Best Configuration for Linux Gaming? 155
werjman asks: "I'm interested in switching completely to Linux but the only thing holding me back is the gaming. What I really want to know is what distro, graphical environment, Window Manager, and so forth are low on the system resources and play games great (and by games, I mean 3D accelerated memory hogs). Does anyone out there actually use Linux as a gaming platform?"
Yup. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
(Even with my "shitty" MX440, UT1/2003/2004 were fine. I am not a gamer though, just a UT fan
Re:Yup. (Score:3, Informative)
I run openbox on XOrg for my desktop environment, since I like a clean , fast, no nonsense desktop that relies on hotkeys rather than stumbling around with the mouse.
The only time I use Wi
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
Who is missing the point here? Me or him?
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
Re:Yup. (Score:1)
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
In an ideal world, there would be a linux (or PointToPlay) client for virtual CD, which would allow me to mount those copy-protected disks and install/use the games. Probably still need No-cd, but at least there wouldn't be any messing with physical media. If Cedega had
KDE is also good (Score:2)
I'm also running gentoo linux.
Re:KDE is also good (Score:2)
There is no specific reason why kde would not be suitable for running games other then its memory (and to a far lesser extent) cpu use.
Your machine has plenty of both, so of course kde doesnt interfer with a game of UT.
Try the same on a Athlon xp 2400 with 512 MB and you will notice a huge difference.
Sure (Score:3, Funny)
Damn young whippersnappers, anyway.
Re:Sure (Score:1)
Well... I think that I might have found (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well... I think that I might have found (Score:2)
When it was the New Thing.
Even before Rogue-o-Matic.
Nethack (Score:1)
you don't necessarily need a WM (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:you don't necessarily need a WM (Score:2, Informative)
xinit --
which sets up a seperate X11 on CTRL + ALT + F8.
This way you can use icq / irc / firefox on your main WM. And if the game crashes / freezes it dosn't take the WM (+ everything else you have open) with it.
I mostly do it because theres no easy way to switch out of iD's linux games without taking forever to reload the textures. (I also use slack + flux, I don't do it for the resources)
I remember reading somewhere how to set up XQF to start a seperate X11 session like this when you start
Re:you don't necessarily need a WM (Score:2)
I'm using ATI's flgrx drivers and if I start a second xsession, going back to the first one will freeze the computer. (This does not occur if I use the vesa driver instead)
I don't know about NVIDIA drivers though.
Re:you don't necessarily need a WM (Score:2)
Re:you don't necessarily need a WM (Score:2)
NVIDIA is not perfect either, but their drivers do work a lot better, and actually squeeye as much performance as possible out of the available hardware.
Its sad when a gforce 440mx outperforms a radeon 9800 but it does on most configurations when running Linux (not so when running windows on the same hardware)
My favorite (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My favorite (Score:3, Insightful)
I use its taskbar (better than gnome's, imo) but its window manager leaves something to be desired. That something is configurability, particularly in terms of key bindings. Sawfish has almost 200 WM actions that can be bound to key or mouse shortcuts. Things like toggling maximizatio
Re: (Score:1)
Why use a window manager at all? (Score:3, Informative)
Stop sshd, inetd, any web servers, any mail serers, reschedule any cron jobs for while you are at work or sleeping, and absolutely do not use gdm or other login display manager.
If you are the sort of person who wants to get every last fps possible, then I suppose you could use Gentoo and compile everything with all optimizations for your platform (Gentoo is the easiest way to accomplish this). You just type exactly what each step tells you in the Gentoo installation manual, and it very easy (just don't try this for anything more important than your gaming machine).
Good plan (Score:2)
-Take the startup parameters for the game, write them to an
-Write a custom XF86Config if needed too.
-Kill X
-Run startx pointing at your custom XF86Config as needed
-.xinitrc should load the game for you
Biggest issue is a little voodoo needed to have your script not die when X stops. Perhaps a file in one of the regular X init scripts that it
Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Stop making excuses for your Windows partition. You don't need it, remove it.
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:1)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, there is supposed to be an xbox port of HL2. Unfortuneatly its all TBA, with 0 screens released.
