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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.
In my experience, gaming in Vista caused noticeable performance hits in every game I tried. I lost a 5-ish fps in oblivion, and up to 40 or more in source engine games. I haven't tried in awhile so I don't know if it's gotten any better but that was one of the main reasons for me switching back to XP. I have not tried any of the latest games such as cod4 or crysis in vista. I also did not try the most recent source engine games in orange box which allegedly use DX10 to help speed up some of the stuff vista slowed down. As for gaming in linux, that's something I don't do much because I prefer to get the max performance I can and wine/cedega just don't quite cut it. I do, however, use linux for just about everything else. :)
Weaksauce as they say...
Is a test that includes only 4 non-working games really a good indication of compatibility, and worthy of coverage on Slashdot? I certainly haven't had a problem with gaming on Vista, although I'm aware there's a few issues here and there.
I also did a search for one of the games listed - Darwinia - first two results on Google gave me a link to an update for Vista on the official site/forum. If he's using that (which he hasn't said either way) and still having lockups, I'd have thought there's some other issue there.
Let's see, on my Vista machine now I have the following games, unmodified that still work perfectly well in Vista, even if one or two need running in compatibility Win XP mode. List includes:
Quake 1-3, Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2, Unreal (classic), C&C95, Red Alert.
I mean, if Vista can run a DirectX 4 game, 6 major DirectX versions later, that can't be bad. All power to wine if it can do it too, but to suggest Vista is awful with games is pushing it.
throw new NoSignatureException();
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.
If you review four games, where all except one is fairly unknown, and you get Vista to crash three of these games, you should probably do one of the following: A) Try with games that aren't filled with bugs (may I suggest some more mainstream titles that have regular patches coming out), or B) Check your hardware for broken component.
And you should probably try a few more games than that to be able to draw any conclusions at all.
Just tried to install the first game on his list (Soldat) on my laptop running Vista 64 bit.
First run; no go. Soldat stops responding.
Start explorer, go to soldat directory, open soldat.exe properties. Set compatibility to Windows XP/SP2, disable Aero for this program, run as admin.
Second run; works like a charm. One more popup asking whether Soldat may access the network.
I'm not even going to bother and try the other ones. This guy should have done his homework.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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
Windows XP came out in August of 2001, it is only 6 and a half years old.
This is a pretty poor "comparison". The author makes some dodgy statements (Aero uses more CPU? not on my PC, where dwm.exe, the Desktop Window Manager that manages Aero Glass, averages around 0-2% CPU at any given time), links to some questionable sources (an article about how Vista Beta 2 sucks for gaming? Beta 2 is over a year and a half old), claiming to have used Vista for "over a year" yet having started with Beta 1 (there was no "Beta 1", but a series of CTPs, or Community Technology Previews, over two years ago and went straight to Beta 2 in May 2006 after the "feature complete" February 2006 CTP that could be considered "Beta 1"), and then finishes off by choosing a poor set of games to compare.
Since this article is all about the games, how about we look at those?
- Soldat works just fine with Vista, if you take the time to make it work. Why do you have to "make" it work? Because the Soldat installer is broken for Vista. It installs into c:\soldat by default, which is not a good idea for non-admin users (apparently it can't read the game textures from there when running as non-admin. If it installed into %programfiles% as it should, things may work better but I'd have to test that by forcing an install into %programfiles%. As it is, to get Soldat working you have to run it as admin (right-click the shortcut, choose "Run as Administrator"). That will fix the lack of graphics issue the author complained about. I didn't suffer any lockups.
- I haven't played Darwinia, but I have played DefCon and Uplink on my Vista box (from the same developers) and it works perfectly. That doesn't mean Darwinia doesn't have problems, but I find it highly suspect that one game would break on Vista when all others from that developer work perfectly.
- I don't have Blackthorne, but I've played a number of games in DOSBox that work perfectly fine in Vista, with audio. If he's getting an audio error, either it's a problem with Blackthorne itself or with his DOSBox configuration. He confirmed that by seeing the same error in Linux. My guess is this was simple user error, being unable to properly run DOSBox. If he can't figure that out, there are plenty of frontends (I like D-Fend even though it's been "dead" for two years) that he can use to abstract that away.
- I just fired up Civ IV to prove it works on Vista and it ran just fine even, though I was already running patch 1.61 (I haven't played Civ IV for probably a year now, yet I was still fully patched. Why wasn't the author?). The original run of Civ IV (which I'm using, and apparently the author is using as well) had a disc printing problem. The second disc was incorrectly labelled "Play", and you're supposed to use the "Install" disk in order to play. If the author is truly as big of a Civ fan as he claims ("When you mess with Civilization, its personal." and "I'd have a better time playing with a steaming pool of diarrhea."), he would've already known this. I didn't suffer any lockups.
