[hunterx11]

Will the real Pixel Shady please stand up?

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[EntropyEngine]

Gives a whole new slant on being a pixel pusher, doesn't it?

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pronounced shad-e-ay, like Fourier, Perrier, and Chevrolet. Damn though, Fourier is fast these daze.

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[woolio]

Sounds like the famous Penis Mightier ... (SNL)

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite likely it is a better indicator that you have no taste.

Re:Pixel Shadier?

[ToasterofDOOM]

I think then you mean "Pixel Black" or "Pixel not so Shady" to shake things up.

Behind the scenes tech?

[Bananatree3]

I am curious...What kind of behind-the-scenes technology do they use to allow this cross-platform gaming? Is it just another Wine based product? Or did they build it from the ground up?

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[et764]

It's based on WineX, which was a Wine fork that had better DirectX support.

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[szo]

it's wine

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[packeteer]

Its the best damn wine for gaming around. I have used cadega since it was called "winex" back in the day so i can explain some of their thinking along the road. I haven't used it much recetly so i dont know how much has changed. They forked wine to ad better directx support. This was basically to get directx games to run under wine. Some of the original games to get working were warcraft 3 and half life/counter strike (the original). They also have added some nice closed source code that deals with the copy protection code on games. This is why back in day day anyway there were two distributions. One was open source and free as in beer. This version didn;t work on copy protected games. The other version was downloadable ONLY as a binary but it was sinply the source pre-compiled with some secret copy protection source they added in. They worked out a deal so that they can legally bypass the copy protection as long as they did not release the source for that code.

Anyway i dont know how much has changed since i haven't been gaming on linux recently.

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[NetRAVEN5000]

"Anyway i dont know how much has changed since i haven't been gaming on linux recently."

The only thing I don't like about Cedega is that IT DOESN'T WORK! I don't know if it's always been this way but the free version of Cedega won't even run Steam. Although it used to so I don't know what changed - Cedega or Steam.

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

I MUST ask, HOW is this A Troll post? It is a perfectly legitamite question! The mods these days! AGHHH!

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

The MetaModerators will get whoever modded this thing "0,troll"! They will get you!!

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[The_Dougster]

Its the best damn wine for gaming around.

Actually, I disagree with that. My Loki version of Jagged Alliance 2 doesn't work anymore, and so I just use Wine to play the Windows version in Linux now. I don't know if Cedega has fixed whatever problem they were having, but regular old CVS Wine ran the game about 20 times faster than Cedega did. Same deal with Fallout Tactics (which I see is now offically supported).

There are some games that for whatever reason just run screamingly fast in CVS Wine but run slow as hell in Cedega.

Cedega is probably a good choice for any of their supported games, but if you are having problems running an older windows game, by all means download the latest regular Wine from CVS, compile and install, and give it a go. You might be surprised.

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[bioglaze]

I haven't had so good experience. I tried a long time to get WoW working with CVS Cedega and just didn't succeed. Then, when I tried regular Wine it worked instantly and I now have an account :-)

Re:Behind the scenes tech?

[BobPaul]

It's based on WineX

Actually, it is WineX. WineX was TransGaming's origional name for Cedega.

game pad support?

[Hatta]

I've never been able to get wine/winex to work with my gamepad. It's a playstation to USB converter that just looks like a generic USB gamepad. Every other linux program works just fine with it. Does this work better in cedega? Can I give it a try before I buy it to make sure it actually works?

Re:game pad support?

[idonthack]

Download it from a torrent or something and if you like it, pay for it. If you don't like it, remove it from your system. It's what I did when I wanted to check it out (I ended up paying for it - it runs HL2 very well)
---
"Man, when the day comes, count me in with the robot smashers." - Anonymous Coward
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Re:game pad support?

[Fallingcow]

You can find it on most of the major bittorrent search sites, if you just want to try it to make sure it'll work for your setup.

Not legal, I'm sure, but then you'll know and can pay for it if it does work.

Re:game pad support?

[dtremenak]

If it works in just about any other linux program, it should work in vanilla wine ( http://www.winehq.org/ ). Wine supports both joydev (/dev/jsXX) and linux-input (/dev/input/eventXX) devices. I've done a certain amount of work on the wine joystick subsystem over the last few months and it's working quite well. If you haven't tried recently, try with wine 0.9... you might be surprised. If you still can't get it to work and you'd like me to see if I can fix it, drop by #winehq on freenode or email me (google for my slashdot username and 'wine-patches' to find my email address, it's out there).

Re:game pad support?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are ware you can just donload the entire cvs source and build form there?!

Re:game pad support?

[mrchaotica]

Actually, you don't buy Cedega, you subscribe to it. If you want to try it out (and don't want to get it off BitTorrent like others have mentioned) you can pay $15 for the minimum subscription, and then cancel if it doesn't work. It's not free, but it's not that expensive either -- it's better than "buying" it (which would imply spending on the order of $50 or more).

Re:game pad support?

[FictionPimp]

I sign up for 15.00 then I let my subscription run out. I dont re-subscribe until a version comes out that i care about. I havn't subscribed in a while, but the promise of battlefield 2 might make me re-subscribe again.

Re:game pad support?

[cthulhubob]

or you know, you could just download their development version from CVS and compile it for free. Geez, the windows user mentality around here...

Re:game pad support?

[Fallingcow]

Eh, they killed the CVS package on Gentoo, so now it's easier just to bittorrent the binary than it is to check out the code from CVS.

Mind you, I never used the CVS package, and in fact paid my $15 to give it a go a while back. It was such a pain in the ass to get most games working 100% that it was FAR easier just to maintain a dual-boot system than to mess with it, so I let the subscription lapse when the 3 months were up.

I dunno, maybe I'll try it again in a couple of years. In the meantime, I recommend that anyone interested in it try it out first, whether through bittorrent or by compiling the code from the CVS, take your pick.

As a gaming platform?

[taskforce]

Having never used Cedega before, I was wondering what the noticeable drop in framerate would be as opposed to when the games were running natively in Windows XP? Hopefully some of what horsepower the computer is throwing at the game is refunded in that it doesn't have to run XP in the background, but I'd assume the net performance change is in the negative direction.

Does anyone regularly use Cedega to play 3D FPS and if so are they playable with a non-cutting edge system? (thinking last generation card or whatever.)It would be nice to lose the XP install on my Hard Drive.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[et764]

I use Cedega to play Half-Life 2 on an Athlon XP 2200+ and a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128MB. It runs really smoothely. I've never played it on a comparable computer under Windows, so I can't say if there's a framerate drop, but the framerate is still high enough, and that's really what matters.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[l_bratch]

This seems to be the best release to date
It would be pretty good if they hadn't ruined the command line support... You now have to jump through hoops to avoid having to load the GUI prior to loading any games.

I agree though that from the Cedega engine point of view, it's a very impressive release.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[QuantumG]

Games tend to run faster and smoother in Cedega. Especially if your comparison is to Windows XP.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[bumby]

I play world of warcraft using cedega, and it works fine. Of course, I'm sure I would have gotten a higher fps in windows, but then again, an average of 27 fps in enough for me.

And my system is about a year old.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Cedega ran Warcraft 3 with a higher framerate than Windows XP in my box.
I can't remember the numbers exactly and it is probably an isolated case, but still higher framerate :D

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Rydian]

I use Cedega to play WoW with a nVidia 5900FX. I just switched from Win2k Pro and can say that I've seen no noticable drop in FPS, unfortunately I never checked my FPS in Windows, but I average ~50FPS under Cedega in 1600x1200x16. I can tell you that my latency in game went from an average of 63ms in Windows to 42ms in Linux/Cedega.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[clayasaurus]

Since it is not emulation of the windows API but rather a re-implementation, there is no reason the linux version can't be just as fast as the windows version.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[rarf]

I've played Counter Strike 1.6 with cedega and I experience about a 25% drop on framerate(not me the computer) from 1.6 on a Windows System.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, half-life and GTA:Vice city in Cedega 4.3 seem as fast as in Windows on my 2-year-old machine.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[swv3752]

Way back when it was WineX, I compared Quake3 in winex to Windows to native Linux and saw little diference. Native Linux was a little faster but only a couple of frames and this was on a Radeon 7500.

I currently use it to play Warcraft3 andsome other games and it works fine.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd assume the net performance change is in the negative direction

You would assume wrong. Wine is not an emulator. It is an API implementation.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe.. a word of warning.. i run only ubuntu, but i run it on a ati-radeon machine.. cedega (and most other gl-apps) hang the computer randomly.. so for goodness sakes, if you want 3d action.. stay in windows.. :/

/ Mark - Former windows basher..

Re:As a gaming platform?

[SoLO]

If you can get them installed, and ignore all the visual artifacts.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[3vi1]

Here's my experience:

Framerate differences will vary greatly from game to game. For instance, EverQuest actually ran faster in Cedega than under Windows 98 for me. Now, the negative side is that the patcher runs *incredibly* slow. What takes 45 seconds in Windows takes about 5 minutes to patch under Cedega. Also, when the last two expansions came out and people started complaining of fubar'd textures in the new zones (so bad that you couldn't see), Transgaming did nothing to address the issues.

Counter-Strike: Source ran at about 24fps under Cedega for me, as opposed to 44fps in Windows - and Windows looked much nicer, with the reflective water and other visual effects that had to be disabled in Cedega. I get about 14fps using the current WINE CVS, but they haven't really started their optimizations yet.

24fps is just bad enough to give every newbie a leg up on you, so I never play it under Cedega. It would run faster for sure, if I had the cash to blow on newer hardware.

Cedega can be a nice solution if they already (actively) support the game(s) you want to play. Don't hold your breath for the ones that aren't supported though: The Sims 2 and plenty of other hugely popular games got crushed by negative votes month after month due to the FPS/MMORPG-centric subscriber base. Transgaming's programming efforts seem to be centered around keeping Steam working and adding a new and "hot" game each month. When I was a subscriber, I was left a bit disappointed that they did not concentrate more on baseline compatibility rather than adding hacks specific to each game they're trying to support.

After being a subscriber for about 8 months, I decided to give up on them ever supporting some of the games I already owned and cancelled my subscription. I'll wait until they can run in WINE, which has been making leaps and bounds of progress in the last year.

One thing to note is that their support for ATI cards is abysmal. The same card that gives me great framerates in the Linux versions of America's Army or Enemy Territory performs abysmally under Cedega. My nVidia card, on a system that's pretty much the same runs much better. Sure, ATI's Linux drivers are not as good as nVidia's yet, but they're clearly not the only problem here when native Linux OpenGL apps perform so well.

In EverQuest, CS:S, and other programs I had to play around with disabling pixel shaders, and other things to get the games working; many ATI users couldn't get some of them working at all. Troubleshooting these problems in their forums many times consists of people telling you "ATI's crap, go buy nVidia". Oddly, there's no disclaimer on their subscription page that says something along the lines of "WARNING: May run like a wounded tortoise when used with ATI hardware".

Re:As a gaming platform?

[MooUK]

I would suggest that the speed of that game in particular could be due to the Warden program... or the lack of much for it to check. Since it's designed to work with the Windows system specifically, scanning for cheating... I would guess that there's little for it to scan through on Linux/Cedega, so it would use less resources.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[McCarrum]

I used to have an ATI card in my linux box. I installed Cedega, and did a direct copy from NTFS to get WoW running in Linux. After a bit of tweaking, I got better FPS (from 5 to 10) in Linux than in Windows. I went and got myself a nVidia 6600GT .. and the FPS dropped the other way, 5 to 10 down.

This was a little ago, as I haven't been playing much of late, but I'm now very tempted to get back and see if the new version changes things.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[snuf23]

What kind of video card are you running?
FPS in World of Warcraft seems to be all over the place due to the number of players in your current area, but I average about 60FPS in 1280x1024 on a 6800GT in Windows.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Frogbert]

That is such a load. A game will run just as fast, but never faster then when its running on windows. Linux isn't some magic go faster bullet when it comes to gaming.

