How satisfied are you with gaming on Ubuntu Breezy?

[anil_robo]

Guys, I'm a true gaming freak down to the bottom of my soul - I've been gaming for almost twenty years now! On console for the first ten years, and then on PC for the last ten years. I recently switched to Ubuntu (3-4 months) and wanted to know how has been your experience on ubuntu gaming. Go ahead and vote!

[arpunk]

I cant play lol, stupid ati drivers and their errors :/, i only play planetpenguin-racer right now :(

[Joe_CoT]

the few video games i play are half life 2 and half life based, all of which need steam to run. I have never gotten steam to run correctly using wine, winex, or cedega. video games are the only reason i still have a windows partition. Wine/Cedega still have a long way to go, but that's not ubuntu's fault. Native games like quake 4 and doom 3 run fine.

[AthlonMDK]

I am very pleased with \\:D/ubuntu\\:D/! I only play mahjongg:-\" , [-o<Enemy Territory[-o< and :twisted:Quake 3:twisted:. Both play well same speed as on Windows:D .

Using a AXP 2400+ With an Ati AIW 9800se (still waiting on TV-In support / Xorg 7.0).

[BLTicklemonster]

I'd rather use my nvidia card, but my son's computer and ubuntu and ati cards don't belong in the same room together, so he got it. ATI sucks, and it totally sucks in ubuntu (hey, what's up with my mouse movement in UT? Its like its spongey or something. wasn't like that with nvidia, and it's like that in ubuntu and windows, also. ati makes your mouse act up. imagine that.) but I'm using the 9200se until I get another nvidia, then the ati is going to be shelved as unusuable junk.

[Artificial Intelligence]

I'm fully pleased/satisfied with gaming in Ubuntu. Both through Cedega and the free games that is availble. Also got a couple of native games running perfect.

10 points from me :)

[anil_robo]

I cant play lol, stupid ati drivers and their errors :/, i only play planetpenguin-racer right now :( I want to play Diablo. Installed it correctly. But wine shows some directdraw error, and no one replies me! :(

But I like planetpenguin-racer, slune and frozen-bobble :cool:

[anil_robo]

video games are the only reason i still have a windows partition.

Me too :(

[anil_robo]

I'm fully pleased/satisfied with gaming in Ubuntu. Both through Cedega and the free games that is availble. Also got a couple of native games running perfect.

10 points from me :)
Wish someone could tell me how to run Diablo correctly! :(
By the way I tried planeshift (www.planeshift.it) (http://www.planeshift.it%29). It didn't run well - performance was too choppy. I installed it in windows and it ran fine. One fine day, I tried playing Planeshift installed in windows partition through wine - and behold! It was running much smoother.

Game developers should write more compatible code I guess! :(

[cydec]

My laptop that I use to run Ubuntu on is just too freaky slow.
Even 3D screensavers just don't wan't to run smooth... so i'm not realy in the mood to game on it ;-)

[Artificial Intelligence]

Sounds like a 3d card problem or a 3d acc. setup have been made.

[Pablo_Escobar]

I've got my Diablo II LoD through wine run perfectly (even through Battlenet) :)
Fallout II also :)
I grabed some abandonware and reliving the old times :)

I'm perfectly happy :D

[anil_robo]

I've got my Diablo II LoD through wine run perfectly (even through Battlenet) :)
Lucky you! I'm so unlucky! :( DII won't run :(

I grabed some abandonware and reliving the old times :)

I guess Ubuntu can build another repository for abandonware games ! It'd be so nice! :D

[Harleen]

Ubuntu is somewhat OK for my playing needs (UT2004, True Combat, Wesnoth).

But I'm missing some game types. Especially some arcade racing game (like NFS), or economic simulations. The later I can run through wine (Tropico) - actually that's the only game I've got wine installed for, although Master of Orion 2 and Age of Mythology run as well.

So I'm one of those that still have a windows partition for gaming.

[jdodson]

i think the gaming state is great. i can run all the games i care to and some ones i should not because they are propretary.

rock it.

[Breepee]

It's no particular problem of Ubuntu, but more of Linux as a whole: lack of games.

The percentage of commercial games that can be played (even with wine/cedega) is zilch compared to Windows. Add that my favourite genre (RTS) is just about not available in Linux, it's sucks :P

I really hate that since it's pretty much the only reason I have Windows installed.

[Rinzwind]

Linux needs 100% DirectX support :(
And yes, it's not just debian/ubuntu. It's all linux flavours.

Just got to say the BEST RPG-game I ever played is Baldur's Gate and since NWN is available under Linux I -do- not complain alot. And I still need a native Ragnarok On-line tho.

And I'd really love to see some bleeding-edge OpenGL/DX9 games created 100% for Linux and NO Windows version. Never going to happen, I know. But that would get so many people into Linux.

For now it's the only thing I really would see changed for Linux. Anything else I can live with (like not getting 1 certain app working cuz there's so many good choices).

[Cuppa-Chino]

Please help if you can supply me with Ubuntu drivers for Logitech quickcam webcam.
Also I have a logitech 5 button USB wireless mouse, but can't make the other buttons work.!

For you webcam try this:
General - HOWTO: Making ICM532 chipset based webcams work on breezy (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75284)

gaming has to grow, but that is probably more done to the developers, many copy protection methods hinder life in Linux, as well as Direct X (yes I know of Wine but I am still having difficulty getting mine to work), last but not least ATI needs to do some driver quality improvements

[BLTicklemonster]

I'd like to see a push by linux programmers in the direction of getting directx going. Like they aren't already, I guess, but anyway, I'd also like to see Heather Locklear in a biki- no wait, I mean a section in this forum dedicated to gaming only.

