[CrazyTech]

I'm not so much a newbie to Linux as I am a newbie specifically to the Linux as a desktop scene. I've worked with servers - from the old RH 8 & 9 all the way to CentOS and Fedora. I recently purchased a computer with Vista Home Basic on it and I have been one of those to grow up on Windows simply because that's all that was around here in South Carolina for a while.

Since I started working with hosting, Linux has been so solid that I have been interested in using it as a desktop. However, my concern has always been compatibility with some apps and games. In my case, particularly CS3 and Age of Empires III (and the expansions). I know of GIMP, but I just don't like it all that much because of the interface. Maybe I can work on that, at least.

Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone had these things working. In my research, Wine does seem to occasionally work for playing AoEIII, but I noticed a lot of various issues. I just don't want to go through installing all of this and it not work.

Thanks a lot!

[i92guboj]

Originally Posted by CrazyTech

Since I started working with hosting, Linux has been so solid that I have been interested in using it as a desktop. However, my concern has always been compatibility with some apps and games. In my case, particularly CS3 and Age of Empires III (and the expansions). I know of GIMP, but I just don't like it all that much because of the interface. Maybe I can work on that, at least.

I don't use either of them, so I can't be sure, but as far as I know, AOEIII should work (maybe, without netplay, I don't know if that's important for you or not).

I don't know about cs3, but cs2 should work. Not perfectly, that's for sure.

Wine AppDB - Photoshop CS2

Gimp can work very well and is a native solution. The migration will not be easy, since the base paradigms of Photoshop and The Gimp are quite different. So, either way, there's will not be an easy way for transition.

[CrazyTech]

Well, my roomate and I play across our LAN, so that is somewhat of a biggie. I've gone dual boot before, but I had a lot of issues with it. I may just have to go that route again, I guess.

[i92guboj]

Originally Posted by CrazyTech

Well, my roomate and I play across our LAN, so that is somewhat of a biggie. I've gone dual boot before, but I had a lot of issues with it. I may just have to go that route again, I guess.

Well, it might still be possible to use it. I've have played in the past to baldur's gate II which had a similar problem with netplay, the same went for diablo II, and with some work, both worked just ok.

For bgII I had to use some directplay libraries and tweak some settings in wine, but it worked as well. The situation might have improved and maybe this is not even an issue anymore, I don't really know. You can always give it a try...

But with wine, there are never guarantees that it will work. It's becoming pretty good lately, and it's quite an impressive piece of software, but you can't be sure if it will work for you until you try it yourself.

[a12ctic]

If theres anything you absolutely need check the DB, if you really need to you could virtualize Windows XP or 2000 in vmware or another virtual machine. I think you might be out of luck with AoE3 though. =/