Linspire To Run Windows Games

Ken writes "Aviran's Place reports that Linspire and TransGaming released Cedega for the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, allowing Linspire users to play hundreds of popular Windows-format games right out of the box."

full text of article

[Anonymous Coward]

TransGaming Releases Latest Cedega Portability Technology for Linspire Operating System Gamers Able to Play Hundreds of Microsoft Windows Games on Desktop Linux Right Out of the Box.

Linspire, Inc. and TransGaming Technologies announced the release of Cedega for the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, allowing Linspire users to play hundreds of popular Windows-format games right out of the box. TransGaming's innovative Cedega portability technology, combined with the Point2Play graphical front end, offers equivalent game-play experience and performance, making it possible for avid Linux gamers to play titles like Half-Life 2, World of WarCraft and Battlefield 1942 on their machines. The product, which can be downloaded and installed through Linspire's CNR (click and run) software library for $44.95 USD, includes one year of access to Cedega plus regular software updates and membership to TransGaming.

"Gamers don't have to choose between Linux and Windows anymore," said Kevin Carmony, president and CEO of Linspire, Inc. "The release of Cedega technology for Linspire fills one of the most serious application gaps that exist for widespread adoption of desktop Linux. The added bonus is that installation of Point2Play with Cedega is so easy and affordable, you'll be able to play Windows games on Linspire for less than it would cost to purchase a Windows system."

Linux Games

[ndansmith]

You can play the games right out of the box, assuming that you can get functional drivers for your video card. For all of us who use ATI cards for games, this is not so exciting.

Alternate Articles

[wo1verin3]

Link is already dead..

- Newsforge [newsforge.com]

- ADDICT3D [addict3d.org]

Linspire, Inc. and TransGaming Technologies today announced the release of Cedega for the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, allowing Linspire users to play hundreds of popular Windows-format games right out of the box. TransGaming's innovative Cedega portability technology, combined with the Point2Play graphical front end, offers equivalent game-play experience and performance, making it possible for avid Linux gamers to play titles like Half-Life 2, World of WarCraft and Battlefield 1942 on their machines. The product, which can be downloaded and installed through Linspire's CNR (click and run) software library for $44.95 USD, includes one year of access to Cedega plus regular software updates and membership to TransGaming. For more information or to purchase Cedega for Linspire, please visit www.linspire.com/Cedega.

Article mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

In case of slashdotting...

mirror is here [mirrordot.org]

and article text:

TransGaming Releases Latest Cedega Portability Technology for Linspire Operating System Gamers Able to Play Hundreds of Microsoft Windows Games on Desktop Linux Right Out of the Box.

Linspire, Inc. and TransGaming Technologies announced the release of Cedega for the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, allowing Linspire users to play hundreds of popular Windows-format games right out of the box. TransGamings innovative Cedega portability technology, combined with the Point2Play graphical front end, offers equivalent game-play experience and performance, making it possible for avid Linux gamers to play titles like Half-Life 2, World of WarCraft and Battlefield 1942 on their machines. The product, which can be downloaded and installed through Linspires CNR (click and run) software library for $44.95 USD, includes one year of access to Cedega plus regular software updates and membership to TransGaming.

Gamers dont have to choose between Linux and Windows anymore, said Kevin Carmony, president and CEO of Linspire, Inc. The release of Cedega technology for Linspire fills one of the most serious application gaps that exist for widespread adoption of desktop Linux. The added bonus is that installation of Point2Play with Cedega is so easy and affordable, youll be able to play Windows games on Linspire for less than it would cost to purchase a Windows system.

Your forgot the cost of Linspire

[strongmace]

Other posters have pointed out that you forgot to add the price of Game X in your Windows numbers.

However, you also forgot to add in the price of Linspire which is ~$80-90 I think.

So 80+40+45=165 for Linspire and $140 for Windows Home or $170 for Windows XP.

Not interested

[Thomas DM]

Not really interesting.

Cedaga costs $44.95 and you also need Linspire Five-0 which costs $49.95 so that's almost $95.

I'd rather have a dual-boot system with Windows than some sort of emulation software that may not boot a quarter of my games.

Re:Most Importantly...

[AKAImBatman]

Yes. [ccp14.ac.uk]

Even if it didn't, sol [thathost.com] is an excellent replacement.