I enjoy UT in ubuntu, and sad to say, 2k4 plays exactly the same as in windows, so it's still junk, lol.

I'm tempted to try Quake4 in ubuntu, but I just don't think I care to go taking on any more stuff at this time. I'm stuck using an ati 9200se 128 meg card, and it is as crappy in ubuntu as it is in windows, and it makes playing ut a challenge with the mouse being way imprecise (though it makes it easier for everyone else on the server).

[anil_robo]

I have heard of windows-only games, but probably never heard of linux only games. WIsh there was no need for emulators and the games would run in Linux straightaway! Wish some game developers read this comment and try to develop platform-independent games! It may be difficult but not impossible!

[alynx]

Well , ATARI has made native files for NWN :)

I got my World of warcraft on Ubuntu (recieving help with slight lagg)
I got PINGUS on Ubuntu
I got NWN in Ubuntu
I got everything i need in Ubuntu

I genrally Love my Ubuntu , and i WIll play in Ubuntu.
Even though its more "work" to play in Linux , im a gameaholic and addicted to Linux. I shall not use Windows :cool:

[hav0x]

Im not satisfied per se. I own a few games and play them on linux. If it doesnt run natively on linux and i cant get it working on cedega i dont play it. simple. i refuse to install windows on one of my machines just to play games.
And it isn't ubuntu or linux for that matter who need to cater to my gaming needs, the publishers and game developers are the ones who should realize that there is life outside the windblows platform.

[william_nbg]

Ditto!!

I find Ubuntu great for my gaming needs. I play D3, Q4, True combat, etc ... - A few window games through Cedega, but have cancelled my contract. I have decided that I will only buy games which include a Linux port - sorry Bill.

[bb002]

I'm currently on the "Satisfied! I miss the windows games, but Ubuntu games are great too!" boat. I haven't installed wine and tried my windows games yet.

My experience is mostly with commercial based games. I've played a few non-commercial games (wesnoth, freeciv, trackballs) and they ran on every distro/system i put em on. More than I can say about the commercial games.

The commercial games that I have played all have native linux support and run just as good as their windows variants. Except Doom3 which is kicking its window's version's ***. Doom3 has yet to go over 25% cpu usage in linux while windows sits around 75%+ on my amd athlon XP 3000+.

The only disappointment I have with linux gaming is the installers for commercial games, which are pitifull at best. Normally the linux installers are READMEs that you manually have to go through. Installers made by other users are very good, which happen to be nothing more than the READMEs turned into a shell script. Though once again, doom3 did pretty good with a linux installation, I didn't find an installer by id but finding the files to copy off the CDs was simple. No digging through "shielded" cab files looking for a obscure file. I found the official installation instructions for doom3 in 10 minutes but took me 3 hours to realize that the patch instuctions doubled as fresh installation instructions, someone should really label the instructions properly.

Having the awesome QJoyPad program (map joysticks to keyboard/mouse buttons). Being able to force games to run in a window and not suffer a performance loss (I tend to have problems returning to the desktop after quiting a fullsceen game in linux). Being able to setup a second Xorg screen for playing games on so i can avoid the fullscreen problem i noted before, and having the ability to switch between them.

I am generally very please with linux gaming in general and ubuntu's stability in linux gaming. I used to have strange issues when I used mandriva 2005LE.

[JoshHendo]

I don't play many games, just very basic ones. And I must say the ones that come with ubuntu are fine for me :P

[bb002]

Linux needs 100% DirectX support :(

Too bad Microsoft created, owns, and controls DirectX. Otherwise, Linux probably would support DirectX alot better.

If linux ever starts getting good DirectX support Microsoft will probably start suing. Or if commercial games start moving away from DirectX, Microsoft will start to notice chucks missing from it's user base. Only reason I still have windows is because of commercial games mostly being DirectX based. I only buy windows only games if they really grab my attention like "F.E.A.R." has. The last game to do that was Diablo II.

[YokoZar]

Too bad Microsoft created, owns, and controls DirectX. Otherwise, Linux probably would support DirectX alot better.Well, Microsoft doesn't control Wine's reimplementation of DirectX into OpenGL, and they can't break the standard in a way that prevents old apps from running in the new version or people won't buy upgrades.

If linux ever starts getting good DirectX support Microsoft will probably start suing.They can't. Microsoft can't sue over reimplementations of the API anymore than GE can sue people for making generic light bulbs.

[towsonu2003]

#@$^%#@$%@$# ATI drivers... hopefully, time+developers will fix this as well ... I give it 3 years though :P

[der_joachim]

(K)Ubuntu is a nice desktop oriented distro, and IMHO one of the parts of a good desktop experience is the ability to play good games. I've had to do virtually nothing to install a few relatively modern games like Call of Duty (1). When playing a game, I switch to a light WM. For every other desktop task, I use KDE. This kind of flexibility is something that Windows lacks.

Linux gaming in general is one of the reasons I still keep some Windows partitions alive. There's simply not enough support for Linux. Although Cedega somewhat alleviates this problem, I severely dislike them for their subscription service. Many commercial games are way better than their non-commercial counterparts. An exception is True Combat:Elite. Its gameplay is more fun than its commercial counterpart Counterstrike (1.x that is...).

I'd choose the "I miss Windows games" option.

[anil_robo]

Ditto!!

I find Ubuntu great for my gaming needs. I play D3, Q4, True combat, etc ... - A few window games through Cedega, but have cancelled my contract. I have decided that I will only buy games which include a Linux port - sorry Bill.

Bill Gates founded Micro$oft, and was the CEO till quite some time back. He has now retired as CEO, and has become the "patron" instead. Some guy named Steve Ballmer is now the CEO of M$

[fonkypij]

I'm trying to get CS Source running on my Breezy (X700 mobility powered), but man, that's really tough...

Nevertheless I installed D3, Q4 and UT2K4 and play these very often @ solid fps rate.

So I'm kinda satisfied :) I ain't gonna give up to hl² as I got NO WINDOWS PARTITION on my notebook.

[anil_robo]

Unfortunately there's no loki installer for DIablo II: LOD, and I'm still struggling with that! :(

Today I'm going to experiment with starcraft first... and let's see if it works...! I'll post the results here!

[Curlydave]

It aint happening. I have some games that run on Linux such as UT2k4, Doom3 and Red Orchestra.

It's not worth it. The performance isn't up to par, I can't use AA, AF or Vsync. (vsync is a must) EAX and positional audio are a no go, and I can't minimize games.

Some would definitely look at the games I play on my computer and say "tha'ts fine, def playable." This is true. But you miss the nuances you get from silky-smooth performance, top IQ and sound that the average gamer might miss.

I don't want to get started on games in Wine.

[anil_robo]

Many of the existing windows games don't run well in Linux. Some do not run at all.

I guess there is a need for "replacement" game creation... Juse as we use Firefox instead of IE, we may play a native Linux game (*yet to be developed*) instead of DiabloII or Unreal Tournament.

I started playing PlaneShift under Linux some time back, and I must confess that the same game runs pathetic in Linux, but wonderfully in windows. Reason? I don't know how to activate 3D in Linux (windows does this automatically) etc.

There shall come a day when no user may have to open a terminal just because they want to "do" something! Or maybe not! :(

[Curlydave]

There shall come a day when no user may have to open a terminal just because they want to "do" something! Or maybe not! :(

There are many who enjoy Linux that don't want to see this happen for reason X or reason Y. I respectfully disagree; good point.

And really, the main roadblock for Linux game support is Direct3D, and there is an easy alternative known as OpenGL. I'd love to see more games developed on the OpenGL platform. It has more than proven its worth. Other kinks however will have to be worked out that I mentioned in my above post, eg ATI cards need to work properly with full features/performance, games need to minimize, EAX support required etc.

[BLTicklemonster]

I have machines here with ati and nvidia cards, and let me tell you, ati and linux aren't exactly a match made in Hoboken. I dug out an old 32 meg nvidia for my machine and left the fx5200 on my son's (removed the ati9200se and put it in a clunker I'm giving an aunt for christmas just to get it out of the house) and the 32 meg geforce2 kicks the ati card all over the motherboard. Yeah, must have been something I did wrong, I suppose, lol. Like buying the ati in the first place lol.

I don't see why the command line and gui can't live in harmony. If people want to be able to use the command line, it's there. Also, as things progress, put your money on a determination to get a viable alternative to directx working. There is no reason for linux to not be able to go toe to toe against any other os.

[Curlydave]

Also, as things progress, put your money on a determination to get a viable alternative to directx working.

It already exists. It's called "OpenGL". It's just not used nearly as much as it should be.

Btw, Gaming is the only reason why I use Windows instead of Linux. It's no fun rebooting all the time to play games, so Windows it is.

[anil_robo]

In my last three months of experience with Ubuntu, I've found out that there are several things the developers missed out to make Ubuntu user friendly. Eventually, the users discovered it themselves (e.g. making "copy to" and "move to" commands appear in right click menu) and happily posted it on the forums. But why not make these a "part" of next Ubuntu release?

Same with gaming! Why not enable 3D acceleration by default? I still have severe problems with getting Diablo2:LOD to work despite getting help from many experts! At least there should be an autoconfiguration "button" which I can click to try some settings!

[Zimmer]

Well. I used to play quite a few games, but I was tempted into Linux (FC2) because it would run a native version of Wolfenstein ET (and that was the only game I was still playing ) and as it worked I have stuck with Linux. Swapped to Ubuntu when ET stopped working in FC2. Had Ubuntu failed to run ET for me I would have sought an alternative. So maybe there is pointer for the Ubuntu developers there, should they wish to convince more people to try a Linux distro, to maybe package one or two of the more widely played mainstream FPS games....or at least advertise their existence more prominently to the potential user...
I haven't tried wine or cedega to run the old Windows games I used to like (Command and Conquer, and all the sequels...completed them, so no loss, really)
nor have I bothered searching for other native games..too busy reading all the stuff in the forum !! :D

Zimmer (using an ATI, yes ATI 9600 Radeon......but not with ATI's own drivers...)

(ps have dual booted the old xp box with Mepis and ET worked 'out of the box', as it were, with no terminal sound or graphics tweaking required....sticking with Ubuntu, though, as I am not keen on the KDE......Ubuntu + Gnome rules the desktop IMHO.)


Zimmer

[anil_robo]

I fully support ZImmer's idea that Ubuntu must support a couple of popular games, and possibly give "straight out of the box" support to those games at least. This will encourage and entertain many to use Ubuntu only.

[gosh]

I can't seem to get Simms and Need For Speed Underground working:sad:

But then again, Pathological is quite popular in this house:)

[madjinx]

Unfortunately there's no loki installer for DIablo II: LOD, and I'm still struggling with that! :(

Today I'm going to experiment with starcraft first... and let's see if it works...! I'll post the results here!


all i did to get it working was copy/paste the install form my windows directory. Used a no-cd patch, and it was all good.

[anil_robo]

Oops! Thanks Madjinx! What you said is so instinctive! I wonder how did I miss that idea! But I did try running the Windows installation from within Ubuntu, and it didn't work! :(

[Crusufix]

In my last three months of experience with Ubuntu, I've found out that there are several things the developers missed out to make Ubuntu user friendly. Eventually, the users discovered it themselves (e.g. making "copy to" and "move to" commands appear in right click menu) and happily posted it on the forums. But why not make these a "part" of next Ubuntu release?

Same with gaming! Why not enable 3D acceleration by default? I still have severe problems with getting Diablo2:LOD to work despite getting help from many experts! At least there should be an autoconfiguration "button" which I can click to try some settings!

The main problem with enabling 3D by default, as I understand it, is that the 3D drivers are proprietary and can't be included in most Distro releases simply because of licensing issues. If it wasn't for licensing I'm betting the proper 3D drivers would have been included long ago.

As for my gaming satisfaction. I'm in the "Satisfied, but miss my windows games..." block. My favorite games run without much caveat. WoW, Half-Life and it's various mods, NWN, Zsnes (mmmm I like my retro games), Starcraft (though I must admit it was a real *BEEEP* to get running), Warcraft 2&3, MoO2, Baldur's Gate1&2 and expansions. Fallout1&2.

There are games I miss though. Half-Life 2 being the biggest, Battlefield 2 is right up there as well. I hear Cedega can get those working though, now just to get off my lazy butt and get me a subscription.

But then factor in all the other things that just plain comes with Ubuntu, Full office suite, Multi-purpose IM client, powerful graphics editor, Offline dictionary/thesaraus, excellent multimedia programs, tons of cool little time waster games that my girlfriend just loves playing and we can't forget the giant internet base for almost any program you can think of a need for. I wouldn't trade my Ubuntu for Windows just for a collection of hyped up video games.

Besides, most older video games you can easily get running on Ubuntu. All the new games are just eye candy and no substance.

though sometimes all you want to do is drool....

[LordDante]

Well i enjoy gaming as much as the next gamer :)
but given that i dont have that much spare time anymore..
i have to tinker arround to get some things working with ubuntu on my laptop..so at the moment given the cost of time, it would be easier to just boot up windows and play a game..

although i admit im addicted to dosbox :)

must have my daily dose of Master of Orion and Xcom series ;)

[jeffreyvergara.NET]

I play local MMORPG that use gameguard so I need to have Window$ partition, but I play other games like Warcraft 3 FT (DOTA) and EnemyTerritory on my Ubuntu.

[earobinson]

this has probaly been said before

IMHO ubuntu needs more/better native games that is a linux version of counter strike, wow, .....

everything can be done with wine / cedaga but for most users this is still to hard.

[tburns]

the few video games i play are half life 2 and half life based, all of which need steam to run. I have never gotten steam to run correctly using wine, winex, or cedega. video games are the only reason i still have a windows partition. Wine/Cedega still have a long way to go, but that's not ubuntu's fault. Native games like quake 4 and doom 3 run fine.

True, it isn't really a matter of distro here. The game makers need to get it together and release linux ports and 64bit ports to their games so they can run natively on linux. I don't do wine or cedega.

[sailor420]

Doesn't do so well from the gaming standpoint--I've yet to get a single game I play working. But that's not the fault of Ubuntu, Linux just doesn't do Windows games very well, and that's why I keep a Windows partition around...

[leech]

This may have already been posted in this thread, but I would suggest for those that are having issues with playing games in Wine to install the wine packages from winehq. just add 'deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/' to your repositories and update them, and then install/upgrade wine. The version that is in Breezy and Dapper are 2005725, which isn't even since the 'beta' version wine came out a few months ago. They're now up to 0.9.3 and it runs a lot of things that wouldn't even start on the version in Ubuntu.

Leech

[Miguel]

Hi guys,

While I consider myself a gamer, my gaming needs have decreased considerably in the last few years. However, I like racers (simulation, not arcade please), flight sims (I am a Falcon 4.0 veteran), RPG's (Elvira I and II, the three Lands of Lore, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind...) and I do play sometimes.

Seeing my preferences, gaming in linux is not made for me. There are basically FPS's, Strategy and the classical games we all love (gnome 2.12's minesweeper is a gem!). That's it. You can have flight gear or Xplane... but that's a bit scarce. If you want to race, racer might suit your needs... if it doesn't freeze or if you don't mind racing alone. There are no RPG's (like the mentioned above) that I know of.

I don't feel attracted by wine. And ATi's drivers don't make me feel more appealed by gaming in linux.

However, that doesn't mean I don't game on linux. I "minesweep" quite often, and Pang in mame rules. I also do a couple of Sudokus on gnome-sudoku. It's just that I'd like to do something more "elaborate"

Thanks for listening,

Miguel

PS: I am very close from uninstalling the ATi drivers from my laptop. You know, choosing between 3D and suspend... when only the screensaver uses 3D...