At best you get equal performance to Windows. More often then not your framerate suffers a little. Games are still playable but they don't run as fast as they would in a native environment.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Guspaz]

But is it not an abstraction layer over the related linux APIs? In that case, it is similar to emulation in that it has to translate all the API calls to native API calls. That takes time, though I'll conceed that the time it takes to translate is much lower than the time it takes to execute. Still, there IS a performance hit.

I suspect that the reason Cedega often runs faster than Windows boxes are a combination of less background services involved, and very good translation that sometimes picks translations that are more efficient than the direct equivalent.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[cortana]

Damn, what's your secret? I play it on Windows, with an Athlon XP 2500+, a Geforce 6800 and 512 MB of RAM and it runs like a dog with no legs!

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[psi42]

You're kidding, right?

The _only_ game I've ever seen to run better in Cedega than in Windows is Anachronox. The level loading delays were significantly reduced, and the game didn't crash randomly like it enjoyed doing in Windows.

However, most games run significantly slower, especially if you don't have boatloads of RAM.

I remember Starcraft running smoothly on a 166 Mhz Pentium 1 with less than 64 MB RAM, in Windows. Try that in Cedega. The thing will be unbelievably laggy, even if you pop in a better video card.

psi42

Re:As a gaming platform?

[et764]

What resolution do you run at? I run at 1024x768, my monitor's native resolution. I've got a gig of system RAM, but if 512 isn't enough there's something seriously wrong with Half-Life. Is the rest of your system responsive? On my laptop, in Windows, everything's been decaying recently and it runs like an original Pentium now. I don't have my graphics options turned up to like super-extreme or anything, but I'm pretty sure most things are on High. My guess is there's something else going on with your computer, since you're computer's definitely powerful enough to handle Half-Life 2.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read what you wrote?

What is the basis for your assumptions?

If someone found out the parts of windows used in the game, wrote better, faster, compatible libraries and binaries, and ported them to linux(kinda like Cedega, though I only know they go for compatible), then it is indeed possible to have a windows app run FASTER on a linux machine, as well as faster on a windows if you can use them there.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[cortana]

1024x768. The system is as responsive as Windows ever is while I'm not in HL2, but it takes ages to load both hl2 as well as the individual levels--and that doesn't count the additional loading that seems to take place after playing a level for the first ten seconds, for about 30 seconds or so. Quitting it takes a few minutes too.

I think my graphics options are set to High--basically the settings that hl2 detected as appropriate for my machine. I notice that if I set the texture detail down to Low then it runs a lot better (though still not great), but then it looks like crap. :(

Unfortunatly I don't really have any other games to compare it to apart from Thief 2, which runs like shit off a shovel, as it should do since it came out in 2001. :)

Re:As a gaming platform?

[et764]

Ahh, HL2 takes several minutes to load for me, and several minutes for each level, and then 30 seconds here and there to load checkpoints. I think that's just something that comes with a game the size of HL2. Once everything is loaded though, it runs well.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[poofyhairguy82]

Damn, what's your secret?

Linux?

Just joking. I think the real reason would be that (I'm pretty sure) in Cedega Half Life 2 always runs in Directx 8 mode (would on the parent's card anyway). You can do that in Windows too.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[imboboage0]

I recently ran with Cedega under Mandrake 10.1. I had an Athlon XP-M 2600+ (OCed from 2.0 to 2.7), 512MB PC3200 RAM, and an nVIDIA GeForce 5700 128MB. All the games I can recall that I played were Need For Speed Underground 2, Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Quake III. Honestly, I saw no difference whatsoever PERFORMANCE-wise using Cedega. However, getting all games to work correctly all the time is another story. It wasn't a nightmare, but I did end up (much to my dismay) coming back to XP for all my needs. I must say, unless you are a diehard Linux fan and absolutely cannot be seen running Windows, stick with Microsoft's OS. In my experience with it and gaming, it just works. Linux needed sh1tl0ads of configuration and tweaking to get it to work right.

Say what you will Linux fanboys, it will get you nowhere. Until these games are DESIGNED to run on linux (thank you, id software), then I'm sticking with Windows. This is my experience, and until you try it for yourself, you will never know.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

That just sounds like HL2.

I call it "Half Life 2: Loading, Please Wait".

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the physics are too much for the cpu?

Re:As a gaming platform?

[The_Dougster]

But is it not an abstraction layer over the related linux APIs? In that case, it is similar to emulation in that it has to translate all the API calls to native API calls. That takes time, though I'll conceed that the time it takes to translate is much lower than the time it takes to execute. Still, there IS a performance hit.

Actually, as I understand it, it isnt. The windows API was written in C, and the Wine API is written in C. The difference is only the c-library which it is linked against. In some cases, the windows clib is faster, in other cases glibc is faster. Stuff like Direct-X has to be translated into OpenGL and Linux sound calls, but the performance hit isn't as bad as you would think.

Typical Wine and Cedega apps run slightly slower overall but more smoothly in my experience. The lack of stuttering laggy behavior often results in the user perception that Wine is slightly faster, which is probably not true. However, a game which runs well on Wine or Cedega is often more playable because of the overall smoothness and the percieved playing experience is very enjoyable when it all comes together.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[xouumalperxe]

framerate loss? none, as far as I can tell (though I have plenty of horsepower to throw at games). Accuracy loss? more than desirable. For the most part, it's little things, but those little things add up. Worse than expected multitasking is a problem; some games, like warcraft 3 and starcraft. have problems with font rendering, InstallShield installers have lots of trouble running, most games have trouble activating all the visual candy (one piece of it or another makes cedega crash). Oh, and for your own sake, never look at the slew of debug messages that it spits at your terminal. It's heinous. Still, it allows you to run games quite well, and unless you're a tad fussy, it should do.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[The_Dougster]

I must say, unless you are a diehard Linux fan and absolutely cannot be seen running Windows, stick with Microsoft's OS. In my experience with it and gaming, it just works. Linux needed sh1tl0ads of configuration and tweaking to get it to work right.

There is some wisdom here. I've been using Linux for over ten years, and you will be hard pressed to find somebody that likes it more than I do; however, the sad fact of life is that if you like playing modern games, you probably need to keep a windows partition around.

I do, and always have dual (and triple) booted my systems. I currently keep FreeDOS, Linux, and Win2k bootable on my personal home system. I also have Hurd and L4/Hurd somewhat bootable for experimental fooling around.

I use FreeDOS as basically a recovery system and have my GRUB bootloader's home on the FreeDOS drive. Other than that, I rarely boot it, but then again it only requires about 350MB so I keep it around just in case something really bad happens to my system.

Linux is my main system, and I run Gentoo (I'm very experienced with Linux, remember). I have an excellent Linux gaming system going with Nvidia 5900, full power OpenGL, Wine, and lots of Loki games. I regularly download Linux beta versions of games from Sourceforge and install into either my home or /usr/local to play around with them. Linux is my home system and I have a massive development infrastructure installed there. I'm an engineer, and if I want to make a science program, I boot to Linux and fire up Python.

I keep Windows 2000 as my bootable windows system. I use it mostly for games and CAD. If I can migrate a game to Linux in Wine, then I do so eventually, but if not I don't sweat it. It is a major hassle keeping my win2k system updated with virus protection and all that horseshit, but its necessary if you want to play games. I like win2k because its a no-nonsense windows version and I'm not looking forward to the time when I have to upgrade it.

There's no shame in dual-booting. At least you are learning Linux and using it when appropriate. In maybe 10 or 20 years, Linux will be a real powerhouse, and I've used it since it was a baby, but until it comes into its prime, use it when it makes sense and don't be a zealot.

Balance in all things grasshopper.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

i use cedega frequently to play games i got a 1.7Ghz machine with 512 sdram and a GeForce4 Ti4400 128MB card and i run quake3 engine based games, (jedi outcast, jedi academy 80pfs/avg, quake3 80fps/avg, rtcw not that you need to cause its linux native, half-life 2 i get about 20-25pfs, doom3 and quake4 is not playable) thats about all i play. using cedega v4.4. prolly not much performance improvement you'd get out from 5.0 but it will support the latest games.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[firl]

for me windows has not run well for me ever on my current hardware.
I use gentoo 64 bit with amd 64 3000+ and a 6600 gt.
I play counterstrike (sadly still)
and Dark age of camelot. and It plays counterstrike perfectly, but dark age I am not able to use the pixel shaders.

although overall I am 2x-3x happier with the switch to linux than windows, I find myself cursing at windows at the college's computers

Re:As a gaming platform?

[theendlessnow]

Frame rate drops.. yes. It can be quite bad. This image shows a 3dmark 2001 score for my Dell M70 laptop. Running 1024x768. The laptop has a 2.0Ghz P-M with 1G memory using a Nvidia go1400 (somewhat similar to a go6800).

http://theendlessnow.com/screenshots/wine-3dmark20 01.png

On OpenGL based games, it's not nearly this bad. The games are actually quite playable. But often times the OpenGL based games come out with a native Linux version, which will always be faster.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[siplus]

I was using Cedega 4.2 and 4.4 to run WoW under SuSE9.3 and Ubuntu 5.04, respectively. The game works fine (Geforce Ti 4200, 128mb VRAM), but there is an odd glitch: I can't "loot" creatures. Recently, I can't select anything without using 'tab', 'f1' through 'f5', or doing an alt-v an clicking their names above their heads. Have you noticed this, or any other problems while running WoW under cedega? Lately i've been running WoW on my new powerbook, but i would like to get it running well under cedega as well

Re:As a gaming platform?

[csplinter]

Your Wrong, some games work better in cedega than windows xp. And it's not magic, it's no secret windows is a huge resource hog. For instance, a fresh copy of windows xp occupies something like 150mb of memory, while a linux kernel + driver modules + a sound mixer + x11 could reasonably be expected to fall far short of 150mb (mine uses some were in the neighborhood of 50mb of ram when no applications a running), Leaving more room for the game. How can you refute the fact that more ram could help increase performance, making a game under some conditions play better in linux than windows. Imagine a system with 160mb of ram, that system running my linux installation would leave about 110mb of ram free for a game, windows on the other hand would only leave about 10 mb of ram free! I would imagine many games would run better under linux with this particular system, wouldn't you.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Rydian]

Have you checked out their Games DB? Specifically: http://cedegawiki.sweetleafstudios.com/wiki/World_ of_Warcraft#Mouse_Issues

If/when you upgrade to 5.0 I got the same fix to work by editing the ~/.cedega/configuration_profiles/cedega_5.0 file.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[ultranova]

That is such a load. A game will run just as fast, but never faster then when its running on windows. Linux isn't some magic go faster bullet when it comes to gaming.

No, Linux is not a magic bullet. Linux is a revolver. Better memory handling, better disk handling, better filesystems, better scheduler, less resource-intensive desktop environments and much faster development speed are magic bullets.

Seriously, there is simply no reason to expect that a game runs faster in Windows than in Linux. Games tend to be limited by CPU or 3D card speed. CPU will obviously run just as fast in Linux as in Windows, as will 3D card, provided that there is decent drivers available to that card - and at least NVIDIA has such drivers available for their cards.

Of course, this is all talking from a purely theoretical viewpoint. I have no idea if some particular implementation of Windows API (Cedega) is faster or slower than another (Windows XP). But it is incorrect to assume that it is slower, just because it is not the "official" version.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the Warden checks are on the WoW process memory, and everything else is just an enumeration of running windows -- no disk access involved. The system load from Warden is pretty much nil.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[stor]

A gig of Ram (or more) ought to help a lot, as would a nice fast SATA hard drive.

Cheers
Stor

Re:As a gaming platform?

