Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrmondo | Hacker News Reader

Took the words out of my mouth. It's saved me from having to install complex or insecure VMs or additional machines so many times I can't count. I also enjoy using it to bundle applications usable on Linux and MacOS that otherwise were locked in to windows.

View on HN

It's also a godsend for gaming on Linux. As long as you take a peek at the wine appdb page for the game you're trying to run beforehand, they usually work great and with pretty good performances.

Though granted the games I play tend not to be cutting edge (but for example, Skyrim with a large texture pack and a full, heavy mod conversion such as Enderal works perfectly and with CSMT, with performances roughly equal to Windows).

> It's also a godsend for windows gaming on Linux

here FTFY.

Are you implying that having access to Windows games on Linux does not improve gaming on Linux?

I believe he's saying that gaming on Linux today goes far beyond Wine, given numerous high profile games have been ported to Linux recently (in a large part thanks to Unity and Valve's Steam OS push).

Not really far if you count games that sell 1 million+ copies. Right now I'm playing Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Forza Horizon 3 and Resident Evil 7. And Hearthstone. Haven't seen a game that I would enjoy released on linux in ages. Even new Doom didn't get a Linux release, id software gave up.

I believe they skipped Linux because Doom uses some Windows-specific DRM. Even the demo is protected by DRM, and it won't work under wine for that reason. So they lost my purchase.

denuvo obfuscation engine has recently been removed from Doom.

I get the impression they never had much interest in Linux ports in the first place, it was mostly just Carmack's interest in the platform that drove it. But now his attention is elsewhere, so they don't have to bother any more.

Indeed; thanks. In my defense, there was a time where both of those roughly meant the same thing ;-)

I'm pretty amazing at the Humble Bundle (DRM-free) and Steam selections for Linux; not just independent titles but some larger ones too.

We've come a long way since Loki ports.

HumbleBundle games for linux have a history of being... suboptimal. Maybe they've improved over the past year, but HB doesn't really have a good method for fixing bugs in releases (unlike Steam).

Keep in mind that some of them are using libwine ;)

I've bought some games (older games from years ago) on gog.com for os x, they were always just running wine

It doesn't really matter if they are though. It means we get "official support" - if something is broken, they are able (and I daresay, maybe even willing !) to look into it.

And DOS-Box. GOG.com Masters of Orion 2 and many older games work great on it.

> "It's saved me from having to install complex or insecure VMs..."

Can you elaborate on this? My intuition is that running an application in a VM provides more security than in wine.

The Linux root is more insulated if your application is in a VM, but running other Windows services broadens the attack surface.

Any problems running Linux in a VM then Wine within that?

Kind of negates the purpose of even using wine. If your running a windows machine to run a Linux VM then you might as well install straight to Windows and not deal with the underpowered VM

>If your running a windows machine to run a Linux VM then you might as well install straight to Windows and not deal with the underpowered VM

Given the context, I don't believe mark-r was talking about using a Windows host for the Linux VM.

Right, I was talking about Linux under Linux.

Also, last time I tried, the virtual graphics cards in the vm were much less powerful than a fully drivered up raw graphics card even on Linux, unless I was doing something wrong?

I assume Windows in the VM would have the same problem. I guess that would be the biggest reason for avoiding a VM, if you're trying to run a game.

This has actually changed. A friend of mine plays all modern games with sometimes even better FPS using the PCI passthrough in QEMU[1], I have to say it's a pretty impressive setup and I've played Witcher 3 with Arch Linux + QEMU + Windows 7, solid 60fps with ultra graphics.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...

Very bookmarked!

I've never tried this, but I know that Wine doesn't use VT-x so I think it would work better than nested VMs.

I don't know how much sandboxing Wine provides, so it might not be necessary to do this.

I was asking because the parent post seemed to be concerned about untrusted Windows binaries. A VM gives you the ultimate sandbox (even if it's not perfect).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com