Thanks man!
I'm not giving up just yet, but I think a little bit of moaning is to be expected whenever you're doing something fairly difficult :P

For those who were wondering:

Update 1:
Keys split into blocks of 4 characters and shuffled, with the order given in brackets after. Different key in the post window in the screenshot.

Update 3:
Instructions hidden in very faint watermarks (an image editor is strongly recommended)
<span class="bold"> -&gt; Disk Setup &lt;-</span> - Look very closely at the "After:" bar
<span class="bold"> -&gt; Freshly installed desktop &lt;-</span> - Look very closely in the lower left corner, above the launcher button/taskbar panel.

Update 4:
More watermarks
<span class="bold">&gt; Driver Manager &lt;-</span> - Above the Driver Manager window, in the large space within the window behind it.
<span class="bold">-&gt; Software Sources &lt;-</span> - QR code in the space under the "Maintenance" button.

For the System Shock 2 key, each 5-character segment was treated as a base-36 number and converted into base-10. Recovering the key was simply a case of converting each segment back from base-10 to base-36.

Update 5:
The instructions for ROTT2013 were written in a text file that has been zipped and then uuencoded

Update 7:
More watermarks:
<span class="bold">-&gt; Dolphin (root) &lt;-</span> - Vertically along the tree trunk in the desktop background
<span class="bold">-&gt; Dolphin (removable media) &lt;-</span> - QR code in middle of Dolphin window
<span class="bold">-&gt; Dolphin (set permissions) &lt;-</span> - Along Dolphin's title bar

Update 8:
<span class="bold">-&gt; Tarball &lt;-</span> - Number is encoded using the electronic colour code scheme

Update 9:
Yet more watermarks:
<span class="bold">-&gt; PlayOnLinux &lt;-</span> - Instructions along the bottom of the white area inside the POL window
<span class="bold">-&gt; PlayOnLinux (Manage Wine versions) &lt;-</span> - Inside the task bar, left side

Update 10
<span class="bold">-&gt; CrossOver (Manage Bottles) &lt;-</span> - Scattered watermarks
<span class="bold">-&gt; IrfanView running in CrossOver &lt;-</span> - Colours were set by entering R/G/B values of 255 except for one which was set according to the inverted ASCII value for the character for that colour. The colours that corresponded to a character went in the order R-G-B-R-G-B - to decode simply invert the colours and inspect to get the ASCII values for each character, then convert the resulting values into text.

Update 11
"1 left = 66 A2 8E 90 88 AC"

Code was ASCII shifted by 1 bit to the left. Shifting 1 bit to the right = 33 51 47 48 44 56 = 3QGHDV

Update 12
Keys were split into blocks of 2 characters and shuffled, with the order given in brackets.

Update 14
Codes split up into blocks of 4 characters and placed on a grid in the image. The post says which parts correspond to which code and their order.


Keys still waiting to be claimed:

The Witcher 2:
The Witcher 2:

Holy shit. I didn't expect to win anything from the random drawing. I've never had any luck with those. Thank you, adamhm.

And now I feel extremely tempted to get the Witcher 2 as well, but.. I think that might be too much. I've already won 3 games in this giveaway.

Edit: Nevermind, I was too tempted. I claimed the latter Witcher 2 code.

Just a quick update. I installed Mint and tried some games (PlayOnLinux). Less trouble then last time but enough trouble (for some of my games) to stay on Windows. Perhaps in some years I will try it again. Thanks again for your guides!

Keys still waiting to be claimed:

The Witcher 2:
Setting up software in Wine will always take a bit more effort to set up than on Windows and the amount of extra effort needed will vary - some software will need more than others, and some software won't work at all yet.

e.g. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena run outright in Wine without needing any special settings or redistributables, STALKER: Clear Sky just needs DirectX, STALKER: Call of Pripyat needs DirectX and a DLL override (d3dx11_42 set to 'disable'), other stuff might require .NET, Visual C++ runtimes, PhysX etc.

I keep a text file with lists of redistributables, Wine settings, DLL overrides, registry settings etc. that are needed by various games/other software to make future reinstalls easier. Also one of the nice things about CrossOver is you can make archives of bottles, so reinstallation of software in archived bottles comes down to just clicking the "Add from archive" button and selecting the relevant archive.

What I recommend doing (and do myself) is to run a dual boot setup, using Linux for as much as possible and keeping Windows only for things that strictly need it - gradually phasing out Windows over time as Wine compatibility improves. Also submit compatibility reports for CrossOver/Wine (with as much relevant information as possible), as this is a big part of helping to improve it. As Wine improves more things will work & will require less effort to get running.

Out of curiosity, which games were you trying to run?

For example:
I tried to get Guild Wars 2 working (Got it working after some troubles. Problem was that the performance was really bad compared to run it on Windows).
Gothic 3 (retail version): I gave up. I read some Wiki on german about it but I need 3 patches for Wine and some more tweaking to get it starting and a lot more to get away graphic problems. Too much trouble for me.
The games from GOG with Linux installers worked good/great.

