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It's hardly 'mind blowing'.

Ubuntu + wine comes nowhere near the performance of windows, and you call that mind blowing?

Don't get me wrong, i only use linux (opensuse) and i think wine is a great program, but it simply sucks for games.

Ubuntu + wine comes nowhere near the performance of windows, and you call that mind blowing?

Because:

a) This benchmark is done using 3D mark which is a windows application running on Linux through a 3rd party compatibility layer (not developed by Microsoft) which was eventually put together after years of hacking and reverse engineering. The simple fact that games do run is mind blowing all by itself. And then, as a final demonstration of supremacy, Linux even surpasses Windows XP in the CPU benchmarks. And all this running though a compatibility layer. Which leads to...

B) What if this benchmark had been done using a native Linux port of 3D Mark, running OpenGL instead of DirectX, and the drivers available on Linux where given the same amount of polish and care as the ones found Windows. What then? World domination?

It is an extremely outdated Benchmark and thus the results are meaningless. You will not succeed getting gamers to use Linux by saying "hey, you can play those games from 2000 now!". By the time Wine will run 2007 games we will have 2020.

Screw wine gaming... what we need is native ports! It's about damn time we have' em if you ask me....

It may be that long before we can rull all 2007 games reliably without thinking about it, but plenty of such games run now. Command and Conquer 3 is working great. STALKER is almost there. Slightly older stuff like Far Cry, Prey, Grand Theft Auto: SA, Warcraft 3, WoW etc all run fine.

Heck, I can even join a game in the Crysis beta and see my surroundings. It's basically unplayable (as per your point) but this game is a graphical beast, and it sorta runs without even being released yet.

I think Wine is slowly getting there. Even more so with regular apps. WinMX, WinRAR, TMPGenc, Deep Exploration, etc etc. I can run almost any app from my old programs directory and it works, getting better with each release.

Sure, native apps are the way to go, and Wine will bever get there (in terms of being "done") but it isn't as bad as all that.

And besides, games from 2000 aren't all that bad Deus Ex (which runs just fine) is still my favorite game ever. I'm quite happy being able to play it even if I can't play Lost Planet or whatever blingfest came out last week.

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I believe you are misunderstanding the meaning of the post. Considering that we are talking Windows games, optimized for "real" Windows, being benchmarked on an OSS platform which has not received any assistance from MS or the game vendors, I'd say the results are, well, perhaps not mindblowing, but impressive. Years ago, (pre-Unreal Tournament) I got the original "Unreal" going under the (then current) version of wine. It ran perfectly. I played the game through twice, which represents *many* hours of play, and I believe I had *one* crash during that whole time. I did not do formal benchmarks, as I have not run Windows in years, but comparing my results with those of Voodoo3 owners on comparable hardware and Win98, my numbers actually came out about the same or slightly *better*.

But then, you were not really wanting a reasoned response, were you, your provocatively worded post having little constructive value?

Well, these are by no means cutting edge games, but I use WINE to run StarCraft and WarCraft 3. I cannot run them smoothly in Vista for some reason, and yet they run really nicely in WINE.

Specifically, Warcraft 3 is really laggy at times at 1024x768 in Vista but runs smashingly at the same res in WINE.

What does it mean? Who knows.

Your Results May Vary.

This doesn't suprise me. We found running several apps under wine was usefully faster than on Windows alone. It is amazing and a great demonstration of open source engineering.

Well done, I say. Microsoft, take note.

well consider the fact that some of the benchmarks run at half speed on ubuntu with wine. Yes Vista is slightly slower than XP on older games but cedega still doesn't get anywhere near the native direct x implementation. Oh and on top of that Cedega has no change of running direct x 10+ games ... so comparison of the proposed configurations is completely pointless. Get over it direct x was designed for windows and if you want to use programs that have implemented it you HAVE TO use the OS as well. The problem with linux is not that direct x games run slower than on windows ( or don't run at all ). The problem is that the few OpenGL games that exist hardly run on linux and even when they do the performance is horrible compared to windows. Now that is something to rave about ... but I guess that's what you get when you use ancient drivers ...

