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."

Windows just isn't that expensive

[Nom du Keyboard]

You know, Windows just isn't that expensive. Chances are, due to the (I would think illegal, but no one seems to care what I think) per-processor bundling of Windows, you probably already have a copy for your box. So just boot into Windows to play your game, and then return to Linux afterwards. It's likely to run faster this way anyway.

Affordable

[teiresias]

Kevin Carmony, president and CEO of Linspire, Inc. ..."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."

Cedega = $44.95
Game X = $40-50
Total = $80-95

Windows Home = $100~
Windows Pro = $130~
Windows Longhorn = Unknown

Makes sense to me.

That's What They Said in the First Place

[Winkhorst]

Actually, Lindows was supposed to run ALL Windows programs before they scaled back their early claims. Looks like it just got put on the back burner.

Cedega and "Out of the box" in the same sentence!?

[cybereal]

Oh come now. Just try to install Warcraft III with Cedega.

I'm serious, that's the only game I was really hoping to play with Cedega when I tried it out. It flopped hard core, yet, WC3 is on their list of supported games with a flag indicating that it is playable.

Lies.

Re:That's What They Said in the First Place

[AKAImBatman]

Robertson didn't know what he was talking about. He'd seen WINE in action, and assumed that it was close to being a complete replacement for Windows. He then went on to include it with Lindows and promised the world that he'd be Windows compatible. Somewhere along the line he learned the horrible truth (Win32 is an ugly, broken, and complex moving target) and backed off his claims.

Unfortunately, this left Lindows in a bit of a lurch because it was less secure than most Linux distributions, and only had its application repository to carry it. My guess is that the Microsoft vs. Lindows lawsuit was what kept them on the map. Without all the press, it's posslble they would have languished into obscurity. Since then, the renamed Linspire has been slowly building back up to Windows compatibility.

Re:Affordable

[Nos.]

If you're going to count the cost of the OS for Windows, you have to do it for the Linux side as well "Cedega with Point2Play requires Linspire Five-0" which according to the site is $99.00 new. Thus, we're now looking at $143.95 for the Linux way, or as you said, $100-$130 for the Windows.

Re:Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[Meagermanx]

Wow, you keep twelve applications up while you're playing a game?

Re:Cedega and "Out of the box" in the same sentenc

[MikeBabcock]

Aside from the obvious flambebaitness of your comment, you're right.

Making most games work with Cedega is dead simple if you use Point2Play (recommended by Transgaming unless you "know what you're doing").

Most every game I've tried on the supported list has worked the first time.

Re:Affordable

[d3bruts1d]

Everyone is getting it wrong. lol You've forgotten that you also have to buy Linspire [linspire.com].

Linspire: $49.95
Cedega: $44.95
Game X: $40-50
TOTAL: $134.90-144.90

If you really want to use Linspire, you also have to buy the CNR membership [linspire.com]. So that would add another $49.95/year.

Now. Compared to Windows:
Windows XP: $100-$250 (Priced @ Amazon [amazon.com])
Game X: $40-50
TOTAL:$140-$300

Pricing Windows XP Home + Game could be cheaper than trying to run it on Linspire.... Though it could also be cheaper on Linspire than running on XP Pro. Upgrade vs Full install also have an impact on the Windows XP price.

Re:Windows just isn't that expensive

[mrchaotica]

1. I build all my own desktops, and my laptop is a Mac. Hence, I don't already have a copy of Windows.
2. Windows is not cheap; it's ~$200 retail.
3. Even if I wanted to spend the money, I sure as hell don't want to sell my soul to the Windows Activation scheme!
4. Why should I have to reboot my desktop -- which has an uptime of several months -- just to play a game?
5. Actually, some games run faster under Wine than they do natively. Besides, as long as it's "fast enough" I don't really care if it could be a little faster on Windows.
6. The way to combat the illegal bundling isn't to bend over and take it, but to refuse to submit.

Re:Linux Games

[StonedRat]

I use the fglrx ATI drivers in ubuntu and never had a problem running doom3, ut2004 and most importantly tuxracer.

Glad it's someone else...

