[EMAIL PROTECTED] schreef: > Thank you for the explanation. That clears it up. I don't play the Doom > series either - I have Soldier of Fortune and Half-LIfe along with some > others. And I have an Nvidia card <G>. > Yes, well, I hate you :) . But it is important to mention on behalf of any other idio-- umm, unfortunate ATI users-- like myself, that our regrettable choice of video card also has an effect on the situation.
But as to the original question, here are some important resources: The Wine application database at http://appdb.winehq.org This resource is not well-maintained atm, but it's trying to come back, so if you are a Wine user, please register, log in, and update application information, or even apply to maintain an application so that the developers can easily see if an app regressed after a monthly release. Wine now also has a Wiki at http://wiki.winehq.org/FrontPage, and the "user wiki" is at http://wine-wiki.org/ . Naturally, this also needs user support to survive, so any Wine users might consider contributing. The Transgaming games database at http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/ . These resources require you to be a TG subscriber to contribute, but anyone can read the data already provided. It's also not that well-maintained (a lot of listed games don't have any info because no one has tested them yet), but it is at least a place to start. TG also has a Wiki, and if the game in question has an entry there, it is linked in the gamesdb, so that's nice. Codeweavers (Crossover Office) also has an application database at http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/ . But I must say, in my experience with the CX demo, they hardly need one-- only one "unsupported" app that I threw at it did not run (CloneCD; but it installed fine)-- and that just doesn't run under Linux, period, afaict. I've found Crossover to be really great, pretty easy to use, looks like a real program, and if it ran games instead of only applications that I have no use for (such as Office and Access and the like), I would buy it in a minute. In fact, I'm almost sorry that I have no use for it, because it's the kind of thing I *want* to buy, just to show my support for how good it is. So for the applications that the OP wants to run (namely Office), I would recommend it, but if the OP doesn't want to spend any money, I would recommend Wine with WineTools: http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/ which should make it easier to get Office installed and running if you really must have it. However, WineTools vastly prefers the "last stable for Office" Wine version, which is considered by the developer to be 20041019 (which is still available in Portage). However, the developer does welcome information on any further applications that users successfully install and run with WineTools, so they can be included in the supported list, which can be found at http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/wt212jo.html As you might have guessed, I'm a pretty big Wine-head, and follow developments fairly closely. As such, on the whole I would say that no version or variant of Wine is (at this time, but that may be changing, as soon as within the next quarter) sufficient for all cases, unless you have very specific (and limited) needs. If you don't play games, for example (or only simple ones not requiring DX support), then Crossover (or Wine and WineTools) is probably sufficient. If you play games, but only older ones (I'm re-playing Deus Ex and Septerra Core atm), then Wine alone may be sufficient, but you may require more than one version (an installed binary and a compiled CVS, for example), as things have been known to break (regress) from month to month. On the other hand, Wine can really surprise you sometimes with what runs "out of the box"-- on one of my "live on the edge" days, I installed In Memoriam (Missing: Since January in Europe), which is only a year and a half old, under either Wine 20050111 or 20050211. I didn't really expect it to work, especially since the game requires an Internet connection, both because you get a FreeWeb account (which enables a password to be sent to you so you can even play the game), and because it also contains a lot of embedded links in the puzzle graphics to get clues (it's a "pre-murder" mystery adventure game, and I was having Adventure Game Withdrawal Syndrome, which is why I was trying this at all). To my complete and total shock, everything worked fine. I think I may have had to install the Shockwave Flash Player by hand under Wine (but had I been playing this under Windows, I would have had to do that as well, so I don't count that as "tweaking"). But it worked. I told the game to use my GMail account, and it sent the password there (meaning it got the information correctly, because Wine was able to use my DSL-via-the LAN connection properly to send it). Even more amazing, I didn't have to install IE or any such thing-- I clicked on a link in the game, and the game opened my installed Firefox. You have no idea how amazed I was that Wine just managed all this without me having to do anything special. The point being, don't dismiss Wine just because it may not claim to run any given "super game" or "super app", whereas Cedega does. There are not a few things that nonetheless run better under Wine than under Cedega, Wine has at least one feature that beats Cedega hands-down (drive mapping through symlinks rather than the config file-- very helpful if an installer needs to change CDs, but locks the drive when requesting the CD change, as some older installers do), and Wine's humility tends to conceal the fact that it does have a few neat tricks up its virtual sleeve. If you want to play most current (DX9, but not DX 9.0c) games now (rather than waiting for Wine), then you probably want Cedega, but then you probably also want Point2Play (the GUI interface to Cedega), because Transgaming *definitely* breaks things that used to work in their never-ending quest to get the latest and greatest FPS running. For example, an old (but very well-regarded) RPG, Planescape:Torment, works with WineX 2.2.1, and with no WineX or Cedega version thereafter. The voting population (subscribing to Cedega gives you the right to vote on what they'll work on fixing) has not succeeded in placing this high enough to get it some kind of priority, so if you wanted to play that *and* HL2, you would have to install both WineX 2.2.1 and Cedega-- which Point2Play allows you to do easily (in this case, so does Portage, but Point2Play keeps better track of things in the Cedega backend, since that's what it's for). Planescape is far from the only game that broke after version name.your.poison (you can find a lot of this information if the game has a Wiki entry, which usually specifies which Cedega version works best). Point2Play seems to bring other problems, though (some things will install or run properly under command-line Cedega, but get borked under Point2Play, for example). But if you have to manage multiple WineX/Cedega versions, it's really the best tool for the job (despite its imperfections). I'm also working on a big "master list" of what I have (or my boyfriend has) and tend to play (or that he would want to play if I ever got him to switch to Linux) that works under what version of what Wine variant (because I'm just tired of trying to figure this out all over again every time I reorganize my system). Should I ever get it done, I'll certainly post it to the Web (and I'm mentioning it so that I have some impetus to actually get it done; it's a bloody big job). On that basis, I would say that it is currently not possible to just choose one and be good to go. You'll probably need at least two Wine variants to cover all your bases. Wine and Cedega, Wine and CX, or CX and Cedega. However, with any two variants installed, you can probably run most any relatively common/popular program you need to, usually with minimal or no tweaking. If you stick to the Win98 default emulation, and if you have a Win98 license, making real Win98 dlls legally available for use, you can tweak a large proportion of things that must be tweaked into running (because they need native Windows DLLs not installed by the app itself but by Windows). Trying to emulate XP, though-- all bets are off (afaik, neither Wine nor Cedega supports XP emulation or native XP DLLs very well yet). Special-interest programs, such as those needed for semi-pro audio recording, seem to be more of a crap-shoot at the moment, but more because those interested are just starting to come forward and publicize their results with specific programs, rather than because the programs cannot be gotten to work. It rather seems that with tweaking, a fair number of them can (isn't that right, Mr. Knecht, if you're here?). OK, so that's the summary of pretty much every piece of general knowledge I have about Wine and its variants. Hope it was useful :) . Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
