Over the years I've tried WINE multiple times on different hardware and distros, and I've always fallen short of being able to get games to work properly on it (even platinum rated games). One of the major reasons I have Windows around is for gaming and I realize that not all my games are going to run in WINE, but I'd at least like to minimize the time spent there. I'm currently using Slackware -current so tips pertaining to Slackware would be handy, but since I haven't had any luck across other distros, any tips would be welcome.

Linux isn't windows.

If you buy windows games, they are built for the windows platform. Exclusively. Just accept this.

wine is (apparently) quite good for some things, but it is not windows.

I use linux, because it does everything I need. If I wanted to play games, I'd install windows. That's just "the way it is".

Please do not waste your time looking for a solution to this.

Best wishes.

There are no general answers to that. If you have problem running a specific game in Wine you should open a new thread for this, with posting all relevant information, like hardware, name of the game, version of Wine and what error messages you get when starting the game from the commandline and a detailed description what is not working.

Don't be too discouraged. A couple of tips from my own personal experiences.
1) If your on a 64-bit machine you'll need to set up multi-lib and also install the 32-bit opengl packages.
2) You'll need the proprietary drivers for your graphics card.
3) Try to overshoot the windows hardware requirements by about 20%

Once you've got all your 32 bit stuff in place and wine is installed properly you should install 'winetricks'. There is a Slackbuild for it. Use winetricks to install direct X runtime libraries, vcrun2008, some fonts, anything that looks important.

Then run your games from the command line and look for any errors.

I'm playing Rift, Starcraft 2 and WoW on my Slackware 64 box, and their so stable and painfree they may as well be native.
Regards,

WINE isn't a foolproof solution to getting applications for Windows running perfectly on Linux. Granted it's decent at some thing but gaming really isn't the best for it. As stated, Linux is NOT Windows, and WINE is not Windows either.

You could try things like VirtualBox, VMWare, or QEMU to simulate a Windows environment virtualized, or you could just grab a cheap copy of Windows and dual-boot it (which for gamers currently is the preferred/recommended solution).

The only other solution I can suggest is to contact the manufacturer of the game and see if they might have some interest in creating a Linux/SDL version of the game, or allowing an open-source initiative to create an engine for Linux/SDL that can be used with the official game files.

However, don't let anyone EVER tell you Linux isn't a gaming OS.

duel boot with windows
linux runs all but two programs i use
one of them is H&R-BlockTax-cut


if you need / and/or want to use MS Windows ONLY programs
run windows 7 .


now wine can and dose run some but anything using DX8,9,10 will do WAY better on windows7

some things will need tweeking using the wine regedit
-- you do have exp. with regedit ??? --


the best results i have had are with opengl games in wine DirectX 8 & 9 ??? iffy ??

I'm surprised though there isn't a greater initiative to get ports of Windows software made for Linux/SDL, especially games... so much of an untapped and under-tapped market.

I'm going to mark this as solved. Perhaps I will try a few games in the future, but for now I barely have enough time to play games as it is. Interesting tidbit is that a couple of the Unreal Tournament Games (Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004) had linux port done by Epic Games and there were talks of doing the same for Unreal Tournament 3 but it never materialized. I guess demand went down instead of up.