[hunte]

Nice question.
Some time ago, I have played some weeks with Call of Duty (network gameplay) with my old laptop (p4 1.6 ghz and geforce2 go 16mb).
The dual boot configuration (WinXP pro an mandrake 9.2/10.0) has allowed me to test the game with the same settings and hardware.
Surprisingly the game run better under cedega, 10%-15% more FPS than windows.

Bye

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting about the Linux virtual memory management which is much better than Windows. Heck, when I upgraded from kernel 2.4.x to 2.6.x it felt like I bought a new, considerably faster system. Faster filesystem access and better memory managment can more than make up for any API translation that needs to be done

Re:As a gaming platform?

[bumby]

1600x1200 on a 6600

Re:As a gaming platform?

[siplus]

thanks! I had googled, but couldn't find the right keywords to get useful information

Re:As a gaming platform?

[jred]

I've got the same issues, w/ a similar machine. I'm planning on moving to 1gb ram, I think that will fix it.

Of course, I can only afford to add 1 stick of ram, which will take away my dual-channel advantage. I'm not sure how much of a hit that will get me.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Surye]

RTFM, you can start any game, with any params you want from the CLI.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[Rydian]

You're welcome!

It took me quite a while to find myself.

Re:As a gaming platform?

[vexx0]

I have played UT2004 under it and it seemed to get alot of mouse lag but their Linux client does the same thing and a Windows box almost identical in hardware did the same thing so I dont think it was a problem with Cedega or Linux for that matter.

Other than that it dosen't work perfect with all games, such as Guild Wars where the cuser goes invisible every once in a while and some perfomance issues, so its still not perfect but it gets better. Also your account gets you votes to decide on which games they work on and ussaully have good support on the most popular games.

I also haven't tried 5.0 but hopefully will soon. So to some it up I still play most of my games on Windows but hopefully get some better Linux compatible hardware in my next machine to use it on.

Damn slashdot Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even see the damn webpage...

Re:Damn slashdot Effect

[Red Alastor]

You miss "Use of this website signifies your agreement to the Terms of Use" written at the bottom of the page.

Cedega will never get my money.

[Khyber]

If I do ever switch to a free OS like Ubuntu or whatever, Transgaming will not get my money. Sure, it's a nice tool that will let you play games on your non-windows box, but, why should I have to pay again to play a game I've already paid for and wish to run?

On a side note, thankfully, Cedega won't be necessary in a few years, since more developers are releasing Linux versions of their games.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[user317]

because stealing cedega is cheaper then stealing windows in bandwith costs.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Simon80]

That, and they're profiting from work done by the Wine developers without giving anything back. Let the flames burn strong..

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[DreadSpoon]

You pay for a game.
You also have to pay for Windows to run the game on!
Damnit, why should you have to pay twice!?

I bought a car.
I also need to keep buying oil and new tires and brake pads for my car!
Damnit, why should I have to pay so many times!?

Cedega will continue to be necessary in future years. If nothing else, all the current Linux games will stop working as the glibc and kernel hackers continue going out of their way to screw users of proprietary software. Eventually some change to stack sizes or libc interfaces is going to effectively kill off your proprietary games. Cedega will be able to run the Windows versions of the games better than Linux will be able to run the Linxu versions of the games. :-/

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[bumby]

You can download the cvs-version for free. But you woun't get the directx-support, iirc.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[et764]

I chose to pay for Cedega since it's a relatively low cost, it lets me play games while still using Linux and if Cedega makes money it will show the game makers that there is a market for computer games and encourage them to release Linux versions.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[vp0ng]

This is exactly the kind of company that the Linux community needs to embrace to bring it more into the mainstream. Cutting them off because you have to pay for it only hurts Linux in the long run. Get in the mainstream. Get noticed. Gamers are a huge PC market, and more often than not, they build their own systems and are not afraid of computers or learning new systems. With the ability to play their games, more and more will flock to Linux. But it needs movements like this one. I will happily give Transgaming my money for a subscription.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

only word that comes to mind is "tool".

you figure it out.

the word FREE as in "I want everything and don't want to pay for it" annoys the dog piss out of me... I prefer my FREE as in "I want everything. I want it to work. I want to be able to fix it myself if it in fact it does not work like I need/want it to. oh and if it meets these requirements.. i'm willing to pay."

my objection to windows... is that is doesn't meet those requirements...

Cedega is a hell of a program and has taken the Wine(x) to a whole different level when it comes to Game compatibility. it's worth the price of a subscription...

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[DedFish]

Why should you have to pay twice? Because your buying Windows software and expect it to run on your Linux OS. Do you often buy software designed for another OS and expect it to run on your other OS? You have to pay twice for the software that allows you to do that.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Khyber]

Pay for Windows?? That's the funniest thing I've heard. I haven't paid since 3.11. The rest either came pre-installed (someone else's computer I bought from them) or it came free on my college laptop.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[vp0ng]

Windows comes preloaded on all major PC's now, but it's not free. It's built into the price. Believe it or not, you DID pay for that copy of windows on your college laptop.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Khyber]

Read above replies for why. First. Wine was developed as a FREE application. Basically, Transgaming is making money off a free project without really giving anything back to the community.

Next, pay for windows? See my other reply to that. I haven't paid, nor have I legally been required to pay, for Windows since I last bought 3.11 (WFW) Either it came pre-installed when I bought the computer from another person (legal transfer of license and key) or it came with the laptop I got from my college.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't get my money either, but for a different reason: no support for the games I want to play. I like FFXI, not WoW. I don't like getting over-run by the democratic process that they use to prioritize games, epsecially when everyone down-votes FFXI for some inexpicable reason.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[wangmaster]

What developers? The majority of games that are released for linux now are by the same folk who've pretty much always released games for linux (ID Software, Epic for their unreal games). There is significant work by icculus.org folks to port a number of games to linux (medal of honor, serious sam 1 + 2) but a vast amount of the work done at icculus is of very little interest by the time it's released (most of it isn't released and is still in alpha/beta form. While playable, they are buggy). Don't get me wrong though, the icculus guys absolutely rock, and it's not their fault, but since loki went away, the number of windows games with linux versions has declined considerably. Neverwinter Nights is one of the only other big ones I can think of, but it still can't play video cutscenes.

Without cedega/winex/crossover/wine people, there are very few games to play under Linux. I can only go so far with quake4, doom3 and ut2004 before I get bored of them.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[plover]

Free? Pre-installed means it came with an OEM-licensed copy of Windows. The last time I built a machine, an OEM copy of XP Home Edition (SP2) cost me about $90 (I think.) Big makers work out better details, of course: I think if you delete XP from a Dell machine's configuration, they'll drop something like $33 from the total price.

In no case is it ever 'free.'

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[wangmaster]

The transgaming folks have contributed alot of their work into the core wine stuff back. They also said they'll open up everything they can assuming they reach their subscription goal, which I believe they haven't reached, although admittedly there's some contraversy around how to account for where they are toward their goal.

Their DirectX work is largely something they keep to themselves, but honestly, it's their right to. They took a wine version at a specific point where the license allowed them to do it, and they forked it. They didn't abuse the license, the license specifically allowed it. Sure some people later on felt jipped and changed the license, but that doesn't really reflect on the fact that someone should have considered it when the original license was chosen, especially if they didn't want this to happen.

Plus, they're putting alot of hard work into the DirectX stuff. I can't fault them for wanting to hang on to it for a while. It's a very niche market they're targetting and they could use the revenue.

The other component that they get alot of criticism for is the copy protection portions of the code, and I believe this is actually the only part not in CVS and there's a reason for that, it's licensed intellectual property that they aren't at liberty to give out the source code for. Since the legality of no-cd cracks is still in a legal gray area, plus the stability of some cracks are questionable, it's nice that they're able to implement this so we can run pristine binaries of the games.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

and again you miss the point.

1. Transgaming does a great service to the Linux community in getting games properly working and bringing more attention to Linux gaming in general. The CVS version of Cedega is available to anyone who wishes to check it out and do what they wish with it.

2. See everyone else's responses to your assumption you have not paid for Windows... because you have in fact. And you admit it when you said "pre-installed".

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Mad Merlin]

Not quite. You won't get the same sort of CD copy protection compatibility, as they can't legally release the source. Even vanilla Wine has DX9 support now. The CVS version of Cedega would be pretty much useless if it didn't have DirectX support.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[vishbar]

That's very true...cedega will attract more users in the short term

What about in the long term, however? Something to think about: Does Cedega cause some gaming companies to refrain from providing a native Linux port for their games because they run "well enough" on Cedega? As you probably know, gamers are also into hardware: they need the fastest possible performance. Therefore, there is an advantage to playing games natively in Windows. If these games aren't ported to Linux, then we could see gamers move right back to windows.

I don't hate cedega--I use it. Just providing some food for thought.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine was developed as a FREE application...

but you keep using that word... i do not think it means what you think it means...

come back when you've figured out what that actually means around the Linux community.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Khyber]

No I did not. It's called a "Scholarship." I paid for NOTHING. The college paid for it all.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[vp0ng]

I agree with you that the ideal would be for the game companies to port their games to Linux, just as they are now Windows, PS2 and X-Box. The only difference, is the latter 3 are very mainstream. I think Cedega will drive Linux more into the mainstream, which in turn, will force a native port. More games = More users More users = More games If we start by making more games available, the people will follow.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, Transgaming is making money off a free project without really giving anything back to the community.

Apart from all the patches they contribute back to Wine, that is. But I suppose you're free to ignore those if it makes it easier for you to justify your mindless hating.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows has always been free for me.

I have never bought a pre-built or pre-installed computer in my life. I have always built my own, and downloaded my own copies of Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, and 2003.

Thanks Microsoft!

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[bn557]

Even if it does put off the ports to linux up front, once linux gets the users, the users will start to demand native ports. 'Just well enough' is the point at which users will accept it and play it, but bitch at the manufacturers to make a native port. If they implement the APIs too well, then there will be no bitching, too poorly and there will be no users.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, so basically, these guys that spend all this time (yes, based on existing product) to allow people to play games, should not be compensated? Oh noes, they did'nt rewrite ATI's crappy drivers so they'd work with Battlefield 2, what a bunch of loosers!!! Oh noes, punkbuster doesn't support Linux, let's blame Transgaming!!!!! omgwtfbbq!

Don't blame Transgaming because OTHER companies refuse to release their products on Linux... instead of whining about what they're doing, be thankfully they're giving Gaming a chance on Linux, they're one of the few that actually do something about it. And the "it should be free argument" well, ya know what, you want it free? Here's GCC, build your own from scratch. Have fun, and if you do spend a few thousand hours writing it, I hope you dont' expect any compensation!

This thread is a great example of showing that, no matter WHAT you do, someone, somewhere, will hate you for doing it.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Zarel]

[...] I think if you delete XP from a Dell machine's configuration, they'll drop something like $33 from the total price.

According to this /. article, the opposite is true: if you have equivalent systems from Dell, one with XP and one without, the one without XP will be more expensive.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Mad Ogre]

Don't forget you have to pay property tax when you buy the car... and then every year to keep it "registered". So in essense, you buy your car (or the right to drive it) again every year.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[andyross]

Eventually some change to stack sizes or libc interfaces is going to effectively kill off your proprietary games. Cedega will be able to run the Windows versions of the games better than Linux will be able to run the Linxu versions of the games. :-/

You're FUDing. Stop it. There has been one (1) incompatible change to glibc in the last ten (10) years. If you look, you'll probably discover that your distro still ships the older libc.so.5 library. And the kernel interfaces (the external ones, which your games use) have been more stable still. I'm not aware of any commonly-used syscall whose calling conventions have changed incompatibly, ever. Backwards binary compatibility is very important to the kernel people.

More generally, programs linked on machines running truly ancient distros continue to run fine on modern ones provided you install the appropriate compatibility packages.