Don't give your hopes up on a console port happening. ever.Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
It could happen. The Dreamcast port of Half Life was essentially complete when Sega announced that they were getting out of the hardware business, so the port never saw the light of day. So it could happen, given that they got burned on the DC deal, I wouldn't be too surprised if a console port was not the highest on their list.
Too bad really, a title like Half Life 2 could pull Halo 2 numbers on a console.
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:1)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:1)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
Uh, I believe that's what this person is trying to accomplish. They probably want to be able to use a newer computer which will allow greater graphic capabilities compared to PS2 or Xbox.
I personally like computer games better because of the controls. I'm familiar with using a keyboard and mouse at the same time. Lettered hotkeys are simpler than button combinations.
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:1)
keyboard control sucks for action game movement. I've tried to understand the WASD obsession but I can't. Mice are fine, I like playing my Playstation/Playstation 2 FPS's with the dual shock in the left hand for movement and mouse in the right for targeting.
You'd probably like some console games if you took the time to become more familiar with the controls. And it does take time.
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I play games on a PC not because its my only option, but because it adds an extra level of depth and complexity that you can't find in certain genres on console games. In the same way that image manipulation software lets you go above and beyond what you could do on paper/canvas (for the most part), gaming on a general purpose computer allows much more fle
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoever modded this as 'insightful' was being incredibly short-sighted. The simple fact of the mnatter is that Windows is the best OS for PC gaming. If you want to play games only available on PC, and you want to play on-line, then having a Windows partition is not an 'excuse'. A PS2 or GameCube is an alternative, but not always an ideal one.
Do yourself a favor and quit kidding yourself. If you're avoiding games because y
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
I have a seperate PC running Windows for games because I don't have faith in the quality of the DRI drivers available for Linux. I won't even consider using a console because of the ~720x480 screen size used by the NTSC signal, a 1950's technology.
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
Really? Care to spell that out a bit? Windows has the largest user base, largest library of games, and supports the largest range of hardware the games will play on. What's so different that it's not the 'best'?
" I won't even consider using a console because of the ~720x480 screen size used by the NTSC signal, a 1950's technology."
If you watch any TV at all then this is a ridiculous cop-out. If FPS
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
Okay, I understand what you're saying. Please understand, we're measuring 'better' in two different senses here. I'm talking about better in the sense of "My goal is gaming, which OS gets me closer to that goal?" I never intended my comment to imply that Windows was technically superior f
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:1)
I may be an odd case when it comes to the number of pixels. I've studied OpenGL and general 3D rendering. I have an appreciation for lighting and shadowing effects. And a think my experience of the game is unduely affected by the sum total of information that is delivered per second. But I also agree that there are
Re:Use a special purpose machine for gaming. (Score:2)
In the 80's the Coleco Adam was a better machine than the Commodore 64 in every respect. But it cost $100 more and was released before its floppy drive and everyone bought the commodore.
Of course I take things seriously. (Score:2)
Although Sony and Nintendo are by no means saints, MS has no goodwill left with me. None. Zilch.
Convinience will not impair my judgment. It is a pity so many people don't even question themselves about these matters and as long as something is convinient they close their eyes to the consequences of their actions.
Re:Of course I take things seriously. (Score:2)
It is a pity so many people hate a company so bad it impairs their judgement on anything related to what they do.
WHO mods this crap up (Score:2)
However, he wants to get decent performance game-wise out of linux. So responses such as "screw what you're doing and do entirely-different-thing-X" are not only useless, they're ignorant and trollish.
Current review of GPU Drivers (Score:1)
Re:Current review of GPU Drivers (Score:2)
use the game itself as your window manager (Score:5, Insightful)
To do this edit
id:3:initdefault:
which will normally read 5 and change it to 3 (like mine is), Fedora inittab files are well commented and explain what to do, others are probably similar.
To go into X (the windowing system) you type startx after logging in, this gives you your regular desktop, gnome, kde, xfce, whatever.
When you are bored with email quit out of X and run your game with (I think)
xinit
I read that here [nvnews.net]
Re:use the game itself as your window manager (Score:4, Informative)
This is why Linux (currently) fails (Score:2, Insightful)
2. this means find the line id:3:initdefault: which will normally read 5 and change it to 3 (like mine is), Fedora inittab files are well commented and explain what to do, others are probably similar.
