Paying to play under Linux?

[Vladimir_BG]

Ok, transgaming's subscription is absurd!
How much better is cedega compared to wine?
And if I want to spend money on propriatery software to play games I might as well play them under Windows!


Please tell me, if cedega is so good compared to wine, whay souldn't I just use a dual boot machine and NOT recomend Linux to gamers?

Sorry for the pure bashing, but I really think that if I'm gonna pay to play, I'm not gonna lose performance using an emulator, and have to pay for that![-X
I'm keeping Win, and Linux is great for web surfing and listening to music and watching movies.

[dreamsINdigital]

I agree.

I've heard some people say that you can compile Cedega for free from CVS, but I haven't tried and am not sure if it's true.

[Monster_user]

It is true. The CVS source code is not officially supported.

Nor does it come with the things that make Cadega so great, which is the Copy Protection technology support. SecuROM, SafeDisc, etc... This stuff costs money, hence the reason there is a charge for Cadega.

EDIT: Support for those technologies as used in the games, is limited, and results will vary. I believe Transgaming has licensed the copy protection technology for use in Cadega. To improve compatibility with some games. Wine cannot implement Open Source alternatives easily, due to legality issues of "getting around" the technology.

The addition of those copy protection technologies, and better DirectX support built-in, means that more games work. Cadega is the best Non-Windows solution for PC Gaming.


OLDVERSION: In many (all?) U.S locations it would be all but illegal for Wine to try to get support for that technology. Since it is illegal to "get around" copy protection technology.

[henriquemaia]

[...]
Sorry for the pure bashing, but I really think that if I'm gonna pay to play, I'm not gonna lose performance using an emulator, and have to pay for that! [...]

It's not an emulator, it's a compatibility layer.

[SolidSnake2]

I downloaded Cedega trial for Ubuntu, but it wont let me launch it. Any idea?

[handy]

Cedega will cost you a minimum fee of $15- US.
That's a subscription that can be terminated at 3 months & not before.

If you don't mind using windoze, use it!

If you can run the game or games that you are addicted to, without running windoze then use whatever will do that for you.

Wine, CVScedega, Cedega or Crossover... They all have their capabilities & limitations like everything & everyone else.

If you can live with it, great.

If not, it's nice that you have windoze to go back to.

[Imexius]

Using Cedega is alot nicer than having to reboot everytime you want to play non-native games.

[adamkane]

The best near-term solution will be Linux gaming Live CDs. There are already some that have all the best free 3D linux games, enemy territory, etc., and there will be more.

I'm hopeful that there will some that even function as installers for the first-tier directx games, but haven't seen anything like that yet.

[leech]

Doesn't a LiveCD distribution for a game kind of defeat the purpose of the "I don't want to have to reboot to Windows to play games" since you would have to reboot to boot off of a LiveCD?

Quite frankly the good majority of games out there have a no-cd crack. Depending on what country you're in, they're perfectly legal. So that isn't the real reason to use Cedega. The real reason is that they hack on the Wine code to support games directly. So they will support a select set of titles, anything else that works is just plain luck.

The good thing about Wine is that they just try to create a full-fledged compatibility layer with the Windows API. In a lot of cases, Wine will run something that Cedega will not. But if it's a game that is on the supported list for Cedega, you'd have better luck using that, since the programmers at Transgaming will try their hardest to keep those games working.

The thing I find really strange, and somewhat upsetting is that if you are a Linux user who wants to play WoW, you end up paying 20 dollars a month instead of 15. Then again, I think World of Warcraft will actually run in Wine. I really don't care myself, I refuse to give Blizzard any of my money simply because they're games aren't that great, and they have shut down at least one open source project and forced another one to change it's name.

Leech

[polpak]

Nor does it come with the things that make Cadega so great, which is the Copy Protection technology support. SecuROM, SafeDisc, etc... This stuff costs money, hence the reason there is a charge for Cadega.

In many (all?) U.S locations it would be all but illegal for Wine to try to get support for that technology. Since it is illegal to "get around" copy protection technology.


