Windows Emulation Today - Wine, WineX, Lin4Win, VMWare, etc.

Davin · n00b Joined: 13 May 2003 Posts: 45 Location: United States

Now that I've actually got a PC with some real power to it (P4 2.8MHz), I decided that it was finally time to investigate putting Linux back on my primary gaming PC again. (not that I have no love for it - been running it on my server for years) With the whispered speed enhancements of the 2.6 kernel, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to start back into this!

I decided I'd check to see if there was a forum thread comparing the various Windows emulating software (by plugging in a few of the names in the subject into the search box) and didn't come up with a thread quite like what I was looking for, so I figured I'd start one of my own.

Quite simply, what is your experience with Windows emulation? What are your experiences (good and bad) with running programs that you find yourself needing Windows for over Linux? How well did your favorite games work? And if you noticed slight performance degredation, has the situation changed since switching to the 2.6 kernel?

If you have any feedback whatsoever, please leave a comment. It would be a good idea to first mention your system specs so we can get an idea of how your experience relates to hardware. Even if an emulator you've played with isn't listed in the subject, feel free to share your experience with the rest of us. Assuming I'm not posting a duplicate thread (and I tried not to), we need a serious discussion about the current state of Windows emulation.

_Nomad_ · Guru Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Posts: 571

I use crossover office on an athlon-xp 2200+ with 512 MB PC3200 RAM. The only thing I really use windows emulation for is office apps.
Office XP is runnin rock solid and with the speed of any windows system.
I did try winex a few months ago in order to play a game (can't remember wich one at the moment :wink:

) but it was just too much hassle.

Lord Bob · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 12:31 am Post subject:

I have just recently got gentoo back on my box. Blasted nforce drivers and stupid tv card were definately designed with only Windows in mind. 2.6 came around and fixed that.

I digress.

I put wine on my box a couple days ago to see if I could get a couple of my favorite windows games working, but no dice. It is painful to see wine tank on the InstallShield wizard. I might just copy the install from my windows partition, but it would be really cool if InstallShield worked under wine, though I think it will be a while before this happens. It might also have something to do with copy protection, but I don't know for sure.

Last year (before my tv tuner) wine worked well with a zip proggie I had in Windows (EnZip). I used it to create a few self extractors for my Windows friends. I also ran Trillian in it once, but now I use kopete or Psi

.

I tried bochs once, but it only has a 16 color virtual graphics card. I wasn't ambitious enough to do anything about it.

Hardware info:
Athlon-XP 2100+
480MB ram
32MB GeForce 2 integrated
nForce (dunno what version) mobo with integrated net
SoundMax digital audio-nForce audio driver works, though. What does Compaq know anyway :roll:

TI Firewire card
AverMedia TV Studio (bttv chip) tv tuner
compaq 48x cdrom
pioneer dvd-rw

software info:
Gentoo-dev-sources 2.6.1-rc2
kde 3.1.4
wine-20031118-r1
_________________
This post brought to you by the letters: T, U, and X, and by the numbers 2 and 6.
"The joy from having 3D flying toasters across two monitors almost brought a tear to my eye

" -- Me

Cerement · Guru Joined: 14 Jun 2003 Posts: 404

Windows Emulation:
Wine (the original)
WineX (Wine optimized for gaming)
CrossOver Office (Wine optimized for office use)

x86 Hardware Emulation:
vmWare (expensive, but gets great reviews, x86 arch only, no 3D accel)
win4lin (needs kernel patch, has a Gentoo discount)
bochs (free, SLOW)
plex86 (dead project, x86 arch only? )

Negated Void · l33t Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 672

I've found that compiling wineX from CVS will get *most* windows games running, with a little work.
My 2 cents, -Murph

defendtherealm1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Dec 2003 Posts: 138

kill_switch · n00b Joined: 14 Jun 2003 Posts: 32

I don't need neighter wine nor winex.

The only things I play run native!!!

(Quake I,II,III, UnrealTournament + 2003, AmericasArmy)

so don't forget that there are already games running completely without emulation
_________________
my jabber ID is kill_switch@jabber.org

Raoul_Duke · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 1:34 pm Post subject:

for everything apart from games, vmware is 'the daddy'

running it on two linux boxes and it's flawless

_________________
www.iamthepenguin.com

nazgum · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 2:08 pm Post subject:

I would like to add vmware is amazing.

I've been running pure gentoo for a long while now - but I use vmware so I have access to windows when I need it (I do some flash work - and flash just doesn't work so well in wine)

besides the ability to use vmware with windows - it's cool to install redhat and mandrake and whatnot in vmware - so you can play around with the other distro's while running linux if you end up forgetting how cool gentoo is

I ended up calling around a few places and managed to scratch up a student vmware licence price for $160 Canadian.

Which isn't bad - vmware is one of my favorite programs atm.

nepenthe · Guru Joined: 14 Jul 2002 Posts: 317 Location: Sanford, ME

I believe the winex-cvs version is missing some stuff as opposed to the pre-built winex from transgaming... but I use wine... and look at appdb.winehq.com for support on games... have been able to get steam 1.6 to work and some other games... but much rather go native games =)

drb · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 9:10 pm Post subject:

Using a 2.6.0 vanilla kernel.

I have been using wine (Version 20031212) for a few oddball applications and it works about 80% with those apps. The odd error messages, but most of applications I need are useable. Some applications just won't run though, so not a complete solution for me.

I have tried VMware, but couldn't get the sound to work problerly; I would get far too much stuttering. Also had problems accessing the cd-rom. When the free evaluation expired, I just removed it. For the money, it just didn't seem worth it to me.

I am in the process of installing Win4Lin now.
_________________
Darrell Bellerive
VA7TO

Naughtyus · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 9:17 pm Post subject:

Does anyone know if Win4Lin will allow me to use my netMD software?

vdboor · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 10:35 pm Post subject:

I'm using VMWare to start all Windows software I need.. And it it'sn much, because I like the alternatives for the Windows software I'd use otherwise.

There is one important thing to note: you can't play your 3D games with VMWare, and you need some memory to run it. Currently my configuration is:

- amd athlon 1800
- 128 mb swap space.
- 750 mb ram. .. 512 mb wasn't enough to run xfree/kde and vmware/windows at the same time. :p

I try to limit the usage of swap space, because I've experienced how this slows down a system very much. That's why I invest in a little more ram, instead of using more disk space for swap.
_________________
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81M/S²
Linux user #311670 and Yet Another Perl Programmer
[ screenies | Coding on KMess ]

Lord Bob · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 10:47 pm Post subject:

Lord Bob · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2004 1:16 am Post subject:

Ok, I got Bochs running and tried knoppix on it. I didn't do a whole lot of configuring with it so YMMV.

I think I need to read the user guide that needs to be updated. But really quickly:
1. Bochs is slow. You might be thinking PII mmx 350. No. Think Pentium 60.
2. The video "card" is funny. I'll have to do some tinkering on this.
3. I don't think drives on the host can be used in the emulated environment as drives. I'll need to check this out further, however.
4. In the introduction in their documentation, they don't recommend anything past Windows 95. hmm.
5. I need to tinker with it more... much more.

Sorry this follow up was pretty bad. Bochs requires much tinkering.
_________________
This post brought to you by the letters: T, U, and X, and by the numbers 2 and 6.
"The joy from having 3D flying toasters across two monitors almost brought a tear to my eye

" -- Me