To wine or not to wine?Forum: Games Topic: To wine or not to wine? started by: odd Posted by odd on Oct. 13 2005,23:44
I am planning on getting a new computer soon, AMD 2600++, 1GB ram, 256MB video card. My current HD is 120GB, with windows 98 on it. Should I keep 98 SE, on my new computer and play games with that, put XP pro on it, or should I use linux(which distro you suggest) and wine stuff? Does using wine in linux use up more ram or what? Thanks for input
Posted by brianw on Oct. 14 2005,01:08
A friend of mine noticed that his windows games ran faster under linux than under windows on the same machine. With that size of hard drive you could probably run multiple OSes, using a boot manager to start up, to see what you like the best from each. You would probably find that linux supports everything you need and want, including speed and stability.
Posted by odd on Oct. 14 2005,01:29
Do you think DSL would work well, with a frugal, or even a regular HD install for this purpose?
Posted by brianw on Oct. 14 2005,17:23
With the amount of resources you have you should be able to do pretty much anything you want with DSL. I have just downloaded xwine.dsl. This is not because I want to run windows apps but because I want the experience for myself and for the forum. If I were in your position I would install to the hard drive and have DSL as my main OS with grub as the boot loader. To do this I would install Win 98 or Win XP on C: and set up a partition for DSl. Install XP or 98 first because they will over write the MBR if you install any windows OS last. If you have windows installed first with a partition prepared to install DSL grub will put in your win partition automatically. After you have DSL installed I would install xwine.dsl and start playing with boot options like toram etc and see what performance I get. If you want to try first run from the CD using toram (you have 1 G and DSl will take very little of that for itself). There are plaenty of post recently about setting xwine.dsl to come up each time you boot from the CD. Once you get things the way you want you may find that DSL becomes your main OS. On my p266 laptop I use DSL exclusively (I am experimenting with Xterminal setups and using my laptop as my development tool) and it is the one I am using right now to post (with a p200 and a freesco floppy as a router running the modem bridge). Get prepared for some amazing experiences using DSL.
Posted by Your Fuzzy God on Oct. 14 2005,17:59
From experience, you are going to have a hell of a time installing games using wine. I started trying to install games on Linux using DSL and then decided I needed a more graphics friendly distro, so I installed Mepis. I kept Mepis as my primary OS, but finally broke down and installed WinXP as a secondary OS for games. Luckly I had a free (and legal to boot) copy. Like brianw said, if you can get some games installed on Linux you WILL notice a difference in performance. You may want to look around < here > and see if other people have had success installing the games that you want to install. Good Luck, Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Oct. 15 2005,00:06
Of course, there are a few popular games out there that have been released natively for linux. With xfree86 and the nvidia drivers installed, I've happily run the demo of UT2004 under DSL, with higher frame rates than XP Pro, and I think Kent runs a full install of it.Check the games thread to see what else Kent has had working under DSL. |