The above is pure FUD. Wine does have the ability to provide copy protection support. And it doesn't "get around" the copy protection. It just lets it do whatever it would have done under windows. Works pretty well too. No legal issues, and no cost. The only thing that cedega currently does better than wine is DirectX 9 support. But wine is quickly catching up. And due to wine's commitment to providing a complete windows API they will be able to support far more games than Cedega will. (Since cedega only focuses their development on getting the few games working that get the most votes, often at the expense of backward compatability)

[Resurrection]

I just had to choose between wine and Cedega today.

I tried wine first because:
1)its free
2)its free
3)I figured I might want to run non-game app one day and Cedega seems more geared to games

Anyway, I was trying to get MOHAA to work, and I just couldn't get it to install right in wine. Tried some of the Install scripts that are out there, and they didn't work either.

Utlimately, I used Cedega, mohaa installed fine (once I figured out Cedega) although rather slowly compared to the same system under windows. I even managed to figure out how to patch the game in Cedega as well, and all this evening. Now I am playing MOHAA and I get a MUCH higher FPS rate with the same hardware than I ever did in Windows.

So I will use Cedega for now but hopefully figure out more about wine in the future.

[handy]

I tried all the options: Wine, CVS Cedega, & finaly Cedega. Trying to avoid spending $15- US.

The outcome was, I wasted so much time trying to save $15- US, still not being able to run the game.

Eventually I tried Cedega, & the game ran straight away!!!

So, now I look back at what a fool I was, wasting days of my life, going nowhere, to save no money!

With no other benefit from the experience except being able to tell others: DONT DO WHAT I DID!!

Use whatever works, value your time, it is the most valuable thing in your life, don't waste it!

[Vladimir_BG]

Ok, $15 US for an EMULATOR(it emulates Win enviroment, therefore it is an emulator) or $50 when I buy a new PC for an oem Win XP that WILL run everything and I don't have to pay for updates, unlike Cedega, wich costs $5 a month, and it won't run everything!
Let's say I pay subscription for one year, and...

Hmmm, tough choice.

Well for a pasionate gamer who doen't take "game won't run" for an answer:

I'll go with Win for games until WINE cathes up and runs games that I play(Freelancer for example), or until Cedega becomes free.

[ZylGadis]

A sensible choice. For me it does not really make sense to give money to Transgaming over Microsoft, as you can argue that Transgaming is worse than Microsoft - to my knowledge, Microsoft has not (yet) taken a fully-fledged open-source project and close-sourced it, in blatant disregard for its license and the moral issues involved.
(Yes, I know that Transgaming actually found a wormhole out of the license. That's pure legal bullsh*t and noone in their right mind would care about it. They broke the OSS spirit and that's all to it.)
So, I'm dual-booting as well, and waiting for the day when all good games will be linux-native.

[Rikostan]

I agree with ZylGadis 100%. I'll go with the dual boot as well.

I have been playing a lot of native linux games lately, but I have my gaming machine and my main linux machine on a KVM switch, so I just switch over to the windows machine when I need my RPG fix.

[Artificial Intelligence]

I play so few win games so I choosed Cedega. No need to have windows installed to play those games.

Luckly my favorite game Dominions 3 is also comming natively for linux 8)

[bored2k]

Using Cedega is alot nicer than having to reboot everytime you want to play non-native games.
It's also better than needing another operating system to play games. I don't see the problem with it having a subscription fee. After all, they need food just as we do, and their research sure ain't cheap.

[ZylGadis]

It's not about the fee, it's about the other kind of freedom that they broke.
AI, do we finally have a release date for D3?

[Vladimir_BG]

It's also better than needing another operating system to play games. I don't see the problem with it having a subscription fee. After all, they need food just as we do, and their research sure ain't cheap.

As soon as paypal starts functioning in my country I'll donate at least $25 do Ubuntu, since I twice got an order of 5 x86 sets. But I made many copies and distributed that distro to a lot more people, who are probaubly going to make donations.

It's transgamings atittude, pay, than you can play, that I find repulsive.
At least they should make a lump sum that you pay, I don't know $40 and you get lifetime support and updates.