[AuraOfDeath]

Having tried Transgaming's software and gui front end, and only getting 1 game out of the 15 I have to work. It definately isn't worth the $5.00 usd that they want you to pay per month to use their services. Hours of frustrated tweaking, redownloading, reinstalling, reeverything... and still end up with a useless gui that takes up much needed anime room. Save the dough until they actually put some effort into game support. Transgaming forums are full of help requests and zilch for feedback from transgaming. Mr M.

Easy as PIE - WINE runs WC3 aswell

[sygin]

Easy as PIE - even WINE runs WC3 Your video card/linux setup support is your problem.

Re:Windows just isn't that expensive

[dadragon]

Why should I have to reboot my desktop -- which has an uptime of several months -- just to play a game?

Why does uptime matter?

Other than that, I agree with you, though when I build desktops for people, I usually buy an OEM version of XP Pro, as Home annoys me, then I just use a premade install image that I made when I was bored one day, set it up, and reseal it. Works great :) They are the one who has to activate it, not me.

Re:Windows just isn't that expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the article you pointed to dates back to more than 3 years ago, and things have probably improved since...

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a more accurate resource. Anyone?

Re:Affordable

[manno]

44.95 per year, I've been using the same windows 2000 license I payed for in full in 2000 for $120 I'm going at 5 years now, and will probably go for at least another 1 or 2 despite m$ dropping support for it. so lets do the math on that shall we? Cedega = 44.95 * 5 = 224.75 Linspire = 49.95 Total = 274.70 Windows XP/2000 = 130.00 Upgrade + 90.00 Total = 220.00 Linspire = 274.70 Win 2K/XP - 220.00 = 54.00 so yeah do the math $50 a year to have spotty at best game support, or $130 one time to have games desinged to run on your pc out of the box... you decide. I think MS is just as evil as the next guy, but I'm not going to cut my nose off to spite my face.

Hardware

[phorm]

The failing point is often the hardware though. It will install fine if you have an NVidia card or possibly an ATI... but with others it can be pretty hit-and-miss.

Cedega has never liked my Epia's Unichrome cards (even for games that seem usable - though not spectacular - in windows)... and I'd bet that it sucks equally on Intel/etc cards.

Re:B.F.D.

[tomstdenis]

Have you looked at the average game? Basically Q3A engine with a few new graphics and a title like "medal of honour!".

Same shit different day.

Not to say they're not partially fun. Just not worth being in windows for.

I'd rather [and do] do without then install windows.

I do play UT2K4 once in a while because they made a Linux port that works well.

Tom

Re:Portability

[Zemrec]

Exactly. I've tried Cedega/WineX on-and-off for about 3 years or so. Sometimes it'll play the games I want to play, but most of the time not. And even when it is working, its sporadic, and like you mention, only a selected subset of games actually work.

For this reason only, I keep a PC with WinXP for games.

Re:Cedega is not an answer..

[SkinnyTurkey]

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.

Ironically, one way to convince the major game developers to have native Linux port is to have transgaming succeed.

When Loki Games [lokigames.com] existed, I enjoyed playing Heroes III, Kohan and Myth 2 on my Linux box. Too bad Loki could not last.

The ports by Loki were decent, especially for games where performance isn't critical. For e.g., playing Kohan was fine, but then try speeding up the playback to 8x (800%), and I notice it was playing maybe just at 3x the speed... on Windows, it really could playback at 8x.

I think the market for Linux gaming has to grow a lot more before game companies can justify the engineering cost of native Linux port. Some way to grow Linux desktop is through improvements on KDE/GNOME, OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, etc., but efforts like transgaming also help grow the Linux desktop share.

Wait before buying...

[loose_cannon_gamer]

I'm not a fully crazed gamer, but I do enjoy playing games a lot, and my hardware isn't that bad. That said, I split my time between development work and gaming, and dual boot (windows being purely for games and finance management).

For a while I tried to be windows free, pure linux, and I even got a cedega subscription. I was disappointed, in that I could only get about 1 title in 10 to actually work, and none without serious UI gotchas, visual artifacts, crashes, etc. This was 6 months ago, and it is possible that things have changed.

