First of all, I've decided to place this in General discussion as I have the same issue with countless other Windows games, but I will be focusing on Far Cry in particular here.

According to paldepind's GOG games that work on Linux list, which has several hundred likes, many games are listed to run in Wine "flawlessly" and "perfectly", with little more depth to it than that. To my dismay, almost all of these games do NOT work by default in Wine. Also, he suggests Wine for the Gobliiins Pack when ScummVM would be much more appropriate, and on that note, other ScummVM games like Beneath a Steel Sky are absent, which makes me wonder why a list that's incomplete and largely devoid of in-depth information has been so highly rated.

Stating "Wine!" and "Flawless in Wine" doesn't do a heck of a lot of good when your results can vary. I certainly wouldn't suggest users who exclusively run Linux to put too much faith into this list and buy a game expecting with 100% certainty that it will work.


I've had graphical problems in Guilty Gear X2, Painkiller Black refused to go any further than a black screen no matter what I tried, Comanche vs Hokum won't go past the menu screens, Fallout runs a little too slow, Big Race USA causes the graphics to spaz out uncontrollably, Sacrifice was slow and glitchy, Serious Sam had graphical problems, Strategic Command doesn't respond to menu options, Total Annihilation works fine but gives an annoying DirectX error on the title screen, Unreal's results are unpredictable and only seems to work when it feels like it, and so on.

HOMM III (and Chronicles), Baldur's Gate (but not BG II, PS:T, or IWD, and GemRB didn't seem to help), Might and Magic VI (but not VII or VIII), RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe, UFO Aftermath, Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus (but not the cinematics), and Chessmaster 9000 seem to work fine. Obviously, all DOSBox games work flawlessly, so I'm not strapped for games I can run in Linux.

Some non-GOG Windows games that work for me include GoldSrc games like Half-Life, Daikatana, Starcraft (but it's a little slow), Faerie Solitaire, and Dungeons of Dredmor.

No luck with Civ III and IV, Grand Theft Auto III, VC, and SA, Source Engine games like Half-Life 2 and Garry's Mod, Iron Grip Warlord, Morrowind, Mount & Blade, KotOR, Super Meat Boy, Terraria, Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World (which I still haven't even played in Windows yet, as the music doesn't work), Recettear, and Chantelise.

I haven't tried much else outside of that. I use Linux exclusively on my netbook, and use my desktop primarily for playing games in Windows, though I've had mostly the same luck with Linux gaming on my desktop as I have on my netbook.


My netbook is an Asus EEE 1000HE running Linux Mint 10. It's very much capable of handling most of what I've thrown at it, and I've seen on YouTube that it can handle Source Engine and GTA games splendidly in Windows. The burden seems to lie solely on compatibility issues.




Enclosed are some screenshots of what Far Cry looks like on my netbook. Iron Grip Warlord, Recettear and Chantelise, and Guilty Gear X2, off the top of my head, have the same sort of graphical problems. I don't have any of the other problematic games installed on my netbook at the moment (space is limited, and they didn't work, so I uninstalled them), but I can provide more screenshots and try suggestions at request.

I've looked into Wine, but don't use it much since I can dual-boot when I need to. You might want to check http://appdb.winehq.org/ if you haven't already. Search for the game you're looking to run and you can see how much luck others have had, and tips on getting it working.

I'm guessing most games won't just run 'out of the box' in wine... you'll likely have to apply winetricks and whatnot to get them to work.

This might help: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/gog_games_that_are_working_fine_with_linux_wine/page1

But as Nedrix said, its probably best to look up a specific game on winhq first to see how well it works, if there are problems and if someone's come up with a work-around.

Wine compatibility may change between two releases. Just because someone else got game X to run, that's no guarantee that it will run on your setup as well. But winehq is the place to go for any information.

My understanding is that different graphic cards have different levels of stability with Wine. I believe I've seen it mentioned that Nvidia cards tend to be a little more stable for Wine gaming than ATI(AMD) cards - I think because the Nvidia OpenGL drivers are better. I may have gotten that wrong on both counts though.

The Wine for Mac GOGmixes are usually only games that are easy to get working in Wine or they contain the (simple) directions on how to get them working with various settings. Unfortunately with a thread which anyone can post to, quality control is a little difficult to maintain - one reason why I am reluctant to make a similar thread for Mac-Wine despite that I think in general having a central depository of easy to get working games (i.e. plug-'n-play or near to it not requiring complex workarounds) would be a good thing rather than multiple single-user-maintained lists like the current GOGmixes.

I also dual-boot just in case, but I like getting games running under Wine too - when I have the time and energy to spend on it, getting a game working right in Wine is actually kind of fun - when I have the time and energy to spend on it. :) This is true too. @OP You might want to look into a program that allows you to bottle a game in a Wine version (on the Mac I use Wineskin - I am sure there are Linux equivalents) so if you get a game working with that engine you don't have to worry about different games requiring different engines.

Something like this?

Yup :)

Far Cry, Painkiller, Fallout, Sacrifice, Serious Sam, Unreal and Guilty Gear X2 all work perfectly on my machines (Arch Linux, wmii). And I have plenty of them to try them on. There are also plenty of other games that work fine, for example, Beyond Good & Evil and Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

The list has been highly rated because someone went through all those games and tested them on their machine so other Linux users have an indication of what works. And chances are, people have brought them because of the list and also found that they work fine. At least, that was why I voted for it :)

What you have discovered is that computers are complicated and things go wrong.

Your issue might be as simple as your DE of choice trying to keep its cursor on top of all other windows (which your first screenshot actually suggests). I also recall seeing similar graphical issues when the game isn't in the foreground properly.. (again, might be your DE thinking it knows better) or perhaps your machines can't handle hardware cursors at the same time as rendering?

