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Wine Software Entertainment Games

Winex 3.0 Released 267

Posted by michael from the getting-my-hopes-up dept.
syntaxman writes "You'll find the information thread here, or see the release notes. The pre-packaged files (rpms,debs,tarballs) are available only for subscribers."
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Winex 3.0 Released More

Winex 3.0 Released

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  • Alright (Score:2, Funny)

    by electro_mike ( 658829 )
    This will convice my mom to switch to linux. good ol' FreeCell... she is at 20 000games Won last time i checked...

  • A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 1337_h4x0r ( 643377 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:44AM (#5750151)
    The day when it doesn't matter what kind of application you run under linux, all win32/directx apps are supported - is the day this will really take off. While I'm sure alot of these games will work under linux, the day when you can just install and play is when it'll make it to the big time.
    • So why dont you subscribe and make it happen sooner?

      I'm sure with a few thousand subscriptions they will have enough money to hire a few more programmers.

      • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Catiline ( 186878 ) <akrumbach@gmail.com> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:06AM (#5750227) Homepage Journal
        I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent. Without a visible need to port to Linux, developers will continue to release games that only support Windows.

        You have a choice: emulate Windows (forever), or seek native software ports. I've chosen [idsoftware.com] native [unrealtournament2003.com] ports [bioware.com], because I think that is the better long-term solution. But if you just can't stand to give over your EverCrack until they provide a Linux client... that is your choice. Just be aware I won't be sympathetic to complaints about the dearth of Linux game ports.

        • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:08AM (#5750237)
          WineX tackles the chicken and egg problem linux has been experiencing, if you cant grasp that...dont use it..stick with your few ported games.

          • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Catiline ( 186878 ) <akrumbach@gmail.com> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:48AM (#5750429) Homepage Journal
            WineX tackles the chicken and egg problem...
            Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem. From what I understood, it wasn't lack of market that sank the company but poor management.

            Anyway, it's not as if Linux doesn't [linuxgames.com] run [happypenguin.org] games [linux-games.com] without WINE.
            • Actually it was both. There was no market because Loki came before KDE was even worth using. Two Loki didnt know how to run a business, you make one or two games, profit, and then move to another game, you port based on demand, you dont port until you run out of money.
              • <troll>KDE is worth using now?</troll>

                I think we have to be fair in acknowledging that Loki had no market because there aren't enough gamers using Linux. This is changing, albeit slowly, and I've seen a number of friends and colleagues consider the switch from MS to Linux. The can consider such a move largely because of WineX. Once there is enough gamers using Linux and willing to use Linux as a primary platform for games then ports will make sense.

                It think it would be interesting to get so
            • Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem.

              Well, not really. First you would have to throw away all your existing games when switching and then Loki just offered 20 or so games out of several 100 current titles.

              If you play 10 games and only one game is not ported by Loki, you will not make the switch, period. Only Wine with near-100% compatibility will allow the masses to switch.

            • >Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem.

              They did, but Chicken & Egg evaded Loki's tackle and ran in for a touchdown.

        • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:25AM (#5750309)
          I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. ... You have a choice: emulate Windows ...

          Do you even know what the acronym Wine stands for?

        • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdot@ ... inus threevowels> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:28AM (#5750323)
          It doesn't have PERFECT application support. That's why you want native ports. Besides, you are probably the only person who is willing to switch to another OS and throw away the thousands of dollars invested in software for win32. Your argument is like saying that dos support in win95 held back native win32 apps. Bullshit, ain't it?

          • It doesn't have PERFECT application support. That's why you want native ports.

            That's why I phrased it as being "perfect" in quotes: I know there are faults with the program, and I know it will never be literally perfect. But when for the majority of programs the process is "good enough" and doesn't interfere with execution, then most people won't look for a better solution.

            Besides, you are probably the only person who is willing to switch to another OS and throw away the thousands of dollars invested in s

          • ??? I have switched to Linux and only use ported games so I know he is not alone. I agree completely with his arguement and think that my support for the ports will help us to move on into a brighter future. I also think your analogy is dumb and that you are simply trying to provoke heated arguement.
          • Linux isn't a viable platform, both because of the small number of desktop users and probably also because they are less likely to pay for software.

            Would be interesting to know if any companies test to make sure their games run fine WITH wine under linux.

            Going further, it would be good to see games that are published with acknowledged Wine Support.
          • so you never moved off of your DOS based OSs since all those thousands of dollors of programs you had for dos would not run in 2k/XP.

          • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:2, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Most people here don't have thousands of dollars in Windows software. They have thousands of dollars in pirated Windows software.

        • Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cdemon6 ( 443233 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:30AM (#5750335) Homepage
          Think about that again - let software developers the freedom to choose to add a linux port wheter they need one or not!

          If we have binary emulation of windows apps more people will use linux, and if more people use linux more companies will port their product to native linux. but for the user winex is a really good thing, some companies just can't spend money on a linux port for this few thousand sales atm.
          • If we have binary emulation of windows apps more people will use linux

            That's the thing. I think linux will eventually be viewed as windows compatible, but the choice for power users. Some people will switch to it to be cool. But when microsoft adds drm, you can bet people will jump ship in a hurry if linux is a viable alternative at that time. Then I think we'll see microsoft's true colors. Windows isn't done till linux doesn't run. The barometer will be directx. When game companies start to resist

        • Native ports wont happen until (Score:5, Interesting)

          by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:31AM (#5750340) Homepage Journal

          Theres enough Windows users to buy those Native ports using linux.

          How do you attract Windows users? With games. You have to start somewhere, you need a market of gamers before you can sell games. Heres how it can work, use WineX to bring tons of new games, get maybe a million gamers to switch to Linux.

          Now you have a million linux gamers, little independent Linux development companies can sell games, let the big companies sit on the fence while the little linux companies make plenty of money selling games, and suddenly the big companies will see how much money they could be making and start to port.

          This is the only way, you need games to attract gamers, and you need gamers to attract games. So bring games, increased gamers = increased games.

          • There is Another Way (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Catiline ( 186878 )
            Platform independent code.

            There are projects [clanlib.org] out [libsdl.org] there [opengl.org] that aim to provide a platform-independent method to produce commercial-quality games. There is no real reason that a company has to struggle with long, difficult ports of system-oriented code if they use the platform independent OpenGL (and other libraries) instead.

            Now, how do you convince developers (or, more importantly, their managers) of the value of this approach? I don't know, because to a manager market flexibility is just Yet Another Buzz
            • Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games.

              You are ignoring the fact that this is mostly irrelevant.

              Unless Linux runs ALL games a given gamer wants to play, it won't be used. Just a single unsupported game is enough to keep him from using Linux, end of story.

              • If you're talking the hardcore gamer -- the kind who subscribes to six gaming magazines, builds his(/her) own $4,000 box and argues over the merits of a higher framerate vs. higher screen resolution -- then yes, if Linux doesn't run $Big_Name_Game then they won't want to deal with it. But for Joe SixPack, who doesn't have a single gaming magazine subscription, it doesn't matter if they have Hoyle Solitaire, Spider Solitaire or PySol, just so long as it works. For that segment of the market, there is nothing
          • I want to Play Carmageddon 2 and Carmageddon 3 on my powerbook (OS X). I'm willing to install Linux if WineX will support it on G4 hardware.

            Can anybody help me out? Direct me to a website that explains how to do it?

            • WineX will not run games on any non-x86 platform. WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator" and that statement is quite true: all it does is translate Windows API calls to Linux API calls. Since this does not alter or in any way affect the machine code of the game program itself, you cannot use Wine (or WineX) to play games on a different platform.
            • The only use any form of Wine can have on non Intel systems is to build binaries of Windows source. Wine will not help you run IA32 binaries on a PowerPC machine. An Intel Linux machine running a Windows app through wine is still executing IA32 code. Remember Wine Is Not an Emulator, it is a port of the Win32 API to Unix.
          • All I can say is that Transgaming sucks. Why do I say that? Well, I subscribed to Transgaming for a year and **my** experience was that:

            *Their development cycle is slow.
            *I couldn't any games out of the box.
            *I couldn't find any tried and true instructions to get a game running under linux in their forums ( or anywhere else on their web site, for that matter..
            *Their forums are very disorganized, trying to search them is a lesson in futility. And when you do find some information, it's always a hodgepodge
            of '
        • Well, the reality of the situation is that demand exists, and the quickest and cheapest way to satisfy the demand is with Wine.

