Installing Windows Games in Linux

Installing Windows Games, or many other Windows programs, in Linux is relatively easy. Though I feel obligated to issue a word of warning here before we start, the technology to do this is in continued development, no program is ever guaranteed to work on every computer, but it never hurts to try does it?

This guide focuses one two things in particular: installing windows games in Linux in general and the specifics of my experience installing Starcraft: Brood War in Linux Mint (an Ubuntu based distribution).

To install Windows programs generally requires one get a program that can emulate or replace Windows to a degree, and there are many choices for this. A company called Transgaming has a program called Cedega out there that runs about 40 games at about 99-100% perfection compared to Windows. However, Cedega costs money, I doubt many of you got into Linux to spend more money, so we should probably go for something cheaper... like, free?

Cedega used to, and still does, contribute a great deal to a program called Wine,. Wine means Wine Is Not an Emulator, meaning that Wine doesn't emulate Windows like some other software out there but uses customs written code to replicate Direct X and such without using Microsoft's code.

I'm going to assume most users reading this are using an Ubuntu based distributions as that seems the be most popular right now, You should know how to install programs at this point too (if not it's the Add/Remove Programs option in the Main Menu). You are looking to install Wine (most recent stable release is 1.0.1 I believe). Once it is all installed you should be done for all intents and purposes (and people say Linux is hard).

Whatever Windows Program you want to run will probably have to be installed, to make life easier, you can set it so wine will automatically open .exe files to do this, right click on the .exe file, select Properties, and then select the Open With tab. If Wine Windows Program Loader is present, make sure it is selected and click Close. If it is not present click the 'Add' button, then click on 'Use a Custom Command' beneath the list. In the line that appears, type in 'wine', then click Add, and Close. Now all your .exe files will be opened by Wine just like Windows opens them, no fuss, no muss.

Installing programs and such should now be as easy as it is in Windows. As I said earlier, no program is ever guaranteed to run, luckily for you there are sites out there to help you, the most obvious being the AppDB at WineHQ.org. At that site you can search for a program and see how likely it is to run flawlessly, or how much luck people have had with it running thru Wine. Many many programs run almost flawlessly, but once again, not all.

So now we'll go thru one game that doesn't run flawlessly, but nearly flawless. Starcraft Brood War is a strategy game released over a decade ago, you think that this would have no problems running, but the fact that Blizzard has kept the game updated does present a problem.

I used the Digital Download from the Blizzard Store to install Starcraft, but the process is similar (in fact it is even easier) if you are installing from CD.

Regardless of your version, install Starcraft like normal going thru all the steps you would for Windows. Once the game is installed though, you obviously have to patch it, here's where the versions differ. The CD version is much easier to path than the downloaded version. There is a way around this. When you are updating the game make sure to download update 1.51.3 before you download the latest update.

Also, Starcraft does have a problem with the interface for battle.net, I know of no work around. Though some people have said the game works fine once you get it started getting it started it a bit of a pain. LAN play works no problems at all.

But sadly, those issues aside there is one more problem... some people, myself included, have found that starcraft is very jittery and the graphics do not move smoothly at all. This is a problem solved simply enough. It requires us to place a key in the windows registry, here's how we're going to do that. First open a terminal from your linux distributions main menu (this should be easy enough for most of you, it might be in the main menu itself or hiding in accessories). Here we will type 'wine regedit' which tells the computer to start the program regedit with wine. Regedit is a way to edit the behemoth of settings and information that Windows natively stores in what is known as the Registry. Generally you don't want to edit the registry in windows unless you are very careful and in this case we're only going to be doing one thing and that's it. Also, everything in the registry you type is going to be case sensative, so keep that in mind (or just copy and paste).

On the left hand side are folders with plus signs next to them, click the plus sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER to open it, this will reveal more folders. Open Software, then Wine. Now the tricky part, if you have a folder called Direct3d you're in luck, open it and skip the next step. If you don't have a folder called Direct3d you will have to add it.

To add the Direct 3d folder, right click the Wine folder you just opened and go to New and then Key. (note: we're obviously not actually dealing with folders, but the icons look like folders and it's easier to understand) Name the new folder you created 'Direct3d'. Then click the Direct3d folder.

On the right side of the screen you should see columns which read from left to right Name, Type, and Data. Right click below the last line of text in that window and select New again, but go to String Value this time. Instead of New Value #1 we are going to call this 'DirectDrawRenderer'. To do this (if you clicked off the name) right click on the line you just created and go to Modify. Enter the name, and then enter 'opengl' for the value and hit OK. You can just exit regedit now and you are set to play.

Please keep in mind that Starcraft is not listed as a program that runs flawlessly with Wine, this was to show some basic steps to get it running at about 99%. Just one more step to breaking away from Windows.

If you run across any more problems check the AppDB on WineHQ.org or ask in your Linux distribution's forums for help with your specific distribution and/or hardware.