It seems to me like you're just whining about progress. Do you have a specific complaint about a binary on your system that no longer runs?

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Steven W00ston]

The college paid for it all.

yeah thats what i thought

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[snuf23]

Cedega's a monthly subscription fee. You'll pay $60 a year for it. So let's say you update Windows once every 3 years - lets say you pay $200 or so for it. You'd pay $180 for the Cedega service. Cedega will let you play some Windows games, some with glitches, some with reduced performance but some quite well. Windows lets you play all Windows games excepting a few that are more than about 7 years old. Oh and Windows will let you run other Windows software as well. So is that worth the $20 over Cedega? I guess that depends on who you are. Don't want Windows on your system no matter what? Well than Cedega is as good as you are going to get. Don't mind dual-booting? Perhaps Windows is a better option. Don't care about running Linux? Well maybe Windows is definately a better option.
Cedega is for people who want to use Linux as their desktop OS and don't want to leave it to play a game. Everyone else will probably have an easier time just running the game on Windows.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Guspaz]

You can extend that argument. The more people that use Cedega, the more people are going to be calling up game companies with support problems running the game under Cedega. The game company will of course reply that running their Windows games under Linux is not supported, but the more people complain the greater the pressure to DO something about it.

That would either force the game companies to provide a native linux port, or contribute to Cedega to make sure their game runs well. Either way, it's a win for users in my book. And even though some developers might choose to help fix Cedega, it does lead to more Linux ports than before, so it's an improvement either way.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you wont pay a little for an emulator that will run Windoze Games on your free, stable OS, but you will pay over and over (and over) for an unstable mediocre OS that is not much good for anything else but games??

Defies logic to me......

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[ne0n]

good news: no-CD cracks generally work, so you're not totally screwed. However performance under WINE is abysmal... I haven't tried Cedega yet, but one of the selling points is that it's pretty quick & updates are frequent.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[mrchaotica]

Even if the APIs were implemented perfectly, I'd still bitch at the manufacturers to make a native port. After all, who wants to pay extra to get their game to work, and load up a separate software stack to run it? It would be just like having to load Classic or X11 in Mac OS -- which, if you haven't experienced it, really sucks.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[xouumalperxe]

No, no. You got it all wrong. Cedega minus directX support is basically Wine (which does have some DX support). What you don't get is the drivers necessary for copy protection verification, which are proprietary stuff that transgaming has to license.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[westlake]

Gamers are a huge PC market, and more often than not, they build their own systems and are not afraid of computers or learning new systems

I'd question whether even gamers are building their own systems "more often than not."

In any event, the gaming experience under Windows is pretty damn good. and I see no compelling reason to migrate.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[dbIII]

all the current Linux games will stop working as the glibc and kernel hackers

On almost every operating system you can have multiple versions of a library. Just because the default upgrade behavior is to remove the old libraries doesn't mean that you have to. In most cases where the default library is incompatable the most you have to do is specify a single environment variable to run the program with the old library.

I still have a few of the Loki games and Neverwinter Nights running on 2.6.* on amd64.

DLL hell is not normal behaviour.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it won't. If it works in Wine, why would they make a Linux version? As it is, they get to sell to Linux users, and have you pay SOMEONE ELSE for product support! Win Win for them, why change that? They'd have to invest time and money, just so they could support their own product when they could do squat and have someone else support it, and STILL MAKE THE SAME SALE.

Cedega is hurting games on linux.

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[MoogMan]

annoys the dog piss out of me...

Why have you been drinking dog piss?

Re:Cedega will never get my money.

[Khyber]

And just like a typical response. Okay, AC, now will you tell me about what they've given back to the community as far as WineX is concerned? What was that? Yea, I thought so. They haven't. That's the problem I'm talking about. You assume too narrow-mindedly. Go back home.

Battlefield 2 on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The release notes mention that pretty much everything in Battlefield 2 is working... except you won't be able to play on PunkBuster enabled servers, which is like, all of them. And you can forget about playing at all if you have an ATI card.

Great fuckin' job, Transgaming. Way to earn that subscription money.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[FidelCatsro]

That pretty much sounds like ATI and Punk-busters problem not Cedega's problem .
ATI do not make great linux drivers and punk buster don't make linux software AFAIK .

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[molarmass192]

ATI's drivers are lousy, but they work ... for gaming only ... I use xorg's for everything else in order to be able to suspend to ram, not get occasional screen corruptions, etc. That said, there is a linux punk-buster client, it's linked into Enemy Territory, so I know it exists. The problem for Cedega is that it needs to get the Windows version of Punk Buster to work under it's emulator since that's what's linked into the Windows binary. I used to sub to Cedega but stopped after getting my votes largely ignored. I am a loyal Crossover Office sub now, they donate almost all their code back to Wine and when they get DX working in an upcoming ver, hopefully it'll take some of that sub $$$ away from Transgaming and redirect it to guys who value OSS.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[donscarletti]

Considering that punkbuster is specifically designed to notice if there is something weird about the environment it's running in, I'd say that isn't really a fair complaint.

As for ATI, Linux boxes don't have ATI cards anyway for all intents and perposes, and drivers arn't really cedega's problem.

I think they have done quite well with this. It's very sad that they have given so little back to open source wine though.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[rincebrain]

Though some of the parts are missing, a lot of DX is working in WINE. :)

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[GnuPooh]

It's worse than you think. If you look closely at the release notes, you have to install Microsoft Direct X 9.0c with the comment "Make sure you're following the Microsoft license agreement.".

That's why the ATI doesn't work. I think they're using the fact that there's a unified NVidia driver between Linux and Windows and that somehow make them able to use the Microsoft Direct X library directly.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

tried Cedega with SOf2(I really like this game) and Pb always kicks me with a bunch of O/S exception or Empty Win32 Module List A. I finally got fedup, discontinued my account and installed wine 0.9. Wine ran sof2 with no problems, the only drawback was that I had to update Pb manually with PBweb. Honestly, cedega made a grave error when they forked, all the newer games have some form of anti cheat software enabled and without proper windows emulation, no matter how good your directx emulation is, you will never be able to play online. Heck I was able to run sof2 in crossover office 5 without any problems, while playing with wine/crossover I was able to achieve roughly the same fps as cedega. I think over time Cedega will become redundant as wine seems to be advancing really fast now after a initially slow period.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[nemattoad]

Punkbuster DOES exist for linux, natively. http://www.punkbuster.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.p hp would be the link for the pbsetup app for linux (and windows) which does a full update/fix of the punkbuster files for a game. Any game that uses PB which exists natively for linux uses pb for linux, natively.

Now whether you could run a game in cedega/wine and use the linux version of punkbuster is another story. I'd be willing to bet only a native linux game would work with native linux punkbuster.

However, punkbuster CERTAINLY does make functional linux software. Hell I just played an america's army round a few hours ago in linux, punkbuster was running fine.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[mattsday]

A unified driver between Windows and Linux? Incredible! Must be due to the near identical driver architechtures... sigh.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[Slashcrap]

That's why the ATI doesn't work. I think they're using the fact that there's a unified NVidia driver between Linux and Windows and that somehow make them able to use the Microsoft Direct X library directly.

Sorry, this is complete rubbish. The whole point of Cedega is that it translates Direct3D calls to OpenGL.

The problem is that ATI's shitty Linux drivers don't support the features necessary to map all of the Direct3D calls. Nvidias on the other hand generally do.

Although I hear that ATI's Linux drivers have vastly improved and can now run the GLX Gears demo with just slight display corruption and only the occasional kernel crash.

Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux

[friedmud]

As a side note...

I have cedega 5 and BF2 so I was toying around with it yesterday... After confirming that it boots you off punkbuster servers with an error something like "Invalid O/S Priviliges"... it got me thinking that maybe Punkbuster was trying to update itself... but failed for whatever reason.

So I downloaded the manual updater for windows (which you linked to) and ran it within Cedega. Surprisingly it ran ok ( a few buttons were gnarled but it did work) and I was actually able to upate BF2's punkbuster using it!

Unfortunately this didn't fix the punkbuster problems with BF2... but it is nice to know that it works in case I ever need it ;-)

Friedmud

Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Reality Master 201]

From what I understand, IBM already tests the Notes client to ensure that it functions properly under Wine (or at least as well as it does under Windows). how long before game producers start to target these kinds of compatibility libraries? I understand that the linux gaming market is small compared to the whole, so direct support is unlikely.

Any game programmers care to comment if/whether their company would deliberately code a product so that it would run well under something like this? Would you code with the compatability library in mind?

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Strom Thurmond (R-SC]

Heh, Notes, working...

Two words that don't belong in the same sentence.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Reality Master 201]

Again, work as well as it does on Windows. The statement is accurate, and is not intended as commentary on the suitability of the product as a mail client or for any other purpose.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for IBM, and I'd sure like to know who's being paid to support Wine under Linux.

There are builds that exist, yes, and they do work under certain versions of Wine (importantly not the latest), but as far as I am aware it is all rather unofficial, and you have to screw around with the package files provided anyway.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, it does work on the most recent builds - the patch for last decembers regression got into builds sometime in september.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[WWWWolf]

What would be the point of encouraging game developers to test that their games work in Cedega?

"Hey, we're Linux gamers, we absolutely don't care if you don't make a full-blown native port of your game to Linux, but we would like you to test how this beta-quality compatibility layer works with the game anyway."

Assuming the game company in question gives damn about Linux users, what do you think is easier: Designing a game ground up so that it can be easily ported to Linux, or getting the programming team aquaintated with gigantic gobs of Cedega codebase, spending their time finding out whether or not they have bugs in their, Cedega's or Microsoft's libraries? (And because their game supposedly runs perfectly in real Windows, it's more likely that whatever compatibility issues there are, are Cedega's fault anyway.)

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[miyako]

Allow me to rephrase your question:
Assuming the game company in question gives a damn about Linux users, what do you think is easier: Designing a whole new engine around OpenGL and training the developers to become accustomed to it, Or using a pre-existing engine written in DirectX and ensuring compatibility in the areas where Cedgea has trouble and/or continuing to use an API that their developers are already familiar with and have an existing codebase for.
I'm not saying that a full-blown port to Linux of games isn't something that would be nice, nor would it necessarily be easier to test against cedega if the game is already written with cross-platform capabilities in mind. The fact is though that a lot of companies re-use engines and code from older games, and a lot of games are written in DirectX.
I'm not saying that Cedega is an optimal solution, but if I have to choose between being able to play a game because it's written with DirectX, or being able to play the game through Cedega I would choose the latter. The only real complaint I have is that when people use Cedega to play a game when a Linux port is planned, then it makes the already small Linux gamer install base look even smaller.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[mabhatter654]

Exactly, Cedega would be better to push off to developers as extra QC rather than a whole rewrite. A game that works 100% with Cedega would definately work with window.. and probably be the better for it.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, not everything in this world is black and white -- like your daughter.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[WWWWolf]

Probably porting to OpenGL.

Porting OpenGL code to Direct3D or vice versa isn't really all that difficult - In the game engine, you manipulate your 3D data on a higher level, and just use the 3D API to draw to the screen, anyway. If the program is designed properly, the rendering side is fairly well concentrated to some specific spots.

I think trying to design existing D3D applications to run on Cedega specifically is more of a bug-hunt on Cedega's side. At worst, the developers always assume the Microsoft's DirectX API is perfect, but if it works wrong on Cedega, it's Cedega's fault. The bug-finding process would work this way:

1) Is it a known bug in Cedega?
2) How does Cedega implement the feature, and how does it differ from MS API?
3a) (commonly) Cedega is buggy, sucks to be us. Report the bug to Transgaming, or fix the Cedega bug ourselves (guess which is more likely outcome for commercial game houses).
3b) (rarely) Our app is clearly wrong, let's fix it.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[Kadin2048]

Actually that might be a pretty reasonable request, given that software testing is usually (at least in my experience) handled at a different part of the development cycle and often by different people than the ones responsible for directing initial development. Also, it's asking a lot less: "Could you test this and fix the things that break compatibility with WINE," versus "Could you make a completely separate version that runs on our niche OS." The first one might be justified by the few sales you'd get from a Linux+Cedega version, currently I don't think that the second one would be. At least not yet.

