Windows for Gaming
It’s funny. For years, I kept around a Windows partition just so that I could play the few games that still appealed to me.
Back in 2000, I picked up a copy of Unreal Tournament. I’m not even very good at it. Anybody that’s played me in PVP will attest, I’m the human shaped red splotch. Despite that, I really enjoyed playing, and I’ve kept it installed on every computer I’ve owned since up until the last one. It came with Windows 7 on it, and unfortunately, the game just didn’t work anymore. I can understand that. The game is over a decade old, and these things just can’t last forever. Still, I was really disappointed to lose one of my old favorites.
The other game I played was World of Warcraft. I’d never been to much into RPGs, but some coworkers got me into it back in around 2005. I wasn’t in the first round, but I did make my way mostly through vanilla. I finally cancelled my account a couple months back just out of sheer apathy. It’s still a fun game to play, and I think I’ll reup when the next expansion comes out. I just don’t feel like paying to rep grind right now.
I didn’t really have any other games that I was playing other than Fruit Ninja on my Xbox, so the point in having a Windows partition was lost. When I installed Ubuntu 11.10, Windows went the way of the dodo. Good riddance in my book. I’ve since moved to Mint 12, which I really enjoy.
A while back, I thought that I’d try out World of Warcraft in Linux. It was a snap. Didn’t require any special configuration or anything. The game just loaded like a dream in my Linux environment. All the more reason that I’m happy without Windows.
In an odd twist of fate, I ran across my Unreal Tournament game this weekend. The thought crossed my mind that since World of Warcraft worked so well, maybe I could get Unreal Tournament working. It didn’t work in Windows 7, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t work in Linux. So, a brief install later, and some minor messing with WINE configuration to make it run in a Window instead of full screen, I have a working version of Unreal Tournament on my Linux box.
All those years of keeping a Windows partition just to play games were pointless. I can do anything and everything I’ve ever wanted to do on a computer on Linux. I don’t know that I’d recommend my configuration to a real gamer, but to a casual like myself, it turns out that Linux is probably just as good as Windows for gaming.
Now, if more people just knew that.
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