Linux Noob... WINE vs POL vs Crossover?

Tute

Tute

Tute

Soldato
Joined
24 Jul 2004
Posts
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Location
Devon, UK
Hi all.

Trying to ditch Windows and use Linux for my gaming - i've been playing around with installing various ones on Mint and i've come across the three "methods" listed in the title.

Now i'm aware that POL and Crossover use WINE at their core and are effectively just "frontends" but I wondered what people suggest I should go with?

WINE seems to be quite complicated for a beginner (having to re-learn command prompt arguments, etc), whilst POL seems good but comes with the support expected of a free app and Crossover seems the "best" with the most support but comes with a price tag.

I'm tempted to get Crossover until I can stand on my own but i'm unsure if i'm just being a numpty for not getting my hands dirty.

Thanks for any advice.

[Edit] For what it's worth, WoW won't work at all. It's installed after some faffing but it seems the ATI drivers will not correctly initialise the OpenGL API on this game and it just freezes up on loading. Switching to DirectX gives <10FPS. It's a damn shame but i'm a frequent raider and can't do without WoW.

Looks like i'm heading back to Windows at the first unscalable hurdle. Gutted as I love the OS otherwise.
 
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Tute said:
Looks like i'm heading back to Windows at the first unscalable hurdle. Gutted as I love the OS otherwise.
Click to expand...
Damn, it's a pity because all you needed to do was change the launcher preferences to load the 32bit version of WoW instead of the 64.

WoW is the one game I managed to get running perfectly on Linux, with sacrifices of course.
Apparently Blizzard are going to announce a native Linux client of one of their "popular games" this year, let's just hope it's WoW and not just a rumour.
 
I think the general answer for now is to dual boot. Sadly this too is the only thing keeping me using Windows. Even when getting games to work in Linux their performance usually is hindered.
 
Swarfega said:
Sadly this too is the only thing keeping me using Windows.
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Yep. Games are the only thing keeping a windows partition anywhere near my PC, and only a very select few at that. :(

All it will take is just 1 game, COD, BF4, WOW, or any single game on that kind of scale, and developers will flock to Linux.
But I get the feeling they are waiting for SteamOS, because making sure a game works perfectly on each individual distro is an astronomical task, so I bet they are waiting for the only dedicated gaming distro and work on that only.
 
I'm shocked WoW hasn't gone native anyway, surely the presence of the OSX port makes the job quite straightforward?
 
stopper said:
Yep. Games are the only thing keeping a windows partition anywhere near my PC, and only a very select few at that. :(

All it will take is just 1 game, COD, BF4, WOW, or any single game on that kind of scale, and developers will flock to Linux.
But I get the feeling they are waiting for SteamOS, because making sure a game works perfectly on each individual distro is an astronomical task, so I bet they are waiting for the only dedicated gaming distro and work on that only.
Click to expand...

Elite Dangerous is coming out on Linux.
 
In other news, my Mum who only uses her PC for web browsing is now using Mint instead of Windows. I just don't see the point in buying her a W7/8 licence from XP so I've moved her across to Linux instead.

And guess what? It performs a lot better than XP did (admittedly it's some nettop with an old dual-core Atom and 2GB RAM but performance is performance).
 
Tute said:
I'm shocked WoW hasn't gone native anyway, surely the presence of the OSX port makes the job quite straightforward?
Click to expand...

I just tried WoW for the first time under WINE. I have bad memories of WINE from years ago so haven't been near it but gave it a go... I have a very modest system i7 920, 12gb ddr3, 750Ti (the evga top overclocked one, but still not much of a gpu) and it runs wow at 1680x1050 8xAA at 40-60fps (I haven't tried a raid yet so expect it to drop to the 30s) but that's definitely playable, I'm really impressed.

That said, I do hope they bring out a native client.
 
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Doubt they will bring out a client this late, but it would be awesome! I'd settle for a diablo client though. Something to show they can actually do it.
 
I don't know... if they already have one developed internally, with SteamOS (potentially) making a market for linux gaming, being the only(?) native MMO may get/retain them subscriptions.

It's not worth developing it from scratch, but since they already have one... it could be seen as a reasonable business plan.
 
I typed this whole thing about wows life near the end. But with the new expansion coming Q4, like MoP, it'll have around a 2 year cycle. So it's deffo possible. Who knows. Maybe info at blizcon this year.
 
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