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Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant in which he tells the story of being so frustrated with gaming on Windows Vista that he tried comparing gaming on Vista to that on Linux using Wine, with surprising results. "This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't have a huge collection of games to try out, but even still with just a few hours of frustrating work, I have been able to show that not only is Linux a reasonable alternative to Vista for gaming (XP is still king though), but also that Linux handles application failures more gracefully than Vista. Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux."
-just to head this off-
I'm Hearing Year of the Linux Machine around here a lot again (again, or continuously... you decide).
Strangely, I've yet to hear a kind word from the normals in the real world.
Maybe this Linux thing isn't catching on quite as much as you think it is.
(not trying to troll, just an observation)
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Years ago, just after WoW's beta, I used to run it using cedega. There were still crashing bugs that would hose my friends machines and require rebooting back then; I would just restart cedega when one happened to me. In fact, I don't remember if I *ever* played WoW using a real Windows install. I quit fairly soon after beta though, less than a year.
On my computer, WoW runs better under Wine in Linux than on Windows XP. Faster load times and such. Not saying that's the case for everyone, but I have heard quite a few others say the same.
I couldn't play Icewind Dale II in Windows XP. There are issues with many laptop input drivers screwing with the keyboard in that game. I couldn't resolve the problem, so I switched to linux, copied the Icewind Dale II directory, which was patched and had a no-CD crack, and it runs swimmingly. The only issue is that my linux cursor still shows on top of the game, but I rarely notice it.
I also remember trying to play Escape From Monkey Island(tm) in Windows XP, but there was this one part of the game that you couldn't get past (rowing up to Pegnose Pete's swamp shack). When playing The Curse of Monkey Island(tm), the cut-scenes would blaze past in seconds. I had to install Windows 98 to play the games. Compatibility mode didn't cut it. Other games that won't work in XP are Myst and Riven.
Laptop drivers are a bitch in Windows, and so I blame laptop manufacturers like Sony and Dell for making quirky hardware that need special drivers. I blame Microsoft for allowing such stupid driver issues to exist. Finally, I blame the developers for not using the APIs that they're supposed to be using, like DirectX, OpenGL, or SDL.
Here is what I wonder: How will the suites that provide emulation and Windows-compatible API hosts deal with Vista? Will they too eventually have to implement all kinds of crazy code that changes the way the Windows API behaves to make calls respond like they do in Vista, add in all the various "compatibility" and "security" shims that Vista implements to make newer Windows apps behave properly? After all, the developers will have built and tested their applications in this environment.
I wonder how projects such as Wine will ultimately deal with this issue.
I too play WoW on Linux - Without cedega that is. There is an endless discussion on the internal cedage forums about it - but the bottom line is: Sometimes it's better to use an up-to-date Wine with OpenGL instead.
The only thing which does not work is the Microphone - but it won't work the Linux version of Skype either so the trouble is elsewhere.
See my installation aid: http://martin.krischik.com/index.php/Main/WoWOnLinux
Martin
Actually the test was pretty good.
The test was designed to test Vista`s compatibility, so the choice of games wasnt bad.
It included an old DOS-title, several Indie games (not optimized for Vista, but made for XP) and pretty recent well known game (CIV 4).
Im also pretty sure that DOS-compatibility is at least equal on linux as compared to Vista, based on my own experience.
I dont know about the coding quality of the indie games but i guess point is, Vista is not compatible to XP. Ok who would have guessed that?
And to find out that even a recent game such as CIV4 doesnt work without the latest patches and fiddling around, well talk about compatibility.
Well, actually. you can.
Microsoft bought VirtualPC from Connectix(?) a few years back; they now give it away. So just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I just popped up a DOS 6.22 window with Masters of Magic, a Win98SE window with Starcraft, and for giggles a Debian window running Americas Army. All run fine, simultaneously.
Of course, this is on Win2k. and Americas Army didn't have a great frame rate. but thats probably because the machine only has 1gb of ram and a Geforce4 MX 4000 card.
It also works on XP. I've had my XP-MCE Core Duo / Nvidia 7300 Laptop running 6 simultaneous "Alien Armageddon" games.
Vista....wouldn't even think about trying it.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
I found the same with many games. Perhaps you could get similar results by really tweaking out NTFS, but I've found that ReiserFS really ran circles around my window default FAT32/NTFS windows config, and XFS was pretty damn good too.
Merits of the OS as a whole aside, the windows world has seen pretty much nothing new except unmaterialized promises in the filesystem arena, whilst 'nix filesystems have experience regular updates and steady growth.
From the article: "Could 98 really be the year Linux breaks into the main stream corporate world in a big way?".
Really, it's not funny anymore.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!