Linux & Gaming

[sixdrift]

While I do wish for the day the best games came out for 'PC, Mac, and Linux", the sad reality is that is not going to happen any time soon.

As far as WoW goes, depending on your system, it is almost as easy as installing wine and then simply running the WoW launcher. Kudos to the way WoW is installed into its own directory structure and not blown across Windows like so many other brain-dead installers. My machines are dual-booted and I just mount the game partition under Linux, run the WoW launcher with wine, and it just works. Granted, without hardware cursor support, the cursor is a bit sluggish.

There are other games that are reported to be this easy. The thing to do is dual-boot your machine, mount up the Windows partition, and then try them out. Do some searches for forums that address the specific game running on Linux and give them a try.

In the meantime, go play quakelive on your Linux box. It runs in the browser and runs very nice.

[aetiv]

To simple: Gaming on this os is still only for the Linux enthusiast

[PDR60]

Seems to be allot of misinformation here. Instead of telling folks games don't work on linux why not help out some. WOW plays fine on linux. I play C&C3, Half-life2, Diablo2, TF2, Rome total war, Warhammer 40000, Left4 dead, COD4, and many kids games for the young ones. Allot of the challenges have been overcome in recent times. Check out programs like Cedega, wine, and Playonlinux. They are all implementations of wine. Cedega and playonlinux are just merely front ends for wine. Most games can be played if you use a little patience and google. There are even youtube videos of folks using linux for gaming. Depending on your specific distro and your determination you can do it. I have been windows free since 2003 and I'm an avid gamer. I even coverd this a while back on my site.

[aetiv]

Its not that the games cannot be played on Linux, but rather they were not made for the OS and it can take quite a bit more experience to get the game up and running. You are correct as far as using some of these other programs to get the best chance of getting games up and running that were not made for this system. I am currently playing Oblivion with all of the expansions by using Cedega and I have had quite a bit of success. I think the worst problems that have been on it were involving sound and locking up. I was able to fix the sound problem just by changing the setting of what driver I was using. The lock-up problem only happens after about two hours of playing and I am able to do a ctl-alt-del, logout, log back in, and then go back to playing the game. So far, I feel Cedega works very well and makes the whole process much easier.

[waterhead]

Seems to be allot of misinformation here. Instead of telling folks games don't work on linux why not help out some. WOW plays fine on linux. I play C&C3, Half-life2, Diablo2, TF2, Rome total war, Warhammer 40000, Left4 dead, COD4, and many kids games for the young ones. Allot of the challenges have been overcome in recent times. Check out programs like Cedega, wine, and Playonlinux. They are all implementations of wine. Cedega and playonlinux are just merely front ends for wine. Most games can be played if you use a little patience and google. There are even youtube videos of folks using linux for gaming. Depending on your specific distro and your determination you can do it. I have been windows free since 2003 and I'm an avid gamer. I even coverd this a while back on my site.

If you would like to tutor those who ask for gaming help, we would welcome the help. I personally never got into gaming, on windows or Linux or any gaming console.

[samsonite2010]

For the OP: I have recently been playing with Steam and some games with Linux. Here are my thoughts so far...

I have only this week installed Linux (I chose Kubuntu purely because it came highly recommended and I had to pick one to start with!).

Firstly, I installed Wine, then went to the Steam website, downloaded the Windows MSI file and it installed as if it was a native app (even puts a little Steam icon in your Linux system tray). So far I have downloaded 2 games on Steam which I already owned: Vice City & Counter Strike Source and they both work flawlessly. Had a tiny issue getting Vice City going, but thanks to this forum it was nothing really.

I would not throw out Windows for now, but er, my Windows threw itself out when the hard disk crashed (internal laptop drive) and Windows does not allow installation on external drives.

So far so good in terms of Steam and the games I have tried so far. I have some newer games I will download over the weekend and see how well they go.

[jpirie23]

While I have tried running Steam etc through Wine / Cedega / Crossover I have had some success but it has been fairly minimal.

To get the cutting edge games that, let's say Steam, produces is quite a nightmare. What I have done is to have a small hard drive that has Windows installed on it, and plug it in when I wish to play games.

Note though... a mac client of Steam has just been released that has caused quite a lot of discussion on when / if a Linux client will follow. When developers like Valve start developing for Linux (Many of ID Software's games have native Linux binaries) as well as Windows, then gaming on Linux may not be as difficult as it is at the moment.

[PDR60]

If you would like to tutor those who ask for gaming help, we would welcome the help. I personally never got into gaming, on windows or Linux or any gaming console.

I'd be glad to help. I'm awaiting the arrival of Kubuntu 10.04 to do a complete build up of a user workstation. I'll cover gaming and much more.

[samsonite2010]

I have had quite good success so far. I have tested about 10 games and got about 6 of them working with minimal effort. May main problem was that I started with just Wine which was nice and things either ran or did not. Then I downloaded PlayOnLinux, which installed another instance of Wine and I started getting confused as to which game was running from where!

Latest game I tried was Left4Dead (Steam) which runs really nicely out of the box. I am impressed with the compatibility so far - much better than I anticipated. The performance has also been good, especially considering I am running on a "business" laptop (but it does have a Nvidia card).

So far, I have only tried Steam games, but as I have said, they are working quite well. I have a few disc games to try next...

[Cobalt60]

Im trying to get into gaming on Linux right now. The biggest problem I am having is getting my gamepad binded to the KB/mouse. This will allow me to run any game with my gamepad even if it doesnt have native support for it. Theres quite a few good FPSs for Linux. One I like is Urban Terror. Graphics in Linux games may be a little behind Windows, but they are still good.

Honestly, if the Linux community embraced gaming more, I think it would have a significantly better user base. The ONLY reason I havent completely abandoned Windows is because of gaming. In Windows, I just plug my gamepad in, use QPadder to bind the keys/axis, and Im good to go play ANY game I want with my gamepad. On Linux, I plug my gamepad in, download a bunch of random programs to try to get it working, none work, so I start a topic on keybinding, no replies, post in different sections, post in different forums, a week or 2 later, still 0 replies in the 7 or so places Ive posted, gamepad still isnt keybinded.

But, if you can get used to WASD and the mouse, Id say youre already set to go! Go get Urban Terror, or any of the other "many" FPSs for Linux and enjoy!

-Chris P