Is WINE good enough?

[sourceninja]

Thats odd, I've played tons that worked fine.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

TF2 almost works fine (lol, only game I've tested) except the perf is crap because something is eating my CPU alive.

Oh yea, and I think Exaile is pretty good for music (native Linux, don't worry about issues)

MPC has some issues on my computer.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: pcgamer321
Lol. Microsoft and its monopoly

Hmm, would dual booting do any good for me? Like, any advantages Linux has against windows for non gaming purposes.

I find it runs smoother and faster booting, plus a lot of the free utilities (movie making, disc burning, etc) tend to be better than the free stuff for windows.

BTW, Wine is hit or miss, only way to know is to try. Sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes not so perfectly. The more popular/older a game is, the better chance it has of working.

Also, get Envy if you're using ubuntu, it makes sure you always have the latest graphics card drivers. This matters a lot if you're using newer cards, or really any ati card.
Annnnnnndddd, nvidia is leagues better in linux 3d than ati. Nvidia basically rewrote the whole linux 3d driver stack from the ground up (for good reasons), and most things are made to work with it. Nvidia was, afterall, the only option for linux 3d for quite sometime.

I find for older games (even only a few years old), Linux + Wine is better than running the same game under Windows, especially under Vista. Dawn of War and its expansion ran like crap for me under Vista, but run perfectly smooth (as they should) under Linux. Many old games run better (or at all) under Wine that won't run on windows anymore.

Sadly, I find myself in Windows a lot, just because it takes so long for it to boot completely with all the services in the background and what not that it's easier to leave it booted then to continually reboot when I want to play a recent game. Of course, there's always the option of having 2 PCs, one with windows and a graphics card for gaming, the other a Linux box that just streams the video over gigabit ethernet. That way you get full compatibility + performance for games. (well, except the older ones that don't work well on windows anymore)

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
Thats odd, I've played tons that worked fine.

Source games work, but at about 1 FPS on my laptop 7900GS (using the latest drivers from nvidia's OpenSUSE repository). Capitalism 2 crashes (known issue, check the wine app db). My games that use 16-bit color fail to work (crash saying that Linux is unable to switch to 16-bit color).

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: sourceninja
Thats odd, I've played tons that worked fine.

Source games work, but at about 1 FPS on my laptop 7900GS (using the latest drivers from nvidia's OpenSUSE repository). Capitalism 2 crashes (known issue, check the wine app db). My games that use 16-bit color fail to work (crash saying that Linux is unable to switch to 16-bit color).

Read the AppDB for your source games. Most of them require a bit of tweaking, but it is set and forget type tweaking. After that they work fine. (Slowness is one bug that I have seen fixed)

All the origional half-life games work without a hitch (Half-life, TF, CS, ect) all be it a bit old. Jedi Knight DF2, works with some tweaking, Jedi Academy works. and SW:KOTOR works with the right settings. (ok, I like Starwars games )

Yes wine isn't perfect, but in a lot of cases it can be setup to be able to run the game. That's why you should always read the instructions on AppDB.

 

[phantom404]

Only thing stopping me is ati 4800 series + wine. I have yet got them to play nicely together. Not sure if its an ati bug or wine bug. But ati had their 8.7 drivers and 8.8 drivers for linux and the problem still there. 8.6 drivers are said to be the most stable for linux but doesnt support the 4800 series

 

[Scarpozzi]

Dual boot ftw!

I've seen wine work with CounterStrike Source and a few others....the games looked good and the fonts were a little different in some games. I did see a few freezes and crashes, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

If you're big into gaming, you'll want to stick with Windows for the most part. Considering most people pay $50+ for a game on a console system, buying an operating system is a good investment...especially considering Vista64 and XP64 can use over 4GB of RAM. You'll see a jump in performance when the system is loading complex maps.

 

[pcgamer321]

Yea, that it what I am, a big gamer.
But I just have this strong urge to try Kubuntu! Maybe its my inner nerd lol.

Dual boot it is!