PS2: I forgot!!! I also do some offline scorched3d

[kingsidy]

they need to put more games out for linux

[tlc]

Quake 4
Doom 3
UT2k4
Postal 2
SS:TSE
SS:TFE

My needs are catered for... at 90fps in the D3 timedemo1 at 1600x1200xHigh. I love my Opteron 144@2.7GHz and 7800GT@something silly that I can't remember. 100% stable too.

/intarweb willy-waving mode OFF

:D

[leech]

Hi guys,

While I consider myself a gamer, my gaming needs have decreased considerably in the last few years. However, I like racers (simulation, not arcade please), flight sims (I am a Falcon 4.0 veteran), RPG's (Elvira I and II, the three Lands of Lore, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind...) and I do play sometimes.

Seeing my preferences, gaming in linux is not made for me. There are basically FPS's, Strategy and the classical games we all love (gnome 2.12's minesweeper is a gem!). That's it. You can have flight gear or Xplane... but that's a bit scarce. If you want to race, racer might suit your needs... if it doesn't freeze or if you don't mind racing alone. There are no RPG's (like the mentioned above) that I know of.

I don't feel attracted by wine. And ATi's drivers don't make me feel more appealed by gaming in linux.

However, that doesn't mean I don't game on linux. I "minesweep" quite often, and Pang in mame rules. I also do a couple of Sudokus on gnome-sudoku. It's just that I'd like to do something more "elaborate"

Thanks for listening,

Miguel

PS: I am very close from uninstalling the ATi drivers from my laptop. You know, choosing between 3D and suspend... when only the screensaver uses 3D...

PS2: I forgot!!! I also do some offline scorched3d

Neverwinter Nights!!! Runs perfectly native (and fast) under linux. Unfortunately the ATI drivers do stink terribly, which is why I made sure to buy a laptop with an nvidia chipset in it. I used to be a big Matrox fan until they stiffed all us users with the Parhelia's linux drivers... though it looks like they are FINALLY (after the card has been out for 4+ years) shaping up a bit.

Leech

[handy]

Linux suks for games! :(

The amount of time that can be spent to try & get a game up & running, with OpenGL, with sound functioning, is prohibitive to most people.

End of Story.

Linux has to address the lack of ease of use problems, before it has any show as a viable alternative OS for those that aren't obsesive compulsive computer users, who like to fight like terriers with any problems that computers throw at them. Yes I'm one too. But most are not.

I love Linux, & intend to remain a Ubuntu user for a long time, the Ubuntu community is inspiring & wonderful to participate in. I look forward to the miraculous improvements that the dedicated & hard working developers will unveil for us in the comming years.

Cheers,

handy

[sailor420]

This may have already been posted in this thread, but I would suggest for those that are having issues with playing games in Wine to install the wine packages from winehq. just add 'deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/' to your repositories and update them, and then install/upgrade wine. The version that is in Breezy and Dapper are 2005725, which isn't even since the 'beta' version wine came out a few months ago. They're now up to 0.9.3 and it runs a lot of things that wouldn't even start on the version in Ubuntu.

Leech

Very good point. The new version does indeed run much software that wouldn't even think about running in the version included in the Ubuntu repos... But for me, none of that software included games :(

Again, not the fault of Ubuntu... It's incredibly difficult to do what the Wine developers do, but it still doesn't make Linux a viable "gamer's" operating system...

[S29K]

I voted 'kinda okay' as there are several half-decent games out there that run natively on Linux but quite obviously not nearly as many as on Windows.

I have tried to install Cedega via CVS with moderate success, tinkered with a few open source games and ejoyed the games that are distributed with Ubuntu. However, I am a die-hard RPG fan and desperately want to play Guild Wars with Ubuntu. Cedega says that it supports it but alas I have an ATI x800XL which runs great in Windows but as everyone knows bites in Linux.

I tried to install NWN and run it natively in Linux. After the tedious procedure of copying everything from your Windows install and downloading the client binaries and patches, etc. the game runs extremely slow due I am guessing to the horrible ATI drivers and messes up screen resolutions and the in-game GUI if any of the settings are changed.

There is a whole lot of work to be done in the area of Linux gaming when a native game doesn't even run properly. I only wish that I had the expertise to do something about it. :(

[taseal]

games!? there are games in linux! whoa

where are these games? i've only heard of the cube engine game thing, and freeciv

[Artificial Intelligence]

Check my sig. It also contains links to linux related game sites.

[Zimmer]

TASEAL.....
games!? there are games in linux! whoa
where are these games? i've only heard of the cube engine game thing, and freeciv
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDocumentation#head-a27b221bdb123ecc2913e648746743da6a82006d

[anil_robo]

Yesterday I tried tuxkart game. It's funny! install it by:
sudo apt-get install tuxkart
and run by typing tuxkart in the terminal window. This game is really funny with tux riding on a little car! :D

[north]

Somebody mentioned:

"Having the awesome QJoyPad program (map joysticks to keyboard/mouse buttons)."

