What needs to be done to have Windows games play on Ubuntu without Wine?

[Chame_Wizard]

Porting with OpenGL!!

[Zeven]

The main problem is and always will be DirectX. A lot of games uses these libraries, and unless you are willing to rewrite every game to use the equivalent in OpenGL, this is a dream that is way too far away.

Why don't all developers just develop using OpenGL? That way they can get an additional 10% of the market by getting games on Mac OS and Linux as well.

[Dlambert]

I think a kernel with WINE functionality built in would be a good start.

[haqking]

I think a kernel with WINE functionality built in would be a good start.

not everyone wants or needs to use wine, why build in overhead for a given % of users.


why not build in everything into the kernel then ?

This is a pointless thread i mean,

why dont petrol cars run off diesel ?

why cant VLC open spreadsheets ?

Why cant you use a kettle to watch TV ?

Why dont VHS tapes fit and play in a DVD player

LOL

Peace

[Sofox]

Why don't all developers just develop using OpenGL? That way they can get an additional 10% of the market by getting games on Mac OS and Linux as well.

Boy, did you miss the gigantic OpenGL vs DirectX war of the late 90s/early 00s?

To be honest, I don't know that much about it myself, but from what I recall Microsoft claimed a lot about how OpenGL was inferior to DirectX and DirectX was best for Windows and most supported. Obviously, this was a hugely debated issue, but Microsoft made a huge effort towards making DirectX good quality and promoting it as the best platform and Linux and Mac wasn't seen as important back then so people went with DirectX (not everyone did though, keep in mind Half-Life supported OpenGL, and id have long been supporters of it).
There were two legitimate strenghts of DirectX back then though: DirectX could be faster at introducing new features since Microsoft could just say "yes" while OpenGL there had to be agreements between several companies before introducing new features; secondly since most games ended up supporting DirectX, it led a lot of graphics card makers to make cards and drivers that supported DirectX primarily and OpenGL to a lower quality. I don't know how it is these days though.

[forrestcupp]

Why don't all developers just develop using OpenGL? That way they can get an additional 10% of the market by getting games on Mac OS and Linux as well.

Because DirectX isn't just graphics. It's everything, including 3D audio and input devices, and it all works together seamlessly, like the positioning of an object in 3D space affects that object's audio in 3D space as well. OpenGL is just hardware accelerated graphics. It doesn't all port.

Why cant you use a kettle to watch TV ?

Lol.

I used a fish tank to watch TV once. When I was a young kid, and I was supposed to be in bed, I watched almost an entire episode of Saturday Night Live by hiding in the other room and watching the reflection on the aquarium.

[na5h]

I guess Java's "Write once, run anywhere" philosophy could come in handy here...browser-based games written in Java or Javascript might not be such a a bad idea either. HTML5! Or perhaps games written in Python?

As for the "What needs to be done to have Windows games play on Ubuntu without Wine" question...Windows is NOT Linux!

[forrestcupp]

I guess Java's "Write once, run anywhere" philosophy could come in handy here...browser-based games written in Java or Javascript might not be such a a bad idea either. HTML5! Or perhaps games written in Python?

Games can be easily written to be portable. There are decent 3D and game engines out there that allow you to write code once, and it only needs to be recompiled for the different platforms. The problem is that most commercial game companies don't know or care.

[del_diablo]

Or perhaps games written in Python?

Compitablity break EACH version update. 2.5 python does not work with 2.6 python, etc. There is a reason why applications on Windows, who is using Python usually is bundeled with Python, just to avoid this issue.
The only thing so far that has not suffered severe break on update is Java.

Native packages

Breaks at each major OS update. Look at Linux Game Binaries, you need to apply hacks or get recompiled versions of it.
Point in case: Is there and 2003 linux games you can still download and that works on Linux without having to apply severe hacks or compiling old libaries for them? Lugaru requires "hacks" to get it working on a modern distro, the same applies to other old binaries.

Compiling from source

As lisati said, it will break and its too complex for a normal user. Even if it involes a automatisation of the compiling(IE: The installer is basically the compiler, but its like a Windows installer), it will at some point break due API incompitablities, which is a severe issue.

[forrestcupp]

As lisati said, it will break and its too complex for a normal user. Even if it involes a automatisation of the compiling(IE: The installer is basically the compiler, but its like a Windows installer), it will at some point break due API incompitablities, which is a severe issue.

especially if they use winAPI and DirectX.