Wine
 

I'm trying to get as many people on Linux as I can. But for some people, the switch seems scary. Like my little brother for example. He is 13 and he is very bright on computers. He's been using the pc since he was about 5. He was introduced to them from me, and I taught him a great deal about how computers work, and how to do just about anything. Today, he can install/remove/configure any version of windows. He can build/repair computers. He knows how to fix a software problem when one occurs.

He's even gone farther than me and explored ares I never thought about doing. One of which is playing games and running other misc windows only software. I'd say mainly the games though.

I've put Debian on his pc before using grub to dual boot his linux and windows. He told me he didnt like the linux because he didn't know how to do anything on it. He couldn't play his games. He barely learned how to change the desktop. And he told me he had all kinds of problems saving configurations. He told me his main problem was the lack of support for his games. So he formatted the partition and let windows take it over as a NTFS partition, and he fixed te MBR back up for windows bootloader.

Anyways. The other night I tried to get linux back onto his machine but he freaked out saying he didnt want it and if I pu it on he wouldn't ever use it. I tried to convince him that he would be able to play his games using WINE. We booted up his machine using a Knoppix 3.3 cd and fired up WINE to configure it. This is where, for the first time ever, I noticed it was talking about it could not find the windows drive in fstab. I didn't understand what it was saying exactly, but I think I got the idea of it.

So.. Is there a way I can configure WINE to use an existing windows on a certain partition rather than making a "fake_windows" file? Would this run a better WINE environment and not be restricted to windows 3.1, 95, or 98? He has windows XP on his machine, is this usable through WINE as if he had originally bootted to windows?

This stuff has got me totally confused because I dont deal with wine ever. But if I can get his XP installation to work inside WINE I am sure I could get him to use Linux a little more and maybe eventually he will switch.

Games he has is like Need For Speed III and stuff. I dont know specifics, I'm not a gamer.

Sorry for you.
Playing game with wine is not as easy as you thought.
Firstly, wine have the option to let you use the existing windows directory.
But This directory muste be writeable in linux (so that it must not be NTFS). Also, it will be a risky to do so, since your brother can accidentally destroy his window partition (if so he my broke down the PC :-)

Sencondly, game require a lot of hardware resources. Even a linux based game is slower than its windows couterpart.
If you can managed to make a game run under wine, it may be too slow to play.
No one will play a game which took 1 minutes to draw a scene on your screen.

Thirdly, the configuration depend on the game you are going to play.
Some gammer on linux can use wine to play window game.
But most if not all of them use a third party software like crossover.
I haven't seen anyone manage to use wine itself to play a game on linux.

Though I don't want to say but linux is not for gamer.
This forum have a sub forum for game (the parents is linux software).
If you really want to try to make it play, try to go there and ask.


In my own experience, you should persuade your brother to scarified some of his game.
You sadid he is bright at computer, good.
But look at what he did.
Linux is completely new to him (he know nothing about it), he should sit back and discover linux to widen his knowledge.
But he had removed it just because it cannot play such poisionous game.
If he keep going that way, his game-playing skill will be better and better but he will be dumper and dumper.
Remember neither linus nor bill is a gamer.