Transgaming Introduces Cedega 6.0

Tux Penguin writes "Today Transgaming introduced Cedega 6.0, which is the popular Linux game emulator based upon WINE. Among the new features in Cedega 6.0 is support for a number of new games, Shader Model 2.0 support, new FBO extensions support, and ALSA audio. Phoronix has provided a performance preview that has Doom 3 and Enemy Territory benchmarks from Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, WINE, and Cedega."

Linux is better for games than vista

[cyphercell]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item =681&num=2 [phoronix.com]

What a horrible review

[dreamchaser]

If you're going to test the performance of an emulation layer you certainly don't do so using graphics intensive games on low end and/or integrated graphics solutions. They should have at least used a midrange GPU. There are numerous other problems with the whole thing. Basically, not everything works and the performance of what *does* work is on par with the Linux equivalent based on the poorly thought out testing methodology.

Don't waste your time.

Re:Woo Hoo An an other 1st person shooter.

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

Why doesn't Crossover spend more time with other games that are more inovative, and fun.

Cedega != Crossover. They develop their own products. Also, why are they testing cedega with a game that has a linux port. That just seems silly.

Re:Wine and WoW

[exwhyze]

wine-0.9.29 works 'out of the box' with WoW. Probably a couple earlier versions do, too.

Re:Get back to me...

[A beautiful mind]

They ARE open source. CVS access is available, sourcecode is GPL.

What you have to pay for is the convenient "snapshot" taken at a stable moment plus the packaging. You also support development that way.

Re:OpenGL

[Sark666]

Well, not really, those games are opengl on windows as well. They only use directx for input/sound.

Re:Woo Hoo An an other 1st person shooter.

[Anonymous Coward]

FPS is equal footing for all players and it is your skill that allows you to do well.

Absolutely, completely wrong. Turn based strategy is the true test of skill. It doesn't matter if you're an 80 year old paraplegic in a wheelchair or a 16 year old teenager. Everyone competes equally. FPS is just about who can react faster. Big deal.

Re:Get back to me...

[X_Bones]

Close. The open-source bits of Cedega are LGPL'd or AFPL'd. The closed-source bits (the Cedega GUI, the copy-protection modules, and IIRC some DirectX goodies), plus the binary packaging and official support, are what you actually pay for.

Re:Get back to me...

[The MAZZTer]

What good is the CVS if it doesn't run?

I tried it, and it compiled correctly, but it failed to run because it was missing some library that I couldn't find anywhere. Plus, it overwrites WINE. >:(

I talked it over with some more experienced linux users and they are of the opinion the CVS version is intentionally hard to use, and even lacking in features, in order to force people to buy the commercial version.

Re:Get back to me...

[packeteer]

Transgaming negotiated with game companies and are required to close the source. The agreement was that if game companies are going to share their copy protection code with Transgaming then they need to not release that code under the GPL in Cadega. Seems ok to me.

Obviously free software is good but if a company is worried about the "viral nature" of the GPL they need to have some assurance that when they work with free software they are not going to get their code displayed for all to see. Ya the Transgaming people made a deal with the devil, get over it.

Re:Wine and WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

You're out of your mind. "wine WoW.exe -opengl" works beautifully. OpenGL is not a hack, it has all the features of the DirectX 9.0c render. Bliz supports the OpenGL render pathh 100% because its what their Mac client uses. Hell, you can run WoW.exe -opengl in Windows and you won't notice the difference.

Re:Get back to me...

[BobPaul]

Sort of open source. It'd be nice if they contributed changes upstream to the WINE project. Many of the problems they've had with games certain (esp older) games not working would be fixed if they used a recent version of WINE. (Un)Fortunately WINE wised-up and stopped using the MIT license, so Cedega development has suffered.

CrossOver Office contributes their changes, and they continue to exist and earn money. We could have had good D3D support in Wine a long time ago if Transgaming wasn't a bunch of freeloading asshats.

Re:Get back to me...

[mikearthur]

That simply isn't the case.

Firstly, the sourcecode has never been GPL, it is a mix of AFPL, LGPL and proprietary licensed code that is not included on the CVS.

Secondly, the CVS hasn't been updated for ages.

Re:Wine and WoW

[BobPaul]

Wine handles Wow just as good as Cedega. If you're paying for Cedega just for WoW, stop... there's no benefit. If you use it for other games as well, then it's probably worth it. Just MHO.

Check here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine [wowwiki.com]
and here:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=648 2 [winehq.org]

Re:And...

[Spikeles]

It's obviously possible for game developers to target Cadega

WRONG! It's thinking like this that makes developers/publishers lazy when it comes to Linux. You don't target the emulator. You target the PLATFORM. The GNU/Linux platform has many benefits going for it, just look at I.D Software and how they support Linux with binaries of all their popular games, Quake series comes to mind. If game publishers would just pull their heads out of their asses and realize there really is a games market for Linux, we might start to see some of the more popular games being ported. It's a piece of fricken cake to port a Windows application over to Linux if you just used standard libraries in the first place without resorting to Win32 calls, and those can be ported without too much bother either. IF i had Linux binaries of my games, you would never see me on Windows again.

Useless

[cortana]

But if you try to redistribute it, Transgaming will change their license to prevent you from doing so [debian.org].

Re:Linux is better for games than vista

[mahmud]

The Cedega software doesn't expire on you. Once your subscription ends you just can't download updates. You don't "rent" it.

Re:Linux is better for games than vista

[Drooling Iguana]

They may have changed their policy since the last time I checked, but I'm pretty sure subscribing to Cedega just means that you can download the new versions of the program when they're released. If your subscription expired, the last version you installed will still work, you just won't be able to get updates.

Actually

[renegadesx]

In my experience Doom III played better on Linux than it did with Windows on the exact same system.

Re:LOL

[bettlebrox]

>Funny how they benchmark two of the very few popular games that have native Linux clients, indeed.

That's the point. So they can compare the Windows version, the Linux version, & the Windows version on both Wine & Cedega. This lets the folk doing the benchmark figure out how much overhead there is to wine & cedega and show if it perform better, worse, or the same than playing games natively.