Re:ongoing cost

[qewl]

Cedega/WineX is $15 for the minimal 3 month subscription which would get you all the precompiled binaries. Not too bad.

http://transgaming.org/subscription/subscribe.html [transgaming.org]

Re:ongoing cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Cedega doesn't stop working when you unsubscribe, you just don't get new versions. So that means if you just want to get a version you would have to pay $15 and get all the updates for 3 months. You could buy a subscription once a year and spend only $15 a year, which is a lot less than most people spend on games.

Re:Bad Comparision

[d3bruts1d]

Bah, you got to it before I did.

Though... if someone were to use the coupon code LycorisWelcome between 7:30AM and 1:00PM PST they could get Linspire 5.0 for free. ;)

Cedega is not an answer..

[kuzb]

...It's a gateway to thousands more user problems. While my hat is off to the Transgaming team for their countless hours of time, effort and dedication to the winex project, and gaming on linux in general, it's far from a good solution. Certainly not one I would unleash on the clueless.

Most games don't play well, or play with really annoying issues. For example, many in-game videos do not play properly in Cedega, and if you can't skip them, you might be sitting there a long time waiting for them to finish. A good example of this is Black and White, where the opening video can't be skipped, and plays at about 3fps.

There was (may be fixed now, I don't know) another issue where you couldn't install games spanning multiple CDs without copying the contents of those CDs to the hard drive. So now you're involving the commandline, and/or file managers in order to install a game. Not quite as point-and-click easy as windows.

Many games which rely on Directplay for their multiplayer functionality do not work at all. Warcraft 3 is a good example of this. Works great single player (assuming you skip all the in-game videos) but fails horribly in multiplayer.

Lastly, most copy protections are not recognised under Cedega/Linux, forcing the user to go out and find a crack for their game.

The solution here is not to run Windows games, but to find more ways to convince major game developers that they should release ports to linux directly. All this Linspire/Transgaming thing is going to do is frustrate people who just want to play games. It will unquestionably leave more with a negative opinion of Linux in general.

ATI?

[phorm]

Actually, if you're using an ATI card you won't be doing too badly. They are making linux drivers which seem to be improving over time. There are issues with the drivers and they aren't as good as the NVidia ones, but then again even my windows ATI drivers have done some pretty funky things before.

Now, for other craptacular cards such as the various intel, etc brands... you're going to be in trouble indeed. Many laptops and onboard video sets use them. They don't perform well in windows, and - in my experience - are even more troublesome (and unsupported) in 'nix thus far.

Re:Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[stuuf]

CONFIG_SUSPEND2=y

Re:Cedega is not an answer..

[rincebrain]

I've actually found that WINE plays Warcraft III under Linux better for me.

YMMV of course.

Re:Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[SScorpio]

I'm not sure what applications you are running. But the majority of the applications are normally just sitting there waiting for user input. There is still the issue of memory, but a 512MB or higher system should be fine.

Re:Portability

[RemovableBait]

What you say is very true, but some of the new Debian based distributions (most notably Ubuntu) are beginning to get closer to the ideal when it comes to package management. The APT (.DEB) package manager is coming on leaps and bounds, largely due to the Synaptic user interface for apt-get. Synaptic fits the user friendly requirement: you click search, enter your wish, click go, pick the software you want and click 'Apply'. Synaptic automatically downloads the software, reads the headers, resolves dependencies (sometimes by automatically downloading required libs), and installs the software. The program then appears in the Applications menu in the correct category, with a nice icon.

This is a major step forward for Linux, in that the terminal is not required and the dependencies are resolved for you (it was a real pain trying to get out of an unresolvable chain of dependencies, sometimes you ended up installing loads of large library packages just to get a little app to run). This method has only a few drawbacks: you are ultimately limited to the software in the repository -- if apt-get can't find it, you can't install it with Synaptic; you also need to search for the software you want... you can't just browse the web, download and install on a whim.

While this is about the best we have so far, the number of available packages is increasing daily. If you haven't tried Linux for a while, give Ubuntu a go (you can use it without messing up Windows by using a Live CD here [ubuntulinux.org] or installing it inside a Windows virtual machine like VMware Workstation: you can get a 30-day trial here [vmware.com]).

Give it a go, good luck and enjoy

:)