how easy is it to get games running on *nix

[RipperRoo]

Ive always said I would dump windows in a heartbeat if I could get my games working on linux. well, I finaly have a spare pc to play around with it on, but as I'm a COMPLETE *nix newb (apart from routers) and have absolutly no idea where to begin.

the game I want to run is Renegade (and maybe GameSpy Arcade as well)
what would be the easyest flavour to install and run these on, and most importantly, where do I start?

PS. I posted this using Konqueror

[iAvalance]

Tried WINE yet?

If you are a n00b, you should start with a 'commercial' flavour of Linux, like RedHat or SuSe which have very n00b minded distributions.

[RipperRoo]

well, being a nOOb, I installed mandrake, but have already downloaded and burned debian and redhat as well.

[iAvalance]

if you can easily download and install 'packages' in some sort of way like RedHat's RPM's, Debian's DEB's, Gentoo's emege, etc. etc, then I think you're set.

You only need a distro with a lot of support, or enough for you. And go off with Google

[technobeast]

First I must say - CONGRATULATIONS for the decision. Second (as seen in a Linuxnewsgroup) - the best with Linux is choice. Install a distro play with it a few weeks, after that try another, etc. and see which will fit you better. As for my advice - Debian is best (RedHat and SuSe are way too comercial IMHO and Mandrake - *sigh*, what was it???? ). Sorry for this but I just don't like these 3 (only them). And before someone blames me - yes I've installed and used all of them.

[dalert0140]

You could try WineX.I don't use Linux much but I got Max Payne running on my computer using WineX.

[technobeast]

Originally posted by dalert0140
You could try WineX.I don't use Linux much but I got Max Payne running on my computer using WineX.

WineX is not that good at emulatin Win for C&C games. And Renegade is one of them I think. But hey that's not a STOP sign for you Rip. Go on and play a bit with Linux. You may end up with better working Renegade in Linux than in Win ( ).

[RipperRoo]

never know, but it looks like my agp card is gonna be my 1st challenge, i got an AGP GF2 MX400 in there, it seams to be listed as a pci card in mandrake, and tux racer ran like a 486, installed redhat and the same happened

PS this is the pc im running it on: ECS K7S5a, XP1600+, 256mb PC2100 DDR, GF2 MX400 64mb, 30gb HDD

[iAvalance]

Hmmm, with that CPU, even Gentoo belongs to the posibilities

I'm not a Debian fan.

That videocard, is that nVidia? Check their Website and download/install the linux driver (works great on RedHat).

[RipperRoo]

as with everything nix, the website isnt much help (I added the link to save seaching for it twice ). I took an educated guess and downloaded the Linux IA32 drivers, now all i gotta do is work out how to install and use the bloomin things

[iAvalance]

Hehe... if you downloaded it, you only need to run it.

I can tell you in advance that you need to shut down your X session, before you run it.

RedHat 9 didn't offer that option in my installation so you just have to do it a little bit dirty.

Open a terminal, and su yourself to root. An alternative option when you are in the wheel group is to use sudo. Dependant on what way you prefer, switch to runlevel 3.

$ su
<root password>
# init 3

or

$ sudo init 3
<your password>

when you are directed to an x-less terminal run the NVIDIA installer by cd-ing to the directory you downloaded it to and typing:

./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run

The 'windowed' installer will ask something and setup your X environment and guide you through the install process.

because you shut down your X-server in a dirty way you at best restart your machine by simply typing

reboot

or pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence, probably well known from Windows machines.

[RipperRoo]

sorry, my fault for not saying, tryed debian after redhat and couldnt even get it installed, so went back to mandrake.

I cheated a little and logged out/in again as root in failsafe so X wasnt running and cd'd to the right directory (after some poking about with dir and cd) the readme said to type sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run, did that, got so far then got an error msg saying:

"unable to find the system utility 'ld' ; please make sure you have the package 'binutils' installed. if you do have binutils installed please make sure 'ld' is in your PATH"


err ok, time to track down the cd its on?
1, 2 or 3?

[iAvalance]

eh...

RedHat:
up2date binutils

Gentoo:
emerge binutils

...

Mandrake? I wouldn't know
but you can always try find -name binutils on a mounted CD ;-)

The nicest thing of RedHat is that it installs these kind of things by default so you don't have to worry about it.

[RipperRoo]

I managed to find and install binutils using mandrake control center's software management, and installed the drivers as per NVIDIA's instructions in the readme

After installing the driver you must edit your XF86Config file before the newly installed driver will be used. See the section below entitled EDITING YOUR XF86CONFIG FILE.

this is my next challenge,

If you already have an XF86Config file working with a different driver
(such as the 'nv' or 'vesa' driver), then all you need to do is find
the relevant Device section and replace the line:

Driver "nv"
(or Driver "vesa")

with

Driver "nvidia"

In the Module section, make sure you have:

Load "glx"

it goes on to say that if you need more info on editing the config file refer to the XFree manual, and that says

all you need do to configure it is fire up the command XFree86 -configure.

did that, tested the new file it made and it didnt work, looks like its a manual edit

(in case you hadn't guessed, im cheating by posting this with the *nix pc by copying from the readme file/s, then reading the command sytax off the screen of my main rig while the *nix pc is in a terminal )

[iAvalance]

I didn't do the configure thing.

I just did the edit, in my situation I only had to replace the nv with nvidia, the glx was already there...