Dual boot is an option but why should I do it if I can use Windows for the rest too. For me it is: All or nothing.

I'm planning to install the last Mint KDE on a 2 years old laptop - Lenovo e531, are there any pitfalls that I should watch for, because 3 years ago a friend of mine installed one of the major distros (can't remember which one - Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora) on a new Asus machine (the first I saw with UEFI, which caused some problems on some distros), and the result was a fault in a fan that led to overheating and the uninstall of the OS?

If you figure this out let me know. I'm still having issues with my GPU fan spinning up far too much on, ironically enough, an Asus desktop running Mint KDE.

I haven't played around with Linux nearly as much as I'd like due to this (and worrying about any corresponding heat issues). While my temperatures seem okay, I don't like the "stress" of that fan constantly sounding like it's going for lift off on simple tasks. It does spin down, but as soon as I do something as simple as, say scroll down on a GoG forum page it screams back to life for a good 15 seconds or more.

Which fan?

Is your card an Nvidia with Optimus support and do you have another inegrated Intel GPU beside it?

Well overspinning is better than not spinning at all, by faulty fan I meant it stopped working and my friend was "Omg why this is so hot" after 10 min of normal usage - the laptop was totally unusable. I think it was either Ubuntu or Suse, one of them worked like a charm but the other had this nasty issue, that was most likely caused by bad motherboard driver.
Probably the main one - on the power (haven't really opened a notebook myself).

There should exist a WinBox for games.
Passing to Linux would be 80% easier.

I'm not sure if Wine and PoL are enough..
Btw, is there a list of incompatible games and programs?

EDIT:
ah maybe directly on WineHq site here.

Just to make sure, your friend's fan was working fine prior and during the installation? Were you sure it wasn't physical malfunction unrelated to the OS and the drivers?

What you described is extremely rare occurence (this is the first one I've heard of) and as you said it happened 3 years ago, so I don't think you have anything to worry about, things have changed rapidly when it comes to Linux in the last few years. Also, not every distro can be considered equaly reliable, but sticking to most recommended ones should give you fine results in almost every case.

If you still have doubts, upon first boot install sensors and monitor relevant temperatures and fan speeds.

For the performance issues, try using Wine Staging (Tools --> Manage Wine Versions to download it via POL). Configure Wine --> Staging --> "Enable_CSMT for better graphic performance". This won't help with all cases, but looking at the reports on WineHQ's AppDB I'd say it's likely to make a big difference with GW2. Also it looks like there was a regression somewhere that caused reduced framerates so you'll probably want to try different versions. GW2 is also officially supported by CrossOver (which uses the CSMT patch by default).

According to WineHQ's AppDB it should be possible to run Gothic 3 without needing any special patches. I only have the GOG version of Gothic 3 but it installed & ran fine just now in CrossOver (which is currently based on Wine version 1.7.25) with no special settings/tweaks required - I only installed the Visual C++ 2005 SP1 runtimes and DirectX (both legacy and modern, although it probably doesn't need both) beforehand. What version of Wine were you trying?


That's fine as long as you're not worried about the spyware/security/privacy concerns, don't mind the direction Microsoft is taking Windows, and keeping yourself locked in to Windows.

The single biggest problem Linux has had is that it's been in a catch-22 situation: Potential users have decided not to use it due to lack of software/compatibility & everything being Windows only, while developers haven't bothered due to lack of users. The end result being that everything has stayed Windows only, Microsoft keeps making decisions that are to the detriment of their users (safe in the knowledge that they can get away with it), and meanwhile people lament the lack of alternatives.

Canonical, Humble Bundle and Valve (amongst others) have done a hell of a lot to improve things on the development/support side recently and Wine has improved greatly, but the userbase also needs to grow in order to attract more interest and support from other developers. This is also partly why I pay for CrossOver... it isn't much (£5-10 a year) but it helps pay for developers to work on Wine development leading to more rapid improvements in compatibility.

This sounds like you have pointers for me. I DON'T know if I have an Optimus card (it's a GTX 460 - the first card I bought when I "got back into" PC gaming and I've been so proud of my choice since - this lil' bugger still plays everything I've thrown at it just as I'd like! I want to upgrade, but don't have the heart to retire my "little engine that could" LOL). If it helps I THINK it's the "second generation" or V2 460.

And yes I'm pretty sure I DO have an integrated Intel GPU. I'm not sure of its specifics. Could this be an issue with my mobo / integrated / GPU "guessing" which to run instead of just forcing the GPU to handle everything? If so I'd love a few ideas on how to just offload everything to the GPU! I was under the impression that if I DO have an integrated GPU it was disabled when I slot the PCIE.

*edit to add : I might try rebooting shortly and seeing if I the integrated chip is disabled in BIOS then firing up Linux - I'd laugh my ass off if this is the simple solution to the problem but please feel free to give advice just in case my fix doesn't work.