You could try the following:

Running the games windowed (or in a virtual desktop in winecfg).
Disable pixel shaders (winecfg).
Use a non-trytotakeoveryourmachine DE or WM (e.g. Xfce, fluxbox).
Disable any composite effects you have running.

I hope you get to the bottom of the issue. If I can help in any way (or you want me to try a particular GOG to see if it works for me), I'll be happy to.

"Works perfectly" has a bit of a different definition in the Linux world. I've found it to basically mean "may or may not work first try, but it only takes a few small tweaks to get working in the end". A lot of the time no one bothers to mention what those tweaks might be because the number of Linux flavors, software versions, hardware, drivers, etc. would make such a list largely meaningless.

Wine can be hit or miss but most games can be played relatively well with tweaking and the proper hardware. That said, some information would be nice. What version of wine are you running and what Linux distribution?

As others have mentioned winehq is the place to go to see how others faired with running the game.

Here's a link to the Far Cry page...
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=13613

Looking at it I might try using the opengl renderer first off, they mention it in the link.

The screenshots were taken with OpenGL enabled. The results in DirectX were far worse. My distro is Linux Mint 10, and my Wine version is 1.2.2.

I've obviously used winehq and winetricks at this point, but it's been surprisingly unhelpful. I'm not sure if my DirectX is working, as many of the guides I've followed instruct you to launch dxdiag, but it never does anything on any Linux machine running Wine that I've tried it on.

Also, I've installed PlayOnLinux on at least six separate occasions, only to be left wondering what the benefit of it is. When trying to install Vice City, it wanted the CD's, but I wanted to use the Steam version of the game. It accomplished nothing for Half-Life 2. Unless you can specifically tell me what I should do with PlayOnLinux that will benefit me in installing and running Far Cry, I doubt trying again on my own will be at all helpful.

Disabling pixel shaders, running in windowed mode, using GNOME, KDE, and xfce, disabling special effects (I always have them disabled, it's especially important on a netbook) has never been much help. I've already exhausted nearly all of the obvious solutions. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have opened a question here. Maybe there's something to install in winetricks that I've overlooked. Maybe Wine just hates my hardware (but I'm surprised I have the same graphical issues on both a netbook with on-board video as well as a desktop with a GeForce 7600 GS, whether or not I'm using the closed drivers).


I was kinda hoping somebody else with similar hardware to the 1000HE attempting to run this game out of the box on Linux Mint 10 would be able to tell me what they've done to make it work. All I can say is that running several games on that list, such as Far Cry, will NOT work out of the box in Linux Mint 10 and the latest Wine on this netbook and all of the computers I've attempted to do the same. I've achieved the same results in Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, and a few less popular distros I can't be bothered to recall.

Here are the steps that I took to play Far Cry on my desktop, Panther:

1) Create a new wine prefix (I do this for every game, keeps things tidy and interference to a minimum).
2) Set virtual desktop to 1024x768 (so I could easily take a screenshot)
3) Launch GOGs installer for Far Cry
4) Wait for ages because the installer has been launched from an sshfs share :P
5) Launch game.

Up to date Arch Linux, Wine 1.3.28.

The framerate is high, the controls work normally, there are no graphical glitches, I didn't have to do anything in winetricks or messing around with DLLs or files. How else could I report it other than "works perfectly"?

EDIT: The closet spec'd machines I have running are my tablet and carputer. I can try Far Cry on them if you like?

I was able to borrow a friend's computer for a few minutes to attempt running Far Cry on, and wound up with the same results. I used a fresh install of both Linux Mint 10 and Wine 1.3.28, installed and ran Far Cry in it's own Wine prefix, and set virtual desktop to 1024x768, achieving the same results with vertex and pixel shaders both on and off.

Far from "flawless", I'm running out of ideas, and machines, to run Far Cry, and most other games for that matter, in Linux. I'm absolutely perplexed that every machine I've tried these games on has the same "white" graphics, and that I seem to be the only one who's ever had this problem. Until I can find somebody who's had this problem, I doubt I'll come any closer to a solution. :/

But you seemed to be gripe-ing at people who reported it as working flawlessly when it does for them, as though you don't get exactly the same problems with gaming in Windows. I remember a particular "bad patch" in the nVidia drivers which led to graphical corruption (missing floors, NPCs and lag) and that was in Windows with a game programmed for Windows.

Looking at your screenshots, I've noticed that there are no textures or lighting at all. This implies to me that your graphics hardware is ignoring it (Wine isn't ignoring it, because it "translates it" for others).

What graphics driver are you installing to provide 3D acceleration?
Are you doing any special configuration for it?
Does Far Cry look bad (as in your screenshot) but otherwise run smoothly?
What speed do you get from glxgears?
What is your 'glxinfo' output?

I think my sister may have a similar netbook to your HE1000 so I will ask if I can borrow it and do some testing on that. Hopefully, we can get to the root of the issue.

EDIT: Also, what graphics settings do you have set for Far Cry?

For Big Race USA, if the problem is just menu graphics going too fast then try using 'cpulimit' to limit the CPU. See http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28126

If you still get the DirectX error on Total Annihilation with the latest wine, consider filing a bug report.

I agree with you that the GOGmix lists aren't the best way to display Linux compatibility. Wine's appdb is handy, and the unofficial GOG wiki could also be used to collect information on getting GOG games running under wine (though of course, there's no point just copying whatever is on appdb).

As others have suggested, I expect a lot of your problems are due to the integrated Intel graphics. I have a similarly specced netbook and had no luck with the few 3d games I tried to play, but get on great with the binary blob Nvidia drivers on my desktop.