More than 300 games are available for Linux today. However,plenty more are out there that are available only to Windows users,and if there's one thing Linux users don't like to accept, it's that wecannot do something everyone else can do. To that extent, anumber of products and projects exist that make it possible to playWindows games under Linux (and to run other Windows programs as well). Aquick list of these options include the WINE Project, Win4Lin, CrossOverOffice, TransGaming's Cedega, VMware and the simple fact that somegames, such as many of those from Id Software (creator ofDOOM, Quakeand so on) actually have binaries available that let you run the gamenatively under Linux.Let's take a look at each of these options, see how it fits into the bigpicture and how likely it is to run the types of games you like,keeping in mind that sometimes the games you'll be able to use areolder games rather than newer ones. WINE—The Free SolutionThe WINE Project's software (see the on-line Resources) allows people to run MS-DOSand 32-bit Windows applications under Linux and the free BSDs.
WhetherWINE will run your particular game is heavily dependent on a number offactors. Because this is free software, your best bet is simply to give ita try and see if it works. Depending on which Linux distribution you'reusing, WINE may be difficult or simple to install. You may find that WINEis bundled in your distribution's core or external package repositories.Those who don't have this option can go to the WINE site and click theDownload button. You may find a prebuilt package for your distributionthere. If there isn't a package available, follow one of the WINESource Downloads links and then follow the instructions in the READMEfile for how to build this program.Once you have WINE installed, attempting to run a Windows program usingthis tool is actually not that difficult. First you need to get theprogram onto your system, whether by mounting the CD-ROM or DVD-ROMcontaining it, or by downloading or copying the software onto yourmachine.
Apr 27, 2007 By the time we reviewed version 3.0, Win4Lin had worked on its performance issues, but VMware Server had cut its price to free, and boasted features not available in Win4Lin Pro 3.0. Now, version 4.0 is available, but it lacks any eye-popping new features. Command-line still indispensable. Installing Win4Lin Pro Desktop 4.0 requires some.
Then, if this is software you need to install, you need to determinewhich program launches the installation—this is typically INSTALL.EXEor SETUP.EXE. From inside the directory where the program lives, typewine program. For example,wine INSTALL.EXE.More often than not, the installation program will launch properly. Youmight even be able to install the software fully using WINE. Ifthat's the case, don't get too excited yet. The real test is whetherthe software will run.
Programs installed inside of WINE are placed in/.wine/drivec/Program Files/. You also may have launcher icons onyour desktop. If you're starting the program by hand, navigate tothe directory containing the program, and then type wineprogram justas you did before. So, if you were trying to see if you could get thegame Bejeweled running, you might change to /.wine/drivec/ProgramFiles/PopCap Games/Bejeweled, and type wineWinBej.exe.
Download free automated activation v3 dragon ball z. This is the momentof truth. It either will run or it won't. If it does, rejoice!
If not,you can search the Web for tips on how to get the particular game runningunder WINE, or you can try another tool.Unfortunately, I've had very poor luck getting games to run under WINE,personally—much of that is due to a refusal to spend four days huntingdown every possible configuration tweak. I'm sure someone will takeaway my official Geek card for that. Frankly, I have better thingsto do. The closest I got this time was pulling out my Classic TextAdventure Masterpieces CD with old Infocom games. The installer worked,and the games would launch, but then they died. Ah well, it was a bitof nostalgia anyway. Win4Lin—Running Windows inside LinuxWin4Linis a commercial product (see Resources), and this section focuses onWin4Lin Pro, which allows you to install Windows2000 or XP inside a Win4Lin framework, which is installed on a Linuxsystem.
Essentially, it lets you run a Windows machine inside a Linuxmachine. Although this product is meant primarily as a business tool, ifyou have it for “practical” purposes, then why not try using it torun games that you can't get to run in another way? Because this is acommercial tool with plenty of documentation, installation instructionsand starting Win4Lin are left to the manuals.Now, first off, on an older machine like an Athlon 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM,don't even bother. The virtual Windows XP box functions at a snail'space for just about any operation, even opening folders. Playing anygames except for untimed casual ones (for example,Bejeweled, which didwork for me) is essentially impossible due to the performance hit—thoughyou get this hit only inside the Win4Lin session, the rest of the machinefunctions normally. Mind you, one of the older games I always test underemulators, because I kind of miss it, is SimTower, and this is the firsttime I've gotten it to run. However, World ofWarcraft couldn't startits install, because the installation program gave an error claiming itcouldn't find a data file.Note that to get Bejeweled to work, I had to copy the files off of theCD-ROM and install straight from my hard drive.
The CD is both a dataand music CD, and both Linux and Windows seem to get fussy with it fromtime to time. CrossOver OfficeCrossOver Office is, again, a commercial product designed for running“serious” Windows programs, but that doesn't mean you can't usethis software at least to attempt to play games. CrossOver Office isavailable from the CodeWeaver's Web site (see Resources), and once you have it installed,you can convince it to try installing any Windows program that isn'ton its list by launching its Install Windows Software tool and clickingthe Install unsupported software button.As with the others, don't get too excited if you can get a gameinstalled. That doesn't mean it will run. For example, World ofWarcraft does manage to install under CrossOver Office—mind you, the text onthe installer's buttons is almost too tiny to read—butSimTower'sinstaller malfunctioned and wouldn't work. I found an oldRISK CD lyingaround and discovered to my amusement that it refused to install becauseit works only under Windows 95.In fact, World of Warcraft's opening movie plays under CrossOver Office aswell, and the game starts and is able to start downloading patches.Althoughit crashed at this point, frankly I found it impressive that the softwareeven got that far.
