Back when I was a WoW blogger, I made no secret of the fact that I played WoW on Linux. In fact, my main was level 70– the then-level cap– before she even saw daylight on a Windows system.

Since then, I’ve managed to wheedle a select few other games into working on Linux (Kubuntu 10.04 is my current distro, before you ask) as well. It’s not always the easiest thing in the world, since getting games to work on Linux often feels like trying to push two similarly charged magnets together– they just seem to repel each other– but sometimes you can pull it off.

Here’s my advice if you want to try:

1.) If you play a lot of PC games, have a working Windows install somewhere, either on another computer or on another partition. This is because, let’s face it, you’re not going to get every game working on Linux. Heck, you’re doing really good if you get over half of them working on Linux. I’ve got a Windows partition on my computer which I’ll switch to when I want to play certain games.

2.) Check the Wine AppDB. Wine is the name of the program you’ll probably be using to run your games with– there are other programs, as well, but they aren’t as widely used and I don’t know as much about them. The AppDB is an extensive catalog of what applications (mostly games) will run in Wine, sorted into groups based on how well they run. Note that the database isn’t definitive, as every individual computer setup will get you different results, but it will give you a good rough overview at how tough of a fight you’re up against. Use the search box at the top to find your program out of some 17,000 they’ve got cataloged in there.

3.) Install Wine. Pretty readily available on most distros these days; use Google to find the instructions for your specific distro. On Ubuntu it’s just a “sudo aptitude install wine” away. (Last I checked it was, anyway.)

4.) Install your program! How you accomplish this varies from program to program. If you have an .exe file available you should just be able to run it through Wine and it’ll install. You can find more application-specific or detailed instructions on Google.

5.) Run your program and see if it works!

6.) Mess with winecfg if it doesn’t work or if you have other issues. You can get to it by simply typing “winecfg” into a terminal. Mess with your settings. Audio settings are often going to make or break you so try different options there. Occasionally you’ll have Library overrides that you’ll have to tweak; the Wine AppDB comments will help you here.

…aaand that’s pretty much it. If you’re having trouble running your game, Google will often be your bible here, particularly for more popular games.

And now a small list of things that I’ve personally gotten to work in Wine on my Linux install:

• World of Warcraft – runs flawlessly most of the time once you’ve got your settings and config file properly configured
• Starcraft 2 – albeit with some sound issues
• Civilization 4 – runs flawlessly after messing with some libraries in winecfg
• SimCity 4 – Works fine; there are a couple of very minor graphical bugs
• Most anything I’ve tried released by Valve, including: Portal, Half-Life 2, and the Steam program itself– all work with minimal problems
• Age of Empires 2 – worked with few problems
• Warcraft 3 – worked last time I tried, although it was a few years ago and I think there were some sound problems

And now a couple of other games that I don’t need Wine for!

• X-Com: UFO Defense – runs flawlessly with DOSbox.
• Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire – If you can get a hold of the old Linux-native version it will run perfectly on modern Linux distros with a bit of dedicated tweaking.  I describe how I did it here.
• Minecraft – Runs in java right from your desktop.
• A whole bunch of indie games because making your games work on Linux is the “in” thing to do right now

So!  As you can see, I’ve got a pretty good library available to me while on Linux.  Granted, those aren’t the only games I play, so I’ve still got to switch over to Windows on occasion (Paradox I’m looking at you nice and hard now), but I think people are often surprised by what you can get on Linux.

In conclusion! Obviously this is all a bit more complicated than I make it sound in this very, very basic guide. If you want to try running games in Linux, you’ve got to be willing to spend some time on Google or various forums and you’ve also got to be willing to accept that it might not always work. You should also keep in mind that results vary from system to system. But Wine is getting better every day, Linux is getting more and more stable every day (the Ubuntu of today is hardly recognizable from the Ubuntu of years past when I first started), and I know that this subject continues to be one that people are interested in so I figured I’d toss up a quick post on it.

Questions? Comments? You know where to leave ’em!