Widows I hate it, but need it for games...

Soldato
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I know there is Wine, that will let windows run within linux right? I have windows set up on my master drive, but all the windows freezing/crashing, just being windows. I still want to use it for games though. So how does stuff like wine work & does windows still use the hardware through itself?
 
Windows doesn't 'run on' Wine like a virtualised OS, instead Wine basically provides an implementation of the DLLs Windows software calls.

To be honest, Windows shouldn't be crashing and freezing - you might want to check your hardware. Which version of Windows are you using?
 
It could be a bad driver for your network card. Windows isn't perfect but in all likelihood your crashes/freezing could be software based and may be ironed out with a format and clean reinstall. If you've done this it could be hardware.

You will find that Wine won't run games as fast as you would like, although it's not an emulator (Wine = Wine is not an emulator :p) it doesn't have terribly great DirectX support. I've got a handful of Windows based OpenGL games working quite well though!
 
Op Wine is irrelevant to you - since to game under it you have to be prepared to drop support for newer games, etc. Also you have to buy/own a Nvidia GPU at present - as well - if you want decent DX9.0c Wine support!! I have found it to work well with the likes of HL2...

You need to troubleshoot your Windows installation properly. I notice you don't even say what version of Windows OS you are using. If you can't even be bothered to mention that in a forum post... It sounds to me more like operator error. :D

I would move this thread to a more appropriate forum like:
Windows & Other Software :D

Bob
 
On one of the setups that i use on this main system, i have Windows running as the Master Operating system, and i use VMWare in there to run all the Linux i need, that way my Linux is then somewhat portable

then if i wanna play game, just come out of VMware and play

is a great setup
 
As above there's only really three ways to play games under Windows if you use Linux:

1) Have two computers :D

2) Dual boot.

3) Run one OS as the main OS and then run the other under a virtualised environment such as VMWare or Virtualbox.
 
The answer is 2 if you play newly released games.

If you play a lot of PC games there's not much point in running Linux as your main operating system.
And XP shouldn't be crashing all over the place. There is something wrong somewhere and it's unlikely XP is to blame.
My XP build crashed about 5 times. It was installed for over 5 years and used every day.
 
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As above there's only really three ways to play games under Windows if you use Linux:

1) Have two computers :D

2) Dual boot.

3) Run one OS as the main OS and then run the other under a virtualised environment such as VMWare or Virtualbox.

Don't forget:

4) Use Wine (or alternatives).

I've had a lot of success with older games running under Wine (especially if they have an OpenGL option). I am building a rig with an 8800GTX in the hope that the Nvidia drivers for that card are better than the hopeless ATI drivers for my X1950 Pro!

You can't rule out Wine - I think it's impressive to get HL2 working @1920x1080 in full DX9.0c (HDR lighting) on a 9500M laptop GPU... :cool:

Also that was just installing the latest version of Wine (on a Jaunty beta install) and no ****ing about with tweaks or installing other stuff to get it to work!!

Bob
 
Don't forget:

4) Use Wine (or alternatives).

I really wouldn't do this do this
WINE is just WINdows Emulation

ideal for main applications yeah but i really wouldn't use it for games
i mean yeah it may work with old games but i don't think it would run crysis on max very well now would it?
 
ideal for main applications yeah but i really wouldn't use it for games
i mean yeah it may work with old games but i don't think it would run crysis on max very well now would it?

No of course it wouldn't. Crysis is still a game used to beat up all but the newest hardware - so it's a tough example!! But I gave an example of game that I could personally quite happily spend hours playing on a GNU/Linux system. It looks good and actually has some time put into the gameplay/story (and not just the graphics). A lot of folks who run a GNU/Linux based system don't have the latest and greatest hardware (due to the delays in driver support being added to the Linux kernel, etc.)

I would rather have Wine as an option to play older games and dual-boot to Windows 7 for more newer more demanding games. Running GNU/Linux in a VM does lose some of the multitasking/ file system performance advantages the OS has over Windows. I am just stating what I am working towards Wine+dual-boot solution (just need an Nvidia GPU-based system) - it wouldn't suit everyone of course...

Wine has definitely been getting more polished/integrated (into the GNU Desktop Environments) over the period of time I have been trying it. Because it provides a native code translation layer from DX to OpenGL there is the potential there for it to approach the efficiency of the Windows code. I personally think that it is totally phenomenal that the developers have reached the stage where it will run older DX9.0c games @Full HD and good FPS. I guess you have no idea how long and how much dedication it takes to reverse engineer the workings of the Windows code base behind their APIs??!!
The glass is half full or half empty depending on your perspective... :D

Bob
 
yeah i have to agree
problem being you'll have to wait a while for some updates before you can play some of the latest release games on Linux
there is no real problem with older games, although when i tried to run homeworld2 it just died, I'm guessing because of the SCAR coding engine but oh well, i use Linux for all the power and awesomeness i need and i just use windows because college sysadmins fail at their jobs and life.
 
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