Virtualization, Direct X, and NWN2

[slickwilly]

Alright, while I'm no computer newbie (25 years of using the beasts), I will readily admit there are things that I still don't fully grasp sometimes. i really enjoy NWN, heck I am an old school PNP D&D player and NWN is about as close to that as you can get with a graphical CRPG. I want to play NWN2, I know lots of folks say it sucks, or are zealots and say if it isn't released for Linux then they wont play it, whatever they are entitled to their opinions, me I want to play it :)
However,
I view Microsoft Windows as a virus, I do not want it installed as my primary OS, and dual booting is a genuine pain in the posterior. So, here is what I would like, it may be either:
possible, but difficult and annoying, or
impossible and I will have to bite the bullet and buy a whole other machine to play on.

So to, finally, get to my point, I want to run Windows Vista Ultimate under Linux, and NWN2 on it, is it possible? What would be required? How many of the few hairs left on my cranium would be sacrificed to me yanking them out?

Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Slick

[reiki]

I'll preface this by saying.... I turn 55 this year and I like to play WoW occasionally. World of Warcraft works under Wine. So the first thing you want to do is see if NWN2 runs under Wine.

I seem to recall that it doesn't. If that's true, then your next best option would be to get a cheap second hard drive and install windows on it and keep it separate and apart from your linux install. Pain in the posterior indeed, but preferable (at least as far as I'm concerned) to having them reside on the same drive.

[etherealremnant]

Running virtualization with DirectX acceleration isn't possible (yet - its being worked on). I concur with the above. Your best bet is a Windows install on a secondary drive, unfortunately.

[Breepee]

And do not use Vista. Even when installed normally it has worse performance for games. Use XP.

In combination with the latest VMWare (which has preliminairy DirectX support for XP) you could try. Otherwise see if wine or Cedega supports it.

[M$LOL]

Running virtualization with DirectX acceleration isn't possible (yet - its being worked on). I concur with the above. Your best bet is a Windows install on a secondary drive, unfortunately.

Yes it is. Vmware workstation has experimental D3D support.

Anyway, as for games, first try Wine, then Cedega (or the CVS if you don't want to pay), chances are one will work (although there are some games I can't get to work on either.