That's 3 for 4 working perfectly in Vista for me (I'd call it 4 for 4 if I could replace Darwinia with DefCon), effectively debunking this article with my own set of empirical data.For posterity, I'm testing on a 2.5 year old Dell laptop with a 1.73GHz Pentium M CPU and an ATI x300 GPU, running on 2GB of RAM and running Vista Ultimate since launch. I'm not a huge PC gamer, but then neither is the author so it's a fair comparison. These days, about the only game I play on this laptop is Galactic Civilizations II, which again works flawlessly under Vista.
Also, I'm not getting into performance here because a) I don't really care to do benchmarking -- if a game works well enough for me to play, that's good enough for me, and b) my machine is a laptop, and an old one at that, so it wouldn't really be a fair comparison to the latest and greatest laptops and desktops of today.
As much as I'd like to stand around and say "Haha" and post a Nelson pic, this article is extremely uninformed and biased. Cedega/Wine can do some great things, but really now, people still don't know how to set an individual .exe's properties for OS compatibility?
Also, I think the setup might have some effect here. A GeforceFX? Jeebus. If you expect reasonable performance on that, I don't know what rock you've been under.
Let us take a look at a definition of flamebait (wikipedia): Flamebait is a message posted to a public Internet discussion group, such as a forum, newsgroup or mailing list, with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame") or argument over a topic the troll often has no real interest in.
As a professional software developer I have a professional interest in the performance of OS-es, even when it comes to gaming. My message was in no way intended to provoke emotional response; I even replaced the names of the OS-es with placeholders to indicate my argument has nothing to do with the OS-es themselves, but with the methodology followed in the article. Please elaborate why my posting should be modded 'flamebait', for I fail to see a valid reason.
On the other hand you're saying it ISN'T news for nerds that games built to run on a prior version of Windows don't work in new one but do work on a totally different operating system?No, I have said no such thing whatsoever. If apps written for A run better on B, it is indeed news. The article however fails miserably in showing evidence for such a claim.
Let me guess. You don't think it's news that newer versions of Office won't open old word documents but Open Office will.My vision on another subject that is remotely related to the one we are discussing is irrelevant. Please stick to the issue you are debating.
Don't get me wrong, the choice of games (besides perhaps Civ 4) is questionable,Which was the point I was making, together with the fact that it is bad practice to (non-randomly) pick 5 out of a population of thousands and make assumptions based solely on those 5.
but make no mistake YOU are the one trolling.Lets take a look at a definition of a troll (wikipedia): An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response.
I fail to see how my post is controversial; I also fail to see any intention of provoking an emotional response. You simply calling my post 'trolling' has no relevance.
The author of the blog article has a point.The only point the author can make is that for his obscure and very small subset of all possible games, they run better on wine than on vista. My point is that that says absolutely nothing about vista in general.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
I agree! I'm really surprised that this guy couldn't get these games to work, because every small issue i've had with software in vista (which is pretty rare, though more common than XP obviously), i just fiddle with compatibility mode or admin mode, and i can make it work. Sure, it's not always intuitive (if you normally click on a shortcut to open a program, you'll have to find the actual .exe to change compatibility settings... a task i know my mother could never do), but it's really not that big of a deal... Vista problems? WTF?
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Rewrite Windows so it becomes more secure, be gone with legacy junk they said... So Microsoft almost did it but kept some huge legacy still working in Vista. Now they scream "Oh noes, our old legacy stuff breaks!"... Damned if they do, damned if they don't. These so called "Articles" are getting ridiculous, even for Slashdot. Yes, seriously!
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant... Really? Several readers? Took time out of their day to write you to tell you about this one readers rant? OK, I'll check out the article. This must be good. What? Only four games tested, and by someone who is a self-professed non-gamer? Let's see what he had to say...
Game 1: Basically didn't work. Oh sure, he got Soldat running in WINE eventually, after tweaking, and gives the impression that it was unplayable. Vista 0 - Linux 0.
