Linux??

[morsmortis]

Has anyone got Black Shark working under Linux via Wine or Cedega? I heard a rumor that some Russian guy got it working (would be nice if he was here :D) It installs fine for me and as of 1.18 of wine the GUI works perfect except for the fact that none of the key inputs show up under options. And of course starting a mission gets an error, probably related to the authorisation . I can tell a myriad of registry inputs are needed, but I have no clue where to start.

 

Vista is still on my machine, but I would love to give it the boot it deserves.

[joey45]

didn't know Linux supported games....

[EtherealN]

joey45, a lot of games are actually ported to Linux nowadays, and even for many that aren't it is eminently possible to run them on Linux through software like Wine ("Wine Is Not an Emulator") or Cedega (by Transgaming). The former is basically an API compatibility layer for Linux whereby API calls from a Windows binary gets interpreted and run by the Linux OS instead of a "normal" DLL being run by Windows. Cedega is basically a DirectX-implementation for Linux, sitting on top of Wine, allowing Linux to run a windows-based game's DirectX calls.

 

Due to the fact that they have to do it all through their own code and figure things out as games are released, there usually is a bit of lag from a Windows game's release date to it being fuly supported by Cedega (and thereby Linux), but many games will work straight out of the box (albeit sometimes with some graphical glitches) since somewhere in the high 90 percents of DirectX calls are already implemented in the Cedega API.

 

Mosmortis, I haven't actually tried it but I would suspect that the protection scheme would indeed be a pretty severe hurdle. It might be possible to fix that through using Wine to install Windows within the Linux partition in a kind of reverse Cygwin kind of way (would even give you the use of native DirectX instead of the Cedega API), but I'm not sure this method would be possible to do without performance overheads - or indeed even that it improve the situation with allowing the protection to operate.

Edited April 22, 2009 by EtherealN

[CyBerkut]

Morsmortis, it sounds like you're off to a good start, but that does seem like a lot of hurdles left to be cleared. It would definitely be nice to have an alternative. The one thing that truly keeps me stuck in the MS Windows world on my home machines is gaming. I don't hate Microsoft, but I'd like to see Linux finally get enough of the desktop market share to warrant game software developers attention.

 

I know it's not what you asked about, and it doesn't take Windows out of the equation, but I'm wondering how much of a performance hit would result from running DCS:BS in a Virtual Machine. There are a number of choices out there for Virtual Machine Managers... some of them use Linux as a host OS, and some use a stripped down Linux kernal as a "bare metal VMM (hypervisor)".

 

I wish I was well versed in Linux / WINE / Cedaga enough to be helpful to you, but alas that is not the case.

[morsmortis]

It will probably work well if and when a Steam version is implemented. The copy protection is the main pitfall for Wine. I am sure the game would run as good or better than under windows once it is up and running. Wine pretty much has all the direct8 apis under control, and afaik DCS still uses those.

[Safari Ken]

The one thing that truly keeps me stuck in the MS Windows world on my home machines is gaming. I don't hate Microsoft, but I'd like to see Linux finally get enough of the desktop market share to warrant game software developers attention.

 

Agreed! Gaming is the only real advantage Windows has over Linux or Mac, in my opinion (though game availability on the Mac is better than it used to be). I switched to Ubuntu for a little while. I love the OS, and for every headache I had getting it configured, I had two "Why doesn't Windows do that?" moments. But Wine isn't perfect, and I found myself re-playing old games because they worked (though often with major glitches), and I didn't like crossing my fingers every time I wanted to play a new game. So eventually I came back to the Dark Side.

 

That said, Eve Online had a native Linux executable for a little while, but they dropped it, because no one used it, because the game ran smoother with the Windows executable run through Wine. :lol:

[EtherealN]

Safari Ken, people did use the Linux distribution for EVE Online (including me). And as far as I know (from, among other things, talking to their Transgaming reps when I was in Iceland) it actually wasn't a native executable. It was a standalone Cedega implementation that ran an adapted version of the windows executable.

 

At least it was when I used it, but I ran EVE Online on Cedega even before they started that collaboration with Transgaming. Though that did have a few funny time-counting bugs, like:

 

 

:D

 

Those petty notes aside (and be it duly noted that I didn't stay with the Linux version of EVE Online all that long, since my systems would be booted into windows for gaming anyway...), I do agree that there not all that much besides gaming that Windows has on Linux nowadays. Ubuntu has pretty much dispensed with the installation and setup difficulties, and to my mind is even easier to install than Windows.

 

That all said, I don't think we should bring too much hope of DCS getting ported, but it would be sweet with a version that has a copy protection scheme that allows it to be run through Wine. But I still am pretty certain there as a way to get applications to believe Wine was a full windows systems with registries and all, and if that was achievable I think it should be possible to both get it to run and even to operate as per normal.

[Raz_Specter]

didn't know Linux supported games....

 

Linux games are few and far between. Wine allows you to run windows applications in a virtual windows enviroment running on linux.

 

Downside to this is that it is slower that the intended implementation.

 

Mithandra

[EtherealN]

Not strictly true. Wine stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator" for a reason. It's not a virtual environment or emulation in the normal sense, since what it really is is an API translation layer that accepts the Windows API calls but is compatible with Linux. IF the API implementation in Wine is as good and effective as the native windows APIs, there would be a theoretical zero performance loss, AFAIK. Generally speaking, the performance loss is less than the possible gains you could get from running the application on a system that you have been able to recompile for your specific hardware.

Edited April 24, 2009 by EtherealN
Clarified a small bit

[Safari Ken]

Ubuntu has pretty much dispensed with the installation and setup difficulties, and to my mind is even easier to install than Windows.

 

I saw that Jaunty Jackalope Final got released in the last day or two. I'm tempted to start dual-booting for awhile. The version I used was 8.0.4 (Hardy Heron?), and I really liked it, but it just wasn't ready for prime time. Most of my specific complaints have been resolved since then, however. That's the best part about Linux, in my opinion. The sheer volume of fixes is very impressive!

[Boulund]

If you are interesting in trying out linux without a "real" dualboot you can try to install it like any other windows application (with uninstall of course if you don't like it or feel ready for the plunge). This or download the free VMware Player and downloading a free Ubuntu "Virtual Appliance" (really a "computer image" with a preinstalled Ubuntu-version and all messy stuff already taken care of) to try it out in a very neat virtualization package. I'm actually currently Ubuntu (and other distributions) this way because it lets me use them for programming and other tasks that I just prefer doing on linux, without the hassle of dualbooting or messing around with partitions and all that.

[naubusan]

Jaunty have a "little" localization bug in wubi be aware.