          I refuse to choose games based on which OS I use. I choose games on their own merits and, if I can help it, I won't limit my field of choices. So what if wine is forever. There's a real possibility that in time, I'll be able to run games better with Linux/Wine than on MS. Talk about opening the door for wide spread linux adoption.

          That's fine that you choose not to support wine
        • Nonsense.

          We can only expect native ports AFTER we have a significant number of gamers on Linux.

          And a gamer will only switch when ALL his preferred games run on Linux. Yes, that means it's not enough if out of 10 games only 9 are ported.

          Wine is the only way to overcome the chicken-egg problem (as another poster already has pointed out), it is absolutely essential for Linux as a gaming platform and also very helpful for Linux as a desktop in general.

          If WindowsXP weren't backwards compatible to Windows

        • Actually, I'm all for WINE. Not for the new games, because that takes a long time to develop and support in WINE, but for the older games. I don't want to have to have a Windows partition just to run them, and I don't want to leave them behind. I've already purchased them once, so emulation is the best way to go for me.

          If you have already-released games that you want to keep, support WINE. If you want to play new games, pester the developers and vote with your dollars.

        • After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent.

          Well, with Microsoft having saturated the desktop market for OS and office productivity applications, their new revenue model is based on upgrade cycles and subscription licenses.

          In other words, they're deliberately cutting the cords of compatibility back to Win 9X, for example. And stopping future support for NT4 and other versions of Windows at specific times

        • Here are a few tasty snippets from Wine HQ - Why Wine is so important [winehq.com] and Wine HQ - Debunking Wine Myths [winehq.com] which I feel answer you better than I can:

          From the first page:

          Any Windows replacement must run Windows applications

          The dependency is not so much on Microsoft Windows as it is on Windows applications. Boxed off-the-shelf applications, games, in-house applications, vertical market applications, are what prevents users, companies and governments from switching to another operating system. Even if 90%
        • Your missing the point.

          One of the ideas behind Wine is to simplify the process of porting to Linux. In addition to it's library byte-level compatibility, one of the overriding goals is to give companies who write windows products the ability to port over large parts of their code relatively painlessly while only optimizing certain chunks for Linux.

          This gives them a foothold in the Linux market with a reduced investment in terms of developer costs. As the market grows and revenue increases the hope would b
        • I understand your complaint, however the same could have been said about SAMBA. Don't use SAMBA, just force every desktop to run NFS!!!

          Without SAMBA a lot of people I know wouldn't give Linux a second look. Now they use it INSTEAD of Windows for some of their servers.

          Let's look at it this way. If WINE was perfect it would help bring people like me that still need DreamWeaver and a few other apps over to using Linux on the desktop. Now once Linux gained significant desktop marketshare, say around $35%,
    • I hear that now, with the new WINE, I can actually get a whopping 20 fps on Quake! Its that fast!

  • Comment Summary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:45AM (#5750154) Homepage

    30% Why would I want to run windows anyway ?
    20% Its dreadful they limit it to subscribers for the RPMs
    20% This great news, it means I can run X, Y but not Z
    10% It sucks because Z doesn't work
    10% If you want to run Windows you should install windows.

  • good or bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fine09 ( 630812 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:52AM (#5750178)
    I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design. Just the fact that I really like to play a couple games now and again.

    I am just wondering if we will ever get the performance we get with games under windows. I know that they have a couple games ported, but in games like FPS where framerates are so important. I think that if Wine can perform in this area, we would see a lot more conversions to linux. Games sell computers, think of the first application that you baught, I know I didn't buy a word processor first(Links386 to be exact).

    Now flame me if i am wrong, but doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine, thus adding an extra layer between the hardware and the code?

    • It depends on the game, certain games can actually be faster than they are in windows, it all depends on the game. Some games will be slower.

      What matters is, we will have all the Windows games that matter. This means we win. What I'd like to see transgaming support next is AsheronsCall.

      You have the tools to build a linux compatible AsheronsCall here AsheronsCall server emulation [uas.ath.cx]

      All you have to do is vote on it.

