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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

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.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  DOSBox with Win 3.11 usually works well for these cases. From what I understand, Microsoft could have totally kept 16bit application compatibility in 64bit Windows, but didn't for some reason. Apparently someone out there even compiled a version of NTVDM that works on Win 10 64-bit using leaked code or something.

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.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
DOSBox with Win 3.11 usually works well for these cases. From what I understand, Microsoft could have totally kept 16bit application compatibility in 64bit Windows, but didn't for some reason. Apparently someone out there even compiled a version of NTVDM that works on Win 10 64-bit using leaked code or something.