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I keep thinking I saw somewhere where you could run a virtual version of windows (I have no idea what that actually means BTW), but it would run at full, and you didn't have to pay for it.

So, if I want to play Witcher 3 and Deus Ex and The Longest Journey Series, which is better? And how do you do the virtual machine?

Running Windows virtual means it running on emulated hardware ie cpu, memory, gpu, network are all faked by the emulator.

To run a virtual version of Window's you'll need VirtualBox and a Window's install disc. There are legal ways to get a version XP for free but for one those games you need at least version 7 64bit.



BTW - Two of those games work in WINE
Deus Ex GOTY http://www.gamersonlinux.com/forum/thre ... post-12553

Dreamfall - The Longest Journey http://www.gamersonlinux.com/forum/thre ... uide.1077/

The main difference between running Windows in a VM and using Wine is this: a VM is harder to set up and uses more system resources but it's reliable. Wine is a stupid hack and is simply not reliable. What it actually does is try to translate Windows system calls to Linux system calls. This often isn't going to work.

In fact most Windows software won't run at all in Wine and much of the stuff that does run works poorly.

An other downside of Wine is that it doesn't work with USB unlike a virtual machine.

Bolle1961 wrote:Another downside of Wine is that it doesn't work with USB unlike a virtual machine.

That's useful to know. I also couldn't find a way to emulate an optical disk in Wine.

Hoser Rob wrote:The main difference between running Windows in a VM and using Wine is this: a VM is harder to set up and uses more system resources but it's reliable. Wine is a stupid hack and is simply not reliable. What it actually does is try to translate Windows system calls to Linux system calls. This often isn't going to work.

In fact most Windows software won't run at all in Wine and much of the stuff that does run works poorly.

Wine is a very useful tool for running old PC games (2005 or earlier). In fact, I would say it's better for that job than a post-XP Windows OS because it's more configurable (particularly with PlayOnLinux).

Will Wine run the latest and greatest commercial Windows software? No

Will Wine run older and open source Windows software with some margin of error? Yes

flatiron wrote:I keep thinking I saw somewhere where you could run a virtual version of windows (I have no idea what that actually means BTW), but it would run at full, and you didn't have to pay for it.

You've got mail. A PM, to be exact.