So while this is a fine idea, I highly recommend proving it out. I know I am not going to be an early adopter, as I felt like the claims made by cedega were, in my experience, wholly unsubstantiated back then. The idea is great, but the last time I tried it, the technology and stability just weren't there.

Re:Portability

[pyser]

If there is no need to write native games for Linux, then why bother?

This is one of the things that killed the mass-marketability of OS/2. Since it would run Windows 3.1 apps, there was little need to provide a higher-performance OS/2-native version. Most apps written for OS/2 were excellent performers (e.g. DeScribe), but the market was too small to be viable.

Re:Wow, I wonder why nobody thought of that

[bensode]

Yes, I do the same. Actually, I get better game performance running under cedega than Windows. I can use the virtual desktop switching to play WoW on one desktop fullscreen, then one hotkey away from any of the other apps I'm running ... such as Evolution, Firefox and my remote desktop sessions, pron, etc. In windows, I'm stuck with screen focus or a "windowed" mode, with crippled system performance to everything else. I usually can't run anything in the background while playing and games.

On the downside, though, for the MMORPGs through Cedega, whenever there is a major patch I often have to wait a few days for the Cedega team to fix what was "broken". Very rare, but it happene a lot on EQ and has started to happen from time to time with WoW. For the other games that aren't patched routinely, I have no problems at all.

Re:Cedega and "Out of the box" in the same sentenc

[vector_prime]

funny, WC3 base and frozen throne work beautifully on my system (Cedega on Gentoo) and did right out of the box. So does WoW, Diablo II, and every other blizzard title I've tried. The only thing that I've not been able to get working is Halo.

Re:Not interested

[radish]

About $120-$130, if it didn't come included with a PC. So limited support for ~$100 or full support (including graphics & sound card drivers) for 20% more? Not a tough choice.

Happy Cedega User

[Bob9113]

I use Cedega on Ubuntu and Debian, so far only to play World of Warcraft. I get 20 FPS with a fairly anemic NVidia card (GeForce 2 MX 400) at 1024x768. Installation was dead simple (they provide .debs). There's usually a minor bug or two when a new release of WoW comes out (Blizzard, understandably, doesn't test on Cedega before releasing patches), but they have consistently been fixed within 24 hours. I have maybe 200 hours in the game, and am completely satisfied with Cedega. I haven't tried Point2Play, but I hear it makes it easier if you're not comfortable with dpkg -i from the command line.

And what is the performance like?

[jozeph78]

So... spend $5 a month to use my $400 gfx card at half speed? 50% of my machine cost is my video card. Why would I want to emulate the software it's supposed to accelerate? I don't think so. I'll continue to run Windows as a main OS and VMWare my Linux installation(s). Linux, because it is better (smller at least), runs quite well in VMWare whereas CS:Source would probably scream under emulation.

Re:Windows just isn't that expensive

[Babbster]

And what does that have to do with anything against Windows? Despite the claims of some, Windows products (certainly 2000/XP) don't just spontaneously become unstable - something has to happen. Even if a particular game causes system instability serious enough to require a reboot (I should note that I haven't played one of those recently), all that would mean is running a reboot after running the game, leaving the computer still up afterwards for serving files and being available to start using immediately without waiting.

Required Reading . . .

[npsimons]

Why you shouldn't use Cedega/WineX and why you should discourage others from using it. [timedoctor.org]

Go ahead, mod me troll if you must, that doesn't mean the reasons listed at the above link are wrong.

Re:Windows just isn't that expensive

[The Infamous Grimace]

I hope you're just kidding, or really ignorant. There's no virtualization solution out there that's even close to be somewhat usable for games.

Chalk it up to ignorance. I'm not a gamer and use a Mac, so emulation has met all my Windows needs. I have a basic understanding of the difference between emulation and virtualization, and know games suck under emulation. But I am certainly am not so familiar that I would know games suck under virtualization as well, or why. If the virtualized OS has access to hardware, and games nowadays seem to rely on the GPU as much if not more so than the CPU, then where is the performance hit? Does the host OS really use up that many CPU cycles? Couldn't it be coded such that the host OS gets almost completely out of the way, and allows the virtualized OS almost complete control? A google [google.com] of the topic returns some interesting articles, but none seem to address the gaming issue in any real detail.

(tig)