Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Wine vs Native vs Virtual Machine

Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
As a brand new (5 months?) Linux user I have a pretty good experience with MINT that resurrecetd my old laptop (1,7 Ghz, 2 Ghz Ram), with LXDE is fast as hell and couldn't image better OS for my current work needs. It's stabel, doesn't crash, doesn't get slow under the flow of time (shut-down still last no more than 4-5 sec, fukken wow). In short, there won't be any Windowz on this comp, period.

...but gaming sux ass :( Emulators are ok, some of them works somehow better then on Windows (PPSSPP!) but I mean proper PC games. I've heard before many good thing about WINE, mainly for it's performance since it's not an emulator, I had hopes that old games (released 'till 2001) would be playable with no problem and I was wrong e.g. Tiberian Sun has massive slowdowns, Red Alert 2 runs on speed of 10 fps and some games cannot even start without desktop emulation turn on.

And I've read somewhere that some native linux apps runs WORSE than they WINED-Windows counterparts e.g. pSX emulator! WTF?

So, out of your linux experience, what's best / most reliable way to play on this OS? Seeking for native stuff, Wine or maybe Virtual Machine with Win'98 installed?
 

Khorne

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 11, 2015
Messages
238
You need proprietary gpu driver, also known as a "blob" to get anywhere near native win32 performance with wine directx and dwrite.
Virtuals need gpu passthrough for proper acceleration, wine normally does not. But in any case, open drivers are currently only good for 2d.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Also make sure you actually have the newest WINE version.

Then it's basically the question of fiddling around, installing right winetricks, etc. - for example I can currently run modded Skyrim (basically exact mod setup I use on my Win7 desktop, including SKSE) with no major problems* on my Mint laptop, but I had to set it up as XP application, otherwise I couldn't get it to capture input.

Minor problems include rare freezes, incredibly slow initial startup (around 10', in-game loading times are perfectly normal), occasional stuck movement keys (readily remediated by pressing them again, not much of an issue as long as block and attack are working reliably), and infamous opaue water bug which is a driver issue and not linux specific.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
git gud, use winehq to check the app and specific wineprefixes to install things with winetricks.

or use playonlinux and it's outdated scripts using specific ancient versions of wine it downloads per broken app.

As for emulators running worse, it's pretty easy to check. Is the main pushed renderer opengl or directx? If directx -> devs don't care about linux -> pass. Is the interface missing features because it's not crossplatform? -> pass.

Desmume for example is one of these, where the main dev mostly doesn't test on linux as exemplified by it not reading roms in zip files on the ubuntu version (because the package dependency is missing and he doesn't care and apparently the maintainer doesn't either). Or that the microphone function of the DS had to be added 3 years later. Or most genesis emulators, that although they work, haven't been recompiled in years and need deprecated dlls (and only use ips patches in hidden ~ dirs in a stunning display of bad design instead of reading from zips with the rom). Psx emulation is in a bad state as you can tell, retroarch is the only sane option and that isn't very sane either (unzipping roms to /tmp to play? lel). Although epsxe 2.0 is probably coming out soon for linux so it might work for a while until one of its dlls gets deprecated (it's closed source).

Dolphin/PCSX2/PPSSPP work very well (unified UI without retarded multiemulator frontends that miss features or make them impossible, good opengl renderers, still recompiled regularly).
retroarch is the best option to find 'working' emulators for other systems since they compile their forks of them, but of course it's hell to configure and misses features that the programming interface they use doesn't cover (because it's a retarded multiemulator frontend).
 
Last edited:

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
Cd3bYWxUEAAoytS.jpg:large
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
or use playonlinux and it's outdated scripts using specific ancient versions of wine it downloads per broken app.

I'm using it as primary step, if it doesn't help or crashes (e.g. with NOLF1) then I'm trying 'pure' WINE.

