Over the past few years, there has been a common question on the Linux vs. Windows desktop front: does the Linux desktop have the ability to play various major release games, and if so what is the performance difference between the two? Linux is commonly overlooked as a viable gaming platform in most communities. Our intention today is to shed some light on what does and does not work inside Linux, as well as give solid performance data for those looking for another option in the gaming world. Each OS has areas where it shows superiority over the other, but for the sake of staying true to the purpose of this article we will only be focusing on the game performance/functionality differences.

Unfortunately there are very few game releases that support running inside Linux natively. To combat this issue there are a few Linux projects that will allow Linux users to run Windows applications - note that we did not say "emulate Windows". We have selected three Linux projects in order to complete our initial round of testing. Our open source project selection "Wine" is a free, easily downloadable project that is created to support both Windows games and applications. The second selection, "Cedega", is a closed source implementation of Wine focused on gaming. The final selection is Crossover Games which like Cedega is a closed source implementation of Wine allowing for enhanced usability and gameplay over Wine.

Sound in Wine has been a big issue.  From a user’s perspective, it didn’t work well.  From a technical user’s perspective, there were 3 different drivers to choose from and none of them worked well.  From a developer’s perspective, no sound driver would ever work well.

Wine was a victim of the proliferation of sound drivers on Linux.

Internet browsing is a huge part our daily lives. No matter where we are we are bound to have contact with the internet in one form or another, and thus when we need it we want/need it to be as fast and as responsive as possible.

Before I get into how to find the fastest DNS for you, you need to know what a DNS is. DNS stands for Domain Naming Service. It’s been around for a while. It is why you are able to type in www.wine-reviews.net or www.google.com instead of an IP address such as 74.52.50.226 It is much easier to remember a name right? Than trying to remember (one of) Googles IP addresses such as: 74.125.43.104. Not only that, DNS allows you to have multiple sites and servers under one name (ie: adwords.google.com, images.google.com, ect…).

CrossOver Mac allows you to install many popular Windows applications and games on your Intel OS X Mac. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing Windows software simple and fast. Once installed, your application integrates seamlessly in OS X. Just click and run your application directly from the OS X Finder. Clicking a Windows file or document ? including email attachments ? will launch the appropriate Windows program, allowing you to work on the files. Best of all, you do it all easily and affordably, without needing a Microsoft operating system license.

Aren't your T-shirts too dull? All my StarWars tees have a lot of colours and shades...

We think different, and give preference to quality over amount of colours. Those princess Leia in bikini T-shirts are printed with a technique called transfer, which more or less is like putting your T-shirt inside a printer.

We use screen printing, a technique that limits us to 6 colours per T-shirt (besides the T-shirt base color), but in return print quality is better, and your T-shirts will survive washmachines, pets and some small tsunami. Furthermore, we individually iron each T-shirt after printing, so that the design finish is smooth, firm and able to stand more tempests.

And what the hell, good things in this life have less than 6 colours: black chocolate (#000), a terminal (#000 and #fff, or #000 and #0f0 if you are that kind of geek), ...

In one of my previous posts I mentioned I had the game Crysis running successfully under Cedega with a few native dll over rides. Today I am going to detail the few hoops you will need to jump through if you wish to get Crysis running on Linux.

• vcredist_x86.exe
• odbcbcp.dll
• pdh.dll

I’m a proud adventure game fan boy and have enjoyed countless hours in the company of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Legend of Kyrandia among others. ScummVm have helped to re enjoy many of these titles after replacing my preferred desktop system with Linux.

When the news reached my ears about “Tales of Monkey Island” I was very exited. But also nervous if would be able to play these episodes without Windows… but fear no more.

It is possible!

My system:

• Nvidia graphic card
• Ubuntu Karmic 64bit
• Wine from special package archive (to get native pulse audio support)