Hi Matt, I think I'm in the same boat as you on this (apart from that I don't have server experience prior to desktop) I started my ubuntu adventures with gutsy, and was able to run GuildWars off my XP partition with no problems. The game was quite laggy, and some textures were missing, but it was playable. I'm not quite sure about GW, but for world of warcraft there are lots of guides out there that detail how to set it up under wine. I had to copy some windows DLLs over to the wine folder, and had to run the exe with the /opengl parameter to get things working. I havent tried guildwars/WoW under the latest ubuntu release, and I think i was on wine .59 at the time so perhaps its better lately ;) have you tried the commercial wine alternative? I forget the name of it.. If you find any solutions I'd be interested to know Regards ________________________________ From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk on behalf of Mephi Sent: Fri 12/12/2008 18:05 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [ALUG] Why is it so hard? (Making Ubuntu Work) Ok, I've been using Debian on my server for years and Knoppmyth (Debian based) on my media centre for slightly longer. But I've not really done much on the desktop. Since I do a fair amount of gaming, I've stuck with windows for my desktop. Recently though I've only been playing one game a lot (Guildwars) which is supposed to work fine under wine. Also I play GW with friends and we use skype. Which has a linux client, so I thought I'd give it a go... I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of ubuntu, setup the ATI graphics card, setup the medibuntu repository and apt-getted skype and wine. So now I have 3 problems. 1. Now they're using something new in Ubuntu called Pulse Audio, which puts another layer between your devices and your applications, and apparently it's why I can't get my microphone working in skype. So, I've been working through everything on the Ubuntu forums (it appears I'm not the only one) documented by someone else here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1006163 But nope, none of that works... 2. I'm trying to setup my screens to work at their native resolution. I've got one that runs at 1680x1050 and another at 1280x1024. I managed to get them to run correctly, but the settings don't stick. It boots with both screens set at 1280x1024. To get them to work I do the following steps through the ATi Catalyst Control Centre: 1. Disable the second screen (1280x1024) 2. Reboot 3. Set the first screen to its correct resolution (1680x1050) which wasn't available before the reboot. 4. add the second screen in. Then it works, until I reboot. The third problem is that Guildwars doesn't want to run under Wine. I've not yet looked into this in great detail yet, as I've usually given up by this point and booted back into windows. Matt _______________________________________________ main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.552 / Virus Database: 270.9.17/1844 - Release Date: 11/12/2008 20:58

On Friday 12 December 2008 18:05:14 Mephi wrote:

Ok, I've been using Debian on my server for years and Knoppmyth (Debian based) on my media centre for slightly longer.

But I've not really done much on the desktop. Since I do a fair amount of gaming, I've stuck with windows for my desktop.

Recently though I've only been playing one game a lot (Guildwars) which is supposed to work fine under wine. Also I play GW with friends and we use skype. Which has a linux client, so I thought I'd give it a go...

I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of ubuntu, setup the ATI graphics card, setup the medibuntu repository and apt-getted skype and wine.

Yes, some gamers on Ubuntu just remove pulseaudio, which does nothing but cause problems if you play games with voice chat and things. I tried to stick with it, but monkeying around with sound after every game patch - with no guarantee of success either - gets *very* annoying when you're pushed for time and trying to fit in a quick bit of gaming to wind relaxevening. That said, some people have luck with pasuspender - but lots of voice chat ( and certainly TS3 ) is highly erratic with that solution, so YMMV. All of that said, I have little interest in PulseAudio, and I don't doubt there is the option to configure it to behave nicely. Since it seems superficially like a sort of exercise in redundancy, and removing it has had no ill effects I can see, it might stay that way for a while.