As for WineHQ, I've tried all thier solutions for Tiberian Sun and speedup is barely noticable so I wonder if installing Win'98 on VM would bring much better performance?
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Possibly. It's not really common but some games do work better in vms (or their cracks, if you're using a pirate copy).
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Oh and you can use mame very well with qmc2 (it's a frontend specific to mame).
As a aside, Mame is a pretty interesting emulator because it attempts to deduplicate game/rom data inside of arcade games so its 'roms' are actually 'sets' that can be re-utilized in other versions of the game (or even different games entirely) and they get updated every so often (bad dumps, etc). So it can actually be kinda hard to manage roms for it without a sophisticated frontend (which qmc2 is)
 

Mr. Pink

Travelling Gourmand, Crab Specialist
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Messages
3,042
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Is there a reason why you can't dual boot? I have a lot of trouble with Play4Linux being buggy when playing older games with 16 bit color like SMAC.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
Possibly. It's not really common but some games do work better in vms (or their cracks, if you're using a pirate copy).
Step 1. for games on Linux Always use cracks or GOG versions.
Step 2. user native GFX drivers.
Step 3. Write letter to Creative to force them to release documentation to allow support of theirs sound cards on Linux.
Step 4. Look at list of games that doesn't work on Linux, and dual boot into pirated copy of W7.
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
Is there a reason why you can't dual boot?

Only Windows available for me now is Win10. He doesn't like Linux, can't recognize Linux and is not recognized by Linux even with FastBoot turned off. I appreciate Win10 is also a pretty good way to bring new life into old PC but it's nowhere near Linux with LXDE in terms of speed.

Works fine here on wine 1.9.5

What are your system specs?
I have the same freeware pack of TS + Firestorm.
 
Last edited:

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
Patron
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
18,651
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I like a nice Cabernet Sauvignon with a steak and blue cheese sauce.

Oh, you faggots are taling about hipsterOS. :decline:
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium II

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Messages
1,866,227
Location
Third World
retroarch is the best option to find 'working' emulators for other systems since they compile their forks of them, but of course it's hell to configure and misses features that the programming interface they use doesn't cover (because it's a retarded multiemulator frontend).
What missing features?
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
retroarch is the best option to find 'working' emulators for other systems since they compile their forks of them, but of course it's hell to configure and misses features that the programming interface they use doesn't cover (because it's a retarded multiemulator frontend).
What missing features?

Mmmm, the more complex features of a emulator that interact with external input. For example, last time i tried it, this is how retroarch implemented zipped roms in desmume:
it decompressed the whole rom into /tmp.

This is because desmume is broken in linux. Although it's supposed to support this internally, it doesn't because the required library is not packaged in many distros. Instead of fixing this, retroarch came up with this (slower, hardrive trashing) workaround.

I'm not even against pulling features out of a emulator and into the multiemulator interface, but i'd like it done consistently like in cdemu. If every psx emulator for example used its interfaces for getting a inputstream to a iso instead of insisting in reimplementing the wheel life would be considerably easier (cdemu has support for a great deal of compressed iso formats including the psx specific .ecm with rar/7z/zip on top). Or ips support etc.

Or for example the arcane configuration of wii-controllers on keyboards, things like that that are so domain specific there is no way in hell a cmd line emulator interface + retroarch is ready to make simple. Another example is advanced controller/keyboard macros. For example, dolphin has the capability to make a button always be pressed for the game unless you press it per game(useful to always run on Resident Evil). Zsnes can configure a sequence of buttons into a single one, etc.
Retroarch is assuming that it can always use a console specific controller for the right emulator. If you're not in this usecase, you're in config hell and forget about advanced features.
 
Last edited:

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I've been suggesting a new container format (like wav) for roms for a long time. Many emulators don't even bother to have ips softpatching support or do it very badly (ie: placing the ips files in weird places).

Since soft-patching at runtime is complicated (for large files at least), can be easily done by reversing the equation. Hardpatch and keep the reversion patch as a header/footer to the new container format.

You could add stuff like manuals, images, compression(maybe this can be external), multidiscs to this fileformat, and upgrading the patch could be done by the tool itself (decompress, apply revert, duplicate file, apply new patch, create revert, create new, compress, delete trash).