    • Re:good or bad? (Score:5, Informative)

      by yelvington ( 8169 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:00AM (#5750210) Homepage
      "doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine"

      No.

      http://www.winehq.com/?page=myths

    • Re:good or bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Surak ( 18578 ) <surak&mailblocks,com> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:07AM (#5750234) Homepage Journal
      I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design. Just the fact that I really like to play a couple games now and again.

      I have one machine for development, one for games, and one for CAD. The problem is that the ideal machine for games is not necessarily the ideal machine for development or CAD. With 3D CAD software and animation and such, I need graphics cards with more capabilities than your average ATI Radeon or nVIDIA GeForce. But games don't run well on cards designed for the CAD market. And for development, I want all the tools I love to use, and many of them either suck on Windows or don't have Win32 ports at all (Quanta+ comes to mind as one that doesn't have a Win32 port). Plus I'm working on a few Linux-specific projects, in addition to the PHP stuff I'm working on.

      So my suggestion: one machine for development, another for games. Surak's rule of hardware: Hardware is cheap.

      • Surak's rule of hardware: Hardware is cheap.

        But monitors are not. I don't want to buy a 21" for all three of my computers. I would get a KVM, but...does anyone know of a *good* KVM switch with no ghosting when running at 1280x1024 or higher?

        I would really like to know a recommended brand, honestly.

        Kashif
    • Now flame me if i am wrong, but doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine, thus adding an extra layer between the hardware and the code?

      Flame On!

      But sadly no. Wine ( as the acronym goes : WINE IS NOT AN EMULATOR )

      It is the libraries and system support that allows linux to direclty execute PE executables, and link them to libraries which have the same interface as Windows itself.

      It is a layer in the sense so is QT, GLIBC, etc.. and other libraries that provide support for application services on

    • Re:good or bad? (Score:3, Informative)

      by fault0 ( 514452 )
      > I am just wondering if we will ever get the performance we get with games under windows

      With most games yes.

      > I know that they have a couple games ported

      More than just a few games work in winex :)

      > like FPS where framerates are so important.

      Yep.. games based on slightly older engines, such as the quake3 engine (rtcw, moh, jk2, sof2), and Halflife (Counterstrike)... pretty much run at the same speeds in WineX and WIndows already.

      What would be interested to see is how new games such as bf1942

    • Re:good or bad? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Spoing ( 152917 )
      If you don't try it...you don't know! Well, OK, that's not entirely true. You can take some short cuts to see if Wine and/or WineX will ~likely~ work for you. A few select sites cover Wine and WineX program tips will give you a good idea.

      Make no mistake, while Wine is getting damn good it is not perfect or even practical for all Windows software. Some software will probably never run under it, most will not run without some tweaking, so don't expect it to. OTOH, if you tried Wine even as late as a fe

    • I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design.

      Well, I did so today! RedHat 9, the downloadable version.

      I have to decide wether to keep it or not. The only thing missing for me is the Macromedia Flash application (not the plug-in, that works fine on Linux). I am seriously considering keeping RH as my main desktop, and I'll just boot into Windows when I need to use Flash.

      I'm quite happy with it so far and it's fun to be learning a new environ

  • Good effort, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gatesh8r ( 182908 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:58AM (#5750200)
    I'm wary of wine making various Unix and Unix clones going the way of OS/2. So far it has only helped, and people that weren't intrested in Linux for example "because it doesn't run my Wintendo games" are now intrested. This is good, but we must focus on getting native titles out for Unix and Unix clones. Remember what happened to OS/2...

    • Nothing happened to OS/2 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:00AM (#5750212) Homepage Journal


      OS/2 only lost because they didnt try. I didnt see a single OS/2 on any computer except for maybe IBMs computers and eventually IBM even took it off their own computers.

      So if OS/2 did bad it was because of IBM, I had wanted to get OS/2 Warp and an IBM but the cost was ridiculous, this is why I never purchased it and its the same reason I never owned a mac.
      • And an IBM exclusive (heh, Big Blue sure learned), but one of the largest selling points was Windoze compatability. They got Win16 going but Win32 and the flooding of APIs...


