Newbie Install Advice

[Les Gray]

On Monday 09 July 2007 21:14:11 Trias wrote:

> Ok i'll keep that cedega in mind thanks.
>

Depending on what games you play, Cedega can be pretty hit and miss. I tried 
it out for about 6 months (cost=US$30) and, while some games installed and 
ran more or less trouble-free, most required a *lot* of fiddling around and 
time-consuming searching for help to get going. YMMV.

And the official support offered to subscribers was slow to respond and 
usually ineffectual. It left me with the impression that Transgaming (the 
company behind Cedega) want the benefits of a commercial software company 
(ie. money up front) without the responsibility that comes with that (ie. 
offering a product that will 'just work' as advertised).

To be fair, it's a tough contract to implement a Linux compatibility layer for 
Windows games. But then, given the nature of that beast, it's probably fair 
to argue that Transgaming should take a 100% free software approach if the 
expected level of product reliability just can't be there (like WINE does).

So I ditched Cedega and just use my Windows hard drive for games. And that's 
really all I use it for these days. In fact, I call it my 'Wintendo' instead 
of Windows (doing this helps psychologically ;) ).

Having a Wintendo is -

1. Much cheaper than buying a console (not to mention console versions of all 
my games, too).

2. More powerful than a console because it's in my comp, and uses the comp's 
hardware to run games.

3. *Much* less problematic than Cedega because it's the platform the games 
were designed to run on.

The only games I run in Linux now are those which run natively (eg. games by 
id software, who've been supporting Linux for a long time). ubuntuforums.org 
has a great gaming section, too, if you haven't checked it out already. I 
recommend having a look.

Les