WINE, Performance?

Anyone used WINE? I'm mainly thinking about using it for my gaming machine.

Microsoft gave me a heck of a time activating, my legal copy of Windows (this particular copy actually only gets installed on my gaming PC too), because I've installed it to many times? I told them if they made a stable OS, I wouldn't have to install it every other week....

So I'd like to give Microsoft the complete heave-ho in the house, if I could Linux to run on my gaming machine, with SLI support. The catch being is I like my dual monitors, so I normally only turn the SLI on when I'm gaming. Can I easily switch between SLI and one just one video card easily in Linux (I'm running ubuntu 6.10 on all the laptops, so thats probably what I'd run on the desktop too)?

So how about it, is WINE actually capable of playing newer PC games reliably, at a decent frame rate?

Reply to Mr5oh

Given the responce to this thread I don't think you are going to get much of a reply here. I'd advise having a search on the Ubuntu forum and also a look at the WINE home page to see just what they are supporting at the min.

As for turning SLi on and off this would be down to the OS graphics drivers and not WINE itself. Unless you can do it in Linux you will not be able to do it in WINE.

Reply to audiovoodoo

WINE is great but sadly not perfect.

Some games work fine others work half way and some not at all.

Ideally you would want to run native Linux versions of the games you are interested in if a Linux version exists.

For WINE compatibility be sure to check out:

http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php

and

http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/

GL :-D

Reply to linux_0

Thanks for the links, that helps a ton, the second one also has screen shots, many with FPS stats.

I noticed the second one, seems to recommend Cedega, which I hadn't heard of until recently. Do you prefer Cedega over WINE, or are they both roughly the same?

I'm gonna try WINE on the laptop tonight and see how it works. If it works decently I may put it on the desktop, but right now, I'm having problems even getting a live cd to boot on my desktop.

Specs:
AMD64 3800 Dual Core
SATA Raptor as the main hard drive (I'm thinking this maybe causing the problem?)
IDE Backup drive.
7800GT x2
2-gig of ram

I'm trying to use the 32-bit version of ubuntu (easier to get flash working), for some reason booting from the CD always freezes in the same place, but doesn't give me any messages? Could the SATA be the problem? (Sorry to ask a second new question in the same post)

Thanks for the help so far guys!

Reply to Mr5oh

Quote :

Thanks for the links, that helps a ton, the second one also has screen shots, many with FPS stats.

I noticed the second one, seems to recommend Cedega, which I hadn't heard of until recently. Do you prefer Cedega over WINE, or are they both roughly the same?

I'm gonna try WINE on the laptop tonight and see how it works. If it works decently I may put it on the desktop, but right now, I'm having problems even getting a live cd to boot on my desktop.

Specs:
AMD64 3800 Dual Core
SATA Raptor as the main hard drive (I'm thinking this maybe causing the problem?)
IDE Backup drive.
7800GT x2
2-gig of ram

I'm trying to use the 32-bit version of ubuntu (easier to get flash working), for some reason booting from the CD always freezes in the same place, but doesn't give me any messages? Could the SATA be the problem? (Sorry to ask a second new question in the same post)

Thanks for the help so far guys!

SATA shouldn't be a problem at all.

You can run 32bit code on AMD64 / x86_64 so you can go ahead and use x86_64 or AMD64 and install a 32bit firefox and the 32bit flash player.

Works great :-D

If Ubuntu doesn't work try FC6 x86_64 or SuSE.

Cedega is essentially a commercial version of WINE it's $5 a month or $55 a year.

http://www.transgaming.com/index.p [...] d=36&meid=

That way you are supporting development you get help and you get to vote on what games they will work on next :-D

It's not perfect but you are helping the community get games running on WINE :-D

Reply to linux_0

Quote :

SATA shouldn't be a problem at all.

You can run 32bit code on AMD64 / x86_64 so you can go ahead and use x86_64 or AMD64 and install a 32bit firefox and the 32bit flash player.

Yeah, I thought about going that route, but I haven't really noticed any difference going to the 32-bit version. Is there a big benifit going to the 64-bit?

