I am considering going full SUSE Linux 9.2 on my desktop but I would occasionally like to use apps (mostly a few games actually) on my desktop but don’t want to have to buy a WinXP OS… is using WINE on something like a Windows only game satisfactory? Is there any other solutions to using intensive Windows-only apps on Linux?

WINE works really well… when it works.  The thing with WINE is that is only works with certain applications, some of which are games.  If you want full game compatability you should install a version of Windows to play those games (any version of Windows 98 or newer should sufice).  But you can give WINE a try and see if it works with you games.

Most recent games (last 2 years) look for a version of Windows that supports NT-level services.  I can think of a bunch of 2D (or 2.5D) games over the last 2 years that didn’t NEED Win2k+ to run, but required 2k/XP for some finagled reason.

I’d say Win2k is probably a safer (better?) bet as your gaming OS for those rare instances.

Although there now is “cedega”, which is a (unfortunately commercial) WINE branch and especially made for playing games. It runs almost all popular games (and unpopular games as well ) without any problem.

wine is bad

vmware is ok, but gaming, nah….

dualboot, or give up games

[quote author=“DayWalker”]wine is bad

Have you tried cedega? Come on, try it, I’m playing all my games under cedega because I’m really too lazy to boot up Windows everytime I want to play a game.

For games..whats the performance difference between running on windows or through wine?

Thats sorta more what I was getting at. Its not just whether or not they work, its also whether or not theyperform equally under Wine… My desktop is already kinda a piece of crap w/o having to use wine to emulate Windows API AND play a game through it.

[quote author=“OnMyWayUp”]
Thats sorta more what I was getting at. Its not just whether or not they work, its also whether or not theyperform equally under Wine… My desktop is already kinda a piece of crap w/o having to use wine to emulate Windows API AND play a game through it.

It’s not exactly “emulating” the Windows API, it’s just another implementation of it. Thus, there’s not so much of a performance discrepancy, sometimes not even any at all, sometimes it can be even faster (although that’s rare).

The only notifiable problem is and remains stability. Unfortunately, that’s a very critical problem.

However, under cedega, with most games I haven’t encountered neither performance nor stability problems. Basically, if a game runs smooth under Windows, it runs smooth under Linux with cedega. If performance sucks under Windows, it sucks under Linux with cedega. Both platforms seem to be pretty equal in that context.

Have fun,
Julien

Ok here’s my question with Cedega… do u have to stay subscribed to them in order to continue using the version you have and have to be subscribed again to use download any new ones?