stupid question

[ricamortiss]

ok, i had win 98 se...i then upgraded to win xp...i then downgraded back to win 98 se...now i am soooo sick of bill gates and his fuk up of a system that i am thinking of going to mandrake linux...i have been told it is the easiest to learn...my stupid question is...can i still play my games that i have paid over $500 for???...i assume that when it says "system requirements windows 95 or higher" that that means *YOU NEED WINDOWS TO PLAY THIS GAME!!!*...am i stupid, or am i just plain wrong???...

[pkd_lives]

When a game states it needs wimdows, then that is indeed what it needs. There are Linux Native versions of games about. Quake 2 for example and UT2003 has a linux native version. For preference try these. However to run your old games you can try an emulation programe called Wine, which has reported good results, and there is a newer version that reportedly emulates the DirectX as well. The rule of thumb seems to be that if it unses DirectX then you will have dificulty using it on Wine.

Games are a sore point in the Linux community because manufacturers will not release Linux versions because of the small market, and will only write for the big market already in existence. So many people are dual booting until Linux games are made available, at which point a large number of people on this site will probably drop Windows forever.

[Calum]

you are very right. windows is technically needed to play those games. the good news is that mandrake and many other top of the line linux distributions will install themselves on your computer without disrupting your windows installation at all, meaning that when you switch on, you'll get the choice of using windows or linux. You can utilise this feature to use windows for only your games, and find out how to use linux for everything else.

Also, you'll be heartened to know there are quite a few ongoing projects to enable windows to be emulated, or to enable windows programs to run 'natively' in linux. most notable of these are WineX, win4lin, VMWare and wine. only the last of these is free, the rest all having different proprietary costs.

Welcome to the fold, and do ask questions if you need to!  

[emh]

Wine is located here:

http://www.winehq.com

WineX is located here:

http://www.transgaming.com

Transgaming has a database of games that are reported to work with WineX, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your games won't work if it's not listed.  The only way to know for sure is to try it.

[ricamortiss]

thanks fellas,
that is excellant...im not sure if i will run both windows and linux, as callum stated, or if i will try this "wine"...but i just read the "wine" page and it states that it is for win32 system. as i am pc illiterate, is that the same as fat32?

[rtgwbmsr]

FAT32 is a file system that Windows uses.

Win32 describes all programs that run natively in Windows.