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Windows games
and programs
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Games
• There is a wide range of games for
Linux, both commercial and non-
commercial ones
• Some non-commercial products are of
a very high quality
• Many of them are available directly in
system repositories or via installators
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Humble Bundle
• From time to time, sets of Indie games are sold

• The special offer makes it possible to buy a set of games which

can be installed under Windows, Linux or MacOS for even a
very small fee

• In great majority of cases the games offered are available in

native form, which makes it possible to install and run them as
any other program in Linux

• Information about the project can be found at

http://www.humblebundle.com/
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Game clones
• Various popular games have their counterparts written by fans

– Simutrans (Transport Tycoon Deluxe)

– FreeCraft (Warcraft 1)

– Widelands (The Settlers)

– FreeCiv (Civilization)

– FreeCol (Colonization)

• Some of them, for instance Simutrans, are very extended and are
much more than just copying ideas from original products
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Computer game classics

• Very many popular games have their unofficial
implementations for Linux

• Usually, they require us to have the original copy of a game

because they don't provide files with graphics, sound etc.

• An example of such a solution may be for instance OpenTTD

(Transport Tycoon Deluxe), Pentagram (Ultima 8), OpenRA (C&C: Red
Alert) or OpenMW (TES3: Morrowind)

• A great majority of classic games can be run using a DosBOX

tool, also known in Windows
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Wine
• Unfortunately, most of popular software is prepared with Windows or
MacOS in mind

• Despite its capabilities and increasing popularity, Linux is still omitted

by the leading game developers

• A notable exception is ID Software, which programs its games so that

they can be started and installed on any operating system

• The idea behind Wine is to allow the users to run software intended
for Windows on their Linux systems without modifying it

• Wine is an implementation of Windows API

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Wine (continued)
• Currently, Wine is a very advanced tool which enables starting many games
and applications

• Often these applications work just as well, or even quicker than on Windows

• The full compatibility list is available under the address

http://appdb.winehq.org/

• The database available there includes a set of useful information pieces which
help run some of the more "fussy" applications

• As a default, Wine installs applications in the .wine directory placed in the

user's home directory
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Winetricks
• It's a special script which enables the installation of additional libraries required by the Windows
applications

• Available at the address http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks/

• It greatly facilitates Wine configuration

• The required system component is downloaded and installed semi-automatically on the basis of
commands issued by the user

• We execute the command as follows:

– ./winetricks <list of options separated with spaces>

– options are Windows components to be installed (e.g. corefonts, vcrun2005, vcrun2008, vcrun2010,
directx9 etc.)

• The required options for the given application are often present at WineHQ
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Winetricks (continued)
• Winetricks also enables us to install the chosen applications and games in a
dedicated environment configured especially for this application

• It automates the installation process and doesn't conflict with other installed
applications

• Uninstalling applications also takes place via winetricks!

– After launching winetricks, we should choose the right application from the menu
and subsequently choose the option responsible for removing the program

• Video examples of installations can be found on the project homepage at:

https://code.google.com/p/winetricks/wiki/FeaturedGames
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Playonlinux
• An alternative solution to Winetricks

• It's used to automate the process of installing games and applications for Windows

• The project homepage can be found athttp://www.playonlinux.com/pl/

• Installation on Fedora takes place analogically to the installation of the Flash plugin

– On the page http://rpm.playonlinux.com/, available also from the main project website, we run a
link to the tool that configures the repository (PlayOnLinux_yum-3.3.rpm)

– If the launch doesn't succeed, the file should be saved and then started from the drive as any
other application

– After configuring the repository we can install a package named „playonlinux”

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Playonlinux (continued)
• At the first launch, this tool configures the environment and
automatically gets the necessary libraries and fonts from the Internet

• The application also suggest the installation of icotool and wrestool.

They are located in the icoutils package

• Playonlinux has a rich application database which can be installed

• For each installed application a dedicated environment is created and

the best suited Wine version is downloaded

• Playonlinux also automatically installs all the dependencies required

by the application