This program is very cool. Basically it captures all the data coming from your joystick and converts it into either keystroke or mouse data. This means that you can use your pad for games that don't support joystick funcionality....like doom3. You can use it to move your mouse around, write scripts to play and pause movies or turn up the sound or anything you want. Get a wireless usb joystick and think about running every game you have with the same buttons doing the same things (who's been bothered by fire trigger hopping from button to button in each game?) from across the room. The thing that makes linux cooler than windows is that you can take a simple program like qjoypad and make it do anything you want. Can't do anything remotely like that in windows. Scripting and configuring are pretty limited to whatever the programer put in in the first place. I admit there are a bit of problems getting games to work - but the thing is linux is growing faster than windows. Anyway, here's how to get qjoypad.

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/qjoypad/qjoypad_3.4-1_i386.deb
sudo dkpg -i /wherever/qjoypad_3.4-1_i386.deb

chances are you'll get an install error something like:

Unpacking qjoypad (from qjoypad_3.4-1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of qjoypad:
qjoypad depends on libqt3c102-mt; however:
Package libqt3c102-mt is not installed.
if so do this and try again:

sudo apt-get install libqt3c102-mt

when you run the program you'll probably get an authentication error. Ignore it, even if it doesn't look like it's doing anything it's still running. Check the upper right hand corner of the taskbar next to the sound icon for a new blank space. double click and set up your joystick. If it's not there it probably opened up a small window somewhere on the screen.

[Mr_J_]

I'm fully satisfied with gaming in ubuntu.
I have the ones i didn't like in windows versions like powermanga.
I have penguinRacer, and loads of others...

I use wine to load up Ultima Online which i play threw on a shard and later on i will try others, but if they don't work i won't care too much.

[leech]

I voted 'kinda okay' as there are several half-decent games out there that run natively on Linux but quite obviously not nearly as many as on Windows.

I have tried to install Cedega via CVS with moderate success, tinkered with a few open source games and ejoyed the games that are distributed with Ubuntu. However, I am a die-hard RPG fan and desperately want to play Guild Wars with Ubuntu. Cedega says that it supports it but alas I have an ATI x800XL which runs great in Windows but as everyone knows bites in Linux.

I tried to install NWN and run it natively in Linux. After the tedious procedure of copying everything from your Windows install and downloading the client binaries and patches, etc. the game runs extremely slow due I am guessing to the horrible ATI drivers and messes up screen resolutions and the in-game GUI if any of the settings are changed.

There is a whole lot of work to be done in the area of Linux gaming when a native game doesn't even run properly. I only wish that I had the expertise to do something about it. :(

Unfortunately that's not the fault of Linux, Ubuntu or even Bioware. It's all on ATI's shoulders. If I knew how to get the fps of Nwn then I could tell you how fast it runs on mine, but it is silky smooth at 1600x1200 with all the detail set to maximum. I do know that on slower systems the thing that chokes it the most is the shadow detail.

Leech

[janode]

I guess I'm quite satisfied. Still missing some of the games left on my windows partition though :-(

[Sp@z]

I just played my first game of UT2K4 in linux and I wasn't impressed or un-impressed, it played the same way it did in windows. VERY WELL. I am one step closer to losing WinXp!

[Gibbz]

In my last three months of experience with Ubuntu, I've found out that there are several things the developers missed out to make Ubuntu user friendly. Eventually, the users discovered it themselves (e.g. making "copy to" and "move to" commands appear in right click menu) and happily posted it on the forums. But why not make these a "part" of next Ubuntu release?

Yes its there with the middle mouse, but for those of us who dont have 3 button mice, have ot stick to windows. This one one of the most anoying things ive found on linux. Why not make it rightmouse instead of middlemouse?!

/end rant

[leech]

Yes its there with the middle mouse, but for those of us who dont have 3 button mice, have ot stick to windows. This one one of the most anoying things ive found on linux. Why not make it rightmouse instead of middlemouse?!

/end rant

For the record, if you have only a two button mouse (Interesting that Macs have one button, Windows has two and linux has three?) you can put
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
into your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in the InputDevice section and then just click both buttons at once for the third button. It's a pain I know (having a laptop with only two buttons for the touchpad), but it does work. Besides, nautilus does have a right click, copy/cut/paste, as does just about everything else.

Leech

P.S. Three button mice aren't exactly expensive either!

[Domhnull]

Out of the box Ubuntu lacks in the gaming department. Not their fault - game developers for the most part aren't putting out games for Linux. As much fun as I've had with Frozen Bubble there's a lot lacking. My wife won't switch to Ubuntu primarily because of the lack of gaming support.

Cedega helps. I can play World of WarCraft and get better performance than I did under WinXP so I'm happy.

Otherwise there are consoles and plenty of games.

Until more game developers create native games for Linux this just isn't going to be a true gaming platform.

[leech]

Out of the box Ubuntu lacks in the gaming department. Not their fault - game developers for the most part aren't putting out games for Linux. As much fun as I've had with Frozen Bubble there's a lot lacking. My wife won't switch to Ubuntu primarily because of the lack of gaming support.

Cedega helps. I can play World of WarCraft and get better performance than I did under WinXP so I'm happy.

Otherwise there are consoles and plenty of games.

Until more game developers create native games for Linux this just isn't going to be a true gaming platform.

One word for you. Emulators. There are emulators for pretty much anything out there that Windows has. Genesis, Playstation, arcade, Atari (2600 all the wa up to Atari ST) and Amiga. I mean literally with the emulators, there are thousands and thousands of games you can play under linux. Granted they're not the shiniest games around, but they should keep plenty of people busy.