3. To go into X (the windowing system) you type startx after logging in, this gives you your regular desktop, gnome, kde, xfce, whatever.
4. When you are bored with email quit out of X and run your game with (I think) xinit
Y
Re:This is why Linux (currently) fails (Score:2)
1. the person asking is obviously a bit more knowledgable then 'Joe Sixpack'
2. you can run games without doing all those things, you will just get the same problems as Windows can have (ie, background processes taking away resources from your game, stupid popups from whatever program interupting your game etc etc)
Re:This is why Linux (currently) fails (Score:2)
Damn good question.. (Score:3, Informative)
Gentoo has some nice patched kernels for gamers, and the gentoo forums are the best forums out there. And then use transgaming to complete it.
As for a desktop wm, depends on how much functionality you want. The barest wm is twm. But then whats a 150K or so, might as well run IceWM which has a nice taskbar.
The easiest out of the box setup is Mandrake for gamers, less configuration and config time.
Just my 2 cents.
twm-gl (Score:3)
What's really amazing is that you can eke out a boost in 3D game performance by using it. Really, one of the best, but lesser known, free software projects. (And since it's free software, I hear that a Windows and MacOS X version is in the works. Awesome!)
Give it a try.
Re:twm-gl (Score:1)
Re:twm-gl (Score:2)
I am reluctant to trust binary-only code from someone that I don't know.
Re:twm-gl (Score:2)
Haha, I love their 404 page. (Score:2, Funny)
.
> look
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> find link
You stumble around trying to find http://icculus.org/projects/twmgl/screenshot1.jpg, but your hands grasp nothing except dirt and rock. You eventually touch something solid, and lift it up. As you bring it to your eyes, you squint to find that it is an electronic root kit of high-jump.
> quit
Your score is 25 out of a possible 375. This gives you the rank of hoser.
Are you sure you want to
Hate to say it (Score:4, Interesting)
I took this chance to actually put some cash in m$ pocket when they've been getting "better" on the security, etc... front. Sure, mod me down or whatever for saying these anti-opensource things here. Not like i actually did anything for linux or open source [google.com]. ;-)
I've found that this works the best (aside from my PS/2) for my needs. YMMV depending on what you need.
Re:Hate to say it (Score:2)
There are, however, inherent advantages to dual-booting in the first place. If some random program I download screws up my Windows desktop...eh, just reset in Linux, get back to work, and worry about it later. Useful, especially since I seem capable of crashing just about any OS (I've crashed Red Hat Linux, stalled an automatic, and crashed a GameCube. ...Windows XP lasted approximately 16 hours the last time I booted up...).
Re:Hate to say it (Score:2)
Older games (Score:2)
Re:Hate to say it (Score:2)
Quoth the AC:
Darn it, why doesn't anyone around here know the difference between "informative" and "insightful"? ;-)
Gentoo kernels... (Score:5, Informative)
Kernels not in Gentoo portage but compatible [gentoo-wiki.com] and designed for speed are:
nitro-sources [www.sepi.be] (ck-sources + reiser4 + framebuffer + other stuff)
love-sources [love-sources.org] (community maintained kernel to optimize desktop performance and test "unstable" patches)
speedy-sources [limitlessfx.com] (love-sources w/ reiser4)
Oh, and looking at the forums nearly everyone uses an nVidia card. So far, nVidia plays nicer with x.org than ATI.
Really not a troll.... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a windows machine configured right next to your linux box. Seriously, it has the pro over a dual-boot at least in that you don't have to reboot to switch operating systems. I recommend a monitor switch to let you use the same monitor for both computers (and of course, allows you to instantly switch). Make sure you get a good one though or your will have some funky artifacts on your screen...
Re:Really not a troll.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally game on Linux exclusively despite having several copies of Windows around. This is simply because I use Linux all the time, and hated dual-booting (guess I'm just impatient like that. I also hate having to drop everything I'm doing; I usually have lots of stuff going on on-screen). I can't afford to maintain a whole nother box (especially one that has the same specs as my laptop, which is necessarily fast due to the work I do) to run the latest games.
