Windows Games On Linux

[zythyl]

Is there any way to completely get rid of my Windows OS because I can play my games on Linux?

I heard of PlayOnLinux, but is it stable? Does it allow online play? Do the games perform a little worse?

[techieMoe]

If you're a Microsoft Windows gamer, your best bet will be to set up a dual-boot system (with XP and Linux) and boot into XP when you want to play. It's sad, but still your best option, in my opinion.

I've not heard of PlaysOnLinux, but it's probably just a graphical front-end for WINE, which is a piece of software that will let you run some Windows programs in Linux. It's not perfect, and a great many games will not work well or at all using it.

The best way to determine whether a game or app will work is to search for it in the WINE Application Database here:

Wine AppDB - Wine Application Database

Even then it's not guaranteed to work. WINE is a half-step at best. For some folks it works beautifully, for others not at all.

[azlinux]

I would recommend you to download and install windows components in wine before installing any games!

Intall all the basic compnents like DCOM98.EXE, VB Runtimes, VC++ Runtimes, DirectX etc into wine

then try installing games!!!

i havent tried but i think it sould work

[Manchunian]

Hi,

I have heard of PlayOnLinux - and I'm afraid to report that it doesn't support many games for the moment. The best advise is to do what techiemoe advises and keep a Windows partiton for the things which you can't do on Linux for the moment.

[Manchunian]

Hi!

I have hear of PlayOnLinux and I'm afraid to report that it doesn't support many games for the moment. Best keep a Windows partition, as techiemoe has advised.

[techieMoe]

I would recommend you to download and install windows components in wine before installing any games!

Intall all the basic compnents like DCOM98.EXE, VB Runtimes, VC++ Runtimes, DirectX etc into wine

then try installing games!!!

i havent tried but i think it sould work

No, actually that won't work at all. WINE has its own libraries that it uses in place of the DirectX DLLs, among other things. Visual Basic, to the best of my knowledge, does not work in WINE either.

[Manchunian]

That's strange: why has my post appeared twice? I tried once, and was apparently blocked by my work's router; then I tried again, only to be blocked once more. Oh well...

[techieMoe]

That's strange: why has my post appeared twice? I tried once, and was apparently blocked by my work's router; then I tried again, only to be blocked once more. Oh well...

Fixed it for you.

[i92guboj]

PlayOnLinux is just a frontend to wine, and even if I haven't tried it, I really see no reason why I would like to add yet another layer of complexity, since wine just works. But, to each, his/her own.

No, actually that won't work at all. WINE has its own libraries that it uses in place of the DirectX DLLs, among other things. Visual Basic, to the best of my knowledge, does not work in WINE either.

You can be pretty sure that wine can't use *most* directx libs, as you say. It's due to technical reasons, and anyway, wine implements their own, so, to install directx under wine, even if possible with the latest releases, it's still useless.

That will not add anything to wine.

It's possible, however, to use some very small pieces. I have used on the past some pieces of netplay to play via ip with baldurs gate and the like. Nowadays those hacks might not be needed, I don't know.

But, the general rule, is that wine will not use the MS implementation of directx. Even if you manage to install it under wine.

About VB apps, I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't run. These libs are perfectly normal, and any lib that wine doesn't provide can be installed as native. In wineconf you can also set overrides to prefer native libs over builtin (wine) ones, or the opposite, when both versions are available.

Anyway, I don't bother installing that much crap. If I need a dll, I just google for it, put it into ~/wine/c_drive/windows/system32 and set it to native on wineconf.

And, again, for n-th time: the first site to check is winehq.org. Search the database for the app you want to run. If there's a need to do something, set overrides, set something in your registry, or download a dll, most likely someone has done it before you and the process will be documented there.