68 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|NOV 08 |www.maximumpc.com
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EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USEHOW TO
Tired of the lackluster gaming opportunities on your alternative OS?
Playing your favorite PC titles in Linux is easier than you think! —JEAN-PAUL CONNOCK
Run Windows Games
HOW TO
Run Windows Games
HOW TO
on Linux
A GNU/LINUX INSTALLATION
WITH RECENT KERNEL (2.6x)
Free, http://www.ubuntu.com
WINE Free, installed via Linux or
winehq.org
A PC GAMESUBMIT YOUR IDEA Have a
great idea for a How To project?
Tell us about it by writing to
[email protected].I
t’s OK, Linux users. We understand your pain. Gaming on your open-source platform is, for
the most part, restricted to similarly open-source or freeware titles from independent devel-
opers. You don’t often receive the same love that Windows users enjoy from triple-A game
developers. But your time spent in the dark can now end: We’re going to show you how to play
the latest PC-only titles on your Linux distribution of choice.
We’re using a program called Wine to simplify the process of running Windows-
based games on a Linux platform. Unlike virtualization applications such as VMware,
Wine is not an emulator. An emulator is a wrapper that allows one operating system
to run within another. This wrapper hides the primary OS from its windowed love
child, creating a software bubble for the second OS to play in. Since emulators run
a complete OS within this virtualized bubble, the performance hit can be staggering
and hinders gaming on all but the most powerful PCs.
Wine avoids this problem by implementing a set of routines (or APIs) used by applica-
tions to communicate with Windows. Rather than emulate them, Wine uses a compat-
ibility layer that translates system calls from Windows to Linux and vice versa. If you’re
still confused, relax. You don’t need to understand how it works. You just need to know
that Wine is free and easy to configure and will have you up and gaming in no time!WHAT YOU NEED
TIME = 37 MIN