Besides, a lot of newer games just plain aren't as FUN as some of those old classics. Hell, I probably play more Bruce Lee and Joust than I do of Quake 4 or Doom 3 or anything like that. But maybe that's just a sign of me getting old... :D

Leech

[S29K]

I agree completely that the fault of NWN and others not working well for me lies with ATI...however...given that everyone knows how incredibly crappy ATIs drivers are....whay hasn't anyone with the know-how attempted to write drivers that actually work. I remember using Omega drivers and others for Windows that worked great on my ATI card and wonder why (at least to my knowledge) none exist for linux.

The fact that ATI has gone to the trouble of making drivers for linux which they must know stink leaves me scratching my head wondering why they havent fixed them. It's almost better to have no support than crappy support. If they arent committed to making ATI and linux act nice together they should drop support for it and everyone using linux will buy nvidia. :???:

[e^e]

I play gta:vice city/Mk4/max payne 2 on ubuntu, which are my favourite games, so i guess i'm satisfied with it since I still have an old gf2 mx :cool: ut2004 works pretty well too.

[jimcooncat]

Fixed up an old Compaq for a friend, and she wanted a lot of games. I installed what looked appropriate from the repositories, then went and downloaded a whole bunch of Flash games. Put 'em all in a directory, then made a launcher to open the web browser to it. Very simple, and I'll be able to add to them for her from a remote console with wget.

Please PM me if you know of any good Flash game collections!

[htinn]

sudo apt-get install libqt3c102-mt

when you run the program you'll probably get an authentication error. Ignore it, even if it doesn't look like it's doing anything it's still running. Check the upper right hand corner of the taskbar next to the sound icon for a new blank space. double click and set up your joystick. If it's not there it probably opened up a small window somewhere on the screen.

The problem with doing that is this will conflict with libqt3-mt which is already needed for things like K3b.

I'd like to add that I cannot build qjoypad from source, either. I keep getting this message:

layout.h:93: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of ‘LayoutEdit’ with no type
layout.h:93: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘*’ token
error.h:8: warning: ‘void error(QString, QString)’ defined but not used
make: *** [layout_edit.o] Error 1

I have the libqt-mt-dev stuff and I installed some glib-dev packages thinking that might be the problem, but no dice. :/

[htinn]

In case someone is curious, I finally solved the above the problem (I hope) by changing the bug in layout.h myself by hand:

I changed line 93 to this:

class LayoutEdit* le;

Now, at least it can compile. :P

[leech]

I agree completely that the fault of NWN and others not working well for me lies with ATI...however...given that everyone knows how incredibly crappy ATIs drivers are....whay hasn't anyone with the know-how attempted to write drivers that actually work. I remember using Omega drivers and others for Windows that worked great on my ATI card and wonder why (at least to my knowledge) none exist for linux.

The fact that ATI has gone to the trouble of making drivers for linux which they must know stink leaves me scratching my head wondering why they havent fixed them. It's almost better to have no support than crappy support. If they arent committed to making ATI and linux act nice together they should drop support for it and everyone using linux will buy nvidia. :???:

That's easy enough to answer. People ARE writing drivers for ATI cards, the problem is, since none of the specs are opened for ATI's newer cards, no one can just write a driver for them. So you're stuck using ATI's drivers. The Omega drivers are just simply the released ATI drivers that have some tweaks that people do to various configuration files. They're not drivers that someone just writes. You have to have the documentation on the hardware for that.

Fortunately from everything I've reead ATI's linux drivers are improving, but I still suggest everyone who wants to run linux to use nvidia cards, simply because their drivers are about 80% better

Leech

[anil_robo]

Finally I installed XP as a slave under Ubuntu, and played Diablo on it! The single player games run amazingly fast, in fact, faster than windows! :D
Could well be a bug! :D
Screenies:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4801&thumb=1&d=1135421162 (http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4801&d=1135421162) http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4804&thumb=1&d=1135421162 (http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4804&d=1135421162) http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4802&thumb=1&d=1135421162 (http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4802&d=1135421162) http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4803&thumb=1&d=1135421162 (http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4803&d=1135421162)

Now I am fully satisfied with Ubuntu gaming performance! :D

[factotum218]

Ubuntu and any OS i have used in general runs games just the way they should in my experience. It up to the develpers to get off their *** and start porting over. Then again the only pc games that I have played in the last 10 years are Baldurs Gate/Neverwitner Nights and the Quake series. Otherwise I power up the playstation every once in a great while otherwise I delve into the wonderful world of snes/sega genesis emulation

[Snocrash]

I use Cedega for most Windoze games. My only problem with Ubuntu is shared with most of the major distros. Cedega works best with the vanilla kernel. So the first thing I do after installing any dirto is to compile a kernel from unpatched source from kernel.org. This gets to be a pain in the butt after a while. Having a current compiled vanilla kernel in the repositories as an option for use would be nice.

