Microsoft wants you to "Get the Facts Straight"

[David Gerard]

2009/9/7 John McCabe-Dansted <gmatht at gmail.com>:

> "WOW. Of all the games to mention, they mention World of Warcraft. I
> wrote a tutorial on how to get WoW running on Linux not to long ago.
> Its probably the easiest game to set up with in WINE."
> I think the author is kind of out of tune with your average user. Here
> is my translation of the above statement translated into user speak:
>   "WoW doesn't work on Linux. You need to follow a tutorial just to
> get the damn thing to install (lets not mention reliability, or Radeon
> drivers, or ...). And thats the *easiest* game. What a pile of ####!"


Tricky one.

* There's a subculture of WoW users who run it on Wine *specifically*
to avoid their Windows box being h at xx0r3d by people they've pissed
off.
* WoW is very popular on Wine, so bugs get reported and fixed quite well.
* WoW is well-supported by Crossover Games for just this reason. The
Crossover stuff tends to be good work that gets into the main Wine
tree as well, not the hacky stuff they sometimes hold their noses and
put into their commercial version.
* But, WoW changes all the time and the developers seem to put zero
effort into Wine testing.

Getting more Windows applications on this list is good:

http://wiki.winehq.org/AppsThatSupportWine

Note that EVE Online recommend Linux users use Wine ;-)

Precis: Ubuntu is not best sold as a Windows substitute. It does,
however, do surprisingly well as one. (My own Windows apps I won't do
without? Exact Audio Copy and my favourite Sudoku program.)


- d.