If your gaming needs are a little off the cutting-edge, Linux can be a viable alternative. And it’s an alternative that has many advantages of its own. There are no viruses, no wayward processes chugging away in the background, no spyware, lie-ware, trojans or worms, and you have complete control over your system.
Not only has Linux become much easier to use over the last few years, it’s now capable of running many of the more high profile game releases, giving you the best of both possible worlds. The switch has recently been made even more tempting thanks to the latest release of the Ubuntu distribution, an amalgam of the best open source and free software wrapped around a custom-built installation and configuration.
Ubuntu is partly responsible for the incredible success of Linux since its first release in 2004. It’s a distribution that focuses on normal users rather than just the uber-geeks. Ubuntu’s motto is ‘Linux for Human Beings’, and the 9.04 release gets closer than any other Linux distribution in bringing Linux to ordinary users.
It installs through a GUI, and requires very little user-interaction. The desktop is easy to use, featuring smooth transitions and bundles all the software you could possibly need. Even hardware compatibility and configuration has become largely a non-issue. If your memory of Linux is pre-Ubuntu, you won’t recognise it today.
Gaming with Linux
The only significant problem you’re likely to encounter if you switch to Linux is getting your gaming fix. With only a few notable exceptions, including the amazing World of Goo, there are very few native Linux conversions of recent games. Which leaves you with two possible avenues.
You can either dual-boot Linux alongside your Windows installation, giving you 100 per cent Windows compatibility and a Linux desktop, or you can run those Windows games on your Linux desktop. The magic behind this shape shifting ability is an open source project called ‘WINE’.
In true GNU/Linux fashion, this is an indecipherable acronym that references itself. You see, ‘WINE Is Not an Emulator’. It’s developers prefer to think of it as a compatibility layer more akin to a wrapper around Windows technology that’s a bit-for-byte translation of what various DirectX and Windows libraries do.
WINE is a masterpiece of programming, and a major project in the world of open source software development. It enables Linux users, and other Unix-like users, to run Windows binaries from their desktop without having Windows installed or any other Microsoft files knocking around.
It accomplishes this by recreating the various Windows system calls, functions and procedures without any idea of what the original Windows code looks like, and it wraps itself so tightly around its own implementations of these components that native Windows applications never have an idea they’re running on WINE.
OBLIVION: Not many people know WINE can play your games without the need to install clever software
And even more impressively, it can do the same trick for games. A large chunk of WINE is dedicated to recreating the intricacies of the various DirectX components, transposing graphics calls into equivalent OpenGL instructions. Audio calls into OpenAL.
But WINE is able to do this with such efficiency that if your Linux system has the horsepower, you can run many modern, resource intensive Windows games and get similar performance to a native Windows installation.
Dumping WINE
But WINE can be a tricky beast to tame. To get the best out of it, you’ll need to resort to the infamous Linux command-line, a process that will immediately break the belief that Linux has left its geeky credentials behind.
Fortunately, before you give up, you need to know that there’s a better solution. It’s a commercial application that costs about the same price as a new game, but packages WINE into a seamless desktop application that removes the pain from installing and running your favourite Windows games. That application is called Crossover Games and you may have heard of the Crossover brand before.
CROSSOVER LINUX: Crossover is controlled by using a GUI so you don’t have to learn the command line
Another product, Crossover Linux, focuses on the more prosaic job of getting older Windows applications like Office 2000, Photoshop 7 and Dreamweaver MX running in your Linux desktop. The ‘Games’ edition allows itself to be slightly more cutting edge. Which roughly translates to ‘it might crash’ , and rather than losing a year’s worth of accounts, you’ll lose your high score in Grid Wars instead.
The Games edition also enjoys a much quicker update cycle as Crossover developers try new technologies in their constant quest to catch-up with Microsoft development. If you want both application support and the ability to run games, then the Professional edition of Crossover includes ‘Games’ as a single package. If you think a commercial solution runs against the grain of Linux evangelism, then there are several good reasons for supporting it.
First, its development directly helps WINE as Crossover’s developers are WINE’s developers – code created goes back to the original project. This improves WINE for free, and actually re-enforces the open source model by showing that people are prepared to pay for a valuable service. Almost all the DirectX compatibility that’s currently built into WINE is thanks to Crossover Games development, and compatibility is going from strength to strength.
