A New User’s Guide To Wine and Cedega
20th January 2008
Hazel
Articles
Cedega, Introduction, Wine
Introduction
Whilst the purpose of this blog is mostly to focus on games which can be played natively under Linux, it is not the only option. This post is an overview of Wine (WINE Is Not an Emulator – hooray for recursive acronyms!) and Cedega, which can both be used to run some Windows software, including games, under Linux.
What Are Wine And Cedega?
As its name suggests, Wine and Cedega are not emulators.
Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. — WineHQ
Essentially, they should allow Windows software to be installed and run under Linux, in the same way as it would be under Windows. Not all software works completely, or at all, but the number of applications is constantly growing.
What’s the Difference?
The first difference you’ll probably notice is that whilst Wine is completely free, Cedega charges a subscription fee to download their prepackaged releases and for support – currently $5 a month for a minimum of 3 months.
Originally, Cedega is a fork of Wine, focusing only on gaming. As such it handles newer 3d games better, however for older 2d games Wine can still perform better, and it also works well with a lot of other software aside from games.
What Can’t They Do?
Generally, brand new games won’t run with Wine or Cedega when they are released. A lot of MMORPGs will not work because of hack-prevention methods they employ. Games written in Dark Basic also tend to have problems.
What Games Can I Play?
Whether a game will work depends on your system and the versions of Wine or Cedega you’re using, so there is no complete list of games which will run. You can however find databases which will give you some idea of how a game will perform at the Cedega Games Database and Wine Application Database. Some notable working games include World of Warcraft, Civ IV, and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Where can I get support?
Wine and Cedega’s website offer a lot of help on getting hold of and using each of them. The linuX gamer’s community forum has a board specifically for Wine and Cedega, and other more general linux forums such as Linux Questions are also often willing to help. If you ask a question here I’ll try my best to help find the answer, but I’m far from an expert on this topic.
Over To You…
Anything I’ve obviously missed from this guide?
Do you use Wine, Cedega, neither or even both? How useful do you find them?
Any tips for new Linux gamers?
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29th January 2008
I was subscribed to Cedega for a while and had a lot of success with getting games to work on it. True there were still quite a few I didn’t manage to coax into working but in general it was worth it, I only stopped when coursework started demanding more time and I couldn’t afford to pay for something I was hardly using.
Similarly I’ve had a lot of good experiences with Wine and it’s given me about as large a percentage of working games.
I would suggest that anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to consider Cedega as their interface is (or at least was last year) very easy to use and configure and if something doesn’t work on a game that is supposedly working you have paid people so you can demand they find the problem
29th January 2008
Hopefully PlayOnLinux will make it easier for people choosing to use Wine.
You can get the latest CVS release of Cedega for free too, but it won’t necessarily be working when you export it, and you have to compile it yourself.