        BTW, don't get me wrong here; I'm a TG subscriber, but I'd still hate to see companies pass on Linux development "because WineX can run it". Right now WineX is a Good Thing, but it could become a Bad Thing if Linux becomes popular.



        • It wont become bad. Companies will want a Native port when theres a million people demanding it.

          Sure we will use transgaming, but certain games we wont tolerate a transgaming style port. We wont tolerate it for a first person shooter, we wont tolerate it for a 3d based game, gamers like good frame rates and quality and wont buy it if the port is shit. As more people use Linux, less people will use Windows, and the Linux community will gain power.

          Also lets not forget the guys who make Transgaming can star
          • I don't think TG as a company will go away; I would be very suprised if they did. WineX and the focus of the company may change over time, but TG as a company is going to be strong. TG did the right thing; Loki did the popular thing. One's dead; the other is at version 3.0 and is really gaining attention. Of course hindsight is 20/20. :-)
      • I didnt see a single OS/2 on any computer except for maybe IBMs computers and eventually IBM even took it off their own computers

        I assume you mean Pre-loaded. Cause if you didn't, you are nuts.

        So if OS/2 did bad it was because of IBM, I had wanted to get OS/2 Warp and an IBM but the cost was ridiculous

        Uh, let me get this straight. From 1992 to 1995, you actively purchased computers based on what OS was preloaded on them? wow. Why didn't you just go and buy a machine with no OS loaded. I bought many d

      • Re:Nothing happened to OS/2 (Score:4, Informative)

        by Gleef ( 86 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @09:25AM (#5750645) Homepage
        HanzoSan wrote:

        OS/2 only lost because they didnt try. I didnt see a single OS/2 on any computer except for maybe IBMs computers and eventually IBM even took it off their own computers.

        IBM certainly tried with OS/2, but not until it was too late.

        OS/2 version 1 was too slow for the machines of the day, and shipped without a GUI partially because Microsoft fscked IBM over on their joint development deal. IBM pushed this version, but got laughed at because nobody wanted to run it.

        Version 2 was much better, and had a good GUI but developers and IBM marketing really didn't get behind it, feeling burned from Version 1.

        Version 3 (The first OS/2 Warp) was even better, it was faster, the machines were faster, the GUI was really polished, critical apps had native versions, developers started getting interested, IBM's marketting really pushed it well. OS/2 Warp sold more retail copies in its first year than its contemporary, Windows 95. The problem was, that was the year that the heavy duty Windows OEM licensing really started, OS/2 was flooded out of the market by computers shipped with Windows 95 preinstalled.

        By Version 4, IBM knew that OS/2 really couldn't compete in the wild against Microsoft's OEM deals, so they focusesed their marketing on their core strength, corporate sales, and did reasonably well.

        So if OS/2 did bad it was because of IBM, I had wanted to get OS/2 Warp and an IBM but the cost was ridiculous, this is why I never purchased it and its the same reason I never owned a mac.

        While IBM certainly holds most of the responsibility for OS/2's failure, Microsoft shares some of the blame too, for backing out of their codevelopment contract, and anticompetitive OEM deals.
        • OS/2 was doomed from day 1.

          Just think about it for one second.

          Imagine you are selling PCs.

          So you now have the choice between being dependent on an evil company or being dependent on an evil competing company.

          OEMs would have been pretty stupid helping IBM monopolize the x86-hardware market.

          OS/2 never had a chance, it didn't matter how good it was.

      • OS/2 only lost because they didnt try.

        Wrong.
        Lot's of other OS/2 bullshitting around here too.

        OS/2 was ruled out 'cause it was extremely picky in terms of hardware. That was at a time where market was being flooded with the cheapo RAM, CPUs (Cyrix was ahead of Intel too, remeber?), boards 'n stuff and people wouldn't yet make the difference between a crappy piece of RAM and the quality stuff. Especially the guys at the screwm-together (and up) PC shops that were popping up left right and center at the t
    • This is not an insightful post. It gets said, one way or another, every time a Wine or WineX story gets submitted. Sit on the sidelines and wait for the day that all game developers go "Oh, gee, we're not coding our games to work in a niche market. A niche market that seems to have certain elements that believe purchasing software is bad. Let's get right on that problem!". You're going to be sitting on that sideline for a long long time...

