Talk:City of Heroes on Linux

"Advantages" don't make sense / aren't true

I enjoy using WINE to play games as much as the next guy, but I noticed some time ago that this article is horrendously misinformed. If no one has a defense for this, I plan to simply remove the advantages section on this page. Here's why!

Because WINE actually implements many of the DirectX functions better than Microsoft has, City of Heroes typically runs faster on Linux. This is typically reflected in a higher frames-per-second (fps) rate, faster zone loading, and faster game loading and exiting.

City of Heroes uses OpenGL, not DirectX. When this article was written, there was no direct3d implemented into wine at all. Even now, with wine3d it emulates the calls to OpenGL... and it is very very far from "better." The higher FPS is actually a reflection of calls that are ignored (whoever wrote this must not have tried running CoH from the terminal). The last three examples are silly, load times are going to be effected minimally by this.

Because Linux is open source software, one does not need to pay several hundreds of dollars for a copy of Windows to run City of Heroes. Also, there are no issues regarding upgrades (e.g. to Windows Vista), as all upgrades to most Linux distributions are free.

Yes this is lovely, and for me personally it's the biggest reasons some of my boxes run Linux. However, Windows is not "hundreds of dollars," nor is it an advantage to switch to Linux when you already own Windows.

Running City of Heroes on Linux allows one to access other convenient features of Linux, such as virtual desktop switching, filesystem links, etc.

Fluff example of an advantage. Anyone savvy enough to take advantage of these features in Linux can do something comprable in Windows. Symbolic Links in Vista/7 are actually signficantly easier to manage and more stable than they are in Linux currently. (See: you don't have to use mount binds to link folders, you can cross all supported filesystems, Windows does not falsly report harddrive consumption when using links as Linux is prone to do) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zupobaloop (talk • contribs) 03:55, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

To put it in perspective, keep in mind that this article was originally written over three years ago and Vista didn't hit the shelves until a month and a half later. There's bound to be some outdated info that could use some updating here.  :) --Eabrace 04:14, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

That's absolutely true. Obviously some of my criticisms are borne out of recent history (or have been made worse by it), but some of this stuff wasn't true when it was written. Perhaps with your point in mind, we could explore rewriting this section entirely from a modern perspective... --Zupobaloop 09:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm running it

That's right, I shed off my obligation to "the man" and swallowed the red pill this past weekend. I've posted in the forums about it. Hopefully, support for the game will improve over time, though it really does run very well now. Comments? Questions? Complaints? Post 'em here or in the forums! --TonyV 08:12, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

This article has a deep flaw; City of Heroes doesn't run on Wine, and Cedega is not a configuration tool for Wine; it's a suite of programs that includes a Wine fork called "Winex". It does support CoH though. If nobody objects, I'm going to take some time later to clarify this article. I'll try to preserve what I can of the hard work that was already done here. --Syberghost 09:04, 6 August 2007 (EDT)

Objection overruled. You may edit at your leisure. --Konoko 09:16, 6 August 2007 (EDT)

Linux and City of Heroes was my main poison for a long time untill i upgraded to Hasty Herron and nerfed my system. Some points:

1. Graphics is harder to tweek under Linux than Windows. Mainly due to driver problems with ATI and Nvidia (due to their nature of being closed source, they generally clash with the GPL and therefore left off many Pro-GPL distrutions. This may change in the future, people will need to research their graphic cards for combatability to the GPL or support in the main flavours of Linux.

2. The way that Cedega grabs the screen makes it hard to swap between apps, as you can do in Windows. However, Ventrillo works under Wine/Cedega, and there is a native TeamSpeak client under Linux. You just need to start them before you start CoX.

3. Be carefull with upgrades. Since video drivers is one of those red button issues in the linux world, sometimes what works in a previous releases may break in current versions. Be prepared to have to wipe and reinstall numerous times (Hasty Herron Ubuntu beta nerfed my system, however, it is beta, so i was prepared for the carnage....hopefully the fix will be in the propper release.

Voradams 07:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC)