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Wine Software

WineX 3.0 Examined 341

Posted by michael from the old-wine-new-bottles dept.
GonzoJohn writes "When I first subscribed to Transgaming's WineX 2.1 product last year, I was pleasantly surprised that nearly half of the games I had were supported to a degree. The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly. The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game (the installers seemed to work). With the release of WineX 3.0 from Transgaming on April 17th this year, it looked like it was time to revisit the wonderful world of Wine. This time around, Transgaming WineX 3.0 has some new tools as well as improvements in the number of games supported and gaming speeds. In this article, we're going to take a look at the new features of WineX 3.0, with a focus on their new GUI installer called Point2Play."
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WineX 3.0 Examined More

WineX 3.0 Examined

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  • WineX 95? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Surak ( 18578 ) <surak@mail[ ]cks.com ['blo' in gap]> on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:19PM (#5836215) Homepage Journal
    Oh no...I can see it now...the next version will be called 3.1, then 3.11 and finally WineX 95! It's happening again! Argh!
    • You're right. Version number jokes never get old. They are repeated and repeated, year after year, but they are still just as clever and inventive as they were five years ago.

      Let's make another 3.11 joke, shall we? The trigger-happy crackheads will be falling over themselves trying to mod it up fast enough.

      • Re:"+5 Funny?" (Score:3, Funny)

        by sharkey ( 16670 )
        Let's make another 3.11 joke, shall we?

        All joking aside, I just can't wait to get the "Leaves" background in WineX 3.11 for Winegroups.

  • Installers??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:21PM (#5836234)
    The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game

    Only a die-hard WineX advocate would count ONLY getting installer to run as some degree of success. Everyone else would count such cases as complete failures - one notch above utter and complete failures (when the installer won't run). Actually, if the game itself won't run I'd probably rather have the installer fail.

    • Re:Installers??? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Angry White Guy ( 521337 ) <CaptainBurly[AT]goodbadmovies.com> on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:23PM (#5836258)
      Sounds like the Iraqi Information Minister, doesn't it. We are Succesful! We have managed to get Halo installed on Linux! X-boxen are commiting suicide, hanging from our Kernel hooks!

    • Re:Installers??? (Score:5, Informative)

      by aoteoroa ( 596031 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:39PM (#5836436)
      Sentance 1:The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly.
      Sentance 2:The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success all just short of actually being able to play the game
      Umm. The way I read that is that some games worked. Those were a success. Others looked like they installed but didn't work and were considered failures.

      Incidentally this has been my experience installing games on Windows (not just on Wine). Many games are picky about which version of Direct X you have installed. I used to have multiple versions of Windows installed just to play my games. Some only worked in Win 98, others only worked in Win2000, and I had one that would only work in win95. It was really annoying and put me off gaming.

      • Re:Installers??? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rifter ( 147452 )
        This kind of crap is exactly why I switched my gaming platform [playstation.com] years ago. Really I don't know why people say they keep a Windows machine around "for games" playing games on windows sucks, big time. Speaking of which, just can't wait to get this particular little jewel [playstation.com]

      • Re:Installers??? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jedi Alec ( 258881 )
        Which is why they put the compatibility thing in XP. Except for some really lousy games that actually check for Windows and DirectX versions, I can still play just about anything using XP and the DirectX that comes with it. So far the same applies for all the games I've tried under Longhorn...
    • There are degrees of partial install than can be considered successful. I'm currently running Dungeon Siege under the WineX 3 pre-release. I had the opposite problem the reviewer did: I couldn't get the installer to work. So I installed the game on my wife's Windows box (I no longer have one), and copied the install into an appropriate subdirectory under my user's .transgaming directory.

      It runs pretty much flawlessly, except for falling water, but I wouldn't expect that to work under my TNT2 card (it w

  • Doesn't Inspire a Lot of Confidence (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:24PM (#5836271) Homepage
    "...I was pleasantly surprised that nearly half of the games I had were supported to a degree. The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly. The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game..."

    I don't know about anyone else, but that wording didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in the 'success' of this project.

  • Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:28PM (#5836317) Homepage
    Please answer me this one question:
    Suppose WineX becomes perfect. Suppose Linux gamers by thousands load up their games and enjoy the latest Windows games. Suppose as a result Windows game developers see incrementally better sales (less than 5%, probably closer to 1-2%). Now, why in the world would they suddenly throw away all the code, tools, and experience they have on their current platform to grab some tiny extra percentage by learning, developing for, and testing on a new platform?

    After all they can happily tell those Linux people "You're unsupported. But try WineX!" When it fails, they simply say "You're unsupported!" They already have your money, after all, and it's your own fault for trying it on an unsupported platform.

    Let's be honest: Isn't WineX just a bandage for all those Linux users (former Windows users) that can't give up Windows games? It isn't bloody likely to convince anyone to leave Windows, the platform for which those games were made in the first place.

    Look at Bleemcast (PSX emulator for Sega Dreamcast). It emulated the original games on a different platform, even with graphical enhancements, but it didn't convince anyone who already had a PSX to jump on the Dreamcast...it just made already-committed Dreamcast owners happier.
    • Not everyone who uses free software has an agenda. The beauty of Linux, and all free software that's at least moderately popular, is that once it exists it never ceases to exist. I have no vested interest in Linux being continually developed until I die, I simply like using it. If WineX reduces developer spending on Linux... so what? Why do I care?

    • Re:Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TClevenger ( 252206 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:33PM (#5836375)
      On the other hand, if WineX is rather successful, the game manufacturers, who wouldn't dare throw away all their existing codebase to develop for Linux, might provide a bit of tweaking to get the game to run under WineX, since such code probably wouldn't hurt the game under the Windows platform. If enough people are using WineX, and can say so to those game manufacturers, they might just start making WineX one of the environments they test under, just to ship those few extra units.

      • Re:Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:57PM (#5836621) Homepage Journal

        might provide a bit of tweaking to get the game to run under WineX

        With only about 5% of the market, (Apple, anyone?), the developers will devote about that much concern to whether their games will run under WineX.

        But if WineX comptability is even on the radar, that's a good thing.

        And if some company in Taiwan releases a very inexpensive PC-like box for gaming via WineX, a box that sells millions of units, then the future of WineX compatibility is assured.

        It's a long way off, but a great milepost metric for real success of WineX would be if game developers started to badger both MS and WineX developers to get together to advance the APIs; maybe even MS would lower itself to devoting manpower working on the WineX codebase. Not that I expect all that anytime soon....

        • And if some company in Taiwan releases a very inexpensive PC-like box for gaming via WineX, a box that sells millions of units, then the future of WineX compatibility is assured.

          What about the Xbox? Does WineX run on that? Has anyone yet dared to install the necessary software on Xboxes and market them as cheap Windows-game-playing machines?

          • Hi I'm from the law firm of Rakin & Ponzer. We would like to extend our name to anyone interested in attempting this. The fireworks will be fun, as well as rosting marshmellows over the flames from your Microsoft Funded funeral pyre.
        • With only about 5% of the market, (Apple, anyone?), the developers will devote about that much concern to whether their games will run under WineX.

          It's not the percentage size of the market that matters. Adobe and Microsoft both sell flagship products on MacOS, for example.

          The equation will have to do with how many units you expect to sell and how much it will cost to port (tangible costs like developer time, as well as intangible ones like introducing potential bugs into the source due to the port).

        • Precisely. Apples are a completely different animal, whereas WineX compatibility is just a matter of identifying a problem in either the library WineX provides, or the "nonstandard" way the game chooses to use that library. Chances are if the problem is due to the way the game handles a library that otherwise meets published specs, maybe a tweak in the way that game accesses that library will make it _more_ stable under genuine Windows environments as well.

          So find a game manufacturer that has a Linux "i

    • Re:Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Devil's Avocado ( 73913 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:42PM (#5836467)
      """
      Look at Bleemcast (PSX emulator for Sega Dreamcast). It emulated the original games on a different platform, even with graphical enhancements, but it didn't convince anyone who already had a PSX to jump on the Dreamcast...it just made already-committed Dreamcast owners happier.
      """

      I don't think WineX is intended to convince windows users to convert to Linux. It's intended to make already-committed Linux users happier, making a little money for its authors in the process.
    • Suppose WineX becomes perfect

      It never will, because there will always be a lag between new APIs being introduced and Wine implementing them. But OK. Let's suppose the impossible happens.

      Now, why in the world would they suddenly throw away all the code, tools, and experience they have on their current platform to grab some tiny extra percentage by learning, developing for, and testing on a new platform?

      Good question. A few possible answers:

      • They want better integration. There are limits to how well W
      • It never will, because there will always be a lag between new APIs being introduced and Wine implementing them.

        There's also going to be a lag between new APIs being introduced and windows users actually upgrading. Game companies have to keep in mind that most users are still using Windows 98.
    • Look, there aren't many reasons for using Windows out there. MSOffice can be somewhat emulated with OpenOffice and such, most tools for network-related activities are much easier to build and support on Unix, email clients and web servers are much better on Unix, most tools for computation are easier to build and support on Unix, GUIs can be done anywhere depending on what toolkits you like, and video production is still usually a Macintosh thing.

      Games are the reason for buying that new 7GHz machine with

    • Re:Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DonkeyJimmy ( 599788 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:44PM (#5836488)
      Let's be honest: Isn't WineX just a bandage for all those Linux users (former Windows users) that can't give up Windows games? It isn't bloody likely to convince anyone to leave Windows, the platform for which those games were made in the first place.

      Of course it will! The only reason I (and many like me) hang around on Windows is because we want to run things-- and the main thing that isn't replicated just fine (or 10 times better) in some open source format on Linux is games. When WinX becomes reliable at running most popular games, I will make the switch over and never look back. I already have a Linux box, but it's for coding/serving, Windows is for using things (it has to be the better machine because games require the good hardware).

      Just because you don't respect Windows, doesn't mean that all the high budget (and is most cases, best) games aren't made for it and only it. And those of us who do play games need a system that can run them. I hate x-box, but when Perfect Dark Zero comes out for it, I will buy it. You need the medium to use the app.
      • You need the medium to use the app.

        No, we need people who will switch and wait awhile for their games to come out. If enough people switch then there is a demand for the product. We need people who would actually stand up to the game companies even if they use windows, and boycott them until they provide games for other platforms. There are perfectly good acceptable open APIs for making the games to where they will compile for multiple systems, we just need to create the demand for it. We also need (more)
    • And why should I care? I don't have an agenda, nor am I interested in pushing one.

      I use Linux for just about everything. But I have a Win98 partition for the sole purpose of playing games. Really, I don't give a damn if this upsets some OS advocate and I don't plan on using Wine at all so long as it's easier to play the games on my partition.

      Which it currently is.

      Max
      • "I don't plan on using Wine at all so long as it's easier to play the games on my partition."

        Actually - depending on the game you want to play, of course - it is easier to play the (supported) games with WineX 3 than dual-booting. Easy as in "click on the menu item." How easier can it get?

    • Re:Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JWhitlock ( 201845 )
      Yes, a perfect WineX will not convince developers to start developing for Linux. But, it if is cheaply or freely availible, they may be convinced to load up a workstation with WineX, and make sure Linux+WineX can run the game through development. Game developers are programmers, and programmers in general like the free software movement - if you can ensure your program runs on Linux with little effort on your part, why not?

      So, WineX might become the standard for cross-platfrom gaming. Not that develop

      • People ignore the fact that bigger userbase=better sales.

        As Linux userbase grows, new Linux gaming companies will form, to make native Linux games to sell to the new Linux userbase.

    • If WineX users become a significant part of the market, then game developers will make sure games run well under WineX. Just as they currently test under different versions of Windows, with different graphics cards, and so on.

      There might come a time when WineX users outnumber Windows 95 users, for example.

    • What happens when (Score:3, Interesting)

      by HanzoSan ( 251665 )
      Linux users eventually begin to match or even outnumber windows users worldwide?

      China, India, Africa. They can make games too.
    • WineX will be successful if game developers make the simple choice to write Windows code which will run on WineX. For example, as of last time I looked, out-of-process COM objects weren't supported in Wine. It's certainly possible to design almost any Windows app to use in-process COM objects. If software houses begin to look at Wine's capabilities and say "hey, if I design within those (reasonable) limitations, then my app will run pretty easily on Linux."

      Linux is a custom kernel which provides a source-c
    • After all they can happily tell those Linux people "You're unsupported. But try WineX!" When it fails, they simply say "You're unsupported!"

      Let me guess ... you were a former Win-OS/2 user, and you thought OS/2's great support for Win 3.1 apps was a *good* thing, didn't you ? I think we met at an OS/2 support group once.

    • Re:Ok, WineX Lovers (Score:3, Informative)

      by batkiwi ( 137781 )
      The facts in your bleemcast argument isn't correct in any way, form, or manner.

      -Bleemcast in it's original form (emulate all/100/50 psx games) NEVER CAME OUT
      -a total of 3 bleemcasts came out, each doing A SINGLE GAME. That means to play the game, you had to pay 15$ for the bleemcast, plus 25-50$ for the game (depending on which one)
      -EVERY bleemcast disc that was released sold out almost instantly. They couldn't keep them in the stores!
      -By the time bleemcast came out, PS2 was already out. PSX people had

    • It's all a question of where the money goes to. Right now, WineX users pay some money so that their games can run on Linux. If a game developer ports their game to linux, they can get a taste of that money.

      And with the Dreamcast comparison, Bleemcast was very poor and only supported a few games. On the other hand, PS2's backwards compatibility DID convince several users of the PSX to upgrade, knowing that they could do so and still enjoy their old games

    • WineX isn't supposed to be a strength of Linux - no matter how good it gets, it will always be inferior to running it natively on Windows.

      It's there for those people who'd use Linux where it has its strengths, and as a "bonus" they can run some games too. Which might make Linux a viable solution for more people - not hardcore gamers mind you, but those that play a game from time to time.

      Linux ports to squeeze out the last copies isn't so important to games, that instead can sell an expansion/sequel. More

  • Question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AnimeFreak ( 223792 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:29PM (#5836331) Homepage
    Even though the licence that Bochs uses and the licence that Wine uses are different, why can't the Wine developers write a portion that allows usage of x86 emulation enabling the usage of Windows programmes under different processor architecures?

    • Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Mitchell Mebane ( 594797 )
      They are working on it, the project is called Qemu, but it seems the site is down right now.
      • Hmm... seems my ISP is just being flaky.

        http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/ [bellard.free.fr]
      • Now that's some crazy sh*t! A windows emulator running on an x86 emulator. Just the overhead from swapping the endianess must be impressive. Anways, the idea is cool. Isn't this a little like how Transmeta (?and the Intel Itanium too?) do things?

        • Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)

          by BlueGecko ( 109058 )
          Just the overhead from swapping the endianess must be impressive
          Actually, the engineers at IBM were a genious when it comes to handling endian issues on the PowerPC. Although the PPC by default is big-endian, the PowerPC 603 and later added the ability to natively work either way. That's a large part of the reason why Virtual PC can operate as fast as it does, and similarly, might make this Bochs-WINE hybrid feasible for non-CPU-intensive apps like Office, etc.
    • Because

      Wine
      Is
      Not (an)
      Emulator
      • I never stated Wine is an emulator. However, you could add x86 emulation into Wine to allow usage of Win32 applications on platforms other than IA-32.

  • Nice but still useless (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alcoyotl ( 157542 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:29PM (#5836335) Homepage Journal
    Playing a game should not require the user to spend time installing and configuring it, and pull his hair whenever the game or computer crash.
    This is why game consoles should remain the only serious way to play.
    Ok people, we all have great PCs with lots of computing and video power, and we know how to use them, but really, the focus should be on average users, guys who want to play right now, children.
    While this is a step in the right direction, Linux is nowhere near being the platform of choice for gamers and will remain the realm of computer savvy users for a pretty long time. Anyone saying otherwise should try to emulate the ease of use of your average playstation.

    • Not only is Linux not the platform of choice for gamers, it should remain as such! The Linux community should not waste their time trying to get games to run an operating system which is inherintly unsuited for such a task. Not only is the OS unsuited, but PC hardware is unsuited.

      I dream of someday being able to ignore the video card upgrade cycle. I dream of playing CounterStrike 2without hassles. My dream includes a mouse, keyboard, and monitor and it does not include monthly fees!

    • So buy a console.
      And buy one for all the children.
      But don't tell others what they can and can't develop for Linux. It's not really up to you.

  • Does WineX let you enable sound enhancements? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:32PM (#5836363) Homepage Journal
    I am unable to read the link to see if the sound support was improved.

    I tried v2.0 and wasn't impressed. I tried to enable EAX and 3D Sound in Diablo 2 and other games. The audio sounded plain and boring in my favorite games. I was forced to go back to Windows to enjoy my audio with my old Sound Blaster Live! card. Does v3.x let you do this now?

  • WineX 3.0 Release notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by diatonic ( 318560 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:34PM (#5836392) Homepage
    You can read them here [transgaming.com].

    The review appears to be slashdotted.

    .:diatonic:.

  • Gaming (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    Under Windows

    Insert CD
    Autoruns
    Type in ID number
    Wait..
    Click Icon
    play Game

    Under Linux

    Insert CD
    Start Wine
    Load Binary
    Crashes
    Load Again
    Goes a bit further
    Move you mouse X11 Locks up
    Download lastest CVS version
    Rebuild
    Try Again
    Crashes
    Give up and do something else

    Now I really like Linux. Honestly I do, but this is one of those times Windows just wins

    Rus

    • Re:Gaming (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      Funny, i recently bought UT2003 from Toys-r-us and on my linux box typed setup.run and it installed just fine..

      in fact I'm playing faster than the copy I have on the Windows 2K box that is indentical in every way (well except the W2K box has hardware raid0 on it so it SHOULD be faster with those 2 drives)

      Linux gaming is really easy, and only a silly fool that doesnt know anything about linux gaming would say otherwise...

      now trying to get a windows game to run in a non-emulator like wine? that is for the
    • Under Linux Buy WineX subscription Download binaries Install them Insert CD of supported game type "winex3 [path to installer]" Game installs, icons are created in K menu Click on icon, play game Get in fight w/ girlfriend for playing eight hours straight on your favorite supported game OR Install the new point'n'click thingy from Transgaming Point and click on pretty widgets Play game Cut yourself off from the rest of the world until you pass out from lack of food Enough with the FUD already!

  • Why not in games.slashdot.org? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kirkb ( 158552 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:41PM (#5836455) Homepage
    Since this article is games-oriented, why isn't it in the new, garish-colored games.slashdot.org?

  • WineX3 has been good to me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:44PM (#5836492)
    I subscribe and wineX3 has been supprisingly good. It's running the games I am really interested in. I'm back to playing Everquest (maybe not a good thing), Warcraft3, Jedi Knight 2, and Baulder's Gate 2. I'm also using EQIM with it. All of these work basically transparently. There's of course the overhead and minor things, (names over character heads are not very legible in everquest though I hear cvs fixes this), but really it doesn't bother me one bit and I don't have to boot out to windows to play these games.

    Point2Play basically acts kind of like a registry for windows games. Not exactly what it does but a reasonable analogy. I wish you could add directories/executables directly to it rather than having to do an install, but other than that it's working well as a launch point for my windows games.

    Over all I am pleased with wineX3. I thought the wineX3 preview was lacking but this version seams acceptable.

    • You can manually add games to Point2Play. Read the Release notes, where they say how to convert an existing WineX installation to P2P. Of course, if you only copy it from a Windows installation, the registry entries might not be setup correctly and the game might be upset, the same way that copying it from a Windows box to another (without installing on the second one) would make it upset. Not much you can do about that part...

  • Yo, here's the article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:53PM (#5836588)
    Here we go, love mike the karma whore :p WineX 3.0 with Point2Play Review: No More Wine From the Command Line?

    Published by LinuxOrbit.com April 28, 2003
    by John Gowin, Linux Orbit Editor-in-chief

    It seems just like yesterday I was cleaning up my office and realized I had a bunch of games I could no longer play because of my complete Linux conversion. Although I don't buy a lot of games, the ones I had represented a decent cash investment, and I didn't want them to completely go to waste. This led me to Transgaming's WineX. When I first subscribed to Transgaming's WineX 2.1 product last year, I was pleasantly surprised that nearly half of the games I had were supported to a degree. The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly. The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game (the installers seemed to work). All of this we detailed in our review of WineX 2.1 last August [slashdot.org].

    With the release of WineX 3.0 from Transgaming on April 17th this year, it looked like it was time to revisit the wonderful world of Wine. This time around, Transgaming WineX 3.0 has some new tools as well as improvements in the number of games supported and gaming speeds. In this article, we're going to take a look at the new features of WineX 3.0, with a focus on their new GUI installer called Point2Play.

    The software

    If you're not familiar with the Transgaming WineX sales model, you have 3 choices. You can subscribe for $5 US per month, with a three month minimum subscription. You can also choose a longer subscription term, such as one year for $50 US (essentially 2 months for free). Transgaming also gives access to the CVS releases of WineX to subscribers and non-subscribers, but the copyright protection code needed to run most games is missing. They also offer no support to those who build WineX from source. Once you've subscribed, you'll find pre-built packages available for download [transgaming.com] in RPM, DEB and TGZ formats. If you're familiar with your Linux distribution, installing the package for your system should be a breeze. This time around, you'll need to install 2 packages however, one for WineX and one for the new GUI tool Point2Play. The instructions for installing both are on the downloads page at the Transgaming website (once you've created an account and logged in).

    The hardware

    Here is a quick overview of the hardware which we used to test WineX 3.0:


    •
    • Generic 1.33 GHz AMD Athlon T-bird
    • 512 MB RAM
    • GeForce 2 MX graphics card with 32 MB RAM
    • XFree86 4.2
    • Latest NVidia driver

    In our tests, we ran WineX 3.0 under Red Hat Linux 7.3, but according to the Transgaming web site, the latest Linux distributions should be fine, provided they support the following:


    •
    • Linux Kernel 2.4 or higher. Stock Kernels recommended over RedHat 7.x/8.x kernels.
    • XFree86 4.0 or higher (4.1 and above recommended)
    • glibc 2.2 or higher
    • Working hardware accelerated OpenGL video card

    (In our previous review, we also tested WineX on a Gateway PII 400 with a Riva 128 video card. That system is currently occupied with a Debian dist-upgrade to Sid over a dialup line, but that is a different article altogether.)

    Once we installed the necessary RPMS for Winex and Point2Play:

    Point2Play-1.0-0.i386.rpm
    winex3-3.0-1.i386.rpm

    we were ready to start testing.

    Editors Note: In our previous review [slashdot.org] of Transgaming's WineX, we covered a few technical notes for configuring XFree86 on your GNU/Linux system. I

  • I LOVE WineX (Score:3, Interesting)

    by James Littiebrant ( 622596 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @01:54PM (#5836592)
    There are alot of posts trashing WineX because it supports only about half of all games, this is just as good if not better than Win2K or WinXP because it supports almost all of my favorite DOS games and alot of the recient games for the windows platform. WineX was made to remove the uneasyness of going to the Linux platform by allowing newcomers to have all of their games on Linux, it also allows people who only single boot with Linux to be happier with their Linux machine.

  • WineX on OSX? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @02:02PM (#5836651)
    Big question, how hard would it be to recompile WineX for OSX? Yes I know you'd have to combine it with Bosche or more preferrably a JIT x86 -> PPC compiler. I'm just curious if WineX itself is written in C or if there is x86 assembly in there. Are there "big endian" issues?

  • Umm yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 )
    ...so why's it so hard to just dual boot with Windows?

    I mean seriously, every time I see these WineX threads I'm reminded of why I went from DOS to Win95 in the first place. I got sick of having to set everything up, then troubleshooting the inevitable problems that would arise. That's gone in recent years. Now installing a game on XP or 2k is "setup.exe, ok, ok, ok, play." Now you guys are talking about adding steps to that if the game doesn't work straight away.

    Seriously dudes, if you really want to

    • Re:Umm yeah... (Score:3, Informative)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 )
      I think perhaps you don't understand. Wine doesn't need Windows. You can buy 3 good, modern games for the price of Windows alone.
      • 'I think perhaps you don't understand. Wine doesn't need Windows. You can buy 3 good, modern games for the price of Windows alone."

        Fair point, except that if you buy a game that Wine doesn't support, you're out $50. It's guaranteed to work with Windows since it was developed for it.

        Think of it as like you're buying a game console. Windows is about the same price as an XBOX or PS2.
        • It's guaranteed to work with Windows since it was developed for it.

          You'd think so, but no, not really. I was having a problem with Starcraft after I upgraded to W2K from 98. Apparently my sound card support went from 'working' to 'not' between kernels.

          As for testing, you could always 'borrow the game from a friend' and then buy a legit copy once you know it works.

          Don't forget the added HDD space you'll need to install Windows. XP and 2K are both rather large installations.
          • " I was having a problem with Starcraft after I upgraded to W2K from 98. Apparently my sound card support went from 'working' to 'not' between kernels."

            That's a 'fix it once' type of problem just like you'd have if it broke in Linux. That's not a "this particular game didn't like it because we didn't quite support it right" type of problem that you'd run a risk of getting in Winex.

            "As for testing, you could always 'borrow the game from a friend' and then buy a legit copy once you know it works."

            There

  • Game company support? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sinequonon ( 669533 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @02:09PM (#5836732)
    Has there been any interest in having the gaming companies support Wine during their test cycle, as well as printing Wine requirements on their shipped game packages? I'd be more tempted to purchase a game for use on Linux if I knew it was supported on Wine by the vendor. Having the information printed in the requirements box could be a big help in selling Linux as a gaming environment. Thanks.
  • I wonder if Point2Play a win32 app :-)
  • "pretty flawlessly", besides being bad English, is akin to 'sort of pregnant'. Either you are flawless, or you aren't.

    Sorry for the interruption.

  • Only use it as a stop gap... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by StarTux ( 230379 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @06:35PM (#5838929) Journal
    I use Linux because of its advantages in speed, stability and configurability by the end user. I use Winex as a stop gap so I can play EverQuest with my wife. One of many things I have noticed with Winex is its resource hogging and lack of real stability, even between versions.

    Ever notice that between versions some games that worked now no longer do so?

    Finally, when Transgaming first started they stated that they would not compete with native ports, well that turned out to be a lie.

    Winex is a strange beast, on one hand I see its value, on the other I can see its potential at destroying good solid ports. And native ports run faster, with a lot more stability than winex enabled games; finally, they help improve and mature other tools like OpenGL and things like SDL rather than just directx. Oh and before people say 90% of the desktops are Windows, well sales fell around 3% last year with regards to PC Games, I saw two whole isles at Fry's be given over to Country music. So in essence, if you make games for Mac and Linux you would have gained back those lost Windows sales and a little more and you would have entered a new market, rather than been where everyone else has been.

    StarTux

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