The problem is that the few OpenGL games that exist hardly run on linux and even when they do the performance is horrible compared to windows.

Might want to be careful with blanket statements like that. Take the Unreal family for example: On older systems it used to run better on Linux than on Windows, and there's virtually no difference at all on newer systems.

I could add 40tude Dialog newsreader to that list. Beside being a PC gamer I am addicted to Usenet in good old "client" way. IMHO there is no really comparable newsreader in Linux environment to Dialog. Claws Mail is good in functions and scoring, but is also very slow and cannot handle more than 10.000 articles in one newsgroup, even on my 3200 Pentium in EMT64 mode.

Pan is fast and somehow similar to Dialog, but falls behind in scoring mechanisms.

Dialog runs almost acceptable under Wine, but there are still some issues, especially width windows resizing and some other stuff.

I did not try to run Dialog on latest Wine, but I have experiences width one from Ubuntu 7.04 repos.

I know that feeling of really wanting to use your favorite app, but i have given up on that a long time ago and now just use the available Linux alternatives.

I could live without games on Linux, but there are some apps that i need that don't have any Linux alternative at all and none of those runs usable in Wine and i stopped believing they ever will.

I could live without games on Linux, but there are some apps that i need that don't have any Linux alternative at all and none of those runs usable in Wine and i stopped believing they ever will.

You haven't even named these apps, and I'm guessing you haven't even filed bugs. How are wine developers supposed to help you out?

Simply not true, I've had my far share of games running in WINE just great, the point being they are playable and thats the goal. Tomb Raider Anniversary(picking one for example) plays just about flawless and smooth.

That's because once you get above 30 FPS, it doesn't matter much anymore, and above 60 FPS people can't even tell the difference. A game running at 200 FPS will not appear smoother than one running at 100 FPS...

As a reference, movies are projected at 48 FPS (each frame is shown twice) and no one complains about them being "laggy"...

In other words, as soon as you hit 30 FPS, it's "good enough", and if you get 60 FPS, then it's "as good as it gets".

Thats where *virtually* comes into the game. You wouldn't spend 50$ (or whatever games cost where you live) on a game on the tiny chance that it might probably run playable. Even if it runs on other Distributions doesn't even give you the certainty that it will run on your Distribution. Even the games that have a Platinum rating on winehq often don't run, because they where only tested with pirated copies. Diablo 3 for example only runs in pirated version.

Not that i care that much for games... i'd be happy if the 3d Apps that i need would work.

I'm curious, what would replace Photoshop. The GIMP although a good program by itself is no way a replacement for photoshop.

It's good enough for the person who comes and buys a computer with Ubuntu on it, Photoshop is way to advanced for them. The GIMP is a image editor that dont get enough credit for what it does.

Photoshop is the cool application to have even though they mostly have no clue how to use it's features, if you want to pay £300-£400 on it for cropping photos then got right a head.

Edited 2007-10-21 21:59

That depends on what you are doing with it. I found usability increased a lot with 2.4 and imho will now suffice for most people.

Do you mean the 2.4 release candidates? 2.4 has not been released yet. Improved usability would be quite welcome! :-)

Yes, i use the rc3 and found that those things that made working with gimp so slow are much better now and i didn't had a crash so far. I don't even mind the lots-of-windows interface anymore.

I've been using Pixel for about 6 months now and it's been a good replacement for me. It's not free, but the price is fair, with the added benefit that it's cross-platform and all variants are included in the price. Well worth a look...

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12

5000 dollars? Does that come with a diamond-coated chassis?

You can already have a killer machine for $3000 and below.

What you say about the FPS is very true though, in my experience.

There are no killer applications. "The Killer Application" concept is a myth.

Care to explain that statement some more?

What about things like Dreamweaver, Aperture, Cubase, Cakewalk, Final Cut, ... ?

Care to explain how these are killer applications? Neither of those are use by Joe Average. Sure, they're good applications in their field but neither are used by the majority of computer users.

