The only thing making me continue to use windows would be the rumours around that its a pain in the ass to get games to run on linux and even if i get them to run, they dont run nearly as well.

If i was to install redhat 9 on my comp, using wine/winex whatever, would games run just as well as if i was using windows?

Also on the wine site there is a massive list of games that are meant to be compatible, are they?

Both of your questions could be answered positivly or negitively, depending on one major factor: Are you talking about native linux games, native ports from M$ Windows games, or non-native M$ Windows games running in wine/WineX?

Wine/WineX will give the largest selection of games (that long list you mention), but will almost always be worse in terms of performance, and sometimes in setup. Examples: StarCraft, WarCraft, Max Payne, GTA...

Native ports (games originally written for another OS but then ported to linux) could go either way on performance & setup; depending on your system & how well the port was done. Examples: NeverWinter Nights, Uplink, Homeworld (being ported now), Savage?, Enemy Territory?...

Fully native games (games created specifically for *nix OSes) will perform as well or better under Linux than M$ Windows (some won't work under M$ at all); but might be a pain to setup, depending on if you can get a precompiled & configured package for your Linux distro (easy), or if you need to compile it yourself (hopefully & usually easy, sometimes a massive pain). Examples: NetHack, ScummVM, Savage?, Enemy Territory?...

But if you consider stability: I have never had a game crash under Linux once I've gotten it working (note, I don't play w/ Wine/WineX; I've heard they even simulate M$'s stability). Under Windows XP I *very* often have Crash To Desktop, and somewhat often other problems.

Another often neglected topic is dedicated servers: many multiplayer games (Jedi Knight 2, NWN...) have dedicated servers for Linux even before or without Linux client support. So if you have an old box lying around, put Linux on it & use it as a dedicated server.

Well, that's my big long spiel. Linux rulez. M$ sucks. I'll shutup now. Goodnight.

Beolach

Generally Windows games run faster in wine for me then in windows.
Hitman 2 would lag in windows.. and now that I've found it on a CD again and tried it, no problems in Linux .

I never really had any problems running games in windows as far as crashing. I find that linux games load faster and the netplay is much better.

With wine (classic or X) the main problem about speed in games is the API used to write the graphics of the game. Both will give you DirectSound emulation (don't expect DS3D), both will emulate (quite well also) DirectInput. But obviously only WineX will give decent (if at all in Wine) D3D performance... Rembember that the mode WineX implements D3D is more like a wraper (remeber those ol' days of the Glide wrapers... funny we now use one for D3D). Since the API calls have to be converted into what Linux rendering can understand, i.e OGL, the performance may degrade a bit. It depends on various aspects, being the most notorious your video hardware under Linux.

It is also true that OGL applications will most of the time run as well in Linux than in Windows, some times even better and some times (with a few games) worse. If you check [ulr="www.transgaming.com"]transgaming[/url]'s page you'll notice that in general they recommend running a given game in OGL if it supports it. Also there are technological delays regarding DirectX technologies. For example, WineX does not support (yet) a wraper for DirectX 8.1 (and 9) Pixel Shaders (fragment programs in the OGL world) and has limited (if at all) support for Vertex Shaders (vertex array programs in OGL)...

I may have left you with more questions than answers, but that's how is the current transgaming* status regarding Linux.

* In the sense of strictly playing games for one Platform into another, like the emulation of the PS/PS2, N64, MAME, etc; consoles.

Day of Defeat mod for Half Life is way slower with winex 3.1 than in windows. I am running Mandrake 9.2 and fps is about 30-50. In win it is close to 100fps.Hardware is xp1800 gf4200 1GB. But Wolf ET is great game and it runs great on my hw. More native linux games please

Hae you tweaked the winex config at all? It is setup to be easy to debug and slow when you get it.

Well, what the keypoints are in winex config that speed things up.

where is this winex config and how would i tweak it? no game has worked in winex, and this could be the reason why.

You should look at your ~/.transgaming/ directory (~ means /home/$USER). There should be a config file. Open it with your prefered text editor and first of all try to understand its contents... you could find of a very good aid the man page about the wine configuration file:
There are many ways to seed up performance (one of them being running apps in a dedicated X session, like failsafe).