  • Everquest in Winex (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:59AM (#5750206)
    I have been playing everquest in winex for the past four months and I have to say I am getting less memory leaks than windows. If EQ crashed all I do is close that windows killing winex instance and start a new now walla. In case of windows I have to reboot w2k box since it freezes up or gets slow as molases.
    I hope vendor do provide linux client in future besides windows there are a lot of us who plays purely in linux.

  • In related news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:59AM (#5750207)
    .. the Wine package for some reason has been removed from the RedHat Linux 9 distribution according to release notes..

    • Re:In related news (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:24AM (#5750302) Homepage
      Wine was probably removed from Red Hat 9 because it is incompatible with the new threading library (NPTL or whatever it's called). The Wine people have now come up with a workaround, but a real 'port' to the new thread system isn't done yet.

      • Re:In related news (Score:3, Informative)

        by praedor ( 218403 )

        The workaround is only partially effective. you will still run into (at least) the incredibly annoying message about there being no "wineserver-socket" filey-thing. You will still have to manually rm -rf the damn thing after/before every individual run of winex to get your app working. So, if you use winex to install a game and don't start the game from the install screen (if it has such an option) then you will first have to go to the .transgaming directory and rm -rf the wineserver-socket dir and then

    • Re:In related news (Score:3, Informative)

      by Papineau ( 527159 )

      You can get a pre-packaged (unofficial) binary for RedHat 9 here: http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/ [sunsite.dk].

      Or install from source.

      Or even switch distro :) (says while writing this on his RH8 box and as a packager of Wine for RH8 on sf.net [sf.net]).

  • dont get your hopes up (Score:2, Informative)

    by RyLaN ( 608672 )
    it still has several annoying starcraft bugs that i ran into after less than 10 minutes of testing. also, when you disconnect from a game in counter-strike it greys the screen and hangs, i had to killall wine to get out...if they could just get over themselves and release their patches to winehq things might go better

  • Yay (Score:4, Funny)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:09AM (#5750240)

    This is nice and all, respect to Transgaming.

    But I just have to vent my concern over the lacking win64 support. The bit-gap between native win32/win64 and wine32 might be the final nail in the coffin for linux on the desktop.

  • winex no substitute for windows (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:11AM (#5750252)
    Gaming is a single-tasking app. While Windows supports every Windows game by definition, winex will by definition always be playing catchup. I have no need to integrate Windows games with a Linux desktop, so I might as well reboot into a Windows partition.

  • Win32 port (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wrexen ( 151642 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:11AM (#5750253) Homepage
    Has anyone started working on a Win32 port of this project?

    *Anxiously waiting its release*

    • Back in the day, Wine was very locked in to a UNIX system. In modern times, the only components locked in to UNIX are the core. That would be ntdll and kernel32. The gdi32 and user32 libraries actually use a driver system, though the only really working driver is for X11.

      However, the rest of Wine has already been ported to Win32 architecture-- even within Wine it runs on the Win32 architecture. There is also ReactOS which has its own core but uses a lot of the higher level wine dlls.

    • Re:Win32 port (Score:3, Informative)

      by jbert ( 5149 )
      Kind of. People are trying to get wine to run in cygwin. And vice versa. Nested emulation is a good test.
  • If you can't get it, reload the link (or, well, subscribe first). The download speed is OK if you do get a connection.

  • Cool! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17, 2003 @08:19AM (#5750282)
    I installed it and played some Wintendo games with it. I must say it looked so good that I will switch completely to Windows and drop Linux. Thanks to transgaming for this great software.
  • I've tried WineX a few months ago and looking over their online database I found that most modern games will about install and thats about it. I would really like to be able to play Starfleet Command + Homeworld well and nativly but I'm afraid hat I still keep my machine dual boot.

    One day though I hope to just be able format c:\ and never look back. Its just games now that are keeping me having a dual boot system. Most of my time is spent in Linux just waiting for a 2.5 that boots on my system

    Rus
  • Now you're just asking for a flame war.
  • I'm grabbing the Point2Play RPM now, though the Transgaming site doesn't show any pics of it. Anyone use it yet? It wasn't in the beta release AFAICR.

