Well I don't have the problem with games as WINE can run almost any windows program. I am currently running Daggerfall through a Windows version of DOS-box.Acaroid said:
That didn't work on Vista.
Should I run Ubuntu?
- Thread starter TheEvilCheese
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That didn't work on Vista.
Software that you get from the repositories is amazing. It's free, it's usually pretty well-tested, and it tends to work with very little extra configuration. I have some complaints about Ubuntu's version upgrade system, but just installing new software and updates is really painless.stinkychops said:
Packages that you download elsewhere or compile yourself can be a bit flakier. Generally installing them requires a bit of command-line knowledge. It's stuff you can probably pick up in an hour or two reading the documentation. The only stuff I've had to install manually is Amazon's MP3 downloader (painless; you can just click on the icon like you would a Windows), a proprietary LightScribe tool (probably about 10 minutes of mess) and some kinda specialized research software (which is, understandably, unpolished).
Non-native software, which is probably what you're really most interested in, is rather hit-or-miss -- that's sorta inevitable because it was never really designed for the platform in the first place. Generally I recommend finding native replacements when they're available just because the whole process is so much smoother and often you get the side benefit of not having to pay for the software (but I understand that sometimes you need Photoshop and GIMP just won't do, for example).
For Windows applications on the desktop, most folks would recommend Wine. Wine is an application that basically fakes a bunch of Microsoft libraries that are needed by Windows applications (like DirectX).
I killed my Vista partition at one point (apparently it is possible for Windows to download a malformed update and then get into a loop where it chokes after 10 seconds every time you restart it) and was too lazy to reinstall. During that time, I remembered a handful of older games I liked and started playing them in Wine:
- Jedi Academy worked great out of the box. It would turn the screen white if I loaded from a save too many times, but everything else was good. Max settings, FOV tweaked manually to make it work right on a widescreen monitor. Most games based on something related to the Quake engine seem to work really, really well on Wine.
- Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic worked great unless I patched it. The patched version just couldn't start at all.
- Guild Wars would occasionally have graphics glitches and it was notably slower than when running on Windows (nothing ruinous, but I had to turn the aliasing down). Disappearing character models made it kinda unpleasant to actually play.
So, mixed results, as you can see. The Wine website (winehq.org [http://www.winehq.org/]) has a big list of applications and some notes about how well each one runs in Wine.
(There are also two related applications, CrossOver Games and Cedega, both derived partly from Wine, but I don't recommend them because they aren't free and aren't notably better -- some applications seem to "like" one more than the others randomly.)
For the newest games, I don't even try to load them in Wine, to be honest. I just dual-boot to Windows. A nice side-effect of not using Windows as the primary OS is that it doesn't get trashed up as quickly (since I'm only installing games on it) and I don't lose anything more important than a save game when I have to wipe it.
Instead of Wine, it's possible to use virtualization software, like VMWare. That's basically using your computer to simulate being another computer that runs Windows (or whatever you want to install). It's a lot faster than it sounds, actually, because of various optimizations made to the virtualization environment. Still, since you basically have to get a copy of whatever OS you are virtualizing anyway, there's seldom any point to using it for gaming. (On big servers, virtualization lets you turn one box into many images; on workstations, it's useful for running several applications designed for different platforms at the same time; with games, you are usually just running the one game application, full-screen.)
-- Alex
In my experience, Windows loves to blow away the MBR. My solution is to just use two drives -- one drive is all my Linux stuff and the other is Windows. When I reinstall Windows I just unplug the Linux drive and plug the Windows drive in as the master, so it thinks it's just installing on one drive. One benefit of this approach is that if I ever trash my Linux disk, it takes all of 30 seconds to switch to booting Windows normally.corroded said:
-- Alex
I'm currently running Ubuntu over both my machines. It's clean, fast, far more efficient than windows is. Just don't expect to do any gaming over your computer unless you decide to run a dual boot (which I'll probably do over my next computer).
It's muuuuuuch different too. Don't expect user friendliness with it (it's a little difficult to work with to get the full potential out of it). I'm still learning myself. I had to have my dad run a command over my laptop just to get it enabled to play DVDs.
It's muuuuuuch different too. Don't expect user friendliness with it (it's a little difficult to work with to get the full potential out of it). I'm still learning myself. I had to have my dad run a command over my laptop just to get it enabled to play DVDs.
Now, one more thing about running your favorite applications and the like...
It's certainly nice to have the ability, but if your priority is to run stuff designed for another OS, you are usually better off using that OS. If you're just using Ubuntu (or OS X, or Fedora, or Windows) to copy the shtick of another OS, you'll probably find it a bit inferior to the original. Each OS only really shines when you're using it for what it's good for, what it was designed to do.
I like the various Linux distributions as a desktop environment because the user interface is highly customizable, I have access to a variety of high-quality applications, and I'm familiar with -- and happy with -- the underlying Unix-style command-line environment. (I like Ubuntu in particular because it's a cleaned-up version of Debian Unstable.)
-- Alex
It's certainly nice to have the ability, but if your priority is to run stuff designed for another OS, you are usually better off using that OS. If you're just using Ubuntu (or OS X, or Fedora, or Windows) to copy the shtick of another OS, you'll probably find it a bit inferior to the original. Each OS only really shines when you're using it for what it's good for, what it was designed to do.
I like the various Linux distributions as a desktop environment because the user interface is highly customizable, I have access to a variety of high-quality applications, and I'm familiar with -- and happy with -- the underlying Unix-style command-line environment. (I like Ubuntu in particular because it's a cleaned-up version of Debian Unstable.)
-- Alex
ummm all the id games, the UT games and many others have ports, the rest can work thru wine or cedegadbrose said:
there's a bunch more that work as well. Ryan Gordon does a great job of porting games to linux. Neverwinter Nights was another one that worked on linux as wellcorroded said:
