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I will buy a new computer and install Kubuntu on it. The only kind of software that I would run on Windows are PC games. Can I play most of Windows games without problems with Wine on Linux?

If Wine cannot run games, how much of disk partition is recommended to install Windows and PC games? Can Windows read ext4 partitions?

5 Answers 5

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In all honesty it highly depends on what kind of games you play, I've played guildwars, world of warcraft and Counter-strike:Source for years on wine and they were fine except minor annoyances here or there.

Your best bet is to check http://appdb.winehq.org/ and decide for yourself.

--edit-- Also if you're going with the windows route, you can perfectly read/write to ntfs in linux using NTFS-3G.

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  • This is the best answer: Look up the games you want on Wine's website. It's pretty much completely random what works. Some games are perfect on Wine and some are unplayable. May 10, 2011 at 5:43
  • I'm not so sure about NTFS-3G. I was sharing my Firefox profile folder between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10, and the next day when I tried to delete the folder, I got a Corrupt Directory error from NTFS, forcing me to run a CheckDisk that fixed quite a few issues. (For the record, I run CheckDisk every few weeks, and I barely get any issues at all -- and I'd never gotten a Corrupt Directory error from Windows before.) I'm not trusting Linux with any NTFS file system anymore... not sure about you.
    – user541686
    May 10, 2011 at 8:12
  • @Mehrdad Did your system shutdown improperly? Sounds like it was corrupted because your Firefox profile was active and didn't get written to disk properly because of a crash.
    – Riguez
    May 10, 2011 at 13:01
  • @Mehrdad I have to admit I don't have windows anymore, however on an old laptop I used to use ntfs-3g to copy files to windows all the time and never had issues.
    – OneOfOne
    May 10, 2011 at 14:41
  • @00101010: Nope, I don't remember shutting it down improperly.
    – user541686
    May 10, 2011 at 17:27
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Gaming Suggestions

If you play lightweight indie games, games that use OpenGL or older DirectX games you should be fine but check for support.

If you play games that use DirectX 9 check and make sure they are supported.

If you play games that use DirectX 10/11 and like to get new releases don't even bother trying.

If you just want to play your games and not be concerned about OS issues or support for that new game that is coming out then use Windows.

Linux Suggestion

You might want to try installing Linux inside Windows so they share the same partition using something like Wubi

You should also consider using a VM running Linux in full screen or with something like VMWare Unity so you can get you Linux applications and not have to reboot the computer constantly.

Partition Suggestions

You can use a 3rd party application in Windows for reading ext4 filesystems here is a write up on some of them... but you would have better luck reading/writing to NTFS from Linux using ntfs-3g so I would recommend you give the majority of the space to the Windows partition and give your Linux partition like 40GB or so depending on what you are doing on it.

If you have a 1/2/3TB HDD then you could partition off like 500GB for Windows/Games and you should be perfectly fine unless you are installing a ton of games.

You can create an NTFS partition for Windows an EXT4 for Linux and a FAT32 mutual partition for sharing files as both systems support it.

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You can run games on Wine. But the performance will not be very good at all. I would suggest partitioning. There is no set limit on the size of the partitions, but you will want to give it a decent amount as some PC games can take up quite a bit of space.

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I would first check to see if the games that you are playing have a Linux port already. This way you could avoid using Wine or Parallels in order to play them.

I haven't had great experience running newer windows games (especially newer FPS titles) through an emulator such as Wine.

As far as partitioning your HDD to dual boot windows and linux, if you are going to be in windows most of the time playing games, I would devote about 60% of the HDD space to windows and the other 40% to your linux installation.

Windows cannot read ext4 partitions AFAIK. Although I do believe that there are a few programs out there that will let you browse the partitions from within windows.

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  • ironically WINE is named as a short-form for Wine Is Not an Emulator .
    – Lincity
    May 10, 2011 at 8:03
  • @Alaukik Oops! Either way I still haven't had great experience using WINE for games.
    – byachna
    May 10, 2011 at 16:47
  • have you tried PlayOnLinux .
    – Lincity
    May 10, 2011 at 16:52
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It depends on on what games you play . First look up the games you play at AppDB . They have various rating levels Platinum being the best and Garbage the worst .

You should also take a look at PlayOnLinux , it supports a large amount of games and provides easy instalation for those games . It also allows to to run multiple versions of wine simultaneously . this is quite important since a game might be platinum in wine 1.3.12 but garbage in wine 1.2.3 so it allows you to play maximum number of games with a very easy method of instalation .

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