Would you like to play the latest and greatest Windows games? Sure. In Linux? Sure. Now comes the tricky question, how exactly do you do that? Linux uses OpenGL, whereas most Windows games rely on DirectX. No problem. That's what Wine is made for.

I've mentioned Wine in my Linux gaming mega howto, as one of the tools that allow you to run Windows games in Linux, for whatever reason you may want to do so. The results may vary and may not be perfect, but you can still manage a handsome array of games easily.

 What prompted me to try running one of the Windows heavyweight games on Linux was the pure simple hardware limitation. The game in question was Tropico 3, a fabulous dictatorship simulation with some pretty hefty requirements, including 2GB of RAM and at least 256MB Nvidia 6600GT card. As it turns out, my two older Athlons both running Windows and equipped with Nvidia 6600GT and 7600GT cards were not exactly tailored for this game. But if you recall, I've just recently bought myself a shiny new laptop, with the powerful Nvidia 9600GS card with 512MB VRAM. So I figured, what the hell, it's worth a try.

What I did was install DirectX 9.0c in Linux using Wine and then installed Tropico 3. Lo and behold, it works, beautifully. I can play the game with details set to high without any problems or glitches, everything runs smoothly and even the sound quality is great.

In this article, you will learn how to install DirectX using Wine. It's not simple, but it's not difficult either. And then, the world's your oyster. I hope you will enjoy this guide, plus you get a few dandy Tropico 3 screenshots. A full review will come later.

Follow me.

Install Wine

This is simple. Just open the package manager and install the software.

Configure DirectX libraries

This is the most complicated step of all. But do not worry, you get everything, step by step.

Launch Wine configuration. You can either do it via the Application menu in your distro, Wine > Configure Wine or by running winecfg from the command line. Once the main menu opens, click on the Libraries tab.

Full Article