That encouraged me to pull out something older. Itried The Sims but that made the CrossOver Office installer decide that itsuddenly couldn't access the hard drive. SimCity2000 not only installed,but actually plays, albeit a bit slowly on this system. VMwareDue primarily to the expense (VMware Workstation costs nearly $200 US),most people who use VMware are doing so for work-related reasons. However, again,if you have this virtual machine tool lying around, and your computer ispowerful enough to run a VMware session quickly enough to play mainstreamgames inside without problems, then this is another avenue to explore. Onthe same machine in which Win4Lin with Windows XP crawled, Windows XPunder VMware runs at perhaps twice the speed.VMware so far is the only one out of the bunch that was able tolaunch the installer for The Sims. Not only could VMware install it,it could actually run the game.
The Sims, being played within Windows XP in VMware 5.Then I figured it was time for the big test, World ofWarcraft. First Ihad to allocate more hard drive space to my VMware session, which involvedfiguring out how to get Windows XP to see and use the new drive (a processI did not find intuitive at all, not being a Windows XP user aside fromthe occasional screenshot).
Once the installation was complete, I tried tolaunch World of Warcraft and was told that 3-D support couldn't be started,so I finally got around to installing the VMware Tools package, whichis supposed to—among other things—improve graphicsperformance. Althoughsome might claim that VMware doesn't support Accelerated 3D, this isactually no longer true. However, that support is“experimental”, butit doesn't get much more experimental than this, so it's worth trying.To turn on Accelerated 3D, it's important first to shut down the virtualmachine. Once this is done, it's time to edit the.vmx file for theinstance. The VMware documentation recommends adding the following threelines to the file:mks.enable3d = TRUEsvga.vramSize = 67108864vmmouse.present = FALSEOnce this file is saved and closed, go to the VMware window and selectEdit→Preferences. In the Preferences dialog box, choose the Inputtab, and click the Ungrab when cursor leaves window check box to removethe check mark.
Doing so will make sure that your games don't run intoconfusion over the mouse pointer. Click OK to save the setting. Withthis done, it's time to bring the machine back up and try World ofWarcraft again. The game detects the “hardwarechange” and offers toreload default settings. Unfortunately, it's not enough, though at leastthis time there was an obvious attempt to start the game.Hoping that an update of the rarely used XP session will help, Isubmit myself to the ritual of update, reboot, update, reboot and soon.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. Too bad— World ofWarcraft getstantalizingly close to starting.Now, can VMware use the half-and-half CD withBejeweled? Itrecognizes that both parts exist and allows accessing the files, but itcan't actually run the installer and doesn't seem aware of all of thefiles on the CD. The game does install and run though from files copiedoff of the CD and onto the hard drive earlier.Bejeweled will not runin hardware-accelerated mode either, so the experimental feature isn'tquite there yet. Still, as it improves, the chance of being able to useVMware for higher-end Windows games does too. Hopefully by that point,however, there will be more mainstream games available for Linux natively.
TransGamingI've saved the most appropriate choice for last among the Windows-gamingoptions, so this section can end on an upbeat note. TransGaming's Cedegaproduct (see Resources) is essentially asubscription service where you pay a monthly fee for access to thelatest versions of the program in binary form, the ability to vote onthe games that you would like to see prioritized and more. Because thisproduct focuses on games and implementing the DirectX APIs and otherWindows features heavily used by game programmers, the likelihood of aWindows game working under Cedega should be better than under the otheroptions. However, it is not guaranteed.I'll give the Point2Play interface a shot even though I tend to havehit-and-miss luck with it.
On Fedora Core 4, my CD drive shows upas /media/cdrecorder, and even when a disk is mounted onto the system,Point2Play can't see it—even though running the built-in Point2Play testssays that my CD drive is fine. A quick ln -s /media/recorder/mnt/cdromfixed that problem. However, the Install button still doesn't becomevisible, so I gave up. There's no other fixes listed in the documentationthat I haven't already tried.There's no Cedega to install the program directly without botheringwith the extra GUI. To do so, I mount the CD (in this case, the firstCD-ROM for World of Warcraft) and change to its base directory.
ThenI type cedega Installer.exe and immediately get hit with a stream oferrors. Going to the TransGaming Forums and running keyword searchesdoesn't help, so I post a query; we'll see what comes of that. I hadWorldof Warcraft working under Cedega and Fedora Core 3 so I know it's doable.Instead, I'll try Diablo II. Point2Play still won'tsee the CD, so I goto /media/cdrecorder and type cedega install.exe to launch the installer,and it launches just fine.
When it gets to the video tests, it recommendsDirect3D: DirectDraw HAL, so it does pick up the 3-D functionality onthe system. The game also launches fine, though if I run it in windowedmode, I can't click on any other windows or it crashes. Again, none ofthe potential fixes I find on the boards helps with this. SummaryThere is no perfect solution for playing Windows games under Linux. Thebest solution is to look and see whether a Linux binary is provided forthe game, or to go find games that are written to play under Linux. IdSoftware and Epic Games both release Linux binaries for their games.
Keepin mind that if you opt to use a solution such as Win4Lin or VMware,you have to own a valid copy of the Windows version you intend touse. Solutions such as WINE, CrossOver Office and Cedega implement theAPIs without requiring the operating system to be installed.Still, as you can see, there are many options if you are really determinedto play a Windows game in Linux without having to dual-boot.Resources for this article.
Then comes the installation of Win4Lin, the copying of Windows installation files to the hard disk of the host computer, and finally the setting up of a personal Windows session for each user.
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