linux for gaming

Check out http://www.winehq.org/ and http://www.cedega.com/

http://www.tuxgames.com/browse.cgi?&category=all

Native linux games will run quite well, sometimes even better than they do on other operating systems.

With WINE and Cedega your mileage will vary depending on the game.

You can also get some hardware to help improve performance but that depends on your budget.

What kind of hardware do you have now and what games are you into?

GL  

e6750
mobo- p5k-vm
2 gigs ddr2
nvidia 8600gts
250 gig sata 2

and the games im into are stalker, oblovion, bf2, red orchestra, hellagte london, silent hunter 3 and 4, world conflict. those are teh games im playing at the moment

Check out the WINE appdb and the Cedega list

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=versio...

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applic...

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applic...

http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php?iCatId=2

http://games.cedega.com/gamesdb/

Some games require work to get them working. Some work out of the box.

GL  

thank you. ill see if i can get soemthing working. is there any advantage with usign linux for gaming

To be perfectly honest, no. Gaming on linux is entirely possible, but rarely superior. The only game on your list I've played under linux is oblivion, and its awfully buggy.

Oblivion is buggy on any operating system.

It crashes constantly on windows.

Amazing game but very unstable  

For heavy gaming I would recommend dual booting Linux and XP ( reluctantly ).

Vista sucks and is horrible for games, believe or not, some people have argued Linux plays many windows games better than Vista.

http://wastingtimewithmikeandari.wordpress.com/2008/01/...

thansk for the info and ye si agree oblivion is crashy sometime i can only run ir for 10 mins at a tiem before i it crashes my compuetr our reboots it and other tiems i cant run it at all. al tho oldblivion runs amazingly

If the code is that bad I'd be taking it back for a refund no matter how good the gameplay was. Why do we put up with crappy not fit for public release code like this?

Good point.

-20 buggy
+50 gameplay
+50 graphics
+50 addictive
-25 closed source
-10 time consuming
-10 runs on xp
-10 no native linux version

+75 overall

 

Wow, i had heard horror stories about oblivion being pretty buggy and crashing alot, but i didn't know it could get THAT bad. I remember Morrowind liked to crash quite a bit as well.

In my own experience though, Oblivion really didn't crash that much. The only time I ever had a problem was if I decided to alt-tab out of it to look up where item X was online. Even so, this would only happen maybe once in every 5 times I alt-tabbed .

All that being said, I completely agree with what linux_0 has said about this subject. Trust this guy, he seriously knows what he is doing (and in fairness, so do the bulk of the guys here).

-Zorak

P.S. All the references to oblivion above were in terms of usage on windows; I haven't tried to get it running in linux via wine/cedega.

Thanks  

In my experience Morrowind crashed quite a bit, not quite a bad as Oblivion though.

Naturally the gaming experience and crashes may vary from machine to machine depending on the hardware, OS, drivers, patches, etc it depends on what the cause of the crash is.

I guess that I'm just very aware of poor coding at the moment, both general SW and also code used on many devices such as routers etc. I'm presently in a war with a wireless router for a friend and don't even start me on the joy that is the non working Wi-Fi drivers on my dads new vista laptop.

I just think that as a paying consumer I have a right to be supplied with something that works, far to often it just does not do what it claims to. In the UK we have the sale of goods act which gives consumer protection against defective goods but I have yet to see it used against a SW company. As somebody that used to test software for a living I just find the whole situation unacceptable.

My windows oblivion would probably crash on average every 3-4 hours (not necessarily in one sitting), or like zorak said, if I alt-tabbed about 3-5 times.

My wine oblivion was initially impressive. I followed all the instructions and transferred over a save game from windows. It loaded my game just fine and the game looked pretty good. I looked around a bit, the framerate was decent enough, but it locked up within about 10 footsteps. I chalked it up to a fluke and loaded it up again and had about the same experience. So it basically 'works'...you just can't play it =)

Thread hijack: the wine appDB has been down for the last 2 days. Anyone know if COD4 runs?

http://games.cedega.com/gamesdb/games/view.mhtml?game_i...

