Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has tried the Mandrake Gaming Edition. Supposedly you can run Windows Games with it. It comes with "The Sims" which I already have and I can't see any reason to spend $70 for the Mandrake 8.1 Standard edition which only costs $25 by itself. However, if the game technology works than it would be worth it easily.
Anyone have any experiences on this to share????

Mandrake Gaming Edition uses wine-x to run windows games. I cant remember the URL offhand but Im sure a google search for it will find it for you.

wine-x is always in development and doesnt support all games. You will want to look through the website and check if they support all the games you have/want to play before buying the OS.

Of course you can download wine-x for free I think.. So the only reason to get Mandrake Gaming Edition is if you want it to do the configuration for you.

http://www.transgaming.com/ for wine-x

Yeah,
I knew about the whole Transgaming/Winex thing. I was just wanting to know how it worked. Since they include a copy of The Sims, I would hope it would work pretty well. I believe you have to pay a subscription to Transgaming to get current releases and if you buy the Mandrake:GE you get 3 months free. Not to mention, it might be really nice to have the config done for you...depending on how hard it is to configure manually.

WineX isn't free to download though, that sucks.

WineX is free to download. just not in RPM or DEB form.

Cool. OK, so you can get the winex source. That part is good. Thanks for the info SICKBOY. I am compiling the source right now. That still doesn't exactly answer my original question. I know there is SOMETHING that transgaming charges you for that comes with the "Gaming Edition". I just don't know what it is.

Although I'm close to just trying it myself, I would still like to know how the "Gaming Edition" w/The Sims works overall. But maybe everyone thought the same thing I did and didn't buy it. Oh well. Thanks everyone for your comments.



Todd

OK, when you subscribe for $5/mnth you are paying for the following things.

1. the privilege of being able to download precompiled binaries.

2. the ability ti post in the suport forums and request email support.

3. the right to vote on games which should be the focus of future support. i.e. i like max payne so i vote for them to support it in the future.

Other than these things, the source code is the same with the exception of not including some sort of decryption scheme for disk copy protection for games such as Diablo 2, and this is due to the closed licensing of this code.