-Sno

[alinuxfan]

awesome, i just rechecked this thread, and it seems i better learn how to compile my own kernel so that I can get the vanilla and wineCVSor cedegaCVS so I can play GW

it's looking more promising every day i search the internet to find a way to play my christmas present :p

[patrick295767]

I cant play lol, stupid ati drivers and their errors :/, i only play planetpenguin-racer right now :(

Did you finally manage installign the apt-get -f -y install xorg-driver-fglrx and to set it up ??
(I have an ati all in wonder) (not easy life with it )


Greetz

Pat

[SHodges]

I recently tried out an Ubuntu LiveCD and was so impressed with it (and the prospect of things like Wine and Cedega) that I killdisked both of my harddrives and installed Ubuntu 5.10. Outside of gaming, I have nothing but good things to say about the operating system, and I've already managed to get two friends to install Ubuntu (one as his only OS and the other as a dual boot), but Cedega and Wine flat out suck, there's no question about it, they are awful. Games don't run even half as well, have corrupt textures, won't detect my hardware, I have to disable EXTREMELY basic features to get most of them to work, and with the exception of Steam and it's accompanying games, they take a massive amount of time to install, it just isn't worth it. Later today I'm going to try installing the game with the most troubles (Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines) directly from the HDD instead of via the 3 CD's, since that was recommended as a possible solution, but if that doesn't fix the problem then I'm probably going to dual boot to XP, or just forget Ubuntu entirely.

[Thorin]

Don't give up on Ubuntu entirely, go dual boot instead. Ubuntu does a lot well (Unreal Tournament '99, UT2004, freeciv, frozen-bubble), a lot decent, and a lot not at all (Battlefield 2 springs to mind.) It has the most trouble with the really A-list titles, which is what it sounds like you are trying to run. I only dual boot for 2 reasons: 1) School software and 2) my bigger games. But if you can put up with booting into windows every once and a while for that game you just have to have your fix of, stick with Ubuntu for the rest. That hasn't failed me so far...

[detyabozhye]

I hardly ever play games, but I'm OK with Supertux, lbreakout2, and Same GNOME. Although I used to enjoy NFSIII on Windows as well.

[mrpixels0]

all the games i play run fine under linux here is the list of what i currently have installed:

1. Unreal Tournament GOTY 436 (native install)
2. Unreal Tournament 2004 5536 (native install)
3. Postal 2: Share the pain (native install)
4. Doom 3 (native install)
5. reflexive arcade games all 115 working in Cedega and at full speed
6. Americas Army
7. POPCAP games all 105 working in cedega and at full speed
8. Adventure companies : Jack the ripper working in cedega at full speed
9. just about every linux game known to man and penguin

so all in all i do not miss windows one little bit, that doe's not even cover all the Emulators and roms i have installed that work natively under linux. to tell the truth i think i need to upgrade my 160GB hdd to a 360 GB SATA. :)

so yes i am completely happy with Ubuntu 5.10 and eagarly await Dappers final release, so i can continue to enjoy my computer and games to the fullest. so in closing i would like to thank the Ubuntu Team and contributors as well as Mark shuttleworth and the Debian Guys for giving me somthing great to really appreciate.

MP0

[Buffalo Soldier]

My game list is kinda lame... but I guess it's all I need at the moment: Ataxx, Frozen Bubble, Gnometris, Lagno, Breakout2 & Sudoku.

[DoktorSeven]

As long as I can play Classic DOOM I'm happy :)

[christhemonkey]

Quake 2 and 3 and im content!

[deathbyswiftwind]

i am very happy i play ut2004 ,quake 4 ,doom 3 ,quake 3 ,soldier of fortune, and through cedega i play jedi academy and a few others. with the newest ati drivers my 1.5 gig of ram and my 3 gig swap my games run even better than in windows

[william_nbg]

No problem here. All games I like playing run fine on Ubuntu:

true combat elite
q3
q4
hl2
etc ...

Though, I will never buy another game which isn't ported for Linux. Cedega is a fine idea, but it's just not the ultimate answer.

[RavenOfOdin]

I find it to be good.
I've been playing America's Army for a while now, and just got into Battle for Wesnoth (when I'm not online, that is) -- plus, all my S/NES games have worked with emulators.

Still holding out hope for a Dark Age of Camelot Linux port, however.

[virgule]

iagno work fine and is entertaining.. I also have snes9x loaded for the nostalgic days.

300Mhz of puuuuuuure power.

[IYY]

I am not a gamer, I play a game of Quake or Unreal from time to time, and they work much faster on Ubuntu than they do on Windows. I know that other games have problems, but my system does everything I need it to do, and I'm happy.

Of course, I also enjoy timekillers like tetris and breakout, both of which have great Linux versions.

And NetHack! :D

[deteringb]

Tetris is great! I think anything beyond that and I need a new system though..Wait, there's Tux racer! I hear that Quake runs, but not yet for me...There is the remote possibility that I am not installing it correctly.;)

[Torete]

World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 both work better (once you get them running) then they do on Windows, and those are the only games I play on the PC so :).

[Vinze]

I'm quite satisfied as you can play my favourite game Warzone 2100. The only working version of the game I've found for Windows was a demo (very limited) from the time it wasn't open source yet.
For Linux however, I first used the Loki installer (http://www.liflg.org/), then found a Debian package for Ubuntu Dapper.
But I've found some other cool games from the Loki site, such as Racer.

[william_nbg]

Oh yeah!

For my racing needs:

Torcs (a very cool racing game - lots of extra's on line to throw in)

Vdrift (great graphics, but you have to shift - that's a bitch)

fps

True combat: elite
q2, 3, and 4
Doom 1, and 3
and several others ...

I have no Window's partition, nor will I ever have again.

Anyone who runs a Windows partition just for gaming is weak - They'll never get the message as long as we're weak.

I'll never buy another game that isn't ported for Linux - and I've gone to many game developter's sites and let them know that.

[Hg80]

usong cedega to play Guild wars, but unable to ge teamspeak to work at the same time