# can ubuntu play games?



## i nEeD HeLp (Sep 21, 2009)

as the title says. can it? im talking new games, not old ones like mario and stuff. read a few posts elsewhere and they said it cant without wine 




need to kno thanks.


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## kuroikenshi (Sep 21, 2009)

Im pretty sure you are going to have to use WINE if you want to play any windows/mac based games.


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## ChewyBrownSuga (Sep 21, 2009)

im pretty sure no new games work out of the box for linux


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## LittleLizard (Sep 21, 2009)

kuroikenshi said:


> Im pretty sure you are going to have to use WINE if you want to play any windows/mac based games.



for most games thats the true except for WOW and id software games. And i think some valve games also run on linux without wine.


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## JC316 (Sep 21, 2009)

No, not stock. If you use WINE, you can play OpenGL games easy enough. Anything with the Doom 3 engine does great.


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## i nEeD HeLp (Sep 21, 2009)

k thanks guys for the quick responses


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## hat (Sep 21, 2009)

Like others have said, only OpenGL. Microsoft has a monopoly over DirectX so if you want to play the majority of games out there you're going to need a microsoft OS


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## parelem (Sep 21, 2009)

TransGaming's Cedega software is a great emulator for games, however, it's not free. $45 a year.


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## LittleLizard (Sep 21, 2009)

parelem said:


> TransGaming's Cadega software is a great emulator for games, however, it's not free. $45 a year.



Its Cedega not Cadega


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## TheLaughingMan (Sep 21, 2009)

ChewyBrownSuga said:


> im pretty sure no new games work out of the box for linux



Actually there are special release versions for Linux and some game that will work with it...very, very few.  Never Winter Nights 1 comes to mind.

Wine will work and it is free....just a bit of a pain in the arse to get up and running though.


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## Solaris17 (Sep 21, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Actually there are special release versions for Linux and some game that will work with it...very, very few.  Never Winter Nights 1 comes to mind.
> 
> Wine will work and it is free....just a bit of a pain in the arse to get up and running though.



Same with unreal tournaments. IDK if they bothered UT3 but i know that for some of the others  they released a linux version..if own the windows ed. you can download the files from their web site and it will get it running...pretty good too i play on some of my linux machines all the time without wine because of this.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 21, 2009)

It's really not that hard to get working you just need to find "which restricted driver and apps to enable from the repositories" and then it's not all that great and you are still very limited as to what you can play, plus you have to seek out quite a few proprietary DLL's for WINE and then install them correctly LOL EASY LOL


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## Frick (Sep 21, 2009)

hat said:


> Like others have said, only OpenGL. Microsoft has a monopoly over DirectX so if you want to play the majority of games out there you're going to need a microsoft OS



Nah, you can get DirectX games to work, more or less.. Not all games work, and it might take a lot of work to get them to run at all.


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## devguy (Sep 28, 2009)

I play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Linux exclusively (and often). IMHO, that is the best, free game of all time (with FEAR: Combat in a close second).

As for wine, it does seem to do a good job with OpenGL games.  But it also does well with some older DirectX games.  For example, I play Halo 1 via Wine all the time without a problem.  My 4870 lets me run at 2048x1152 everything maxed out with no framerate issues.  Although, don't expect Crysis to work via Wine.


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## exodusprime1337 (Sep 28, 2009)

i actually just tried out wine on my ubuntu build, some games work ok, but idk, it just seems foreign and so back to win7 i go.  personally i use linux for what i feel it's meant for, servers, networking, and security.  Games go to windows and being a fan of spending a lot of money for very little goes to mac owners... just my opinion though.


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## Easy Rhino (Sep 28, 2009)

exodusprime1337 said:


> i actually just tried out wine on my ubuntu build, some games work ok, but idk, it just seems foreign and so back to win7 i go.  personally i use linux for what i feel it's meant for, servers, networking, and security.  Games go to windows and being a fan of spending a lot of money for very little goes to mac owners... just my opinion though.



well yea if you play games and overclock then stick with microsoft. linux makes a great desktop OS tho and does everything Windows can do for free EXCEPT play games.


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## coodiggy (Sep 29, 2009)

Solaris17 said:


> Same with unreal tournaments. IDK if they bothered UT3 but i know that for some of the others  they released a linux version..if own the windows ed. you can download the files from their web site and it will get it running...pretty good too i play on some of my linux machines all the time without wine because of this.



PC CD-ROM set for ut2004 has the linux installer, I don't think they included the linux installer on the DVD set.


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## Th0rn0 (Sep 29, 2009)

There is 3 programs that allow you to play games. 

Cedega
http://www.cedega.com

Crossover Games (cxgames)
http://www.codeweavers.com

Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator)
http://www.winehq.org

The top 2 are specialised for games and are alot easier to set up. Wine is alot harder, although its ALOT easier then it used to be.


