Windows-only games, Conclusion
WINE is a package which provides a compatibility layer for Windows programs, allowing unaltered Windows apps to run under Linux. WineX (now called Cedega) is a modified version of WINE, designed for games and games alone. If you're not cheap, then you can pay for an enhanced version of Cedega from the Transgaming home page for only $5 a month. Or £3 a month, for UK citizens - sufficient badgering means they take Switch, Solo, Electron and Delta now. If you ARE cheap, then you'll need to read this tutorial on making the freely-available source code for Cedega do something useful. Cedega's success rate isn't 100%, but it certainly enables more games than without. Transgaming's website has a list of supported games, which should be considered a starting point rather than certain.First, some packages we'll need to make Cedega compile properly. "apt-get install cvs build-essential bison flex-old libasound2-dev x-window-system-dev libpng12-dev libjpg62-dev libfreetype6-dev libxrender-dev libttf2 libttf-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev msttcorefonts libfontconfig1-dev" should do it, with any luck.
That should take a fair while on any connection. Next, we need to get ahold of the Cedega source, and compile it. A nice gentleman called ElmerFudd has created an ingenious script, which will do all the hard work for you, and has stuck it up on his website. The version I used is for the old version of Cedega, WineX - screenshots will all reference this. Save the script somewhere, and run it with "sh WineCVS.sh" so it can work its mojo. When it's done, run "cvscedega" once to do all necessary first-time configuration - just hit enter a few times, defaults are fine.
Okay, time to install Steam! Before you start, remember that Steam is a constantly evolving product - it is constantly changing, and as many users will bear witness, it constantly updates and breaks. This is felt even more strongly on Cedega, where a simple update can completely break the program, until a Cedega update is released. The screens below illustrate it working fine at a point when it worked fine, but that isn't at ALL times. At time of posting, retail Cedega ran Steam fine, the CVS instructions (below) did not.
First, Change to the folder with the Steam installer (I have the original 600k installer, I'll be using that), and run it with Cedega - "cvscedega steaminstaller.exe". When the installer is done, it will automatically run Steam. You can run it again in future by running "cvscedega STEAM.exe" from in the install folder (probably ~/c/Program Files/Steam). It won't be pretty, as some fonts are messed up. Obtain from somewhere (e.g. a real Windows CD) the fonts tahoma.ttf and marlett.ttf, and place them in ~/c/windows/Fonts to fix the fonts. You can also make a quick change to the WineX configuration file to speed up the games, and remove the Gnome window handles: open ~/.cvscedega/config with an editor such as nano, and disable Freetype and Managed Windows on Steam:
Run Steam again; fonts and decorations are fixed:
Note that the free version of Cedega doesn't like InstallShield or copy protection much.
That pretty much sums up this series of articles. Go out and experiment - try another window manager, play about with applications and settings, try different games, learn all the intricate commands. Feel free to discuss any Debian queries or Linux issues in general, on our IRC channel #HEXUS.net on Quakenet, or in our Operating Systems forum.
Have fun exploring Linux!
I'd like to thank the members of #debian and #cedega on Freenode, Epic for Linux UT2004, Asus for the 9800XT, ElmerFudd, linuX-gamers.net and Flavio Stanchina
