I've been doing a little (emphasis on little) research on using Wine and Cedega on Linux. Wine is free but looks like it requires quite a bit of expertise/experience and tweaking, and I'm no expert on Linux and such. Cedega has a $5 a month subscription fee and comes with support and looks like it requires less tweaking that perhaps Wine would. Question is: is that price per user, or per installation?

Or you can get an OEM copy of WinXP for a one-time fee of about $90 and be (mostly) assured that everything will work well indefinitely.

Thoughts?

Well to be honest, I was considering to go linux at one point too. However, Wine and Cedega couldn't 'emulate' all games properly so until linux gaming improves, I'll have to stick with XP. Just my two cents.

to be honest both are not going to make you able to switch from using windows as your primary gaming os, I have tried both of them and they are only rearly compatible with a few games and not the majority. For example any installer that uses .net will not run on ethier. Linux is most excelent for native games like ut2004 though.

Having used both for gaming, Linux just does not compare to XP.

I wish Linux was up there with xp, buy it just isn't. Just stick with XP for gaming.

I may not have configured Linuz corretly, but even native games, such as UT2004, still ran at half the speed that they did in XP.

Americas Army is the best game i've seen that runs on linux.

Window's is free...

Quote: Originally Posted by Zaltan Window's is free...

It is? How so?

Use google!

Quote: Originally Posted by Merkwurdigliebe It is? How so?

?.........

Some of the reasons that windows was so easily able to snatch gaming glory and will still be able to hold it is because they give developers tools that allow them to build a set of standards that work not only on almost any PC running windows but also their gaming consoles. If you remember the older windows games before Direct X came out or even DOS based games you would remember an era that had games shipping with hundreds of graphics card socket drivers and hundreds of profiles for sound cards so that you "might" be able to play if you had a supported card. Still today there is a limit to your ability to play without supported hardware but the SDK's and Direct X have taken the guessing game out of the developers end and allowed them to produce standardized content that DOES NOT FIND A LIMITOR in the development. There are a lot of games for Linux that use sockets similar to Direct X but there is nothing as wide as Microsoft's Implementation on both Xbox and their Windows platforms. WINE is a very good example but what we are talking about is emulation with little or no ingenuity in development. Linux is suffering from emulation. Simply put: if all developers are doing is making linux programs that can read windows drivers then your loosing the major benefit of Linux which was to keep things small, compact, original and free.

OpenGL - it's why Unreal Tourney and a few assorted others worked happily cross-platform. DirectX does have better development tools though. So slightly less work, and the limited gaming market of Linux and Mac made made the selection of DirectX the easier path to take.

Wine is not an emulator. It's right there in the acronym. It's a reverse engineered implementation of some Windows API's.

Quote: Originally Posted by thedemonxanth Wine is not an emulator. It's right there in the acronym. It's a reverse engineered implementation of some Windows API's.

Well lets just examine that statement for a moment.
Here's a quick snippet from the Wiki about emulation.

"Emulation refers to the ability of a program or device to imitate another program or device. Many printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. By emulating an HP printer, a printer can work with any software written for a real HP printer. Emulation "tricks" the software into believing that a device is really some other device."

Even if WINE didn't use window API's it can still be classified as an emulator because of the massive ammount of proprietary windows files that are required to run the programs under linux.

It is very much safe to say that because these are software based implimentations of "emulating" software that they are NOT infact ground breaking software development kits in their own right...no developer in their right mind will optimize for WINE or Linux gaming because of the ammount of software transcoding that happens at the runtime. Your taking the development responsability out of the hands of the platform engineers and placing it on the game developers...as if GAMES weren't expensive enough already.

We've discussed this over at GameApex a good bit. Wine (and Cedega, Crossover Office, etc.) all have severe limitations. There's only a handful of good games that run natively, though most have some sort of Linux server available... that should tell you something. And as long as game developers use massive amounts of DirectX to run their games, it will always be that way. I think the few that have gone with OpenGL deserve much credit, because it really does broaden the amount of platforms you can use it on.

Anyways, I don't really like military-style shooters, so I'm happy with my native port of Descent3 and a few other games.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wellmont Some of the reasons that windows was so easily able to snatch gaming glory and will still be able to hold it is because they give developers tools that allow them to build a set of standards that work not only on almost any PC running windows but also their gaming consoles. If you remember the older windows games before Direct X came out or even DOS based games you would remember an era that had games shipping with hundreds of graphics card socket drivers and hundreds of profiles for sound cards so that you "might" be able to play if you had a supported card. Still today there is a limit to your ability to play without supported hardware but the SDK's and Direct X have taken the guessing game out of the developers end and allowed them to produce standardized content that DOES NOT FIND A LIMITOR in the development. There are a lot of games for Linux that use sockets similar to Direct X but there is nothing as wide as Microsoft's Implementation on both Xbox and their Windows platforms. WINE is a very good example but what we are talking about is emulation with little or no ingenuity in development. Linux is suffering from emulation. Simply put: if all developers are doing is making linux programs that can read windows drivers then your loosing the major benefit of Linux which was to keep things small, compact, original and free.

Wrong, Wine Is Not an Emulator.

Wine is a compatibility layer to the Windows API. More or less it's a reverse engineered Windows API, another good example is Mono, aka .Net for Linux. It allows developers to basically convert a program over from .Net Windows to Mono on Linux, with little to no actual work involved.

Wine allows for the code to be ran natively on Linux, without the need for a emulator which emulates the windows enviroment, such as VMWare or Parralells.

If Wine was a emulator, it's developers would have a IP case brought upon them by Microsoft.

if you are not cutting edge, linux is decent for gaming.

gaming companies dont want to make games for linux, due to the lack of money =) i wish they would make versions that would work with cedega, so they could keep there licensing =)

windows = gaming / all around purpose computing

linux = web servers / databases / productivity applications

mac = music / video production / eye-candy

Quote: Originally Posted by THRiLL KiLL linux = web servers / databases / productivity applications

You forgot nerd pride

I don't think linux is actually all that bad of a gaming platform, you just have to be fine with not being on the gaming curve. I have a linux installation on my laptop where it suits me perfectlly since most of my real gaming is left to my desktop. But since this laptop goes with me on trips and on plane rides, I've been downloading a lot of games to keep me happy.

A lot of using linux is not wanting to support the big guy, at least for me, so I think it actually works very well as an indie platform. Which reminds me that I should pick up the latest introversion title

Quote: Originally Posted by Wafflesomd ?.........

legally...