Game 2: Darwinia, patched to the latest version (a reasonable suggestion for any game, really, in this day and age) ran with a horrible frame rate in Vista, but "runs fine under Wine (even at a tolerable speed)" Not at "a normal" or "expected" framerate, but at "a tolerable speed." I have no idea what that means. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, but someone might want to share the fact that Darwinia is available in a native Linux version. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 3: DOSBox under Vista hangs, and he says it's basically a DOSBox problem. Okay, fine...so he tries it in Linux and it also fails, though in a different way. In Vista he tries to shut off the sound in the config, and nothing, but in Linux he changes the config from SBPro to SB. I'd like to know, did he try that in Vista? (First rule of troubleshooting...assume nothing.) I don't think I can give Linux a point on this because there's just not enough information. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 4: Civ 4. The author of the article says he's a big Civ fan, and frankly so am I. Great game series. He gets a message that indicates known compatibility issues, so tries to run it anyway (why not...might as well see what happens.) It hangs on him. Now, anecdotes are anecdotes, but my buddy and I have been playing the Civ games together for sometime, and he recently (within the last year) put Vista on his machine. Afterward we both purchased Civ 4 (I'm running it on XP.) He installed it, loaded it, and (drum roll)...it worked. No window claiming "known compatibility issues", it didn't hang his machine. It's not even a state of the art machine. We've been playing for several months now, and neither of us has had any issues with Windows "hanging", which suggests to me that there is more going on here than just a windows issue (even though windows could be involved.) He does say that after patching the game (there it is again), well, I'm not sure what he says.
Update: With the 1.61 patch, Civ4 no longer freezes, but it like in WineX, it does not recognize the cd labled "Play / Disc 2 when in the drive. An improvement, but still not good enough. I think he said it didn't work. Oh, and he could install in under Cedega and it wouldn't run. It wouldn't even install for him with Wine, "but at least it doesn't hang my machine."
Using highly refined comparitive techniques similar to those in the "rant", and given that my friend's experience running Civ under Vista has been completely smooth, I'm gonna give Vista a point on this one. Vista 1 - Linux 1.
Margin of error: 1000 games, either way. I don't care if one "handles application failures more gracefully than" the other. If I'm the average user who wants to game as is implied in the article, I will be as confused by nothing happening as I would be by the computer hanging and restarting. Looks like a tie to me.
Look, folks, I have no love for Vista (tried it, tested it, didn't like it), but this was about as scientific a test of Vista's compatibility as reading tea leaves.
And just to add 2 cents, I don't think any of those games were sold on the assumption that they would run in Vista, just because it's supposed to be backwards compatible.
I'm gonna go with flamebait on this one.
Do You Experiment?
Let's see: the article is titled "Linux has better Windows compatibility than Vista"; it's even in the url. Comparisons between operating systems have (traditionally) high emotional responses in discussion groups (I recall comp.os.*.advocacy newsgroups in the pre-www days). Making such a claim (os A > os B) while offering the worst possible 'evidence' (non random 5 out of thousands) can certainly be called trolling/flamebaiting.
I have clearly stated why I think this article is flamebait. You have still failed to give proper argumentation why my response is flamebait or trolling. In fact, on my question: 'why is this flamebait?' you answer: 'you called the article flamebait'. So in your logic, stating that something is flamebait is flamebait in itself?
I am not complaining, I am calling for valid arguments. You continue to fail to give them.
So the summary was bad. Why does that make the whole thing flamebait?Please, look at the title again. The title of TFA that is. The whole point the writer is making is that vista is worse than wine, because his non-randomly selected 5 games run better on wine. That makes it flamebait to me.
Your failures aren't my problem.Please stick to argumentation and stop picking on words. The message I am trying to get across to you is that you have not pointed out why my response is flamebait. 'I fail to see' is a friendly way of saying 'you did not make it clear'.
If you can't see why asking to mod/censor an article that might be of interest to others might provoke an emotional response, I don't see how I can help you.Ah, now we are getting somewhere. As you might know we slashdotters are not able to mod or censor articles. On regular occasions comments are given like 'nothing to see here, please move along' or '-1, Flamebait'. They are not ment to really censor the article, but comment on its newsworthyness. Such comments are lingua franca on slashdot, just like RTFA, IANAL or references to the goatse man. That you are emotionally provoked by such a statement surprises me, to say the least.
If new versions of windows are less compatible with even some software than Linux emulating an old version that is of interest to me, and I don't appreciate people like yourself trying to shout down the article.Well, if you do not appreciate that, than do not accuse me of things I clearly did not. Keep in mind you have NOT given any valid argument why my response should be modded flamebait, so I cannot reach any other conclusion than that you incorrectly accused me of something because you did not 'appreciate' what I said. I find that a bit sad.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
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.
In fact, let's just put this whole story to bed now.
Darwinia on Vista x64.
Soldat on Vista x64.
Civilization 4 on Vista x64.
Blackthorne on Vista x64 in DOSBox.
TFA is verifiably false, and the title is misleading.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien