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Wine Software Linux Entertainment Games

Transgaming Introduces Cedega 6.0 246

Posted by CowboyNeal from the because-rebooting-sucks dept.
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."
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Transgaming Introduces Cedega 6.0 More

Transgaming Introduces Cedega 6.0

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  • And... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mayhem178 ( 920970 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @03:11PM (#18694129)
    ...I'll bet that it still doesn't work right.

    Honestly, in the past I've had more success running games with just straight up WINE than Cedega. I had a 1 month subscription, and it was a complete waste, cheap as it was. Not a single game worked as advertised.

    As usual, I'm sure their benchmarks were acquired from a machine with a very specific setup requiring hours of tweaking to get right.

    Linux has its uses, and they are many. Gaming is not currently among them, and this hack (yeah, I went there; Cedega is a hack, nothing more) is not the solution to bring Linux gaming into the mainstream.
    • It's obviously possible for game developers to target Cadega, the article itself doesn't discuss anything more than frame rate. Personally, I think wine and derivitives are a PITA. It's not a matter of if something works or not, it's a matter of "will this button work" or "will this room render properly" or "do I mind my character rendered as a sprite with a black background", it's all a big PITA. *IF* Wine's codebase was actually targeted by the developers (simple flag ie if (windows) do this elseif (!wind

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Spikeles ( 972972 )

        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 m

        • Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by philgross ( 23409 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @05:17PM (#18695711) Homepage
          Er... No. "standard libraries... without resorting to Win32 calls"? It's not the Win32 part that's the issue, it's the DirectX part, a high-level, high-performance interface to 3D hardware. OpenGL is somewhat comparable, and in the mid-90s was the polished alternative to the weak hack that was DirectX. However, OpenGL evolves by committee, and has many conservative stakeholders such as CAD firms, while MS totally controls DirectX, and has been pushing hard for it to be used as widely as possible. Each iteration has made it much more powerful and better suited to games programming, as well as tracking the rapid advances in consumer 3D hardware. Further, if your PC game uses DirectX, it's much easier to port it to the Xbox360, and vice versa.

          Both Parallels and VMWare are working on cloning the DirectX API so VM applications can have accelerated 3D, but it's a big task. The DirectX libraries are massive, and each version has major differences with the previous one. VMWare is working hard just to get DirectX 8.1 compatibility, i.e. two revisions ago.

          Some of the big graphics engine makers continue to support OpenGL, but even so, how do they financially justify spending the time and money to port their games to a platform with a tiny desktop market share, and where a significant percentage of the users expect everything on their machine to be free and open source?

          This [linuxgamingworld.com] is a passionate and well-argued plea for mainstream developers to develop for Linux, but I don't think he convinced too many game company CFOs.

          I would refer you to the sad post from John Carmack [omnipotent.net], regarding the disappointing sales of the Linux version of Quake III back in 2000. So far, not too many companies have wanted to risk seeing if things have changed.

          • Late to the party... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by xtracto ( 837672 )
            Not to forget that OpenGL can not be compared to DirectX as DirectX besides Direct3D, there are a lot of other full fledged features as DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectSetup, DirectX-Media and DirectX Media Objects (Look at wikipedia for a description of all of those), all of that in one lean package and consistent APIs (through all of them... of course the darn version function suffixes are shit).

            Whereas in Linux you'll have to make a mutant join of SDL(with all the half assed libr

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by skoaldipper ( 752281 )

      As usual, I'm sure their benchmarks were acquired from a machine with a very specific setup requiring hours of tweaking to get right.

      FTA,

      we had used a modest setup to better represent the systems of more computer enthusiasts that may be using Cedega or WINE. The motherboard was an ASUS M2NPV-VM with GeForce 6150 (+ nForce 430) integrated graphics

      Modest setup? Representative? 800x600 for Doom3, 12 fps? By those standards, my kaleidoscope is the Cedega/Wine equivalent to dropping a real LSD wafer.

    • since wine aims to provide a directx compatible windows api, is directx a hack too?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by k1e0x ( 1040314 )
      Wine often works better.

      This is because where at one point they were the same code base.. Wine has been attempting to provide a full implementation of windows. Cedega on the other hand has just been hacking and older alpha version of Wine so that it works with certain popular games.

      If you follow this to the logical end.. eventually Wine will have a full implementation of windows on unix where new games (and anything else) will run.. and Cedega will have a bunch of hacks requiring constant tweaking for newer

      • eventually Wine will have a full implementation of windows on unix where new games (and anything else) will run..

        (emphasis mine)

        Not if the WINE devs won't get involved with platforms other than Linux. Look at this WINE dev's comments [winehq.org] regarding WINE on FreeBSD (#18). Dammit! I want to play D2 on FreeBSD. It's been out for over 5 years. Why such a big deal? NVIDIA has drivers, too...

        WINE is for Linux and Macs. I don't think that's going to change, so the future is equally bleak for both projects, IMO. I'm still paying my $5/mo. though, in hopes that a full DirectX 9 implementation will be available for at least one of

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by robbiethefett ( 1047640 )
      "Linux has its uses, and they are many. Gaming is not currently among them, and this hack (yeah, I went there; Cedega is a hack, nothing more) is not the solution to bring Linux gaming into the mainstream." i really disagree with that statement. i think Cedega is, in fact, a great step towards bringing linux gaming into the mainstream. let me extrapolate.. the reason cedega is significant is because there are users willing to pay money to a subscription service that is specifically geared towards gamers w

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's funny how your priorities change with life. Once I shunned Linux becuase I couldn't play games
      on it. Now I actually enjoy the fact that my Linux system wont play games. I call it a grown ups computer system.
      Since I dumped Windows so many years ago productivity went up by a factor of ten. Many times I was tempted
      to install Wine and some games, but then thought better of it.
      It's very revealing that Windows is seen primarily as a gamers platform. I'm at that age where I treat
      a computer as a serious tool a

      • If it wasn't for games would there be any argument for Windows at all?

        Yep, it's called "vendor lock-in".

        • There's also DirectX, Visual Studio, XNA, and tons of other MS supplied services/help/software that makes programming on Windows that much easier for games development...
          • Yea, like I said it's called "vendor lock-in".
            • "Yea, like I said it's called "vendor lock-in".

              But, I see Cedega being the same thing. I was wanting to buy and play with it, but, it appears to be a subscription model. I don't want to 'rent' it...I want to buy a version of it, and play my games I'd want to play. I don't want my games going 'dark' if I miss a payment.

              Why don't they sell it outright? Hell, I'll pay for upgrades if I need them...but, I don't want to 'lock-in' to them and rent the damned thing....

      • Re:Linux is better for games than vista (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @04:04PM (#18694827) Homepage
        Now I actually enjoy the fact that my Linux system wont play games.

        I'm sorry, but I just don't get that. That's like saying, "I'm proud that my car isn't capable of attaining speeds of 200 mph safely." There's nothing wrong with having the capabilities, as long as the capabilities don't interfere with necessary components.

        I think your statement must be pure elitism. You're proud that you've set yourself apart. Being proud of having a limited system, even if you don't need or want the extended capabilities, is something I just don't understand.

        I don't really care to run VMWare. An equivalent statement is, "I'm proud that my FreeBSD system can't run VMWare."
        • I'm stictly a linux user at home and I would have to agree with you whole heartedly with what you said. I think an important question he did bring up though, is if gamming didn't factor in then what would stop the average user from switching? Ubuntu is fairly easy to install for a first OS and setting it up doesn't always have to be a pain. If a manufacture went and set it up like they do with windows when they ship a computer would it really be much different for the home user? Drivers installed and med

        • Here's the logic... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sterno ( 16320 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @05:39PM (#18695935) Homepage
          I'm glad my car doesn't go 200mph, because the temptation of all that raw horsepower will be too great to resist. High speed pursuits and law enforcement derived beatings will certainly ensue. It's a used geo metro for me.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sancho ( 17056 )
            I'm sure you were trying to be funny, but if you were serious, my response would be that an inability to resist temptation is nothing to be proud of, and an entirely different problem altogether.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by sesshomaru ( 173381 )
        Not only is this comment dumb because it is basically saying, "Linux is better than Windows because of something it can't do," but it isn't true at all. There are tons of "productivity killing" games for Linux, you just don't get the same variety of games that you do with Windows.

        You don't need Wine to play games on Linux!

        So not only is the comment demented or stupid, it also isn't true.

        How did this get modded up to 5?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        Since I dumped Windows so many years ago productivity went up by a factor of ten.

        I don't care if your current OS gives you free blowjobs (as if that'd increase productivity...) but if your productivity went up by factor ten, you must have had serious game addiction and used Linux as a form of mental therapy. I do have both a Windows install with games and a Wii, but even if I dedicated all my gaming time to "serious" work I wouldn't get remotely close. Also from what I've understood the leading addiction th
      • Adult.

        *burble*

        (:

      • If it wasn't for games would there be any argument
        for Windows at all?

        The question is why would I run Linux over windows? Your argument is that Linux doesn't run games. Thats fine, my windows box can also not run games, all it takes is some self control. Failing that, remove direct3d, opengl, or even replace your videocard with something cheap.

        Now, as for what Windows can do that Linux can't: Run plenty of applications. Just about any good 'Linux' app has been ported to windows (gaim, firefox, xchat, apache

    • Linux is better for games than vista.

      So far, for me, Vista sucks for games [mdlug.org]. I'm entirely unsurprised. My system is almost identical to the one Phoronix used in these tests.

      • Not to be rude, but no shit. Trying to game on a Sempron 1.8 with only a gig of ram and integrated graphics is stupid.
        • Why is that stupid... that's spec for an average PC about $500 on the shelves everywhere 6 months ago. Why shouldn't somebody pick up a game from across the aisle at the same store and the same tine and expect to play it on their new fast computer? I know WE'RE all gamers and know better, but average guy does not... realize that on most days the "box" stores that sell the latest games don't have a balanced spec machine on the shelves that can actually PLAY the latest games properly.. or those machines are

        • Not to be rude, but no shit. Trying to game on a Sempron 1.8 with only a gig of ram and integrated graphics is stupid.

          Well, all of the games I listed there ran fine on an Athlon 2600+ machine with 1GB RAM and a GeForce 5700LE (very closely equivalent specs) under XP. (Well, until XP corrupted itself and I gave up on it. That's a pure Linux box now.)

  • What a horrible review (Score:5, Informative)

    by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @03:15PM (#18694179) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Wine and WoW (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MarcoG42 ( 1087205 )
    I use Cedega to play WoW so I don't have to boot to the much maligned Windows partition on my machine. It's there so my girlfriend (I'm not a liar, I swear!) can watch her 'time shifted' television shows on our HDTV, since I have trouble getting dual head output to work on my nvidia card in Ubuntu.

    On topic, kinda: I use Cedega because I'm lazy and don't mind the $5 it cost me to get a copy. I read the review linked in TFA, and I'm curious; how well does WINE play with WoW? Is it worth the (little, i'

    • Re:Wine and WoW (Score:4, Informative)

      by exwhyze ( 781211 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @03:22PM (#18694261)
      wine-0.9.29 works 'out of the box' with WoW. Probably a couple earlier versions do, too.

      • I've had WoW working in Wine since 0.9.22, and I'm sure there are others who've had it working even sooner. It has run flawlessly since 0.9.30.

    • It doesn't, at least it didn't for me. Direct3D locked up the PC within 30 minutes of launching WoW, and OpenGL is an ugly, ugly hack. Results are still best with Cedega+NVIDIA. In some ways, the performance is better too, though on the Windows platform it seems that there is more of a balance between network and graphical performace (higher latency, better framerates) than on Linux+Cedega.

    • Re:Wine and WoW (Score:4, Informative)

      by BobPaul ( 710574 ) * on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @04:33PM (#18695211) Journal
      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]
    • > since I have trouble getting dual head output to work on my nvidia card in Ubuntu.

      TVOut doesn't work? I got it working with these instructions quite easily:
      https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaTVOut [ubuntu.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Old Wolf ( 56093 )
      My flatmate just bought a new PC specifically for playing WoW, and he installed Kubuntu on it. Installation took a while because his motherboard was so new that there were no Kubuntu drivers for the onboard sound or Ethernet, and it took some time to find the correct Nvidia graphics driver. He had to put in a 3rd party sound card to get sound.

      However, once the hardware was all set up, Wine ran first time and WoW ran under wine, first time.
  • Looking at the benchmarks, there's what, one test where Cedega outperformed Wine? What exactly is this monthly subscription fee supposed to pay for, minimal if any improvement over Wine? I understand that it supports newer games than Wine does, but I'd rather put my money into an open-source project than throw it into a monthly fee, especially considering the minor differences.

    Am I misunderstanding something vital about Cedega here, or is Transgaming really asking us to pay for the same functionality?
  • Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't Doom 3 and Enemy Territory OpenGL based and Linux native? Benchmarking them with Cedega is pointless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HuguesT ( 84078 )
      It does compare the quality of the Cedega DirectX implementation vs. native OpenGL under Linux for the games they tested.

    • Benchmarking the game in windows, natively on linux and on linux through translation is the ultimate in comparisons, really. Being able to compare all three lets you know a lot more about the overhead of cedega than simply having the windows and cedega performances compared. Reversely, without the windows version, you wouldn't know if the hypothetical performance difference between cedega and pure linux is a matter of overhead or port quality.

  • Isn't this what was stopping splinter cell 1 & 2 from working? I still play multiplayer chaos theory so I'd love splinter cell support.

  • Vista RC1 ??? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anyone else notice...

    "For our Vista "Longhorn" benchmarks we had used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate RC1 (Build 5600)".

    Sure. Because that will give you a good, impartial quality result.

    Bloody muppets.

  • Here's how you do so:

    http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Linux [uesp.net]

    NOTICE:
    You might want to check the history for the last Mongoose update in case asshats from slashdot add bullshit to the wiki entry. ;)

  • Wait a minute (Score:2, Troll)

    by SQLz ( 564901 )
    I thought Cedega had killed Linux years ago.....and that all Linux gamers have since switched to Windows, and that Cedega, not competetion from consoles, had killed Linux gaming for good, and blah blah blah blah.
  • I run FreeBSD/amd64. It seems that Wine is not in the cards for this platform. No, I won't use either Linux or 32-bit computability modes. Does Wine compile/run as a 64-bit app under Linux these days? VMWare has never been an official option for FreeBSD. Win4BSD is 32-bit only right now. Bummer.

    The good thing is that QEmu is finally at sufficient quality and speed to replace VMWare, so I have a good alternative now. Still... I'm disappointed about the lack of Wine. Sometimes its nice to run someth

  • for running Windows games under Linux.

    What needs to happen is for gaming companies to write Linux versions of games so that there won't be any performance issues due to running in some Windows environment or emulator.

    I think the fact that many are buying Cedega and other Windows environment programs to play Windows games under Linux shows that there is a need for Linux native games.

    My brother is a Gamehead and the only reason that he uses Windows XP still is because running the Windows games under Linux giv

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mandelbr0t ( 1015855 )

      I think the fact that many are buying Cedega and other Windows environment programs to play Windows games under Linux shows that there is a need for Linux native games.

      And I think that all of us who remember Loki Games know that this will not work. Transgaming allows a project to put a business face on some deals that desperately need to be made to support gaming on Linux. Cedega works with game companies to provide an API that works equally well on Windows and Linux. This approach is better, since what happens is that game companies continue to develop games on Windows where most of their market is, without causing any extra work for the Linux side. Admittedly those who

      • A rewrite as a port is generally too much work to be profitable, especially when the target market is at best one tenth of the original market.

        One tenth? Get real. One hundreth would be closer to the truth.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Pecisk ( 688001 )
        I remember why Loki Games went down - NOT because they went under 'cause of bad sales. They just got bad/criminal CEO, who done anything possible to bancrupt Loki Games without any remorse. And he succeeded.

        Afaik, Loki Games was very successful creating needed infrastructure - and they knowledge in doing so was industry high. See SDL, see their installer, see OpenAL which they actively pushed and which now has some support in industry.

        It was sad that Loki had to go away just because of some greedy jerk.
  • Wow... I'm actually still a subscriber... but I hardly ever use it.

    Just the other day I was thinking "Maybe I should cancel that... they haven't come out with any real improvements in a while"... Lo and Behold....

    I'll give it a whirl and see if I can spend some more time in Linux...

    Derek
    • I just canceled mine. I've had it for 2 years and have been using it on and off. After reading above that they having been updating their CVS and confirming as much, I decided they don't need my money anymore since they've become a proprietary software vendor.

  • Don't support Cedega (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AlexMax2742 ( 602517 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @05:24PM (#18695787)
    ...they're pure slime. They threatened debian maintainers with a licence change [debian.org] unless they withdrew a free, easy to install debian package from debian repoisotories. And they at one time had a promise on their page that said as soon as they crossed a certain number of licenses, that they would reopen the code and contribute back to wine. That promise has since been taken down.

    And on top of that, according to reliable reports, cedega is only marginally more stable than Wine ever was. Which in my opinion is not worth five bucks, especially given how much progress Wine has made in the last year or so in terms of compatability. Heck, the latest version can even run WoW with minimal amounts of fuss (according to its rank, which is Gold). And I'd rather wait for someone to brute-force copy protection in a free way instead of having to be at the mercy of those that provide it.

    Cedega doesn't need your support. Wine does. Give the latest version a spin, download it, and provide bug reports for your favorite games so the remaining bugaboos can be fixed up.

    • Which in my opinion is not worth five bucks

      Five bucks only? Last time I checked, they want you to subscribe a minimum of 3 months for the "monthly subscription". Thats $15 minimum just to get their software. $5/month my ass.
    • where credit is due? Namely, CodeWeavers [codeweavers.com]? I agree that the TransGaming/Cedega crew has acted objectionably and their product is questionable. CodeWeavers are a much better example of OSS stewardship with a product that I think is actually worthwhile *and* worth supporting.

      I'm all for railing as much as anyone else, but if you're going to slam a company and there is another doing exactly what you feel the first should be doing, giving that other company credit is always a nice thing to do. :)
  • What a HORRIBLE review done in TFA. It only compares games whose rendering engine is OpenGL (doom3 and enemy territory). I don't give a shit about how Cedega "emulates" OpenGL games. All it's doing is forwarding those requests unmodified (or maybe *slightly* modified) to the native OpenGL subsystem running on the Linux box. What I, and I'm assuming all others out there are concerned with, is gaming performance when Cedega is actually emulating Direc3D calls. Not only are there barely any game companies

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