I do not think COD4 runs  

zorak: its a pretty bad horror story my oblivion. one day i got it to run for 20mins.

on my old pentium4 1,6ghz, with 1 gig rdram. with a 9200ati. it ran amazingly with oldblivion.

another game that is just as buggy is stalker. oh and i tried using linux for games it just aint my cup of tea.

I will reiterate what I said earlier...

For heavy gaming I would recommend dual booting Linux and XP ( reluctantly ).

Native Linux games will run very well. Many, many old games and DOS games will probably run quite well on Linux (DOSbox is great).

 

OpenGL games will typically run well on Linux through WINE was well. For example, the original Half-Life runs perfectly on WINE for me. I've not tried to run HL2 yet which uses DirectX. But nothing will beat a native Linux version of a game, many of which run at least as well on Linux as they do on Windows. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a recent big title that has a native Linux version and runs very, very well on Linux.

Hopefully they will also finish the native Linux version of Unreal Tournament 3 (sooner rather than later).

 


-Zorak

I must admit that it has been a long time since I've been down here.

I must be one of the mystical few who have had very little problems with Oblivion. I've played frequently and the only crashes I've had with it were due to Nvidia's non-WHQL pre-release drivers (the initial ones for Crysis). I'm not running anything special either, an X2 4400, 320 MB 8800GTS and 2GB. The game has always run nicely with very acceptable image settings and speed. Once the pre-release drivers were removed (properly) the game runs without issue for me. It's really too bad about everyone's troubles because it really is a gorgeous game.

Im using a Acer Ferrari and running Ubuntu 7.10

http://www.antarctica-rbak.nl/ubuntu/acer_ferrari.php
http://www.antarctica-rbak.nl/ubuntu/screenshot1.php

Your experience doesn't seem normal. I put in over 300 hours in that game and could count the crashes on one hand. This was using XP. I can't say how it does in Vista, though.

There is a lot going on in Oblivion, so much that if you have any sort of hardware issues/instabilities, it will expose it.

Never experience any trouble with Oblivion too...
But with the native UT 2004 installation on my Mandriva, I had some pretty cool time. Within these days, I will put Mandriva 2008.1

I run Vista 32 bit and I have only had one lockup with Oblivion. I have never just had an outright crash.

physx7, just out of curiousity, do you use Linux at all? Anyways, I want to help steer this topic away from complaints and counter-arguments about Oblivion's stability; suffice it to say that some of us have problems with it and others don't.

On a different note, I heard that steam may be ported to Linux soon? Additionally, it may be possible that UT3 for Linux will come out as soon as they port Steam to Linux. I think this would be a big step forward for Linux if this ends up happening, however, I am a bit weary of getting my hopes up on this one.

-Zorak

Not at the moment. I want to try it out real bad but I don't have my own computer right now. As soon as I build myself a new computer I will do a dual boot with linux and Vista/XP.

The computer in my sig was bought out by my Mom. Sooo I'm in the market for a new one.

It's quite possible my systems have problems but morrowind crashed on a regular basis ( BSOD ) on a P4 for years and Oblivion BSODs on 3 of my AMD64s, 2 with nVidia cards and 1 with an ATI card.

I think what basketcase said is at least partially valid "There is a lot going on in Oblivion, so much that if you have any sort of hardware issues/instabilities, it will expose it. "


I've noticed that merchant inventories get slooooooooooooooooow when they have too much merchandise that tells me there's a bug somewhere.

Also the player's inventory gets super slooooooooooooooooooooooow sometimes.

The BSODs seem to be more frequent when there is a lot of intense combat goin on.

Despite all the problems i've had I can't wait for TES 5  

I sure hope it runs on Linux  

What are your specs and what kind of FPS's are you getting in Linux?