I understand your point, but I think that asking for a Linux version of a game, given the small current market, might be asking for a bit much while asking for testing to ensure compatibility with Cedega -- especially if Cedega was willing to work from the other direction and help to make things easier -- would be more successful.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[mrchaotica]

Also, it's asking a lot less: "Could you test this and fix the things that break compatibility with WINE," versus "Could you make a completely separate version that runs on our niche OS." The first one might be justified by the few sales you'd get from a Linux+Cedega version, currently I don't think that the second one would be.

Except you don't have to make a "completely separate version" because the Linux version (i.e., the one that uses open APIs like OpenGL and SDL) will run perfectly fine on Windows too!

Just look at id: do you really think they made two separate engines for Quake 4? NO! They just used the right API to begin with -- OpenGL -- and only needed to make one version.

Chances are, the only real reasons why every company doesn't do like id is either (a) they have a hard-on for Windows (e.g. Valve), or (b) they get "incentives" from Microsoft.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[miyako]

The problem is that DirectX > Direct3D. While I've had only limited experience with DirectX, as I understand it, DirectX provides a lot more than just Direct3D. DirectX also provides DirectSound, DirectInput, etc. Plus there are a lot of things that are standard in the newer versions of DirectX that are unsupported by OpenGL 1.5 or only available through extensions provided by Video Card Drivers, and therefor may not be on every users machine.
The thing of it is, at this point in time it seems to me that it would be reasonable for a game company to at least test on Cedega. If they are using some weird code that is an easy enough fix, or some undocumented or weird API behavior that could be corrected then why not go for it? If on the other hand Cedegas buggyness or incompleteness means the app won't work, then why not at least pass a note on to the Cedega developers saying "Hey, we tested our game with Cedega and it didn't work quite right/at all. We don't have the resources to fix this, but if it looks like something your users want then you might look into fixing X,Y and Z- hopefully that will help our game run." Granted it would take extra time, but I would imagine that there are some instances where the miniscule additional cost compared to the development of the game may be offset by the still miniscule but slightly larger amount of sales they could generate from people who would buy the game knowing it would run on Cedega who wouldn't have done so otherwise.

Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?

[lscotte]

From what I understand, IBM already tests the Notes client to ensure that it functions properly under Wine (or at least as well as it does under Windows).

I wish. For what it's worth, we use notes at work and it doesn't run well at all for me under either wine or cxoffice. Sure, it doesn't run all that great even on it's native platform, but there are enough problems I resorted to rdesktop'ing to run it.

We need some Linux-only games.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need some real Linux-only games. It would give more people a reason not to run Windows, and might create a considerable buzz if they were cool enough.

I'm tired of all this copycat catch-up bullshit. Let's innovate on our own wonderful platform. It's certainly possible.

Re:We need some Linux-only games.

[mrchaotica]

He didn't say we need cool games, he said we need Linux-only games. Which, exactly, of those games in your list are Linux-only?

Re:We need some Linux-only games.

[Anonymous Coward]

DOOM 1,2 - were cool games - once upon a time
DOOM 3 - some think it is cool I think it was boring (half decent if think as technology demo)

Quake 1-2 - were cool games - once upon a time
Quake 3 - never liked it myself
Quake 4 - haven't tried it and don't think ever will (yawn)
NWN - stupid me, did go and buy it once upon a time.. *yawn*
unreal - *yawn* - were cool game - once upon a time
unreal tournament *, *yawn* as goes with all epic's games

I want my first person games with some substance: Call of Duty 2, Half-Life 2, Halo 2 (what's this with all sequels and especially part two's? ;) you get the drift.. then something completely different: Civilization III (!), Full spectrum warrior, Warcraft III (especially DOTA), Battlefield 2, Alpha Centauri, the list goes on.

But that's just my taste.. I don't doubt that you think the list *you* provided are cool games in your opinion, but your comment as "Yeah, no cool games eh?" is supposed to impress or give "proof" that there are cool games.. na.

I don't know how, but I suppose some people still get something out of DOOM and DOOM 2-- that is a big mystery to me HOW THE HELL.

Re:We need some Linux-only games.

[mrchaotica]

Technically, those are just Free Software games. bzflag, for example, was originally developed at SGI, on Irix. I'd hazard a guess that a bunch of those probably have BSD, Windows or Mac (even if only X11) ports as well -- especially since BSD and Mac/X11 are trivial.

In fact, every single one of the games you mentioned has a Windows port, and all except Freedroid have a Mac port. (I checked.)

So don't feel bad about not finding "linux-only" games; it's highly unlikely that any such thing would exist (any Free Software game popular enough to exist at all would get ported, and any proprietary game would have to be developed for more popular platforms in order for the company that made it to stay in business). ; )

Interesting business model.

[QuantumG]

I signed up for Transgaming earlier this year. Like many others I gave them my money so I could vote for my favourite games. Unfortunately, like in just about any democracy, my vote wasn't worth anything, so my favourite games never made it to the top of the TODO list. That said, I still think Cedega is a good product and if Transgaming focused more on building a developer community than paying developers they'd get a lot more games working.

Re:Interesting business model.

[Doctor Crumb]

Your vote is worth exactly as much as everyone else's. If you want it to be worth more, try bribing your representatives.

Re:Interesting business model.

[QuantumG]

What sucks is that you can only buy "5 more votes" or something like that. If I want to pay them $20,000 to get my favourite game voted to the top of the TODO list they should bloody well take it. But then again, I don't actually want to spend that much money, so they probably would :)

But the real tragedy is that even with the source code I was unable to get my favourite game working under Cedega. There was nowhere I could go to talk with other developers and get help. It was like using a proprietary product.

Re:Interesting business model.

[Andy Dodd]

Also, you can't seem to be able to temporarily buy extra votes once your subscription has started.

Transgaming needs to change their voting system - Rather than having a -3 to +3 range where users can select any of the choices, voters should be limited to only allocating X points between the available options. This will force people to choose actual priorities, rather than +3ing everything they like and -3ing everything they don't like.

Re:Interesting business model.

[Doctor Crumb]

Yeah, I've noticed that the forums/etc are pretty much useless. Jsut a bunch of people shouting questions into the void. As you said, just like a proprietary product.

Re:Interesting business model.

[oliverthered]

What's your favorate game? Have you tried to get it working under Wine?

Re:Interesting business model.

[jZnat]

It was like using a proprietary product.

Uh, earth to QuantumG: it practically is a proprietary product! Can you download the entire source code that can be built to make the exact binaries they provide? Can you redistribute your own modifications under a BSD-like or GPL-compatible license? Didn't think so.

Re:Interesting business model.

[QuantumG]

Yes, you can, on both counts. The only difference between the Cedega license and the GPL is that you can't profit from the work. That right is reserved for Transgaming. So, for example, you can't sell CDs with Cedega on it.

Why?!

[c0l0]

As a hobbyist software developer, I still believe in what's been taught at university:
 
"Seperate the program's core from its user interface."
 
So, what benefits does it give to incorporate "application logic" into it's graphical front-end, like the press release stub says. That's just stupid, isn't it? The only "plus" from my point of view is that the whole program would noticeably hang, and not just some kind of crashing server or back-end being controlled by a (maybe still responsive,) polished interface. Or do I miss something really important here?

Re:Why?!

[alras]

technically the core and gui are still seperated, its just not that obvious anymore. The binaries are now a little more hidden in the home directory of the user.

Re:Why?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you miss your mommy.

Re:Why?!

[mrchaotica]

The binaries are now a little more hidden in the home directory of the user.

Do they have an excuse for this bit of bad design, too?

Re:Why?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing with games is, all the logic that makes a 3d game good IS the GUI. As that is the part that is optimized to the nth degree. Take away the GUI for a game, and you'll probably have a more portable codebase that is just a game server.

Non GUI game logic is nothing special, generaly speaking.

Re:Why?!

[Surye]

Yes, because different users can have different profiles with different versions of cedega, for the best compatibility with any given game. With out this, all users get all or nothing. I like this system.

Debs Torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

http://torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torrentde tails&id=457719

Slashdotted

[Viper233]

"... unfortunately this urgency of this new release drew resources away from the web team and they were left with a pentium 166 to host the web site..."
Well done to the transgamming guys. Hopefully then can step up to where loki left off.

Re:Slashdotted

[garrett714]

Kinda odd... I can ping transgaming.com with a steady 70ms ping... yet still can't connect to the website...

Cedega increases the cost of gaming.

[s-twig]

In terms of Linux, Cedega increases the cost of gaming, not only indirectly by having to own a better system to counteract the performance loss in comparison to Windows, but also because of their subscription fee. It's just doesn't seem right, you have to pay two companies to have your software work. There are plenty of other end user friendly ways of making money.

Software Installation

[DreadSpoon]

Something I find vastly amusing is that, using Wine or Cedega, it is generally easier to install Windows program on Linux than it is to install a Linux program on Linux.

Cedega: Pop in the CD, run the installer, run the updater (if its not automatic), done.
Native: Open a terminal, run a shell script, watch it not quite work because your distro is 2 months newer than the software, manually hack the shell script to work, copy files over, manually create menu entries, download a tarball to update the game with, unpack the tarball, run the updater script, done.
Native w/ Package: Find the package, realize you grabbed the wrong one because most people have no clue what the difference between .i386.rpm and .x86-64.rpm is, use a one-click install tool if you're lucky or open a terminal and manually install it if not, realize you are missing dependencies, install dependencies, done.
Native w/ Package Search UI: Search through 10,000 poorly organized packages trying to find the right one (if you're lucky it is actually in the repository), install, done.

Most Open Source/Free Software/Linux folks seem to think that the last option is _clearly_ the best choice. I'm not so sure. Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

The package selector interfaces in Synaptic or whatever is popular these days is also pretty much crap - when you have 10,000+ packages, you need something a little more efficient than a list with some hierarchial and practically meaningless categories like Amusements/Games.

Re:Software Installation

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

If you are APT-GETting all over the place in a shell, shouldn't you know already what the difference between a .i386.rpm and .x86-64.rpm is? I sure hope so...

Re:Software Installation

[Gefunden]

so. do you even run linux? if so you must be new, thanks for coming over. in my experience, all good distros (eg. gentoo) have at least two of those games in their package management system. i installed doom3 and nwn via portage quite easily. maybe you should get a little more practice before complaining about installs you appearently know nothing about.

Re:Software Installation

[radarsat1]

Perhaps you'd be interested in klik then, which pretty much solves all the problems you just mentioned..

Maybe you can email your favorite game companies and try to get them to support it.

Re:Software Installation

[donscarletti]

It sounds like you need to use a distro with a better package manager, or learn to use your current one better. I use Gentoo, Ubuntu and Debian regually and they all allow software to be installed very quickly and easily. Synaptic (Ubuntu) provides an excelent search interface to choose a program and it's two to three clicks to install any package you want.

Re:Software Installation

[Mad Merlin]

Most Open Source/Free Software/Linux folks seem to think that the last option is _clearly_ the best choice. I'm not so sure. Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

It is the best choice. If you prefer to mindlessly click "Next" 5-10 times every time you want to install something and then again if you ever want to update it, when you could simply issue a single command or tick a single box and select install, and then have *all* updates handled for you, then I sincerely hope you have nothing to do with any important software development.