I've head lots of good things about SUSE, and I've run Fedora, Mandrake, RedHat, and tried Slackware (never got that running), so I think I may try SUSE (since I haven't tried that yet) on the desktop next. I've been happy with Ubuntu so far though, so I may try the 64-bit verision instead of the 32-bit version on the desktop.

Time to mess with WINE some, I'll let you know how it goes.

Reply to Mr5oh

Quote :

SATA shouldn't be a problem at all.

You can run 32bit code on AMD64 / x86_64 so you can go ahead and use x86_64 or AMD64 and install a 32bit firefox and the 32bit flash player.

Yeah, I thought about going that route, but I haven't really noticed any difference going to the 32-bit version. Is there a big benifit going to the 64-bit?

I've head lots of good things about SUSE, and I've run Fedora, Mandrake, RedHat, and tried Slackware (never got that running), so I think I may try SUSE (since I haven't tried that yet) on the desktop next. I've been happy with Ubuntu so far though, so I may try the 64-bit verision instead of the 32-bit version on the desktop.

Time to mess with WINE some, I'll let you know how it goes.

SuSE is decent :-D Unfortunately some people would argue Novell recently went over to the dark side by signing a potentially catastrophic deal with microsoft.

Fedora Core 6 x86_64 and Ubuntu 6.10 AMD64 are both quite good.

x86_64 is 25-80% faster when running 64bit code vs. 32bit code.

So there is a good reason to use x86_64 :-D

Here's some fancy stuff FC6 can do:

http://lunapark6.com/?p=2454

What kind of motherboard do you have by the way and what versions of Linux have you tried on it?

Some newer hardware is not fully supported by all distros.

Reply to linux_0

Its a ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, if I remember correctly.

I've only tried Ubuntu on this particually machine, the other distros where on an older PC.

Installed WINE last night, and apparantly I still have some tweaking, no sound, and never got any games running, a few would complete installation but that was it. I'm sure its still something in the Config files.

Reply to Mr5oh

Quote :

Its a ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, if I remember correctly.

I've only tried Ubuntu on this particually machine, the other distros where on an older PC.

Installed WINE last night, and apparantly I still have some tweaking, no sound, and never got any games running, a few would complete installation but that was it. I'm sure its still something in the Config files.

The ASUS A8N-SLI is a good board :-D

FC6 x86_64, Ubuntu 6.10-amd64 and similar distros should work on it beautifully.

Just make sure you stay away from the older distros.

Be sure to check winehq for documentation, tips and tricks on how to get games running on WINE.

Also check the WINE forums, etc.

http://winehq.com/site/getting_help

You may want to give Cedega a try ( it's commercial but you can get a membership for $5 a month - 3 months up front IIRC ).

http://cedega.com/

GL :-D

Reply to linux_0

As a minute ray of hope, when I did setup some applications under WINE (Photoshop and a CPLD/FPGA schematic design and programming app called MAXplus+II) the runtime was equivalent to that of Windows on the same machine.

Also, while reading the NVidia driver README file for the latest driver, it unfortunately looks as if enabling/disabling SLI requires changing the X config and restarting the X server (YMMV, that's just the feeling I got by reading the guide as it didn't discuss changing such a thing on-the-fly using their GUI-based settings tool)

Reply to bmouring

Quote :

Also, while reading the NVidia driver README file for the latest driver, it unfortunately looks as if enabling/disabling SLI requires changing the X config and restarting the X server

Thanks for the info.

I'm gonna get WINE working on the laptop before I wipe my desktop to try it out. Still need to play with the config files some I guess, some stuff installs, but nothing runs yet.

Reply to Mr5oh

Quote :

Also, while reading the NVidia driver README file for the latest driver, it unfortunately looks as if enabling/disabling SLI requires changing the X config and restarting the X server

Thanks for the info.

I'm gonna get WINE working on the laptop before I wipe my desktop to try it out. Still need to play with the config files some I guess, some stuff installs, but nothing runs yet.

You do not have to wipe your desktop. You can use parted / gparted / qtparted to resize your NTFS partition to make room for a Linux partition.

Of course backing up your data is strongly recommended just in case even though this is usually a safe operation.

GL :-D

Reply to linux_0

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