Second, thanks to the nature of games software, Crossover is constantly being updated with new titles, and you can vote for those you want to see better compatibility for. If this were a free project, there would be no incentive for similar development, and Linux users wouldn’t have such a great solution for running Windows games.
Hard choices
And this is where hardware comes into the equation. Linux can still be picky. Good Windows games performance needs solid Linux driver compatibility, with the biggest hot spot being your choice of graphics card. Currently, there’s really only one option, and that’s something from Nvidia. AMD/ATI cards can be made to work, but they’ll leave you reformatting your hard drive, begging Steve Ballmer for forgiveness.
Either way, the latest release of Ubuntu handles proprietary driver installation automatically. After you’ve installed the distribution and booted into the normal desktop, Ubuntu will detect whether you’re using hardware that could benefit from a proprietary driver and ask whether you want to proceed. This is necessary because Ubuntu is predominantly open source, and that means the code for all the software can be freely modified, and freely distributable.
Nvidia and AMD’s drivers are not, and as a result, their stability is out of the hands of the Ubuntu developers. The good news is that you shouldn’t have the same problem with audio hardware, as the vast majority of modern devices will work from the first boot.
Things are slightly different when it comes to controllers. Linux isn’t a popular gaming platform, and as a result, controllers that aren’t a keyboard or mouse are poorly supported. You’ll find that many Logitech joysticks work, for example, but a steering wheel is unlikely to be functional. There’s no custom calibration tools and no button configuration utilities either, and feedback is always hit and miss.
You might think that you could simply install the Windows drivers and tools through Crossover, but this won’t work. Your stick either will work or it won’t, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a go. If you’re after a quick and cheap solution for arcade titles, then console controllers work well with a corresponding USB converter, and that’s probably the best way to proceed if you need to use a controller.
It’s also worth noting that, unlike Windows, the 64-bit versions of distros like Ubuntu won’t hold you back in the compatibility terms. A 64-bit install can obviously take advantage of more memory, as well as running more efficiently, and both WINE and Crossover will run 32-bit games and applications from a 64-bit desktop.
Crossing over
When it comes to playing the games, Crossover Games is relatively straightforward to use. And in comparison to getting certain SecuROM titles to work on Windows, it can be considerably easier. But your first step has to be a check for compatibility.
Crossover hosts an online database that lists around 200 games titles that are known to work, and a few that don’t. Compatibility is graded by gold, silver and bronze awards, and if your game wins any of these, you should be able to play it through without too much difficulty. Crossover judges compatibility against its own very high standards, and tries to be completely truthful about the faithfulness of a working game.
It’s for this reason that there isn’t a single game that has been awarded a gold medal, but there are over 20 with the silver title. According to Crossover’s standards, this means the silver games ‘install and run well enough to be useable’, and titles include many Valve titles such as the Half Life 2 Episodes 1&2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. World of Warcraft, EVE Online and Guild Wars are reported to run well, and the latest 7.2 release of Crossover adds better support for Spore and City of Heroes.
UPDATES: The latest release of Crossover adds better support for games like Spore
In our experience, performance is usually a little below the equivalent XP speed. Using the Half Life: Lost Coast benchmark as an example, the Linux version (with the same settings) ran around 20 per cent slower, which doesn’t make any difference considering the age of the game and that most modern hardware should be able to run it without difficulty.
Even if a title isn’t in the database, it doesn’t mean you definitely won’t be able to run it. WINE, and hence Crossover Games, attempts to run any Windows executable you throw at it. If you like games from earlier on in the decade, for instance, there’s a good chance that these games will run without any mention of their compatibility in the database. But you might also have some luck with newer games.
We were able to get Oblivion and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to run by clicking on the executable from our shared Windows partition, although we couldn’t perform the same trick with Bioshock, presumably because of the copy protection. We were also able to successfully run the Steam.EXE in the same way, running it from a mounted Windows partition. Steam even found the installed games list from our Windows installation, which saved both the space and effort from downloading them twice.
Steam is one of the best reasons for using Crossover. Thanks to its civilised anti-piracy mechanism and the download model, plenty of games and demos in its roster will run. From the Crossover application window, you can download and install and run the latest Steam client, which will in turn download your games to the Linux desktop. And if they don’t work, you can always revert to Windows and use the same Steam account and play the game that way.