  • X-Com: Apocalypse? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Honken ( 665599 )
    According to the forums X-Com: Apocalypse doesn't work at all (it's not even listed in the games section), anyone knows if it is possible to run it in dosemu instead? I'd say it's one of the best games ever made, a shame that Microprose never released a patch to fix the quite serious bugs in it. Quite annoying when you after countless hours of playing discovered that all savegame files were corrupted meaning that you couldn't finish the game...

  • I look forward to the day when Wine is only for... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @09:00AM (#5750506) Homepage Journal
    people into retro gaming, or required to use other old software. I'm so glad we are slowly approaching this point. UT2K3 has Linux support out of the box. [slashdot.org] The demise of Loki [lokigames.com] is something that I initially thought was going to set back the Linux gaming community for years, but then I've seen games like UT2K3, [unrealtournament2003.com] Castle Wolfenstein, [activision.com] and if you want to count their late to the punch arrival Never Winter Nights [bioware.com] come out native. If we could only get Blizzard on the bandwagon, and Maxis more firmly seated the other developers would have little choice but to jump onboard. gatesh8r is right. [slashdot.org] If Wine gets to good to fast not only will it slow some developers to adopt Linux natively, it may loose a couple that we already have. I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole. The Mac actually has the attention of the developers, and porting from BSD to Linux should be much easier than porting from Windows to Linux. Of course if everyone adopts and improves on SDL [libsdl.org] and OpenGL [opengl.org] they will have little to worry about when porting anyways. Especially if OpenGL2 ever makes it way to daylight with all the Active X type replacements it's supposed to have available.

    • Re:I look forward to the day when Wine is only for (Score:4, Informative)

      by masq ( 316580 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @12:14PM (#5751994) Homepage Journal
      I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole.

      It's good for developers to support ANYTHING besides Win32, but I'd rather have developers starting with Linux, and then porting to OSX, UNIX, and Windows - for the simple reason that OSX is VERY sweet, but doesn't encourage cross-platform coding (at least from what I've seen of their dev tools). Same with Windows. People who write for Windows tend not to care if it runs on any other OS, their focus is only on their own system, and this closes down their future options should they change their mind, or if they are successful and want to expand. My experience is that this is true with Macheads as well, and Apple Corporate doesn't seem at all interested in bringing OSX apps over to Linux, just getting them from Linux over to OSX....

      It's best to use strictly open standards which allow for easy cross-platform portability if you're at all interested in supporting other OSes. I've talked to guys who said "If I had only thought of that BEFORE I wrote the whole thing in VisualBasic (or whatever)..." Being able to write your code using open tools and thus support three or more platforms from basically the same codebase (like Opera) is very very cool.

      But yeah, OSX is definitely a VeryGoodThing. It's nice to have Apple join the party, and it's interesting to watch how Apple Legal interacts with the OpenSource movement. Apple has a lot of strengths and a lot of things to bring to the table - if they decide to get into the game in a big way and deal a few hands themselves. Hopefully, they keep heading in the "right" direction (openness and sharing). They may get a gold star from the teacher yet.
  • Will be 3.1 and then 3.11 and then 95,98,ME and so on ;)

  • Bittorrent mirror? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone have the .torrent file for this? Good to distribute the load rather than kill their server.

  • Internal Server Error (Score:3, Funny)

    by GMFTatsujin ( 239569 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @10:37AM (#5751207) Homepage
    The release notes page won't come up... Hey, they're not emulating IIS on their server, are they?

    Or not not emulating IIS, since Wine Is Not an Emulator?

  • I guess all applications that use OpenGL will have its performance halved due to context switching on the graphics hardware...
  • I remember trying an older version and wasn't impressed by the sound engine. Diablo 2 and other games had missing EAX, 3D sound, etc.

    Is this area improved in for v3.0?

  • Don't get excited, still "broken" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by praedor ( 218403 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @12:01PM (#5751901) Homepage

    with any distro using glibc-3.2.2 (which is just about any new distro release). If you are using older distros, you may be happy and fine with it but if you use RH 9.0 or Mandrake 9.1 (or any other 3.2.2-based distro) you will not be pleased.


