Windows to Linux WineX questions

[TogaAssasin]

Well I have recently looked heavily into ditching windows entirely, I've sure I don't need to go into the novel of reasons on this forum. I do have some worries though. I have run linux as a server OS (Samba, apache, bind etc) for a while now, however I have never done anything with a GUI/X windows before.

Here is my main concern, I am most definetally, a core gamer. I play a lot more on consoles then on my PC however I have a seriously unhealthy wow addiction. Now i know that WoW will play under wine, however I am worried about performance under wine. Last time I saw someone post side by side benches wine X was giving horrid framerates in newer games. I was wondering what kinda performance hit I could expect moving to wine.

I was also wondering what the media player of choice under linux would be.

BTW in case anyone was wondering I was thinking about moving from windows XP Pro to slackware 10.1.

[Pafnoutios]

I can't tell you much about the performance of WineX, as I don't have it yet. I do know, though, that with the release of version 4 they changed the name to Cedega. I guess they didn't want to appear so blatantly alcoholic. Check them out at TransGaming (http://www.transgaming.com) . It costs $5/month for a membership for continual upgrades, and there is a 3-month minimum membership (i.e. $15 minimum to grab one version). I think it will be worth it when I can afford it, and I've heard others on the forum say that it is.
For media playing, there are two popular options that I know of: MPlayer and Xine. I use Xine. I think I chose it when I switched because it was the first to support my dxr3 DVD card.

PS. I think if you leave Windows installed in a partition, Cedega can use some of the native DLLs and run more smoothly and reliably.

[CoffeeMan]

I have run Counter Strike :: Condition Zero and Half Life 2 under Cedega, and I am impressed. It isnt perfect, but nothin is. Execept me.

[TogaAssasin]

yeah I really want to avoid having to pay for cedega (BTW cedega is still,m to the best of my knoweldge a wine grape keeping with the alchahol theme). If I keep windows installed I might as well dual boot to play games and then use linux for everything else. I mean for my games and windows I could use my 10k drive formatted NTFS with windows XP and games (I don't even think I would install a web browser). And then boot onto my other 80's (in ex3) and then run linux off of those. Any downside there other then the presence of windows?

[timothykaine]

I dont play games on Windows, so I really have nothing to compare it to. But when I play the games I play under Cedega they work just fine. I <3 C&C.

As for media players:

If you want something pretty with the fun plugins and visualizations etc, go with Totem (if using Gnome), or Kaffiene (if using KDE).

If you want a standalone regular player without the extra frills, Xine is great.

Mplayer is an option, but I find the above Xine-based players (Totem, xine or gstreamer?) are a lot more friendly, and less legal issues of course. I read that Mplayer is not completely free.