Better, IMHO, just to pay for Linux games and maybe pick up a few on the discount rack that work via Cedega/Wine. I don't have to be annoyed or maintain two expensive machines, and I get my work done under Linux (I'm honestly much more productive under Linux than Windows), and I help support Linux games with my wallet. A win-win situation for me. Others' views may be different, but those are my reasons.
Re:Really not a troll.... (Score:2)
> How about a windows machine configured right next to your linux box
Lets see, the person asks very explicitly for a Linux setup. Your answer: Use windows.
Sure, Windows does better for gaming then Linux due to availability of games and supported hardware, but THAT WAS NOT THE QUESTION. Neither was it a question about dual booting, it was about running games on Linux.
Audio... (Score:2)
Has this been improved yet? I don't play games in Linux these days.
Re:Audio... (Score:3, Interesting)
And since version 2 [transgaming.com], WineX has been able to translate DirectSound 3D into ALSA's 3D API.
Does Diablo 2 use DirectSound 3D or just EAX?
Re:Audio... (Score:2)
Cedega (Score:5, Informative)
Of course not all games now-a-days require wine or cedega in order to run on linux. Games like unreal tournament and doom III include fully functional linux versions [icculus.org].
There are several open source games developed for but not limited to linux. torcs [sourceforge.net], flightgear [flightgear.org], tuxracer [sourceforge.net] are some examples.
Projects like libsdl [libsdl.org] are making cross-platform game development easier.
Probably the biggest problem you'll encounter is building drivers for your video card. I've heard it argued both ways but as I understand it, both nvidia and ati drivers are ass-pains in linux. Nvidia's drivers [nvidia.com] are free as in beer, not speech. If you don't really care about free-software principles and philosophy then this is not a problem for you. ATI's drivers [rage3d.com] I understand to perform less than ideally. If you haven't already purchased your video card, I would encourage you to do extensive research beforehand.
In reality, linux distributions have few differences. Any recent, major distribution should be able to accomodate gameplay. I myself use debian [debian.org] unstable for amd64.
As far as performance, it really boils down to hardware. My advice is to install the linux distribution of your choice. Once you get glxgears [xfree86.org] to run, give ut2004demo [unrealtournament.com] a try, and if you like the way it works, then stick with linux.
Re:Cedega (Score:2)
ATI drivers are still a pain, NVidia drivers however are now among the easiest to install drivers outside the standard kernel. They come in the form of a simple self-extracting script which you just run, it will automatically detect the correct kernel headers and such and will in most cases compile out-of-the-box without ever manually configuring anything, even on a Debian box. Beside from the easy
Suse/Nvidia (Score:3, Informative)
As for a window manager, Window Maker seems to be pretty light weight, or if you really want to get fancy, you can write a script to drop you out of a window manager completely and just run the game on top of plain ol' X. To be completely honest though, I run KDE most of the time, and have never found it's memory footprint to be a problem even when I'm running rather resource intensive games or applications. I have a buttload of ram though, so YYMV.
Others have mentioned Cedega, which is not free, though you can get the source free from CVS if you feel like messing about with configuring it and compiling it yourself. AFAIK their licensing doesn't prohibit this, it only prohibits you distributing it to anyone else.
Don't do LFS (Score:3, Informative)
Anything but Fedora (Score:2)
Gaming under Gentoo (Score:1)
I have both WINE and Cedega installed on my Gentoo system (and, FWIW, you can obtain Cedega from CVS without paying for
been a Linux-only gamer for 3 years (Score:5, Informative)
If you are very familiar with Linux, you will likely be very satisfied with your experience, and even likely to have fewer problems than your Windows using friends(for games that run on Linux, that is).
So first off, you need the proper hardware. You _need_ an NVIDIA card. Don't bother with ATI, their drivers are unstable and perform terribly. With NVIDIA, you will be up and running in no time.
Second, you need a decent sound chip. If you have a laptop, chances are you're screwed, unless you're seriously willing to tinker. You will want a card that supports hardware mixing, all common audio frequencies(many newer cheap cards only support 48000). A SB Live is probably your best bet, unless you know of another card on the market today with those features that is supported well in Linux. If you use the alsa drivers, be sure to load the oss compatibility modules, and you may have to $ echo "binary 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss, to get some games to work. Google is your friend. Substitute "binary" with the actual name of the program, eg. "quake3.x86" or whatever.
