This may sound competely crazy or could be a good question but either way, my excuse is that I've hardly ever used Linux (SuSE and Knoppix briefly)! My question is ... can you play Windows games (like HL2, Doom 3, etc) on a Linux machine?
Its very unlikely you can play HL2 or Doom 3 on linux, WINE can emulate windows programs and games but it has limitations and most applications do not run very well!
I really depends on the game and whether the developors saw fit to include Linux integration. A few games, noteably UT, can be run out of the box, most of them however will need to run under an emulator such as Cedega which can work very well with some games while others don't run at all. On the other hand there are several free games that are written to be cross-platform (see this thread for some of them). If you want to play Windows games you will need to check if that specific game can be run under Linux though from what I know first-person shooters generally seem to run well.
First of all, Doom3 is a cross-platform game that runs extremely well on Linux, no API emulation necessary. As for Windows games on Linux, you can run many at native speeds by using Cedega. For instance, Warcraft 3 actually runs faster on Linux than it does in Windows, for some reason. And World of Warcraft is reported to run just as well in Cedega as it does in Windows (no faster no slower). You can play HL2 in Cedega, but I can verify that even on a very high-end system it doesn't run as fast as it would in Windows on the same hardware (due to heavy use of DirectX-specific shaders, more emulation means slower performance). Even so, it's still playable. That being said, some games don't run at all in Cedega or WINE. You can check out the Cedega games compatibility list here. No matter what, it's always best to prefer native applications which were written for Linux in the first place. Of course they're going to run better than partially emulated applications. -AT
WINE is good for many apps, but Cedega has far superior sound & 3D support for commercial games. It's definately worth the $15 or whatever.
Don't forget Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Cross-platform and free. Can't beat it! Make sure you don't have an ATI video card if you want to be gaming on a linux box. ATI's not done much for linux driver support.
Yeah, it's pretty nice. That's the way I played and beat it.... UT2004 is also native Linux and I'm pretty sure that HL2 is officially supported by Cedega now. Check this out http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/ That is Cedega's list of games... the one's with the stars beside them are officially supported. Even if they aren't officially supported, it doesn't mean they wont work. A lot of the games have user reviews which would help out quite a bit when Transgaming didn't design Cedega specifically for the game.
