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That's great news and all. And I salute all the people who have put tremendous time and effort into getting Windows games to run on Linux. Sadly, I gave up, a

That's great news and all. And I salute all the people who have put tremendous time and effort into getting Windows games to run on Linux. Sadly, I gave up, and installed Windows on my PC, entirely replacing Linux. I think I gave Linux gaming a good try. Some of the titles in my catalog had native ports, which generally worked well. Some Windows titles ran under Proton (or Wine) and worked well. (Dear Ester, Valve titles obviously) Other Windows titles had issues, ranging from the minor (glitches: The Witcher 1, GTA IV) to significant (no controller support: BioShock 1). In some cases, as with Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, the original release runs under Proton (no controller support though), but the Special Edition currently has game-breaking issues. And installing mods for Skyrim was going to be even more of a challenge than usual. I was spending more time trying to get things running than actually playing games, so I gave up and switched. Sorry...

metalliqaz 8y ago
For my entire life, I have used Windows on my PC, and accessed Unix and Linux machines via PuTTY. My games and web browsers always just work, as do my programming tasks on the servers. I've never understood why this isn't recommended more. Windows and SSH, it's great!
- lloeki 8y ago
  PuTTY is not a good terminal emulator by any stretch of the imagination. I have only tolerated that setup because of emergency situations.
  - metalliqaz 8y ago
    Fine, use your own. But PuTTY is free and easy to install, and it is enough to open the SSH connection that can then be used to launch any terminal emulator you want.
- stuxnet79 8y ago
  With the new Windows Subsystem for Linux you don't even have to use PuTTY anymore. The new improvements from Microsoft have come close to convincing me to switch back to Microsoft as my daily driver.
  - erikdared 8y ago
    You can actually install OpenSSH natively now: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh/openssh_install_firstuse https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrati...
dleslie 8y ago
Ironically, I find that the older a game gets the more likely it is that I'll get it working on Linux with greater ease than it would be to run it on Windows 10.
- kirion25 8y ago
  This has been my experience as well. Quite a few old games have become buggy or simply unplayable under recent Windows versions, but play fine under Wine. The most common symptom is the game becoming extremely slow on more modern DirectX iterations, which can ironically often be solved by using Wine DLLs.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    There was one very ironic case with an old (1999) game that has been having issues on Win10. A long time ago, I used to run this game on Linux with Wine, and ran into a very similar issue back then, so I made a patch for the game. So I figured I'd try the same patch on Win10, and what do you know - it works. The amusing part is that I don't remember what the patch actually does. I mean, it replaces a bunch of opcodes with NOP, but I have no idea what. I vaguely recall spending a day in IDA Pro to find those bytes, but nothing about the details. The really amusing part is that game developers haven't figured out what the problem is, either, and so my who-knows-what-it-does patch is a semi-officially blessed solution for now: https://steamcommunity.com/app/61500/discussions/0/215439774855125498/?ctp=2#c1319961868328546321 https://steamcommunity.com/app/61500/discussions/0/215439774...
    - dleslie 8y ago
      Such a good series. I didn't really _feel_ it with the third, though.
- innocenat 8y ago
  Funnily, when I was trying to get a 16-bit game to run, my final (and easiest) solution was to SSH to a linux machine, run it under wine, and do X tunneling back to my Windows system. Works like charm.

metalliqaz 8y ago

For my entire life, I have used Windows on my PC, and accessed Unix and Linux machines via PuTTY. My games and web browsers always just work, as do my programming tasks on the servers. I've never understood why this isn't recommended more. Windows and SSH, it's great!

lloeki 8y ago
PuTTY is not a good terminal emulator by any stretch of the imagination. I have only tolerated that setup because of emergency situations.
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  Fine, use your own. But PuTTY is free and easy to install, and it is enough to open the SSH connection that can then be used to launch any terminal emulator you want.
stuxnet79 8y ago
With the new Windows Subsystem for Linux you don't even have to use PuTTY anymore. The new improvements from Microsoft have come close to convincing me to switch back to Microsoft as my daily driver.
- erikdared 8y ago
  You can actually install OpenSSH natively now: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh/openssh_install_firstuse https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrati...

dleslie 8y ago

Ironically, I find that the older a game gets the more likely it is that I'll get it working on Linux with greater ease than it would be to run it on Windows 10.

kirion25 8y ago
This has been my experience as well. Quite a few old games have become buggy or simply unplayable under recent Windows versions, but play fine under Wine. The most common symptom is the game becoming extremely slow on more modern DirectX iterations, which can ironically often be solved by using Wine DLLs.
- int_19h 8y ago
  There was one very ironic case with an old (1999) game that has been having issues on Win10. A long time ago, I used to run this game on Linux with Wine, and ran into a very similar issue back then, so I made a patch for the game. So I figured I'd try the same patch on Win10, and what do you know - it works. The amusing part is that I don't remember what the patch actually does. I mean, it replaces a bunch of opcodes with NOP, but I have no idea what. I vaguely recall spending a day in IDA Pro to find those bytes, but nothing about the details. The really amusing part is that game developers haven't figured out what the problem is, either, and so my who-knows-what-it-does patch is a semi-officially blessed solution for now: https://steamcommunity.com/app/61500/discussions/0/215439774855125498/?ctp=2#c1319961868328546321 https://steamcommunity.com/app/61500/discussions/0/215439774...
  - dleslie 8y ago
    Such a good series. I didn't really _feel_ it with the third, though.
innocenat 8y ago
Funnily, when I was trying to get a 16-bit game to run, my final (and easiest) solution was to SSH to a linux machine, run it under wine, and do X tunneling back to my Windows system. Works like charm.