Build yourself a custom kernel, do not include DRI or agpgart. The NVIDIA drivers have their own agp support, with better support for different/broken hardware.
Get yourself a gig of memory already, and you won't need to worry about your WM. Just don't have any silly CPU consuming applets running.
If you have to ask what distro to use... well, I don't know quite what to tell you. Any distro can be made to work if you know what you're doing. But since you're asking for a recommendation, I heartily recommend Gentoo. It will, hopefully, teach you a bit more about how your system works, and it is the most flexible of the mainstream distros, IMO.
Cheers, and good luck.
Re:been a Linux-only gamer for 3 years (Score:2)
My friends have a LAN party every other week and I had assumed that I would need to build a winbox to join in. Is Wine sufficient these days to use the Windows versions, or are games generally available for Linux? Or something else I hadn't thought of?
Cheers,
Justin.
Re:been a Linux-only gamer for 3 years (Score:2)
UT2004 is available for Linux and runs very well. Doom 3 is available and runs well, but not many people are playing that at LAN parties :) There's some classics, Quake 1 - 3, UT, UT2k3. RTCW, Enemy Territory.
Some Windows games that reportedly run very well are Far Cry, Painkiller, Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, GTA3, GTA:VC, Half-Life
Re:been a Linux-only gamer for 3 years (Score:2)
Ta.
J.
Re:been a Linux-only gamer for 3 years (Score:2)
Christ, if I had a nickel for everyone clamoring about Steam not necessarily existing in the future I'd be rich.
The pirate/cracker community will always have a way around this. [nforce.nl]
If you bought the game then Valve has your $50 and you should feel no shame for using a crack to avoid talking to Steam servers. The plain fact is that if you know where to look you will
loki installers for linux gamers (Score:1, Interesting)
loki installers for linux gamers [liflg.org]
Lightweight window managers? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) RAM costs next to nothing these days - 512MB goes for under AU$100 locally.
2) Even without enough real RAM, this is a classic example of what virtual memory is for. After a quick game, is logging back in to your desktop, reloading all your apps and then getting back to your work really quicker than just leaving the OS to swap your apps back in?
For me, one of the joys of Linux is the ability to have my desktop and applications open 24/7 for weeks on end. If you're going to log out every time you play a game, you might as well just hit the reboot button in your login manager and go play in XP.
To answer the topic, I'd suggest an NVIDIA video card (the 6600GT is, by all indications, awesome, and NVIDIA's Linux drivers are better than ATI's [anandtech.com]), a Creative SB Live! or Audigy card (no need to knock yourself out - an older OEM Live! card will do fine), and an Athlon 64 CPU. There's no Linux-specific reason to go for the Athlon 64 over the P4 (though playing with 64-bit Linux can be fun), but they just seem to be a better chip for the money overall, and a better gaming chip in particular.
The most enjoyable gaming... (Score:1, Insightful)
Xsession (Score:2)
Any configuration will work. (Score:1)
I use Gentoo, but again any distribution will work.
As other people have mentioned, this might not work as well as you hope. I've also been forced to maintain a "Wintendo" because my gam
Simple Solution.... (Score:1)
Re:Simple Solution.... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a believer in using the right tool for the job. This is why I have a Linux web, mail & file server, and my games machine is a windows box. - That's not to say Linux isn't any good for games, but for me
If keeping machine dedicated, might as well reboot (Score:2)
In terms of hardware though I think same principles as other apps apply but with the best linux graphics card there is... probably Nvidia Geforce 6800? I think SCSI or fast storage is suprisingly useful too!
Re:If keeping machine dedicated, might as well reb (Score:2)
While I agree that games are usually a big resource hog, it is by far not as bad as you are suggesting.
