By way of an expansion to my previous couple of posts. Linux in can play games shocker! I can now play many of my favourite games in Linux, thanks to a couple of native ports and Winex. I now have the following games up and running on my Linux install:
Native:
- Neverwintrer Nights
- Freespace 2
Winex:
- Baldur’s Gate II
- StarCraft
- Total Annihilation
- Civilization III
I’m quite impressed, and have left Windows behind for now as I can play all my favourite games on Linux now. I have had problems with lots of games with Winex, though. I can’t get either Baldur’s Gate I or Icewind Dale to work, which is a shame. I also can’t play Sim City 3000. However, all in all I am happy with my selection of games.
Let me expand upon my comments about Winex from the previous post. Winex tries to implement the DirectX set of apis on top of the Wine Windows impletion. This is quite a feat considering the size of the DirectX api. Wine itself is impressive as I there are even more api calls for it to handle. Winex isn’t perfect however, and there are many games it just doesn’t work for. So far I have tried just using the Winex interface to install programs, without trying using files from an existing Windows install of the game. I might have more luck with some games by copying the data from a Windows installs, but I wanted to see how far you could get without having to resort to Windows. I believe that installer compatability is one of the major aims for Winex3, but the preview release seems to break more things than it fixes, so I am using the stable build for now. I’ve also set up scripts to copy in different configuration files for each game, as there seems to be no one config that works for all games. So Winex is nowhere near perfect, but it is good enough if you are willing to mess around with the config files for a while.
Some people don’t like Winex; they think that native Linux ports are the only thing we should be playing on Linux. I see their point: I would use the Linux port for a game if it is available. I’d buy the Linux version if I didn’t already own the Windows version. I think herein lies the crux of the matter: I want to be able to play the games I’ve bought for Windows in Linux. That is why I think there is a place for things like Winex. I fully support native ports and think that we should encourage developers to make them, but for games I already have I am not willing to buy another copy of the game just to play it on Linux. The Loki ports were a case in point. They were popular games, but by the time Loki had ported them, most people had bought the Windows versions, and so were unwilling to buy the Linux versions. A great shame, as Loki showed much promice witht he quality of games they were porting. In conclusion: Winex good, native better!