Ehm, they might be killer applications for that particular target group. If said persons wanted to change to another OS, what software would they switch too?

Indeed, but gamers are a different breed. If it says on the box of the graphics card that the games run better and faster and you die less, they will buy it.

It is the same thing for digital camera users. Here is a site that explains it in camera terms..
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

True, my 5.1 megapixel digital camera creams most 7-8-9-10 megapixel cameras when it comes to image quality

I'm (somewhat) a gamer but I pretty much only play single-player games... yet the visual quality of games when comparing two cards (my 'old' 6600GT 256mb and my new 8800GTS 640mb) is much better; old(er) games tend to play smoother too.

While the 60+ framehunt is pointless indeed, just look at those benchmark results. Those are for *ancient* games, and results are horrible. Now, noone cares if a game runs at 30fps on wine instead of 100fps on Windows, because both mean playable. Now if you take a game that isn't that old, we quite probably are talking 10fps on Wine compared to 30 fps on Windows, and that simply means non-playable on wine but playable on Windows. Also, heavy shader usage quite likely will make those numbers even worse and no one wants to buy a high end Box to play games that you probably can't even buy as budget anymore.

So i can't find any enthusiasm about the fact that the cpu benchmarks came out little better, because that is the one that matters the least these days.

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1. Good games don't rust or rot. Quake 1 is as enjoyable as it ever was.

2. Not all modern games stress modern hardware to the limit. In fact, the vast majority don't.

3. Wine's performance on modern games is an unknown until someone does some benchmarks. I would be hesitant to guess at the results.

No one is claiming that Wine is a hardcore gamer's dream come true. All it has to be is good enough to let most people play most of the games they want to play.

Which means, from a compatibility standpoint, that Cedega is probably a better choice than vanilla Wine for gaming. On that note, does anyone have a comparison of Cedega vs vanilla Wine's performance? Is there any difference?

"1. Good games don't rust or rot. Quake 1 is as enjoyable as it ever was."

True... I was running Prince of Persia 1 under Wine yesterday. Lots of fun even though once in a while there are some small lighting/clipping problems; this plays near-perfect. As well as Secret Files Tunguska; which plays perfect.

"2. Not all modern games stress modern hardware to the limit. In fact, the vast majority don't."

A couple do though, at least if you want the best quality.

"3. Wine's performance on modern games is an unknown until someone does some benchmarks. I would be hesitant to guess at the results."

I would not call the Phoronix tests much of a benchmark either... it's more of an 'indication' for me.

"No one is claiming that Wine is a hardcore gamer's dream come true. All it has to be is good enough to let most people play most of the games they want to play."

True this. As for me, I mostly play Adventure games, which generally do not need lotsa Oomph in the hardware.

"Which means, from a compatibility standpoint, that Cedega is probably a better choice than vanilla Wine for gaming. On that note, does anyone have a comparison of Cedega vs vanilla Wine's performance? Is there any difference?"

This would be interesting, I agree.

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I just recently had a lot of fun with "Flight of the Amazon Queen" and "Beneath a Steel Sky". Oldies but goodies which run under the OSS ScummVM engine and which have distributable game data. Very clever and witty little adventure games.[1] And they were new to me! :-)

The engine and game data are available for Fedora and Ubuntu from the usual repos, and no doubt other distros include them, as well. Enjoy! :-)

[1] Some of the puzzles are really tough, though!

true, but if you're getting an average of 30fps that probably means it dropped into the noticeable range a handful of times, and that's what you're trying to avoid.

the push for higher and higher FPSes is in reality more of a push to lower the chances of dipping into that noticeable range of <25fps or so.

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the push for higher and higher FPSes is in reality more of a push to lower the chances of dipping into that noticeable range of <25fps or so.
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Seems like an inefficient way to do that. What if the driver was made smarter, so that if a frame takes too long to render, it can back off on quality on the next one to keep the frame rate above 25? That way, the player gets the best quality possible that still keeps the framerate acceptable at all times.