STEAMING: Counter Strike Source is one of the games you should be able to play with Crossover Games
Our biggest problem came from using a dual monitor configuration in Linux, as most games could only detect this as a single massive resolution through Crossover. Fortunately, there are two solutions. Either use the game’s properties field to set a screen resolution or windowed mode, or force a virtual resolution in the Crossover Games configuration panel.
In our experience, Linux is much better at running a game within a window alongside your normal desktop applications, which can be a real boon if you like to run more than one EVE account at the same time.
The competition
If you want to delve into the details, there’s plenty of room to change things in Crossover. Games are installed into something called a ‘bottle’, which is a term for a separate virtual Windows installation. This means you can keep bottles completely isolated from one another so that there’s no conflict with shared libraries or other files. It also means one bottle can emulate Windows XP, while another could attempt Windows 2000 or Vista.
These options are dynamic, and you can change almost anything about each bottle through a properties manager that looks and feels much like the real thing on Windows. If you’re looking to run Bioshock and Oblivion then there’s a competitor to Crossover that will run both without problems.
Transgaming’s Cedega is a private and purely commercial fork of the WINE project. It doesn’t release its modifications back to the WINE project, and it uses a subscription model to keep its customers up-to- date. If your subscription ends, you’ll still be able to use the software, you just won’t benefit from any updates.
While this closed model goes against the philosophy of using Linux it does offer the Transgaming developers certain advantages. The biggest of which is their ability to licence the official anti-piracy code so that games can be installed and run from the original optical media. The result is that games like Bioshock run well on Cedega, along with over 40 other games that have been certified.
For several years, Cedega was the chosen platform for the semi-official EVE Online client on Linux. Using a slightly modified Windows executable tested for compatibility with WINE, it enabled Linux users to play EVE Online on their desktops. But in February this year, EVE support came to an end. The producer in charge of both the Linux and Mac clients cited lack of growth in the Linux market for the decision, and it seemed clear from the tone of his message that Linux uptake had been disappointing.
Fortunately, the game isn’t over for EVE heads. Cedega still certifies the game as compatible, and the standalone premium Windows client seems to work well on Crossover Games. Many EVE users have even reported success using an ordinary WINE installation.
Supporting DX 10
In March, the CEO of the company behind Crossover – Jeremy White – laid out a roadmap for future development. He mentioned that his developers had spent the last year working hard on under-the-hood improvement such as .NET support, Gdiplus and DirectX.
As a result of this hard work, DirectX 9 compatibility is looking good in both Crossover Games and WINE. But his plans for the next release include the far more ambitious DirectX 10, and if development goes well, there may be a compatible version of Crossover Games released by the end of the year.
If Codeweavers can achieve this magic trick, there’s a good chance that WINE could even be ported back to Windows, bringing DirectX 10 compatibility to older versions of Windows, such as XP and 2000, an irony that won’t be lost on Linux users. While it’s obvious that Linux is never going to be a hard-core gaming platform, Linux is also far from being a barren wasteland.
Technology like WINE and Crossover present enough potential to satisfy most persistent gaming urges, and over the course of the next 12 months, the situation is only likely to improve for Linux games. There’s also a world of independent, free and open source gaming to delve into as well, and commercial small scale games like World of Goo have been very successful on the Linux desktop.
As with most things to do with Linux, getting things to work and run properly can be something of an adventure game in itself. But to those of us with a passion for the free desktop, that’s the whole point.
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In Depth: Play Windows games on Linux with Crossover
We knew that the Boxee desktop app's days were numbered, we just didn't realize how numbered. It was only the day after Christmas that we learned version 1.5 would be the last to ship for Linux, Windows and OS X. Now, with January coming to a close, its life is officially being snuffed out. Tonight, as you flip the calendar to February, Boxee will be busy purging its servers of the installable media center software. What that means, in case you hadn't figured it out, is that this is your last chance to download the official app for your desktop OS of choice as the company shifts focus to the Boxee Box and other streaming appliances. Of course, we're sure someone will pick up the torch and update the program, but as far as Boxee is concerned it has no desktop son.
Canonical -- shepherd of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu -- generally doesn't rock the boat with its LTS releases, but things are going to be different this time around. With 12.04LTS the company is taking its assault on contextual menus to the next level by launching HUD. Mark Shuttleworth's obsession with simplifying user interactions began with the controversial Unity UI in Ubuntu 10.10, and will continue with the Head-Up Display. "Menus require you to read a lot when you probably already know what you want," the distro's founder wrote, "HUD solves many of these issues." Those that have used the search feature in Apple's "Help" menus, or launcher apps like Quicksilver and Alfred, will immediately recognize the goal -- to keep a user's fingers on the keyboard, remove clutter and facilitate quick access to available actions. Listening to music and in the mood for The King? Invoke HUD, type the artist's name and you're presented with your Elvis catalog. It also uses "fuzzy matching" and will remember the actions you most commonly perform to further refine your experience. If you're having a hard time envisioning how HUD works, fear not; there is a three minute video demo awaiting your inspection after the break. Death to menus!
It's still just a proof of concept, which is a bit of a disappointment, but Ubuntu TV was here at CES making its public debut. For the moment it's running on an external PC and being controlled by a Boxee remote, but Canonical hopes one day to have its media-focused Linux distro embedded in TVs. Even in its relatively young incarnation, the 10-foot tweak of Unity seams relatively smooth. A rep showed off the media browser and guide, including the interface for tying in movie rentals and purchases (we guess we know where the Ubuntu One store will be going next). It's all pretty slick and, to be honest, if we could hack this in to the dumb set currently gracing our TV bench we certainly would. Check out the gallery below and the video walkthrough after the break.
This petite stick of USB-HDMI actually houses a ARM Corex A9 dual-core processor and is capable of running its own OS. But then, you knew that already, right? So what's new? Well, it's now capable of running both Android Ice Cream Sandwich and we've got Ubuntu running on the show floor. The dongle can connect to these operating systems through the USB connection and while Cotton Candy itself has no internal memory, it can all be stored on micro-SD. There's still the Ubuntu hiccups that are to be expected, but the prototype device still deals out a Firefox browser and the usual Ubuntu niceties. Marvel at Gingerbread-powered Angry Birds on a MacBook, or widescreen Ubuntu and ICS. They're all in our gallery after the break.
Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth promised that Ubuntu would come to TVs eventually, but we never expected it would arrive so quickly. A concept preview is here at CES for convention goers to get their eyeballs on and we'll be swinging through the company's booth to get some hands-on. For now it's largely a technical demo and concept, but there are already some neat features on display like a 3D dash, searchable guide and streaming video apps. The goal, the company says, is to "uncomplicate television" by removing as much of the paraphernalia that accompanies it -- primarily the boxes and cables. If you can't be here to check it out in person (or can't wait for our own preview), check out the gallery below and the video after the break.
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We've heard the promises of bringing Ubuntu past its comfort zone and into the mobile space, but who wants to wait until 2014 when a home remedy can deliver precisely that right now. XDA-Developers AdamOutler and Loglud have been grooming a way to bring the OS to your Barnes & Noble tablet, because -- you know -- we're all longing for slates with desktop-scale operating systems on them. At the moment, you can get a quick glimpse of Ubuntu running on the Nook, but porting can only be done via a VNC Server, which opens up plenty of potential avenues for lag to mar the experience. Notably, the delays should all but vanish once a ROM solution becomes available. Now, if we could only get Jane Lynch to sing her way through letting us know the Nook Tablet can also run Ubuntu, we'd be set. Have a peek at the Glee-less demo vid just after the break.
There are very few places left in this world where you can't access a virtualized Windows PC. VMware has its, well, wares available on almost every platform imaginable. Its View client, for connecting to remotely-hosted enterprise servers has become a particularly integral part of the company's plan to put powerful virtualization tools at the tips of your fingers. After debuting on the iPad back in March, followed shortly afterwards by an Android edition, VMware View is now coming to Mac and Linux machines as well as the Kindle Fire. The feature set doesn't contain many surprises, but full screen support in Lion makes a welcome appearance in the list. The app should already be appearing in the Amazon App Store and the Ubuntu Software Center, though you wont find it in the Mac App Store... at least not yet. Check out the complete PR after the break.
We won't be seeing the finished version of Ubuntu's next release for a few months, but the folks at Canonical are hard at work making Precise Pangolin the very best it can be. Version 12.04 is an LTS release, meaning only refinements are in store for the OS, but apparently one of the areas targeted for improvement is power consumption.
