The only thing right now that is holding me back from completely ditching windows is gaming. Is there any true possibility that I can play all of my games using Fedora, SUSE, Kubuntu, or any distro for that matter, without paying a monthly fee for Cedega. Is there any hope of a comparable software like Cedega coming out without having to pay for it (like Linux software should be)? Is Wine an option for my games? I have a fairly high end rig, and want to see Linux in its true glory, not on struggling eight year old systems, and still be able to play my high end games. Thanks for your time.

Your first concern is display drivers: if you can't get DRI (Direct Rendering) work with good speed, you can't probably play anything. Second thing is the software: Cedega is geared towards games, but it's a fork of Wine after all. So in that sense yes, Wine can play some games too. It's just that Wine was not developed with only DirectX games in mind, so not all games are going to work with it (and not all games work with Cedega either; they don't have every single game listed as supported). And then there is this free version of Cedega; it's not officially supported so you don't get any help (except from the community, perhaps) if it doesn't work, install or play anything. Wine (and Cedega) are your best friends if you want an emulator, but they don't guarantee 100% working games. Another way around is to use VMware (player or server, which costs) to install a virtual Windows operating system on your Linux box (you need to have a legal copy of Windows, of course), in which you could try playing your games; I have no idea, though, if it works for games and how well (because running an OS inside an OS consumes quite a lot of resources).

So..no, nobody can guarantee your games work 100% on Linux. They were designed for the other OS (most of them, at least), and that's how it goes. In the future that might change but at the moment it's like this; remember that not every game works on XP that worked on 98SE, and not every game works on Vista that worked on XP. On Linux it's just more visible, for obvious reasons.

And one more thing: "Linux software" is not meant to be free, it's just open source (usually, but not necessarily). It's completely up to the licence what you can do and cannot do, or what you will have to do to use the software. GPL does not mean "free of charge", necessarily, it just means GPL, mainly open source. Most open source software you can sell, as long as you go with the rules of the licence.

Alright, I see what you're saying about Wine and Cedega. Too bad, because I can use Linux for basically everything but gaming. I also see what you are saying about software and freeness. I guess that I just find it unfair to charge someone to play games that they paid between ten and sixty dollars for on an operating system that is free of charge. Anyway, thanks for your insight. I'll keep on using my two computers for the time being I guess.

Well, that isn't what you are paying for at all. What you are literally paying for is the support. And all the things the site says you are. Beyond that it's perfectly acceptable to me to pay for years and years or coding. It's not as if EA or any other gaming company paid the Cedega guys anything. I think the billing system needs a revamp, but Cedega provides a very nice service. Especially once Source got to the point it is at now and I can play it well enough to actually do well.

http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/...WTO+Cedega+CVS
http://liflg.org/?catid=6

google is your friend.....if you don't need the support, cedega is free.
running UT2k4,quake4,doom3,neverwinter nights,and america's army native.heroes of might and magic 5 under cedega.

That's awesome, thanks. I'll have to try that out on my good rig. I'll also do some more researching. What distro do you think would work best? I have tried Gentoo, since I heard that it was good for gaming and multimedia, but I didn't get it to install properly. I am leaning towards Fedora Core 6 or Kubuntu. Possibly openSUSE 10.2.

You know I've been meaning to ask about Cedega - am I reading their page right in that you get both the Cedega back-end AND basically unlimited commercial game downloads, for $5/month? Or do you have to go out and buy the Windows version and just hope it works right?

I believe that you need to have games, as in buy them, then you pay the $5 per month to use them in you Linux distro.

edit: And the key is "hope it works." Not all games are supported. Its basically hit and miss. I think there is a page on their site to see which games work, and which don't.

http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/

and yes,you do need to have the game first.id (quake and doom) have linux installers on their website.unreal tournament has it on the disk.neverwinter nights has a linux version,or the installer can be found on the bioware website.AA and wolfenstein:ET are free downloads for linux.

yes. several of the games you mentioned, dont need Cedega or anything else to run under linux.

I run UT99, UT2k4, and doom3 native in linux. Wine runs my ol win98 UT99 install fine also, and it is
free. Had to select d3d had the renderer for it work well under wine, but use opengl for all the native
installs of course.

I installed wine, and I installed Deus Ex. But it won't run. I set the game to openGL rendering, and installed it to Program Files, but it won't run. I am not at home now, so I can't get the exact error it gives. I'll post that later if anyone wants. If anyone want to know my setup, I have a GeForce 7900GS KO, Asus A8N-SLI Premium, Athlon 64 4000+, and 1GB of Corsair ValueSelect RAM. The games that I really want are: Far Cry, FEAR, Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Blitzkrieg II, The Sims 2, Deus Ex (one and two), Age of Empires 3, and maybe some others. Anyone have experience playing any of these games using wine only?

And you think you should get your software for free?, even a tiny fraction of the cost spent on that machine would amount to a years worth of subscription to Cedega!

Paying a monthly subscription gets you updates (i.e more games are supported by the software), you also get to vote on the major title they should be working to get supported.

And if you don't think you should pay the extortionate game prices, don't, it's only going to get worse if people keep stumping up the cash.

As for the games themselves i haven't personally tried any of them, and without knowing the error it's difficult to diagnose, have you checked the site to see if they are indeed supported? i know wine has a fairly decent sized list of what is/is not supported which should be your first port of call.

I installed football manager 07 using wine and it works flawlessly (windowed mode even works, and it doesn't on my win32 system), although there isn't much need for 3D accel etc.

Yes, I checked the Wine database to see if it was supported, and it is. I'll post the error later if I can. As for my new computer: I have finally been able to get a new system after using the same one for 5 years. After 5 years of use the motherboard finally kicked the bucket, so it was time to get a new system. This new one is actually not anywhere near current - in fact it was probably current a year and a half ago. Also it is not even considered to be high end, so its not like I spent a huge ammount of money on it - in fact I spent less than $550 on it in total since I reused some of my old components. I see what you are saying; no, software should not be free. If they offer it for free thats great, I love that. But if they ask for money, and I really can see that I need it, I'll give it to them. I guess what really turns be off with Cedega is the monthly fee. Why not just charge $40 for it? That will bring in a lot more customers. Only problem then is updates. I would not want to pay for updates to a program. I don't know. I guess its a personal opinion. I'll keep working on wine.

tuldr,

Games like Doom3, UT2004, Quake3/4, World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights will all work natively in Linux.

iam_techno

WoW works natively in linux? Hrmm, did I miss a link to info on that?