This would prevent the need of having ips/whatever softpatch support at all in any emulator.
 
Last edited:

sullynathan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 22, 2015
Messages
6,473
Location
Not Europe
I am a mac user that has experience with Wine and other virtual machines. I would just recommend finding a way to boot Windows 10 natively on your computer.
 

Konjad

Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2007
Messages
3,930
Location
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Maybe a silly question, but are you certain you have installed DX9 dlls and whatever else the games you want to run under Wine require?
 

Khorne

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 11, 2015
Messages
238
What are your system specs?
I have the same freeware pack of TS + Firestorm.
Specs irrelevant, this game needs one core and 1024 RAM at most.
The slowdown you described normally comes from having background compositing, I'd first reinstall the driver and then try if there's any difference under TWM.
Just get rid of gnome3, compiz, cinnamon etc. wine performs much better under TWM, XFCE or MATE.
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
I have LXDE, lightest GE I've tested (maybe Razor QT was faster a bit) so it's not its fault. Reducing res too 640x480 and lowering details have reduced slowdowns but still, processor is working with full power. My old P200 32RAM manage to run it better 17 years ago.

Now I've read many Linuxers suffer the same problem with RE2/TS, all solutions are useless for most of them, they advice to wait for Linux OpenRa edition of these games.

BTW what's TWM?

Maybe a silly question, but are you certain you have installed DX9 dlls and whatever else the games you want to run under Wine require?

These are old titles, dunno what them may need beyond DirectX? Ironically, modern games like FEAR run without problem (except being slow but it's due to low hardware specs).
 

Severian Silk

Guest
I've been suggesting a new container format (like wav) for roms for a long time. Many emulators don't even bother to have ips softpatching support or do it very badly (ie: placing the ips files in weird places).

Since soft-patching at runtime is complicated (for large files at least), can be easily done by reversing the equation. Hardpatch and keep the reversion patch as a header/footer to the new container format.

You could add stuff like manuals, images, compression(maybe this can be external), multidiscs to this fileformat, and upgrading the patch could be done by the tool itself (decompress, apply revert, duplicate file, apply new patch, create revert, create new, compress, delete trash).

This would prevent the need of having ips/whatever softpatch support at all in any emulator.
Why are you playing all these shit games that require emulators? Play PC games and stop being retards.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Khorne

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 11, 2015
Messages
238
I have LXDE, lightest GE I've tested (maybe Razor QT was faster a bit) so it's not its fault. Reducing res too 640x480 and lowering details have reduced slowdowns but still, processor is working with full power. My old P200 32RAM manage to run it better 17 years ago.

Now I've read many Linuxers suffer the same problem with RE2/TS, all solutions are useless for most of them, they advice to wait for Linux OpenRa edition of these games.

BTW what's TWM?
TWM is a standard lightweight tabbed window manager that comes with xorg package in most distributions.
Anyway, this sounds a lot like radeon to me, maybe you need a proper accelerator? If your proc is doing too much work then you probably lack hardware acceleration.
IF you're on a laptop with dual gpu or something, just forget about it, chinese vendors call it switchable gpu, but is only switchable on windows in most cases.
TBH I just buy hardware that's already been tested, this is the only way to dodge crap drivers that only work in windows and likely the main reason why things just work on my machines.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I see. Some things are lost in the unification I guess.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be a good thing if 'best examples of' features from specific emulators were pulled into retroarch. It would actually be great to have dolphin ! operator to invert button press state or zsnes style macros or to have dolphin's ability to 'reverse' a loadstate (it does it by saving a special one before loading), or a 'rewind' function (possible with multiple continuous savestates) on multiple emulators with a single interface.

However all of these things are in areas that are very coupled to the original emulators. It would be like herding cats to get commits for this upstream that probably wouldn't even be accepted or forking a great deal of the code on all of these emulators (not to mention all the work). It was just predictable as soon as this 'frontend' craze started that the end result would be inferior to standalone configuration.
 
Last edited:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom