The Linux Thread

[lost_soul]

Why not use the native version of Doom 3 for Linux? I don't know if it works with the steam version. http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/ You'de probably get better performance. I've got Thief 1 and 2 running pretty well in wine. The only issue is that the game hangs sometimes when you try to click through a movie. I just disabled the movies. Heck, they don't even work at all under my Vista install.

[Baddcog]

Yeah I'll try that. I have a 3 cd set which sucks to load. That's why I've only gotten as far as DR. But I'm trying to gain access to my SVN right now too.

 

Linux won't mount my games HD right now so I gotta shuffle some stuff (In and out of windows boot)

 

-----------

 

How did you instal T2? Not concerned with 1 or even playing T2, but I do want to play some FM's. So I can watch the movie out of zip anyway.

 

I would like to instal System Shock 2 though, I've had it forever but never played it much so it would be fun.

 

----------EDIT.

 

Well, now I am having troubles finding DR to DL. I did it before but jsut 'stumbled' across the solution.

 

And trying to install Doom3, got the file DL'ed and installed from ID, but now I am supposed to mount my dvd player and can't figure that out.

Main issue I have with Linux. You can't just look at a drive and see path like with windows. You have to know how to find the /dev/sdc1 crap.

[lost_soul]

You said you tried to double-click the EXE files on the CDs, but it didn't launch wine. Perhaps your distribution did not configure the desktop to behave like this by default. You can right-click the exe, select properties/open with, and enter wine from there. Unfortunately, dark engine games are a bit of a pain in the behind, because you also need to use

 

"schedtool -a 0x2 -e wine thief2.exe" to launch them if you have a multi-core CPU. This command only runs the game on one core, but you first need to install the schedtool package. I just made a thief.sh script in the game's directory and put that line there. Now I can double-click the file and the game loads. You can also make shortcuts in the menu for the games, but I can't remember how I did that right now.

 

I would also set Wine to mimic Windows 98, or the game installer will fail with the "NT not supported" error. This can be done in applications/wine/configure wine, or by entering winecfg on the command line.

Edited September 18, 2010 by lost_soul

[Baddcog]

I get this when I try to open System shocks setup.exe with Wine

 

 

The file '/media/SYSTEMSHOCK2/setup.exe' is not marked as executable. If this was downloaded or...

 

I did set to 98

============

 

edit

 

I did manage to get DR DL'ed and installed. The windows glitchyness is caused by having visual effects turned on (I thought they were off). They were only on normal though.

Which is fine by me, didn't want them anyway.

[lost_soul]

Yep, sounds like Linux isn't treating it as a Windows executable, but rather trying to launch it as a native one. You can set it to open with wine, or open a terminal, cd to the game directory and type wine setup.exe. Are you using gnome? This can be configured from right-clicking on the exe file. I haven't messed with KDE in at least a year though.

 

I also bound hotkeys to turn on and off the advanced 3d effects. I use the magnifier quite a bit, but I want them off while playing games... so I set shortcuts where ctrl+f2 turns them off and ctrl+f3 enables them. The more I use this system, the more I find things I like. I also set it where ctrl+alt+f1 and ctrl+alt+f6 can change my screen resolution to whatever values I desire. (currently 640x480 and 1280x1024)

[Baddcog]

Sounds cool, I still haven't messed with hotkeys yet.

 

Yeah, gnome.unbuntu 10.4 basically.

 

The .exe's do have a wine icon .

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I tired WinDoors. It installed from the exe on the CD no problem. But SS2 crashes when I try to play.

 

I tried putting the above into the console, with shock2.exe instaed and tried typing in the path, but can't find the right path I guess 'cause it keep saying it can't find it.

[lost_soul]

Your wine directory is usually .wine. It contains a drive_c folder, where the game should be located. Keep in mind that filenames and directories are case-sensitive in Linux, and don't forget that you can use tab-completion.

 

cd ~/.wine/drive_(tab) will give you drive C if that is the only thing named drive_* in the directory for example.

Edited September 19, 2010 by lost_soul

[PranQster]

And trying to install Doom3, got the file DL'ed and installed from ID, but now I am supposed to mount my dvd player and can't figure that out.

Main issue I have with Linux. You can't just look at a drive and see path like with windows. You have to know how to find the /dev/sdc1 crap.

 

Hmmm... I didn't read this whole thread to see which distro and desktop you are using, but will after typing this. In KDE4 desktop on Mandriva, removable media produces a notification when inserted and a choice of how to open it, auto-mounting when you select a choice. The mount point becomes '/media/drive' or '/media/DVDNAME' (DVDNAME being the volume name of the disk).... so it might end up being '/media/Doom3' or something like that.

/dev/sdc1 is a path to an unmounted partition, not the mount point where you can directly access the data. Whereas, a device such as /dev/hda1 translates to '(device) hard disk a, partition 1', and /dev/hdb2 would be '(device) hard disk b, partition 2. /dev/sdc1 would be '(device) scsi device c, partition 1'. Once given a mount point, such as '/media/disk' or '/mnt/cdrom', the data can be accessed there.

 

No need to worry about the UNmounted device partition path such as /dev/sdc1, etc... that's mostly handy for tasks such as formatting/managing partitions, or doing an ntfsundelete on a windows drive to recover deleted files.

 

[PranQster]

Yep, sounds like Linux isn't treating it as a Windows executable, but rather trying to launch it as a native one. You can set it to open with wine, or open a terminal, cd to the game directory and type wine setup.exe. Are you using gnome? This can be configured from right-clicking on the exe file. I haven't messed with KDE in at least a year though.

 

Yeah, in KDE, it is like this: Right-click the .exe file and choose "Open With..." then you can type 'wine' (or browse to the wine binary) and check the box for "remember the application association for this type of file". Often for an .exe, there will already be an "open with wine" selection in the context menu when you right-click.

Personally, I prefer to have the terminal panel open on the bottom of dolphin or konqueror (not sure if nautilus can do this). Then I can browse directories graphically as much as I want, but if I want to issue a command I just type it in the console (the console changes directories along with the graphical file manager). This makes it easy to get the best of both worlds... easy of a point-click gui file manager with the power of the console.

 

Another thing I do is to make a symbolic link to the '~/.wine/drive_c' directory directly in my home directory, naming it 'Wine'... either 1 click on it or a 'cd ~/Wine' takes me right to the drive_c. (plus it is not a hidden directory)

[PranQster]

"schedtool -a 0x2 -e wine thief2.exe" to launch them if you have a multi-core CPU. This command only runs the game on one core, but you first need to install the schedtool package. I just made a thief.sh script in the game's directory and put that line there. Now I can double-click the file and the game loads. You can also make shortcuts in the menu for the games, but I can't remember how I did that right now.

 

Edit: oops I guess I should type something before I reply.

 

That schedtool command looks much easier than what I do, I'll have to try it. Instead of doing that, I have been issuing a command to actually disable all but one cpu core before running wine, then the command to turn the other cores back on after wine exits. It works, but it requires root access so I need to run the command in a terminal with sudo and supply my sudo password each time the cores get:

disabled

 

#!/bin/bash
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

 

enabled

 

#!/bin/bash
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

 

 

Also, if you use an nvidia card, be sure to run nvidia-settings and disable antialiasing, or at least set it to 'Enhance application settings', before running thief or thief2. Having it set to "override application settings' will cause thief and thief2 to display a blank screen and become unresponsive. My only ways out of that were to type 'ALT-F2' (KDE) for the 'run' dialog (still hidden by thief blank screen), and blindly type 'killall Thief2.exe'. The other way is to use CTRL-ALT-F3 to drop to terminal 3 and login as myself and then issue the 'killall Thief2.exe' command, then 'exit' to log out of the terminal 3, then CTRL-ALT-F7 (or sometimes F8) to get back to the desktop.

Edited September 20, 2010 by PranQster

[snobel]

"schedtool -a 0x2 -e wine thief2.exe" to launch them if you have a multi-core CPU.

An alternative is to use taskset, e.g. "taskset -c 0 wine thief2.exe" to run it on core 0. The benefit (on Ubuntu at least) is that you don't need to install an additional package to use it.