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## i789 (Sep 29, 2009)

yes, but it also depends on which game you want to play. I think you should definitely check the WINE database for which game can be played on WINE and their performances on different versions. Just use WINE, it is not that hard to setup, just go to the file repository and point click to install. One last word, most OpenGL game performs better in Linux than Windows.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 30, 2009)

i789 said:


> yes, but it also depends on which game you want to play. I think you should definitely check the WINE database for which game can be played on WINE and their performances on different versions. Just use WINE, it is not that hard to setup, just go to the file repository and point click to install. One last word, most OpenGL game performs better in Linux than Windows.


yeah and i'm sure you will love both of them that was a smart remark directed towards developers.......You can also play most Source games(HL2 etc..) with "wine' but you take a major hit on performance until you understand what really needs to be added to "wine", for me it took about 3 weeks to get games to play almost as good as XP, and that's what those "pay" programs(listed in  a post above this one) do for you......and don't forget you have to update quite a few DLL's for just about every game you want to play


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## SneakySnake (Sep 30, 2009)

I know that UT3 is confirmed as coming to Linux, but its not out yet


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## pr0n Inspector (Sep 30, 2009)

Don't waste your time, just boot into Windows for games. It's pointless to spend so much time migrating to Linux and then spend more time to make Windows games run on it.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 30, 2009)

pr0n Inspector said:


> Don't waste your time, just boot into Windows for games. It's pointless to spend so much time migrating to Linux and then spend more time to make Windows games run on it.


My conclusion as well


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## devguy (Sep 30, 2009)

SneakySnake said:


> I know that UT3 is confirmed as coming to Linux, but its not out yet





No.  It isn't.  It is almost two years late, with no news.  You know the term "Epic fail"?  Well, that term came from Epic's promise of Linux/Mac support for UT3 way back when.  Now, they have failed both platforms.  There is no sign that it is still being worked on.  In fact, Ryan Gordon (the guy who was supposed to do the porting), actually removed the UT3 client from his resume online.


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## i789 (Sep 30, 2009)

jmcslob said:


> My conclusion as well



you cant be serious to think that games that designed for windows to work in linux with 100% performance. How many games have been designed for linux?? as far as I know, none, perhaps only doom3 and quake 4 have linux native installers. so in that perspective, WINE has done a lot to help people to run their windows applications (yes, that includes all the games and everything else) People should be glad that WINE doesnt work as good as windows itself, or they are getting their butt sued by Bill Gates


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 30, 2009)

i789 said:


> you cant be serious to think that games that designed for windows to work in linux with 100% performance. How many games have been designed for linux?? as far as I know, none, perhaps only doom3 and quake 4 have linux native installers. so in that perspective, WINE has done a lot to help people to run their windows applications (yes, that includes all the games and everything else) People should be glad that WINE doesnt work as good as windows itself, or they are getting their butt sued by Bill Gates


Exactly, that's also why i can't be more specific as to what you need to do to get those games running better (it's illegal) and if i remember right those cross platform providers are based out of Russia which is why they can get away with it


from winehq...important info...I edited out the unneeded info tho...
Changing settings in the Applications and Libraries  tab will have the most impact on getting an application to run.
If you've configured a specfic application under the Applications tab and have it selected, then any changes made in Libraries or Graphics will affect only that application.
Recently Wine's default Windows version has changed to Windows 2000.
A troublesome application is best configured separately from the Default Settings.
Likewise, some applications require specific libraries in order to run. Wine reproduces the Windows system libraries (so-called native DLL's) with completely custom versions designed to function exactly the same way but without requiring licenses from Microsoft. Wine has many known deficiencies in it's built-in versions, but , Wine has the ability to load native Windows DLL's. 
After you've located a native DLL on a Windows system, you'll need to put it in suitable place for Wine to find it and then configure it to be used. Generally the place you need to put it is in the directory you've configured to be c:\windows\system32 
You can configure Wine to choose between native and builtin DLL's. Or, you can override the global settings on a per-application level by adding and selecting an application in the Applications tab.create fake DLL files to trick many programs that check for file existence to determine whether a particular feature (such as Winsock and its TCP/IP networking) is available. If this is a problem for you, you can create empty files in the configured c:\windows\system32 directory to make the program think it's there, and Wine's built-in DLL will be loaded when the program actually asks for it. (Unfortunately, tools/wineinstall does not create such empty files itself.) 
 Applications sometimes also try to inspect the version resources from the DirectX version Empty files will not do in this case, it is rather necessary to install files with complete version resources. This problem is already fixed for many files. For others, you may still need to grab some real DLL files to fool these apps with.

i truly wish i could be more specific, just remember several LIBRARIES are available as redistributable packs, though they require a license to access them, if you do not have a license yu should not continue as that would be illegal cough**hint**cough


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## pr0n Inspector (Oct 1, 2009)

For me, it's simple really: Why bother switching to a completely different OS if you want to run apps from your old OS so badly?


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Nov 5, 2009)

Wine works wonderfully for most games if you compile it yourself. Most othe software works fine as well as you can install it straight from the repositories. Linux has thousands of gmaes made for it. don't believe me? look in the repositories, search for games. Google Linux games. Goto Happy Penguin.


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 5, 2009)

As with everything in Linux, it also runs games far better than Windows. You just need to write them yourself first.


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## Zedicus (Nov 5, 2009)

devguy said:


> No.  It isn't.  It is almost two years late, with no news.  You know the term "Epic fail"?  Well, that term came from Epic's promise of Linux/Mac support for UT3 way back when.  Now, they have failed both platforms.  There is no sign that it is still being worked on.  In fact, Ryan Gordon (the guy who was supposed to do the porting), actually removed the UT3 client from his resume online.



it is still coming, they are still working on it. it is sad that it is 2+ years late though.

gaming on linux is always improving, the more people who start doing this the more developers will notice. if your going to switch do it all the way. if you love your windows, dont bother even trying, your mindset will sabotage you from the get go.

i am a gamer/overclocker, i exclusively run linux.


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