Get New Wine Features Faster With Wine Staging

Wine Staging is a Wine version which provides bug fixes and features that aren't yet available in regular Wine versions.

Wine Staging (formerly known as Wine Compholio) was initially created for Pipelight, a project that brings Silverlight and other Windows-only plugins to Linux web browsers. The project has evolved and some Linux distributions, like Fedora, provide it in the official repositories instead of the regular Wine version.

The latest Wine Staging provides the following extra features and bug fixes:

• CSMT (Commandstream multithreading) for better graphic performance
• CUDA / PhysX / NVENC Support for NVIDIA graphic cards
• DXVA2 GPU video decoding (experimental)
• EAX 1 support
• Fixes for various upstream regressions
• Job Object support
• Loading of .NET CLI images without entry point
• Named Pipe message mode support (Linux kernel >= 3.4 only)
• Performance improvements for IO-heavy programs and memory allocation functions
• S3 texture compression (DXTn) support
• Threadpool API support
• Various improvements to d3dx9
• Various speed improvements (shared memory, RT priority)
• Windows ACL support
• Wine PulseAudio driver

For a complete list, see the Wine Staging GitHub page.

Some of these features are optional and they can enabled or disabled via Wine Configuration, on the Staging tab:

Install Wine Staging in Ubuntu or Linux Mint

Wine Staging is available in the Pipelight PPA for Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivatives. To add the PPA and install Wine Staging, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipelight/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends wine-staging

If you're on 64bit and want to use the 64bit Wine version, also install 'wine-staging-amd64':

sudo apt-get install wine-staging-amd64

The Wine Staging executables aren't installed in /usr/bin (and aren't available in your PATH by default), but under /opt/wine-staging/bin/. Thanks to this, you can continue using the regular Wine version as well as Wine Staging - to run any Wine Staging executable, simply add "/opt/wine-staging/bin/" in front of the executable, like this:

/opt/wine-staging/bin/wine
/opt/wine-staging/bin/winecfg

... and so on.

However, if you don't want to type the full path each time you want to use Wine Staging, you can install a package which provides compatibility symlinks (but you won't be able to use the regular Wine version any more):

sudo apt-get install wine-staging-compat

For more information, see the Wine Staging Usage page.

The Wine Staging developers provide binaries for Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo, Mageia and OpenSUSE - for installation instructions, see THIS page.

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How to play Terraria on Mac OS X

You are using Mac OS X and you can’t find a way to run Terraria on your Mac? Don’t worry, in this tutorial I’m gonna show you the easiest way to play Terraria on Mac by using CrossOver.

Play Terraria on Mac OS X Tutorial

• Download and install CrossOver at here: https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac/download/
• After installing, visit this website, and click on “Install Terraria via CrossTie” (in web browser)
• Click “Install”.
• Keep install various softwares requested. After done, a window pop up with two button : “Restart later” or “Restart now”, just click on Restart now.
• Wait for Steam update
• When Steam’s main window is shown up, shut it down and reopen it.
• Log in to Steam then install Terraria and play!

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

It’s All About the Team at E3 The Super Bowl of Computer Gaming

This week, I am at E3, the Super Bowl of computer gaming! Right off the bat, I noticed that game studios have fully embraced this whole team aspect thing. It's not you vs. the bad guys. It's you and 15 or 20 of your teammates vs. 15 or 20 people on another team fighting to the death within a certain time limit in a confined area no bigger than a phone booth. Mass carnage with surreal graphics in mind-blowing locations at a frantic pace. And again, it's your team vs. the world. No team? No problem! These games are more than happy to put you on a randomly created team from a pool of available players just waiting to get a taste of the action.