As I said I'm a pasionate gamer, and if I had to upgrade Cedega every two months to make the new games work, I'd pay them more than I pay MS for Win.

And if Cedega was free(not the CVS thats more trouble than it's worth) I woudn't mind giving them money once and a while.

P.S.
I do like Ubuntu, a lot, for various resons, and I intend to keep using it, but I never had any SERIOUS trouble with win since '98 and Win98... Had it running till 2003 without it slowing down, needing reinstall, nor have I ever cought a virus, and the computer was connected to the net,call it skill of maintaince. So, until Linux becomes a SERIOUS gaming platform, I'm keeping dual-boot.

[Artificial Intelligence]

It's not about the fee, it's about the other kind of freedom that they broke.
AI, do we finally have a release date for D3?

The closet I can find is summer 2006. All thte beta testing have run for awhile so I don't think it gonna be late summer 2006.
Also if you preorder you'll get $7 off the prize.

[Monster_user]

The above is pure FUD. Wine does have the ability to provide copy protection support.
Sorry, I missposted...
I was told that Wine was having difficulty with getting some Copy Protection mechanisms to work right. Aside from several older ones. It is NOT illegal for a person to install the actual copy protection software in Wine. In order to use copy protected software. I meant that Wine could not include those technologies, or build compatible alternatives to use instead, since they were not Open Source. That is what I meant by support for those technologies.

If I remember correctly, Cadega includes some kind of support for those technologies, that allows them to use the version in Cadega, instead of the game. That support was licensed from the holder of the rights to the technology (ies).

I was actually told that, properly configured, Wine has good support for DirectX. Just about as good as Cadega, except for a few compatibility hacks here, and there. Only it was very difficult to get it configured right, and it varied from system to systm... That was back in the DirectX 8 days though, shortly before the DirectX 9 release.

My apoligizes for putting out FUD, it was not my intention.

I really need to take the time to recheck my posts. Instead of troubleshooting kernel panics, and drivers on another distro I'm using.

[zgerrz]

It's not right that Cedega uses code from Wine, and Transgaming refuses to give code back to the Wine project.

It's a blatant disregard for the open source philosophy, and I think it damages the Linux community as well as the hope for one day being able to play the majority of Windows games in Linux for free.

[handy]

Ok, $15 US for an EMULATOR(it emulates Win enviroment, therefore it is an emulator) or $50 when I buy a new PC for an oem Win XP that WILL run everything and I don't have to pay for updates, unlike Cedega, wich costs $5 a month, and it won't run everything!
Let's say I pay subscription for one year, and...

Hmmm, tough choice.

Well for a pasionate gamer who doen't take "game won't run" for an answer:

I'll go with Win for games until WINE cathes up and runs games that I play(Freelancer for example), or until Cedega becomes free.

(W)ine (I)s (N)ot an (E)mulator!

Do some research on this one.

There are no plans to ever make Cedega free.

Use whatever makes you happy! :D

[handy]

A sensible choice. For me it does not really make sense to give money to Transgaming over Microsoft, as you can argue that Transgaming is worse than Microsoft - to my knowledge, Microsoft has not (yet) taken a fully-fledged open-source project and close-sourced it, in blatant disregard for its license and the moral issues involved.
(Yes, I know that Transgaming actually found a wormhole out of the license. That's pure legal bullsh*t and noone in their right mind would care about it. They broke the OSS spirit and that's all to it.)
So, I'm dual-booting as well, and waiting for the day when all good games will be linux-native.


The story is that the reason Wine's directX has improved so much in due to the work that Cedega has done, & then passed back the knowledge to Wine!

[handy]

As far as the joys of supporting microsoft are concerned, vs what some see as the evil & untrustworthy practices of Transgaming!

Read This! (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html)


On the topic of people being payed for their work: How immature to think that people can live without working & being able to trade!

[Rikostan]

On the topic of people being payed for their work: How immature to think that people can live without working & being able to trade!

Hmmm it seems to work well for the wine developers.. not to mention all the other open source software out there. How immature to think software should not be free... Isn't that one of the fundamental aspects of Ubuntu?


