Open Source + nVidia + WoW = No Playtime
You like my mathematical equation for dead playtime with World of Warcraft on a linuxbox? When I first installed Fedora 8, I ran Wine 0.9[something] with nVidia’s proprietary drivers. I had no problem playing World of Warcraft. I did notice something though - that every time there was a kernel update - when I restarted my Xserver that things would be kind of haywire. I would normally have to reinstall the video driver and then I’ll be back to status quo. So; now I’m a bit more seasoned with linux and open source or non-proprietary software means a little more to me than before - and getting that to work with WoW has proved to be quite difficult.
The Free-be Process
First I’m going to talk about the natural progression of a user migrating from the “Windows/Mac” world into this vast ocean of the “linux” world. I heard on a podcast that most folks come into the linux world for various reasons, but the consistent reason is for the FREE software. It’s awesome NOT having to pay anything anymore. As for me, I’ve been used to not paying for software for a very long time… I’m a digital pirate. There; I’ve come out of the closet (on that issue, I’m really a heterosexual). I haven’t paid for software in over 10+ years. But over the past couple years my conscience has gotten the best of me and my escape from the underground is linux.
So; the natural progress is people want free software, later on when they become familiar with all this software - they are exposed to GNU and the fight between proprietary and non-proprietary software. And that is where I am, my friend. I wish to run linux with no proprietary software - well except for the NEEDED ones like Flash, etc. If you’re running open source/non-proprietary software - you will have less complications as the kernel and operating system progresses and improves.
Getting WoW Installed
Ok; back to my dilemma at hand. I installed Fedora 9 (F9) and I was stoked to see that Wine released their stable version, which is “one point oh” (1.0). It’s a great milestone to release a 1.0 version and Wine has been in works for years. I was happy to see that F9 had this in their repos. I installed it and immediately installed World of Warcraft. I had no problems with it. I also installed the kmod-livna drivers for my nVidia GeForce 8600 GT video card. It worked because I was able to apply “Desktop Effects” and get the whole cube and wobbly windows effect. But when I try to run WoW nothing would happen. So; I ran the command in my terminal to see what the error messages were and it seemed to have not registered something with the Wine/Windows Registry.
I’m not certain which component is the culprit, but so far I can’t install any of my games using Wine 1.0. GTA: San Andreas, Battlefield 2, etc. I always get some freaky error and I usually just move on to other things I have to do. So; I’ll try and keep a log of what happens, but this is my situation at the time. I’ve done some Google searches and WIne forum searches, but no luck yet.
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