As I step up and play on a random team, I instantly notice the lack of cohesiveness that results in decisive victory (the kind of victory where someone on the other team might just quit playing). And to that, I don't know 15 or 20 people that would be willing to team up with me to take on the world. Which, in hindsight, is probably for the best as discearning victory usually requires practice. PRACTICE??? Who's got time for practice? I'm lucky with my schedule that I even get to play games at this stage of my life (husband, father, suburbs, three dogs). So, I'll be sticking to random teams – for now. I just wish that the time I spent in my youth on Atari 2600 and Nintendo wasn't so largely wasted leaving me unprepared for today's gaming.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't try (even at my age – 43) to prepare and compete in these games against vastly superior and considerably younger gamers. I try. I bought a headset with a microphone. I spend countless hours at work playing a variety of these team concept video games. I even sneak away in the evenings to log in an hour or two just to increase my rankings. HECK, I'm even spending some of my entertainment money on upgrades and add-ons for these video games (just to compete). My problem is that I'm not willing or able to commit the 60 hours or so a week it would take for me to actually be GOOD at these games. I can buy all the upgrades I want, but it doesn't negate the fact that these 13-year-old kids are twitchy and fueled by Red Bull.

Soooooooooooo…. E3. Team based games? Check. Games where you can be Darth Vader, a mythical god, an elite sniper, world class soccer player, or even vicious dwarf? Check again. From what I've seen so far, the 'must have' games for 2015 are going to Star Wars Battlefront, a 40 vs. 40 mass assault where you're battling as either the Rebels or the Empireon the ground and in the air on worlds like Hoth and Endor; Smite, a seven vs. seven arena based combat where you can be an actual mythical god battling other mythical gods; Rainbow Six Siege, a five on five strategic assault where you are either a member of an elite military unit or part of a faction that is a threat to freedom; and the impressive list of games from both established and indie game studios goes on. The games all appear incredible and the action is non-stop. You attack. You die. You restart. You improve. And you do it again!!! It's like that Tom Cruise movie, 'Edge of Tomorrow' – LIVE. DIE. REPEAT.

How do these games impact Mac and Linux users? Well, they don't. That's the rub in all of this. Most of these games are PC only. However, you might still be able to play these titles on your Mac or Linux computer when they are released later this year using CrossOver. In the coming months, CodeWeavers will have support for DirectX 11; better controller support; and further improvements to overall GPU performance. While these incremental improvements for game support may seem small (at first), the cumulative improvements for game support will allow for many of these games to 'just run' when released. And when more games 'just run' in CrossOver, it won't matter if you're battling against Thor or Apollo using a PC, a Mac, or a Linux computer.

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

Linux – uruchamianie Windowsowych programów

 CodeWeavers CrossOver Polish Review thanks Mariusz Łączak !

Dzisiaj wpis trochę z innej dziedziny, a mianowicie o systemie Linux i uruchamianiu aplikacji z Windows. Jako, że ja od ok. 10 lat pracuję na systemie linux, to nie mam problemów z jego użytkowaniem. Osoby, które dopiero zaczynają przygodę z linuxem mogą mieć problemy z pewnymi aplikacjami. Duża część windowsowych aplikacji ma swoje „zamienniki” na linuxa, np. MS Office/Open Office, Photoshop/Gimp, itp. Również ostatnio za sprawą Steam coś ruszyło z grami i bez problemu uruchomimy natywnie CS, CS:Source, CS:GO czy inne gry. Czasami jednak zachodzi potrzeba uruchomienia jakiegoś programu/gry z Windowsa na Linuxie, lub nie znamy odpowiednika. Co wtedy? Z pomocą przychodzi nam aplikacja CrossOver/Wine.

Każdy użytkownik Linuxa na pewno słyszał o Wine, czyli programie umożliwiającym uruchamianie oprogramowania napisanego na Windows pod Linuksem. Wine jest bezpłatne, ale posiada płatny odpowiednik – CrossOver. Na stronie producenta kosztuje 30-40 dolarów.

CrossOver Linux to bazująca na otwartym projekcie Wine aplikacja umożliwiająca uruchamianie oprogramowania dla systemu Windows na platformie Linux. Aplikacja zapewnia wsparcie dla długiej listy popularnych programów. Wszystkie obsługiwane aplikacje znajdują się pod adresem codeweavers.com. Wersja testowa pozwala na korzystanie z programu przez okres 14 dni.

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.