Also, it's your choice if you choose to support them, but leave the insults at home.

[handy]

Hmmm it seems to work well for the wine developers.. not to mention all the other open source software out there. How immature to think software should not be free... Isn't that one of the fundamental aspects of Ubuntu?


Also, it's your choice if you choose to support them, but leave the insults at home.


No insults intended.

So much of what is being discussed is uninformed opinion!

Freedom of choice is what it is all about!

& as far as what Ubuntu is all about!?

I would not dare to presume...

I do know that I would happily pay for Ubuntu. The reason that I love it, & use it, has absolutely nothing to do with the lack of purchase price!

I do believe that people have a right to be payed for their time. As do they have the right to choose to do work voluntarily, & not charge for it. These 2 are not mutually exclusive, right or wrong, more or less good.

Mark Shuttleworth, makes money, & donates his resources as he sees fit!

Yes, the more money you have the more choices you have.

Is that equitable?

No, in many cases it would seem not. That still does not mean that if you make money from work that you do, you are responsible for somebody else going without. Does it?

Really, the attitude that all software should be free, has huge cultural implications. Why just software, what about all the food & clothing that we use. Our computers, cars, housing...

Singling out software, without everything else makes no sense to me.

Yes, I'll go with the everything for free model, though I fear we need a few more hundred years of human development before it might work!

[benplaut]

Here's the story of cedega licensing:

Cedega is based on an old version of WineX, which is based on an older version of Wine. Both of its descendents were under a not-very-restrictive BSD liscence. Cedega is completely legal... it's not a loophole, it's just how the BSD liscence works (and why i don't really like the BSD liscence).

I mainly play n64 games, so i could care less about cedega :P

[Artificial Intelligence]

It's not about the fee, it's about the other kind of freedom that they broke.
AI, do we finally have a release date for D3?

I've updated Dominions 3 game entry at Ubuntu game list: http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Dominions_3

[handy]

Surely Cedega has given more than it has taken.

So many of us (no, unfortunately it has to be granted, not all of us) have been able to play the games, (or use other software, for that matter) without having to boot windoze!

I am so grateful for Ubuntu (firstly), & the ability to play Guild Wars through the Ubuntu OS, without having to boot windoze (secondly).

Yes, I would boot the dreaded :rolleyes: windoze to play GW if I had to. I would not let that OS stop me from doing something I love to do.

I will not stoop to windoze bashing. Because that would be stopping me from doing something else I love... :KS

Really, is there a problem here?

Peace.

[siorai]

Personally, I have no problems with paying for Cedega. $15 to save me from having to reboot to play the one or two games that I still play is definitely worth it in my eyes. Do I have any issues with them charging for it? No. Sure, it may not go with the "everything for free and open source" ideals of Linux, but so what? They aren't the only retail Linux software out there. The way I see it, is that there are people who see a product they really want to use, but aren't willing to pay for it. It's the way fo the world. Some things are free, others aren't. Some people accept this and pay for what they want, others don't accept it and complain that everything isn't for free.

[Phesto]

I wouldn't have a problem paying for Cedega if i saw a difference between it and wine. I admit i don't play many games but i'm happy with the fact that I've been able to get "everything" i've wanted working under wine. "Everything" just being Warcraft III and counter-strike source. So, right now for me, $15 is not worth the ability to play the games i already play under wine and the ability to play games that i don't own or don't want to play. If the day comes where i can't get something to work under wine and Cedega claims to be able to support. The price would probably be worth it.

[YokoZar]

The story is that the reason Wine's directX has improved so much in due to the work that Cedega has done, & then passed back the knowledge to Wine!
This isn't true. Transgaming in many ways actively slowed down Wine's DirectX development, because Transgaming promised to contribute their code back but never did. Consequently, a lot of Wine development went on in other areas of Wine, while the games support lagged behind as everyone was waiting around for Transgaming to fulfill the promise they made when selling Cedega.

Instead what happened is Transgaming ended up mysteriously deleting the promise from their website, and no Transgaming code has ever hit Wine again.