For example, I have been running a webserver on the same machine that I use for playing Enemy territory. This setup was very usable, and the game and webserver did not cause any noticable interference with eachother (webserver was also usi
Fall 2004 State of Linux Gaming (Score:3, Informative)
On the Linux side of things, I run Gentoo and just use the regular old Gnome desktop with Nautilus even. My system is fast enough to keep up with it, and Athlon-XP 2400, GeForce FX-5900, 1G of RAM, a fast 120G HD, 20" Monitor, SBLive! sound card, and some USB joysticks and game pads. I use the JFS filesystem in Gentoo because it has the lowest CPU usage and its speed is comparable with the other guys.
One of the greatest things for the Linux gamer is DOSBox [sourceforge.net]. Using that program, I can play Wing Commander: Privateer, and X-COM UFO Defense in Linux. You can adjust the speed of DOSBox so the game feels about right. You know its getting pretty good if it can run Privateer (which is now abandonware and a free download from The Underdogs). In fact, you can probably run most of the great old DOS abandonware games in DOSBox with zero problems now. This one program increases your Linux gaming library to thousands of freely available commercial quality games.
Next are the nice commercial games which have a linux port. Neverwinter Nights and Doom3 stand at the forefront of the pack and run great on my system. Also there are great ports of Quake1/2/3, RtCW, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen 1/2, and Doom.
After that, you enter the realm of Open Source games, with great titles like the Ur-Quan Masters, Vega Strike, Battle for Wesnoth, and any of the thousands of other games listed at The Linux Game Tome [happypenguin.org]. Having Gentoo is an advantage here because the compiler toolchain is particularly strong, so its easy to compile and try out the latest cutting edge CVS versions of these in-development games.
Then you have the Wine and Cedega games. I use this for Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout1/2, and Diablo II. These (and other) well programmed games are totally playable in Wine, so there's no reason to have to special boot to windows just to play them, might as well just use Wine to play them. The windows versions of most of the old Loki games that are now broken typically work under Wine.
I won't even go into the other emulators, but suffice it to say that there are emulators for most consoles, such as ZSNES, and arcade games, like MAME. There are thousands of games which will work great using these things. I sometimes boot up ZSNES and play some ShadowRun.
Which leads me finally to the unfortunate state of the Loki titles. A lot of these are linked against older libs and may or not work on a new system without some serious fiddling around and building of compatibility libs. Some still work, some don't, but chances are that they will all eventually die of bit-rot. Poor Loki Games, you are missed.
I've been doing serious Linux gaming since 1998. There are tons of great games available, thousands that can be emulated, and the best part is if you want to take a hand at making your own games, you have every tool and library under the sun right there at your fingertips.
Almost anything will work. (Score:4, Informative)
Now, if you're trying to run Doom 3 on three-year-old hardware, the case might be different, but if you've got something up to snuff, you shouldn't have much of a problem running almost anything. When I'm in KDE on my machine, I typically have a memory usage of around 200 MB, even after days, with several programs loaded up. Can Doom 3 really not handle itself with 800 MB of ram (assuming about a gig of ram is standard on a gaming machine these days)?
If you want a lightweight window manager, use XFCE or Fluxbox or something. However, don't listen to people who tell you that on a 3.5 GHz machine with a gigabyte of memory you need to use Ratpoison because anything else uses too much memory. Use whatever you like to look at. You bought a giant machine; you don't need to treat it like a pentium 90.
Re:Suggestion (Score:4, Informative)
As for your original question, I would recommend using any light weight window manager. openbox, blackbox, etc. You could move from gnome or kde to one of these when you are going to play a game. Also, I recomend you to buy an nvidia card. The ati drivers suck badly. I play 3 games on my machine (when running linux) Doom 3, UT 2004, and Enemy territory.
I forgot to tell you, that you might want to check this links:
Wine Application DB" [winehq.org]
Frank's Corner [frankscorner.org]
To see how to install several windows games in linux.
Re:Suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't even matter if WINE is an emulator or not, in the first place. I'm continually mystified by the myriad of people who feel the need to "correct" anyone that refers to it as such.
That's
Re:Suggestion (Score:1)
Re:Suggestion (Score:2)
In addition to this, plenty of other games work but I either (1) don't play them, or (2) haven't bothered to install them.
The ones which do work tend to work very well, usually at around about 80% of full speed. You can play OpenGL games also with little or no problems.
Wine has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years, and TransGaming'