Swapping from MS Win7 to Ubuntu 11.10 -- Rift Questions

[Zombiiduud]

I am going to college right now for software analysis and development and I recently tried out Ubuntu 11.04 via Wubi. Now I am an avid Rift player and my primary concern is wine support of Rift, I did get Rift to run fairly well if not better than I had it running in windows 7. Though after an update my setup was no longer working, I have discontinued that method reverting back to Windows 7 (yuck) for my Rift fix. My new idea is to utilize Virtualbox to boot Win7 and run Rift through that, my question is should I expect similar complications using this method to run Rift? If someone has any input on this matter I would be greatly appreciative. Ideally though I would like to forego Windows all together, I understand that Linux does not natively support direct x and every direct x call should be treated as an OpenGL call out to emulate the Dx3D call and I have found some workarounds but I am reluctant to only use Ubuntu 11.10 and Wine to run my game due to the frequent patches, so what do you guys think?

Should I use Virtualbox to run Rift in the virtual windows 7 environment? (Wouldnt this still cause the Windows bloat?)

OR

Should I just utilize Wine with some more experienced workarounds that you guys could suggest I try to run my game?

Yes, Rift will be a gamebreaker but I do overall enjoy Ubuntu MUCH more than I enjoy Windows anything and if I cant play my game then I will be stuck with MS indefinitely.


Anyhow, any help would be great and I look forward to your reply.

[wildmanne39]

Windows in virtualbox on average does not play games well, you would have to try it and see.

Windows in virtualbox runs faster on my system then it does by itself, and I think by default it does not install as much bloat when it is ran in virtualbox.
Thank you

[Zombiiduud]

Thank you for the reply, I was a bit skeptical myself of going the Virtualbox route, however I fear I will try it out regardless, I am currently backing up all of my files onto DVDs so I can later access them again, it should at the least save me a 19 hour download of my game, while I wait I am just monitoring this thread an perusing the topics contained on these forums to further my understanding of Ubuntu's possible problems in relation to what I am hoping to achieve.

I suppose that so long as I get everything backed up even if my endeavor is a fail I will be able to painlessly reinstall win7 chalking it all up to a waste of time, I have high hopes but look forward to any future responses.

Thanks again, also I am sorry to the mods, I did not know that my slang was inappropriate, it shouldn't be an issue again.

[wildmanne39]

Hi, do you have a windows disk? Are you going to have ubuntu on its own partition?
Thank you

[Zombiiduud]

I have a Windows 7 Ultimate disk so I can boot from that for installation purposes. I also have an Ubuntu 11.10 disk I made on ubuntu.com both are 64 bit if that matters.

EDIT: Also I plan on clean installing so that I only boot to Ubuntu. Rather than the dual boot I currently have which currently has only 20gb of space for my Ubuntu Partition, which is a shame because I have 650gb available to me, I might be wrong but I believe that was the maximum size I could set when I used Wubi to install it.

[wildmanne39]

Hi, you might want to dual boot ubuntu for now until you see how your game plays in windows in virtualbox.

You should read up on virtualbox at this link before you install it.
https://www.virtualbox.org/
Thank you

[Zombiiduud]

I haven't even thought of trying that prior to doing a clean install which is pretty dumb on my part, but a good idea, I am fairly familiar with Virtualbox, I think I am going to give that a shot right now thanks for the idea (that I should have thought of myself) :D

[wildmanne39]

Hi, your welcome! if you need help with installing start a new thread since it is a different topic.
Thank you

[nixIT]

I am going to college right now for software analysis and development and I recently tried out Ubuntu 11.04 via Wubi. Now I am an avid Rift player and my primary concern is wine support of Rift, I did get Rift to run fairly well if not better than I had it running in windows 7. Though after an update my setup was no longer working, I have discontinued that method reverting back to Windows 7 (yuck) for my Rift fix. My new idea is to utilize Virtualbox to boot Win7 and run Rift through that, my question is should I expect similar complications using this method to run Rift? If someone has any input on this matter I would be greatly appreciative. Ideally though I would like to forego Windows all together, I understand that Linux does not natively support direct x and every direct x call should be treated as an OpenGL call out to emulate the Dx3D call and I have found some workarounds but I am reluctant to only use Ubuntu 11.10 and Wine to run my game due to the frequent patches, so what do you guys think?

Should I use Virtualbox to run Rift in the virtual windows 7 environment? (Wouldnt this still cause the Windows bloat?)

OR

Should I just utilize Wine with some more experienced workarounds that you guys could suggest I try to run my game?

Yes, Rift will be a gamebreaker but I do overall enjoy Ubuntu MUCH more than I enjoy Windows anything and if I cant play my game then I will be stuck with MS indefinitely.


Anyhow, any help would be great and I look forward to your reply.

I have Rift running in both Linux Mint 11 and Arch linux, with a Radeon card to boot. I don't have all the desktop effects turned on on Gnome, and for the game, I am running medium video settings without a major issue. Meridian at times is sluggish, but still playable.

What issues are you having with Rift and Linux?

--nixIT