From portage:

* games-rpg/nwn
Latest version available: 1.66
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 2,420,283 kB
Homepage: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html
Description: Neverwinter Nights
License: NWN-EULA

* games-fps/doom3
Latest version available: 1.3.1302
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 16,802 kB
Homepage: http://www.doom3.com/
Description: Doom III - 3rd installment of the classic id 3D first-person shooter
License: DOOM3

Or maybe you'd prefer the web listings.

Any other questions?

Re:Software Installation

[fikx]

Strangly enough, it's also easier to install programs using this than it is to install them on a real windows machine!

safer too, I might add :)

Re:Software Installation

[capicu]

er... am I the only one who thinks this post might be a rewording of the Doom 3 Is Hard To Install in Linux copy-paste troll?

Benefit-of-the-doubt time:
- Yeah, you're right. I used wine for the first time earlier today. I nearly pissed myself laughing when the windows installer completed flawlessly. (Then I nearly cried when after an hour of trying nothing I installed would actually run)
- Most linux users do know the difference between i386 and x86-64. Most people don't, but remember that linux is for the most part made by and for linux users, not by a company for a customer, so this doesn't matter.
- You know perfectly well that they can't put commercial products in a free-access repo
- Package management is now at a stage where you can easily install a program, if it is in your distro's repo, and you know its name. Search technology in general is still fairly crappy, but give it time. I believe that this is something that the Mandriva/SuSe-type distros will be fixing soon.

NOT A FLAME. I'm honestly just addressing some of your points - your post made me think (about package management), oh and reminding you of the nature of linux.
Anyway, you shouldn't become disheartened with all of this. There are some pretty good open source 3d engines being worked on right now. Pretty soon we're all going to be able to get rid of that windows partition.
The only thing that will be left soon is that old chestnut: devices. I've never seen a digital camera or camcorder connect properly to linux. My graphical artist brother can't use his tablet in linux, my little sister can't use her microphone or webcam on MSN to talk to her "m8s" from "skul".

Re:Software Installation

[Darby]

Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

Hmmm.. I wonder....

# emerge doom3
Calculating dependencies ...done!
>>> emerge (1 of 1) games-fps/doom3-1.3.1302 to /

# emerge heretic2
Calculating dependencies
emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "heretic2".

# emerge nwn
Calculating dependencies ...done!
>>> emerge (1 of 1) games-rpg/nwn-1.66 to /

Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
Add in Soldier of Fortune, Tribes2 and a bunch of others as well.
Neat.

Re:Software Installation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, do you expect everyone who wants to use a computer, for games even, to have a doctorate in computer science? Why would we want the set of all GNU/Linux users to "have anything important to do with software development."?

Re:Software Installation

[xouumalperxe]

Well, by definition you can't possibly have freely distributable .debs or .rpms for commercial software unless the vendor allows it. In id's case, they don't (and have repeatedly asked distros NOT to distribute the Doom 3 installer). In nvidia's case, they do allow it, and installation of my graphics card's drivers was smooth because of it. That doesn't invalidate that the "Package Search UI" model -- which is a gross oversimplification of the apt system, that resolves dependencies and installs them correctly by default -- is quite good.

BF2

[Short Circuit]

Yes, but will it work with Punkbuster?

Re:BF2

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.

Re:BF2

[Anonymous Coward]

No :(

Re:BF2

[Anonymous Coward]

tried Cedega with SOf2(I really like this game) and Pb always kicks me with a bunch of O/S exception or Empty Win32 Module List A. I finally got fedup, discontinued my account and installed wine 0.9. Wine ran sof2 with no problems, the only drawback was that I had to update Pb manually with PBweb. Honestly, cedega made a grave error when they forked, all the newer games have some form of anti cheat software enabled and without proper windows emulation, no matter how good your directx emulation is, you will never be able to play online. Heck I was able to run sof2 in crossover office 5 without any problems, while playing with wine/crossover I was able to achieve roughly the same fps as cedega. I think over time Cedega will become redundant as wine seems to be advancing really fast now after a initially slow period.

It still costs less...

[Weaselmancer]

...than buying a copy of Windows XP.

Re:It still costs less...

[garrett714]

The funny thing is that it is also more stable. Running WoW in Windows would always freeze or lock up randomly, and reinstalling Windows didn't help, new graphics drivers didn't help. Running it under Cedega works fine, although slightly slower. If I had higher end graphics hardware speed wouldn't even be an issue, it's like the difference between 100fps and 80fps... who cares?

Re:It still costs less...

[ivan kk]

Windows XP is compatible with all Windows XP programs. Is Cedega?

What about the time spent trying to get things to work, checking the cedega forums for fixes to quirky problems?

Sure it may cost less to buy, but what about to use.

Re:It still costs less...

[snuf23]

Well that depends on how long you use Cedega's service for versus how long you use your copy of Windows. Cedega is $5 month/$60 a year. Windows cost is from $85 for OEM XP Home up to $200 for non OEM XP Pro. If you are dual booting in to Linux and just gaming on Windows, XP Home should be fine. And let's figure you keep using your copy of Windows for 3 years. Well with Cedega after 3 years you'd be at $180, and so with the OEM Windows XP home you would save $95.

PLEASE use Coral URLs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Transgaming is slashdotted off the web already.

Can people posting articles *PLEASE* use Coral cache URLs so that the subject website has a chance to survive our tender attentions?

Thanks.

Re:Software Installation when you are a n00b

[garrett714]

Native: Open a terminal, run a shell script, watch it not quite work because your distro is 2 months newer than the software, manually hack the shell script to work, copy files over, manually create menu entries, download a tarball to update the game with, unpack the tarball, run the updater script, done.

I've never had to manually hack a shell script to make an install work. Copy what files over? Once again, never had to manually create menu entries but if I did it's pretty simple. Downloading a tarball to update is no different than downloading an .exe to update a game in Windows.

Native w/ Package: Find the package, realize you grabbed the wrong one because most people have no clue what the difference between .i386.rpm and .x86-64.rpm is, use a one-click install tool if you're lucky or open a terminal and manually install it if not, realize you aremissing dependencies, install dependencies, done.

Looks as though someone is a bit shaky when it comes to installing packages on his Linux box.

Native w/ Package Search UI: Search through 10,000 poorly organized packages trying to find the right one (if you're lucky it is actually in the repository), install, done.

Once again, looks as though someone is a bit shaky when it comes to installing packages on his Linux box.

Good theory...

[sterno]

Great idea but here's the problem. If you're a game development company and you can only afford to code for and support one platform, which would you choose:

1) Windows with 90+% of the market
2) Linux with 5-10% of the market, give or take

Also, keep in mind that anybody who's a serious gamer has a Windows machine, or dual-boots.

Re:Good theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree, if your motivation is money, you should stick to Windows.

I'm talking about writing a quality open source game in people's free time, but having it only available for Linux.

People do write games in their spare time, so it's not unreasonable. It's just that the best examples I can think of have been ported to other platforms, so there's no "switch incentive" there. I also feel it sort of takes away from my pride in this computing platform, even though I know that making things portable as a free / open source game developer is a gesture of selflessness and generosity.

I mean, just think of some really great open source games for Linux -- nethack, Wesnoth, UQM, freeciv -- they all work fine on other platforms. Crap, even a kick-ass console emulator that was Linux-only might be incentive (e.g. if zsnes only worked under linux-x86).

Re:Good theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

(e.g. if zsnes only worked under linux-x86).

% sudo apt-get install zsnes
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:

zsnes

Well that was easy...

Re:Good theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

I said, "if zsnes only worked under linux-x86" and not, "if only zsnes worked under linux-x86."

To clarify: I'm saying that if NO zsnes EVER existed for WINDOWS, at least back when super nintendo roms were all the rage, then it might have made the LINUX platform much more attractive to a lot of people.

Of course, zsnes is kind of a bad example, since it started out as a DOS program. And indeed, emulators for next-gen consoles are out of the question since support for ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards sucks.

Re:Good theory...

[sterno]

Yes, I agree, if your motivation is money, you should stick to Windows.

Ummm... okay, well it is for the vast majority of the commercial game developers. As for open source games a couple thoughts:

1) You will not be able to write a game in your spare time that is of such earth shattering quality that people, not ordinarily inclined to do so, would install Linux to play it.

2) If it's truly open source, somebody can port it to Windows if it's all that.

I mean, just think of some really great open source games for Linux -- nethack, Wesnoth, UQM, freeciv -- they all work fine on other platforms.

Nethack... okay, it's fine, but how many people are really that into it. Never heard of Wesnoth or UQM. As for freeciv, that's a derivative of a Windows game.

Until somebody develops a game that's only for Linux that's of such significance that people are willing to install Linux just to run it, you're not going to see any real change here. If other factors cause an overall shift in the market share for Linux, then the games will follow.

Believe me, I've bet on many a horse that lost out because of simple market share. My Atari 1040 ST played some great games but when I went to the local software store it was only IBM and some Mac games.

Re:Good theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

does linux have 5-10% of the desktop or more specifically the desktop gaming market?

Re:Good theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not be able to write a game in your spare time that is of such earth shattering quality that people, not ordinarily inclined to do so, would install Linux to play it.

I'm not sure you can make this claim. You're just predicting the future.

Lots of people have lots of spare time. Basically I don't think it's impossible. And it doesn't have to be such impossibly high quality that it's the sole reason people install Linux. Just having some good Linux-only games would really help in general.

If it's truly open source, somebody can port it to Windows if it's all that.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Games make use of pretty much every kind of computer science; they stand to benefit from every software and hardware trick in the book. Is everything we can do in Linux available for Windows? If so, why are we even using Linux? Just for stability and lack of (constant) annoyances and open source and freedom?

Even if we just focused on writing games that were ultimately going to be portable, developing them first and foremost for Linux would give the platform an edge.

Until somebody develops a game that's only for Linux that's of such significance that people are willing to install Linux just to run it, you're not going to see any real change here.

So, I agree. That's like, exactly my point. Imagine if we could create such a game. What if everyone who was working on copycat versions of Windows games or trying to make Windows games work under Linux stopped doing that and instead worked towards creating new, innovative Linux-only games, using all this fantastic technology at our disposal?

I know what I'm proposing seems a bit silly. But on the other hand, so does playing catch-up eternally, creating and playing these communistic no-name clones of great games.

Re:Good theory...

[bryan986]

Also, keep in mind that anybody who's a serious gamer has a Windows machine, or dual-boots.

I am a serious gamer and I only run linux

I play ut2004, counter strike, call of duty, americas army, enemy territory, and many other games, and I play them often.

Re:Good theory...

[TheStupidOne]

Easy, you code the game using toolkits and librarys freely available for both platforms. Instead of using directx, code using opengl/openal/etc. Now you got spiffy code that can not only run on Windows, but can be easily ported to Linux without having to rewrite a metric buttload of code.

Re:Good theory...

[Thing 1]

UQM is "The Ur-Quan Masters" and is a great clone of Star Control.

Re:Good theory...

[sterno]

Okay... I think there's a place to start. Can we get a Linux game that's good and ISN'T a clone of something else :)

Re:Good theory...

[sterno]

I'm not sure you can make this claim. You're just predicting the future.

I think I can. The scale of games these days has increased tremendously. The amount of time, effort and people to develop a game is huge. There are companies out there that can make good money by doing nothing but designing trees for other people's games.

Is everything we can do in Linux available for Windows?

Pretty much, yes. Keep in mind most of the tools and libraries for games in Linux are either deliberately cross platform to make it easier to write for both operating systems, or they are ports of Windows stuff (Cedega).

I know what I'm proposing seems a bit silly. But on the other hand, so does playing catch-up eternally, creating and playing these communistic no-name clones of great games.

I mean I understand what you're getting at but I think there's not enough incentive to go out of one's way to make a game that only works on Linux. I would argue that the community that supports Linux would naturally be against such a concept because, generally, people who are into Linux like flexibility and choice and it seems rather odd that they'd work to eliminate that.