    This isn't a winex problem, but a problem that affects ALL wine variants whether from WineHQ, Codeweavers, or Transgaming. The glibc developers have happily gone off and broken software everyone uses (again) for no real good reason. I imagine they change things here and there just so they have something to do or simply to try something to see how it works. LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE! IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FRICKIN' TOUCH IT!


    Sheesh.

    • glibc 2.3.2 issues are fixed with 3.0 (Score:4, Informative)

      by gavriels ( 55831 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @12:39PM (#5752230)
      Please check the release notes - this was one of the things that we fixed with WineX 3.0.

      Take care,
      -Gav

      --
      Gavriel State, CEO & CTO
      TransGaming Technologies Inc.
      gav@transgaming.com

      • And yet, I still get the same problems with MDK 9.1, glibc-3.2.2, that I got with the pre-release.


        This problem only occurs in 9.1 and affects ALL wine versions, even those prior to 3.0. The problem goes away with pre glibc-3.2.2 distros (I still have 9.0 floating around).


        The most annoying manifestation of this problem is the damnable wine-socket error message that requires a manual "rm -rf" to fix every time you try to start wine(x).

  • WineX - Not as evil as you think. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Karn ( 172441 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @12:25PM (#5752093)
    Anti-Wine claim #1:

    If a company can use WineX for their game, they won't bother making a true native port.

    Here's the deal: If a company cares about it's audience, and a significant number of it's audience are running Linux, they are not going to want to use WineX. Why? Performance. Higher hardware requirements on games means you lessen your audience, so it's in a game developer's best interest to make the game as fast as possible, which means NOT using WineX. In addition to a game developer having to make their game run efficiently to reach more players, they have even more incentive to have their game run well due to competetion. If company X and company Y both have a FPS Doom 3 clone, and company X created a native binary while company Y did not, whose game will Linux gamers choose (assuming the games have comparable gameplay/fun factor)?

    What if a company doesn't care about their Linux audience and decides to use WineX? Well, we lose nothing. If they don't care about their Linux audience (because it's much smaller than it's Windows audience or whatever) then chances are they weren't going to do a native port anyway. For example, it's obvious that Blizzard has no intention of porting to Linux in the near future. If they decided to create a Linux 'port' of World of Warcraft using WineX because it was extremely cheap, it doesn't mean that WineX prevented a native port. We lost nothing, but gain a title which is likely to attract many more Linux gamers, which will increase monetary incentive for companies to port their games to Linux. An example of a company that could have used WineX to port their game, but didn't, would be Bioware. They obviously care about their Linux audience (late port issues aside.)

    To sum this point up, while WineX could cost us a native port or two, it will increase the Linux gamer audience to the point that it is significant, which is usually what is required for companies to even consider a native port of their game. And companies that do choose WineX during the Linux gaming movement's infancy due to monetary reasons will be reconsidering, because the savings from using WineX will be overshadowed by the return from reaching more gamers, and outselling a competetor whose game is less efficient because it uses WineX.

    I'll be buying Neverwinter Nights from Tuxgames.com when it's stable under Linux, I'll be buying Doom 3 from Tuxgames, when it's released, and I'll be buying any other native Linux ports that I can get my hands on. I will also continue to be a Transgaming subscriber so I can play Battlefield 1942, the current game of the year (although, since BF1942 didn't run before, I had to dual-boot, which means I am registering my hits to websites as a Windows user. Is surfing under Linux important? Web hosts know the percentage of Windows users to Linux users. [google.com])

  • WINE is Peculiar (Score:5, Funny)

    by repetty ( 260322 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:01PM (#5752421) Homepage
    The WINE phenomena is peculiar...

    Imagine that some guy has grown up with an oppressive, domineering, butt-ugly, and mean mother.

    One night, he decides to do something rather independent -- something he knows that she would not approve of: He hires a hooker.

    When she shows up at the hotel room, he hands her some of his mother's clothes to put on, douses her with his mother's perfume, and then he straps a mother mask onto the girl before he does his business.

    Hey guys, if you're going to use Unix or Linux, use Unix or Linux.

    You're creepin' me out.

    --Richard

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