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Gaming on Linux

C_MonC_Mon A Genuine Sucker
in Zocalo v2.0
I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on hdd I didn't use on my desktop computer. I mostly wanted too see what kind of improvements they've made to the boot time and try out compiz. I find it's really quick now to boot (40s from grub to Ubuntu loaded) and the compiz stuff, nice 3d graphics but also quite useful (like the rotate cube for workspaces).
I then thought I would just try wine also and see how far they've come. Installed it and some other stuff for it that I read would make guild wars run better. I wanted to test guild wars as that was the last game I tested with wine. Works a lot better now than when I tried it on a Radeon X800XT 3d cad (now I have Geforce 8800gts). Some small graphic glitches were there but nothing that really stuck out. Most annoyed me a performance drop, from like over 100fps in some areas to under 50fps running in wine, but still totally playable.
Then I just for fun wanted to try Forged Alliance and thought if it works even half as good as on windows I might switch to Ubuntu. First I had some issues where it rendered the units under terrain level if zoomed in so not really nice to play, but hey at least installed and started. I then noticed I had installed the stable version of wine so I tried installing the latest and whoop, it fixd the issue. But the frame rate wasn't really playable at around 15fps with a few units, so I didn't even test a lot of units. Did some further tweaking and installing of directx stuff in wine, and to my amazement I now have Forged Alliance running at good frame rate, with all settings to max except shadows that are for some reason only at medium as highest setting. I even tested it LAN with my brother running FA on a Windows computer and it worked.

I must say that the people working on Wine has done an amazing job. I might actually now switch to Linux due to how well they've made Ubuntu and Wine.
Sure the installing of games and software on Wine requires alot more tweaking than on windows but works for me as I like playing around to get stuff working.

Comments

  • SpiritOneSpiritOne Magneto ABQ NM
    just as a side note, I have been running Windows 7 for quite some time. Its really quite nice. I know ubuntu, but for those not ready to make a massive switch, its worth noting 7 is the real deal.
  • C_MonC_Mon A Genuine Sucker
    Yeah, I've tried Windows 7. It's better than Vista and it will go on my laptop due to it's better touch support. It just seems like Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.
  • CurZCurZ Resident Hippy
    Use Gentoo and compile everything with -funroll-loops and -O9000 and you'll see your FPS increase by at least a billion. Possibly a hundred bazillion million.
  • Lord RefaLord Refa Creepy, but in a good way
    I wont get a linux unless I can get FPS increase of a hundred gazillion bazillion trillion.
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    we run Ubuntu on 90% of our cafe machines, it does everything we want it to. as for Windows 7, iv'e got the RC's, but have not installed them yet, although the new computer i got gets the free upgrade to Win 7 ultimate when it comes out.
  • croxiscroxis I am the walrus
    My nvidia driver and some game like to crash on me every couple hours, I'm not sure why yet because I don't have this issue in xp or ubuntu. That being said I've had good success with a lot of my games running in wine. Virtualbox now also has hardwar acceleration for opengl and directx for windows and linux guests operating systems.
  • Vertigo_1Vertigo_1 Ranger
    [QUOTE=CurZ;182679]Use Gentoo and compile everything with -funroll-loops and -O900[b][color=red]1[/color][/b] and you'll see your FPS increase by at least a billion. Possibly a hundred bazillion million.[/QUOTE]Fixed that for you.

    There used to be a gentoo-based distribution back when Compiz was new and shiny. The person who made it put a bunch of really unstable compile options in the make.conf, the liveCD couldn't even successfully install itself.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    You have spent far, far too much time on slashdot.
  • TridentTrident Ranger
    I can't use 7 on my desktop, the Beta and RC has no compatible drivers for my ASUS board's lan port. And ASUS hasn't released any drivers for it yet.
    I run ubuntu on a USB drive on my laptop though, I like it alot. Havn't played with wine much but gonna try it soon.
  • C_MonC_Mon A Genuine Sucker
    Heh, but there is a lot of playing around with wine if you want stuff to work. So I wanted to try Office 2007 but had to have earlier version of wine for it to install. After install I updated wine and installed supcom but apparently I had installed dotNet2 and other stuff in the wrong order or something because I got a lot of errors when I wanted to update forged alliance, and couldn't get it to work. So I completely uninstalled wine and stuff installed with wine and started from scratch again. Hopefully this time it will work.
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