Re:Good theory...

[H0p313ss]

So you're part of an even smaller minority?

Re:Good theory...

[dolson]

...or uses a gaming console.

PCs are great for certain genres, but consoles still rock for others. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sides, but there are many Linux users who are "serious" gamers that do opt for console-based gaming over dual booting or having a second PC for Windows.

I do try to support the Linux native games (most recent being Professor Fizzwhizzle and Lugaru), but most of my gaming is on my GameCube or Xbox.

Re:Good theory...

[Erandir]

Well, the biggest contribution that Cedega makes is that gaming companies don't have this dilemma any more. I've been a Cedega user for almost a year now, and it does a pretty good job of running cutting-edge Windows games under Linux, often with no noticable performance difference.

Some games run better under Cedega than others, simply because they use the DirectX API in a more standardized way. It costs a gaming company very little to test their Windows builds under Cedega, and doing this could win them a little bit of extra market share.

Re:Good theory...

[Qbertino]

UQM is "The Ur-Quan Masters" and is a great clone of Star Control.

Yes, nice, but does it run on Geforce 4600 Ti GFX Card?

Re:Good theory...

[clickety6]

But bear in mind that in the Windows market you'd be competing with hundreds of other gaming products. In the Linux market you would be cometing with far fewer products. So what would be better, 1% of 90% of the market or 50% of 10% of the market?

Re:Good theory...

[sterno]

This is why I wrote "and support". While yes, you can use a cross platform library to write your code, you also need to provide support for the other platform. That requires a certain amount of resources for testing on both platforms, technical support, etc. Nothing ever works 100% cross-platform without some tweaking.

Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage

[linuxkrn]

Try Gentoo Portage http://www.gentoo.org

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=nwn

See NWN with data and server right there.

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=doom3 for doom3

And Portage put games into catagories.

Like: games-fps, games-rpg, games-puzzle. etc.

AND the best part, to install. emerge nwn
It will download any and all deps for you!

Re:Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought UT2004 a few days ago. The GP post couldn't be more wrong... or just biased?

Re:Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when you update your system every month or two - I mean not just system, but world? Hmm..first, it takes a couples days, then the new "better" config files break your machine. Hope it wasn't a production server... st00pid gentoo fanboy.

Re:Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage

[Anonymous Coward]

thats why you don't automatically merge the configs? sheesh

Re:Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage

[Jesus_666]

Yeah, I love gentoo. Installing software under Gentoo Linux (emerge package) is even easier than doing so under OS X (find package on the 'net, download it, open the image, drag application to appropriate folder) most of the time. Now if only Gentoo OS X would be that far...

Don't forget...

[Diocleciano Palma]

... you can get the CVS version of Cedega/Wine/X for free and build it yourself (or better yet, have a nice shell script automate the process of wgetting and building it for you -- you still have to configure the app yourself). AFAIK it's not updated to 5.0, but it's probably worth the trouble. Check out http://winecvs.linux-gamers.net/index.php/Main_Pag e

Review at Linux-gamers

[pshuke]

Linux-gamers have put up a review, if anyone are interested.
Doesn't seem too shabby.

The Ultimate Accomplishment

[eno2001]

The Microsoft dominated computer industry won't go away until Wine is merged into the Linux kernel so that it gets optimal performance and actually out-Windows Windows itself. Just imagine if the entire whole of Cedega was merged into the Linux kernel to be a completely self contained OS that runs all Windows applications including virii, wormii and and server applications. Just imagine what a combo like Linux + Cedega + IIS would wrought on the world!? It would be awesome. Microsoft would drop dead in it's tracks and no one would ever use Windows again. And not only that, you could run IIS at the same time that you have Unreal 2008 running at 20,000 frames per second with total perspective vortex shading. This would go a long way to improving the work conditions of many IT grunts because the production servers would now be useful for more important things than serving out the corporate web site. :)

Re:The Ultimate Accomplishment

[evilad]

Shouldn't that be wormae?

5.0 is a double edged sword.

[ahpx]

I'm a Transgamer subscriber. Having downloaded and installed 5.0, and used it abit. I'd say 5.0 is a double edged sword. The positives on it is that it fixes alot of problems with older versions and fixes support for the Steam patch that recently broke it before. However the negitives to it is that it completely kills the use of Point2Play which I enjoyed using. Now you have to import all your old settings into Cedega's new GUI which at first might not seem like something bad until you relize that all your old custom made launchers and syslinks and now useless. All in all it's not a bad release, they could have just left some features alone. Now I and many other users have to change syslinks, and rework the old launcher programs we had before.

Re:5.0 is a double edged sword.

[ignorant_newbie]

what's a syslink? are you trying to spell 'symlink' ?

If so, you seem to be complaning that the hacks you implemented to make the old version work are no longer necessary. how is this bad?

Re:5.0 is a double edged sword.

[ahpx]

Yeah, Symlink. Sorry, was typing fast.
They weren't hacks persay. They were scripts to turn certain certain things on and off, and to run commands before launching the program. This is bad because now we have to rewrite the script. Sure it might not take that long, but if P2P wasn't rendered useless because of the new update we wouldn't have to rewrite the script. It just takes time away from other things most of use have to do.

Re:5.0 is a double edged sword.

[Dimensio]

However the negitives to it is that it completely kills the use of Point2Play which I enjoyed using.

That's nothing. Anyone who used command-line only -- like me -- is now totally screwed. EVERYTHING I had set up previously was hosed, and it was a nightmare trying to get things to a mere semblance of how they behaved before.

I want an app where I can go to the command line and run cedega with just a reference to the executable file and have it work (if the file can work at all with cedega/wine). I could do that up until 5. Now I have to configure settings in the GUI for ANY DAMNED EXECUTABLE THAT I WANT TO RUN! I have to jump through hoops just to run a one-time use hotfix patch exe file. I DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH SHIT IN WINDOWS!

So I'm back to 4.4.3 until and unless Transgaming returns a proper interface to command-line users.

So MS will go away when...

[sterno]

... Linux is completely dependent on an API that's controlled by Microsoft...

Somehow I don't think so...

Re:So MS will go away when...

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Microsoft control the API when the Wine project is BUILDING it from the ground up? It's completely original and has nothing to do with Microsoft. It just magically allows Windows apps to run natively. That's it. So there's no dependence on Microsoft. They can do whatever the hell they want and Windows apps will still run on Linux with Wine. That's the beauty of it. The freedom to use Windows apps without needing to run Windows at all.

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so what?

[sakura the mc]

i still cant play my hentai games on linux.

CVS? You've got to be kidding!

[ClassicG]

The public CVS version of Cedega is horribly out of date and is missing a lot of pretty criticial stuff, not to mention quite difficult to compile and set up. It's just NOT worth messing with unless you really want to look at the code, rather than just get a 'demo' of Cedega. Rathar that fight to get the CVS code to compile and run, there's a 'timedemo' version of Cedega available at http://nzone.com/object/nzone_cedega_downloads.htm l. It's not Cedega 5.0, but it's a lot better than anything you'll pull out of CVS.

Re:CVS? You've got to be kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like your homepage. No, really, I do.

It must be said...

[Admiral Frosty]

But I run windows you insenitive clod!

Re:It must be said...

[rollingrock]

No problem, just use cygwin ;)

until wine is merged into the linux kernel

[ignorant_newbie]

why would a bunch of windows shared libraries be in the linux kernel? they're not in the windows kernel.

what benefit would there be in having this in the kernel? do you even know the difference between the kernel and userspace? are you just throwing fancy words around because they sound cool? you realise that it's impossible to impress women with /. posts, right?

Re:until wine is merged into the linux kernel

[eno2001]

Your Slashdot ID suits you well young padwan... Watch and learn:

why would a bunch of windows shared libraries be in the linux kernel? they're not in the windows kernel.

They should go into the kernel for PRECISELY that reason. Microsoft wasn't innovative enough to think of what I've come up with and they will loose for it. By putting them in the kernel instead of luser space, they have total access to the system meaning absolute power!! They will outprform the sludge that comes out of Microsoft 10,000,000 fold!

do you even know the difference between the kernel and userspace?

Of COURSE IS DO!!! The kernel is where everything runs fast because it has absolute power!!! Luserspace is where everything runs slow because administrators don't want to give users absolute power! So if you move anything from luserspace to the kernel it will run 10,000,000 times faster than before! The system admins are just greedy and want to keep absolute power for themselves. I want Outlook running on my Unix box as root!!!

You realise that it's impossible to impress women with /. posts, right?

Uhh... I beg to differ. In fact I was at a bar last night and I got two luscious women to come home with me after I told them about how my hot tub runs on Linux. It's all in the attitude... (well that and the fact that I asked nearly every woman in the bar to come back and look at my Linux based hot tub)

Re:until wine is merged into the linux kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, either you're a complete fucking moron, or you're just fucking around with people, cuz this post is full of shit.

There's my answer.

[Kadin2048]

When I was reading the article on the front page I wondered to myself, "how long will it take for someone to make a 'shady pixel' joke?"

I really need to get out more.

So is wine ahead or behind with dx9?

[Sark666]

I remember reading about progress with dx9 making it into wine. http://directxwine.sourceforge.net/

Did this ever make it into .9 beta? Kind of curious how the two compare now.

Re:So is wine ahead or behind with dx9?

[Mad Merlin]

Yes, all of the DX9 patches have made it into vanilla Wine.

Re:So is wine ahead or behind with dx9?

[oliverthered]

That's not quite true, vertex buffer object and other performance patches aren't in wine cvs yet, I'm finishing off stabilizing Directx (including allowing DirectX 8 to use the improvements) over the next month or so, including Pixel Shaders 1.4.

After that I'm going to commit the performance patches that should bring wine to a comparable level to Cedega (some of the patches give a huge performance increase over Cedega).

There are still a lot of no DirectX related issues that need fixing in Wine so that games are playable.

IMO. Cedega aren't putting much effort into DirectX in Cedega, my patch from 2005-06-13 has many of the features Cedega are touting as new in their 5.0 release.

Re:So is wine ahead or behind with dx9?

[Hohlraum]

hey I was curious. i saw some stuff on your site:

# Fix for texturing problems in Axis and Allies and Evil Genius
# Fix for model corruption in Pirates
# Movies in Pirates
# A Fix for the lines on the landscape in Axis and Allies

when you fix something for a specific game does it fix it for all other games that might exibit a specific problem or do you actually have to make specific tweaks for specific games/software?

Re:So is wine ahead or behind with dx9?

[oliverthered]

The fixes are usually generic unless the fix is to work around a bug in the game, e.g. Warhammer 40k doesn't load textures properly so there's a specific fix to get nonpower2 textures working with that game.

Only one question

[shitfuck]

I wonder if this would allow Taco to run WoW on Jubei? Assuming he gets his handle back, of course.

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Gaming the O-System

[Doc Ruby]

What exactly is a "game"? Wouldn't a merger of Cedega and WINE let us run all those Windows apps under Linux? Is there a complete list of tested apps? Seems like those tests would be a great way to harness Linux's "massively parallel" userbase, and possibly the best argument for switching from Windows to Linux.

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convert instead of translate....

[Danathar]

I've always been concerned with the performance of windows games under linux. Since wine is able to translate (not emulate) windows calls into equivelant linux calls would it be possible to use the wine codebase to write software that, instead of trying to run it on the fly could look at a set of windows executables and libraries and then create a native linux binary and set of libraries (as close as wine translates now) so we could run it without running wine?

Just a thought...

Re:Software Installation when you are a n00b

[djsmiley]

Well i just did...

# make="cdinstall" emerge -av ut2004

It checked for the cd in the cd drive, and copied the files over, according to the ebuild.
It then informs me that i must edit a file to prove i've read the elua (remove the #read from the bottom) and i may play...

six months later there is a update, scary times, what should i do? Oh yeah, update silly:

# emerge sync && emerge -auD world

wow, it updated ut2004 package for me :o AND it still works! :o WOW! So hard to install linux packages, it makes me almost cry..... Oh and it installed all the dep's too, i love gentoo :D

Huh?

[NCraig]

Not according to these.

But hey, pulling things out of your ass is good fun, right?

Re:Huh?

[egjertse]

But hey, pulling things out of your ass is good fun, right?

Indeed it is. Start with small objects though. And stay away from rabbits.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't pull out the greased up Yoda doll. That stays in, no matter what.

food for thought???

[digitallysick]

Why should i pay for cedega to run windows games that i have already bought?? when i can run them in windows for free?? other than bragging rights, i see no reason for cedega, its a great idea, but, you might as well dual boot into windows and play the game, save some time, cash, etc I know it is the principal of the matter, and i agree its a good fight, but people want what is easy and cheap, if not free

Re:food for thought???

[mabhatter654]

windows isn't free! "white box" geeks tend to buy their systems a piece at a time so windows is an extra $150 purchase. You could say the same about hardware.. I just bought a high-end cpu, mobo, and video card, why should I have to pay for an OS to run my drivers on???? Right now the ONLY thing holding me back from dumping windows are the windows-only games I've invested in... if 5.0 works as well as they say, it would seem to be what I've been waiting for.

Re:food for thought???

[The Bubble]

Why should i pay for cedega to run windows games that i have already bought??

Yeah, you're right. I'd much rather pay Microsoft ~$200 for a proprietary, buggy, closed, forced-upgrade of an OS than pay $15 to Cedega so that I can run my games on my free, open, and stable OS.

Yeah, who needs Cedega?

:wq

Re:food for thought???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.. 5$ a month, after like maybe 4 years or so it only cost $240 dollars, windows expense is still $200 (way less if it was OEM)

Forced upgrade? give me a break, which version of linux are you using? 1.0 kernel? no? oh because modern stuff won't work with it uh?

Re:food for thought???

[Surye]

That "forced upgrade" didn't cost anything, and didn't license your first born to Microsoft. MS upgrades are totally different from Linux upgrades. What to make that tired old argument.

Re:food for thought???

[digitallysick]

most people have windows, like it or not, and cedega is not going to support all games that you want to play, why not get the game publishers to make linux versions of the game, and then cedega would not be needed?

No login == no play

[ee96090]

Now cedega doesn't let you play any game without registering first with a valid login/password.

Re:No login == no play

[ee96090]

OK, I'll take your word for it. That was just my interpretation to a unclear error message I got. Perhaps should not have been so peremptory.

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But will it play Civ 4?

[Darby]

I'm wondering if Civilization 4 will be playable with it.
It sure as hell isn't playable under Windows for a metric assload of people.
It's not MSs fault, just poor programming released too early, but maybe the memory leaks won't kill performance after only a couple turns.

I'll have to try it when I get home.. Well, if I get home....stupid PERC cards.

Re:But will it play Civ 4?

[Darby]

Well, somebody considered it interesting so what the heck.

I got home, turns out Dell had an update for people with my exact card and storage solution combined. It worked too ;-) So I'm home.

Download latest version, put it in /usr/portage/distfiles/.
Emerge Cedega. Trying to emerge the version I already have. Doh! My computer is the local rsync server and it's not in cron, ok emerge --sync.
Emerge cedega (take 2). cedega 5 is blocked by Point 2 Play. Right, someone else said Point 2 Play is gone. unmerge that. Don't have much there, don't care if it gets borked. Not worth even reading up first.
Emerge cedega (take 3). Worked like a charm. I love you, oh Gentoo cedega package maintainer.

Run cedega. It says, you used to have point 2 play, so lets import all your old crap. Thanks!

Stick in Civ4 disk 1, click install, click mount. Browse, select setup.exe. Bork! Bork! Bork! Crap.
Ok, try autorun.exe Nice!

Update direct X. Hmmm... well, WTF I really don't care if it kills everything go for it. OK, installing away.

"Insert disk 2". Alt-Tab click mount. Disk pops out. Insert second disk, click mount, Alt-Tab, click ok. Install away.

Finish, swap disks again, click play.
Show first loading dialog, nice.

A whole screen ( in the terminal I ran cedega from) full of:
0005:: Bad stuff: client ignore setting select events for 0x900ed830 to 1

and not much else.

Could try to figure it out. Too late, too many hours this week already. Heck, my boss already gave me Friday off.
But the cluster is up, and mysql01 and mysql02 are all updated. Amazing what changes in the year and a half since they were rebooted ;-)

YMMV obviously, I suppose a week is a little early to expect a game with the latest directX and an already demonstrated glitchy implementation on its native platform to work well.

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Nice Advert, but...

[3vi1]

I was thinking about re-subscribing to check it out, then stumbled accross this poll. For some reason, 3/4ths (at this time) of the people responding have negative feelings about the update. That's not a very good sign.

Re:Nice Advert, but...

[jalefkowit]

That's 3/4ths of 22 votes. I don't think I would hold up this poll as a representative sample of opinion :-)

Re:Nice Advert, but...

[Maserati]

Down to 70% bad on 31 votes :-)

Re:Nice Advert, but...

[Angelox]

You're right; for starters, the users that would post negative would be the ones browsing the site because they had problems - Most users don't even look at the site if they are not having trouble.
So, 22 is a small number compared to all the users.

Linux Games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only someone would create some kind of application that would let me run Linux games on Windows! This is something I would pay for. Also, some kind of Mac emulator so I wouldn't have to give up all my key Apple only applications.

Re:Linux Games?

[daverabbitz]

PearPC, for PPC mac, and BasiliskII for 68k macs, and coLinux is linux for windows, don't know how well it runs games though.
And all of those are free, except of course for the System 8/OSX Licenses.

Honest Question For Cedega Users

[poofyhairguy82]

I am thinking of messing with Cedega (buying it once is pretty cheap) just so I can finally play through the copy of Half-Life 2 I bought, but I have a question first.

Whats the best environment to use Cedega in? I know enough to know that running games inside of Gnome is a bad idea because Gnome likes to eat my resources, but what is the best way to do it? In a super light-weight Window Manager like openbox? I was planning on just logging out of Gnome and running the command to start the game inside the GDM failsafe terminal, is the a bad way to go about things?

Re:Honest Question For Cedega Users

[the_greywolf]

i actually use Enlightenment DR 17 as my main environment, but i regularly keep a second X session running with Fluxbox or similar lightweight WM specifically for running games so i don't have to worry abuot instability on my main display bringing down my game display. it works pretty well for me.

Re:Honest Question For Cedega Users

[XpirateX]

I use Gnome and it works perfectly. There isn't any noticable lag. However, if you disable any gdm, kdm, whatever, just do an "echo xterm > .xinitrc && startx", just run steam from an xterm on blank x. How's that for a window manager?
Really though, that's a bit of overkill IMO. Plus, the Steam system tray icon shows up in the Gnome systray - pretty cool.

Re:Honest Question For Cedega Users

[Mad Merlin]

In general, your DE/WM isn't going to make a big difference for gaming performance. Any RAM that the game wants to use that's already consumed will just get swapped out until it's needed again.

Probably not.

[Corngood]

Some might, but I don't see it happening for any of our products. We target consoles first (PS2/Xbox), and usually Windows as well, but so few of our sales come from the Windows version that it wouldn't even be worth doing if we didn't have the technology in place to make porting easy. Wine/Cedega/etc would be a fraction of that already small market, so it definitely wouldn't be worth it, at least not for the console-centric sort of games we make.

Why not just make it cross-platform to begin with?

[mrchaotica]

Surely if they were going to the trouble of testing for a second platform anyway, it would make more sense just to use OpenGL/OpenAL/SDL to begin with and save all the hassle, right? Besides, then it would work in Mac OS too.

Re:Software Installation when you are a n00b

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be:

# USE="cdinstall" emerge ut2004

Windows port?

[Anonymous Coward]

This cedega looks pretty good, but does it only run on Linux?????

is there a Windows port?

would someone be willing to do one?

I'd be willing to pay.

Re:Windows port?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are very unfunny asshole

If they really cared...

[bhav2007]

But truthfully, if you are actually interested in making a platform independent game, then you use a platform independent api. Epic games has a great example of this in Unreal Tournament 2004 (and 2003, I guess). The game's audio runs using OpenAl, and the video uses SDL. Thus, they have native Linux and Mac versions, and even a (beta) port to amd64! That game is one of the best made programs I have seen, with great attention to detail. Portability, stability, performance, just a great peace of work. Unfortunately, most game manufacturers couldn't care less. The greater part of the video game industry is composed of a people who care more about profits than putting hard work into a well designed program.

Re:If they really cared...

[Anonymous Coward]

UT2kN is a DirectX engine which just happens to have an OpenGL port. This in comparison to id engines which actually use OpenGL normally. UT2kN is more like if Microsoft/Bungie paid someone to port HALO to Linux. The next release of the Unreal engine is again a DirectX engine.

Nothing but good things

[tourettes]

I just wanted to chime in here quickly and say that I downloaded the new version last night, and so far, i've nothing but good things to say about it. Not only are newer games supported better (HL2), but older games that never worked before are now working.

I would say it's money well spent.

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How many more until Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that WineX would be BSD license, when Transgaming got 50.000 registered users. I guess this is also true for Cedega (or could they just get over their promise by changing name?). So I am asking, how many is paying a monthly fee for Cedega?
It must be pretty high, since Ubuntu desktops is used in the millions, and a small percentage of them is propably using Cedega.

won't subscribe until it runs Tibia

[fadir]

:P

currently I still do not get shadow effects, so I see no point in subscribing.

Depends...

[Conor Turton]

If its got OpenGL graphics option such as the original HL, my experience is that it runs faster on Cedega. If its DX, it runs a bit slower. Cedega 4.xx also runs in about DX7 in regard to effects in HL2 but PS 1.4 should fix all of that.

wine server perhaps

[bluGill]

Most of wine should not be in the kernel. However (parts of?) wine server would be better off in the kernel. One major performance problem that wine has is everytime you need to use something in the wine server, you need two context switches. For some programs this doesn't happen often, but for others it makes wine half the speed of Microsoft Windows.

If wine server was in the kernel there would be no context switch.

Note that I'm not arguing that moving wine to the kernel is the best solution to this problem. Only that it is one.

How about their proprietary-ness?

[jZnat]

What really pisses me (and many others) off about Cedega/WineX/whatever is that this is one of those rare examples where a decent open source program is forked into a proprietary code base, then of which the forker tries to squash the original competition by doing good things with the code, but never contributing back. I'm sure that the forker wouldn't have wanted to start from scratch if Wine was GPL'd (or similar) in the first place, so maybe he would have contributed towards Wine and provided a more professionally-supported version like Crossover Office has done. Insteadm, we get a binary-only program (except for the Wine components of which) that costs fucking money just to get the program, not even support! This isn't your typical "Microsoft takes the TCP/IP stack from NetBSD and puts it in Windows" sort of situation. Just imagine if Apple didn't contribute back to the community with Darwin, or with their improvements to KHTML, or other projects they contribute back to. You'd hate Apple too.

Down with Cedega! Open your code or be lower than MSFT when it comes to obscurity. At least MSFT started from their own closed code (DOS wasn't open source when Gates bought it).

Re:How about their proprietary-ness?

[NetRAVEN5000]

Exactly - they claim to be free and open-source, but their free version is pretty half-assed and doesn't work properly so you pretty much have to pay for a subscription or steal it from somewhere. What they should do is have everything you need in a free package and then just have like the work they did on keycode validation and other "anti-piracy" measures in the paid version. That way the people using the free version can still use it and play games on it, and the paid customers can use it for the latest and greatest games that require validation.