Half-life 2: Orange Box on Ubuntu Linux using Wine

This is a small example to show how well The Orange Box (Half-life 2 games) run under Wine. This video was shot while running 32-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and Wine 0.9.59. Here are my system specs (which are not the best out there):

Athlon64 3800+ (single core)
7600GT PCIe w/ 256MB DDR
2GB PC3200 DDR
SATA-II (3.0 Gb/s)

I initially show the Steam window and then I launch Portal from a folder I have created. This is because I override the heapsize of the games by passing in the -heapsize option to them. I also pass in the -dxlevel option to force the games to run in DirectX 8.1 mode, instead of 9.0. It makes them run much better, and that's why I don't launch the games directly from the Steam window.

I also have a small clip of Team Fortress 2. For some odd reason it ALWAYS lags a bit the first time I walk outside on a map (though it doesn't happen later) and sometimes the information windows take longer than usual to go away (as is the case in this video).

I run Portal at 1280x1024 resolution with most of the options on high. I turned on "net_graph 3" but it's hard to see the FPS. I average about 45, but it goes as high as 80 (in enclosed areas). In TF2 I run at 1024x768 because there's more going (so it strains the system more at 1280x1024 and can get a little laggy), so it doesn't look quite as good because it's running at a lower resolution.

There's some weird audio from TF2 that somehow got into the Portal portion around 1:13. I'm not sure how...Blame it on my poor video editing skills.

Also, this is the quickest way to beat chamber 14 that I know of (least amount of portals) so feel free to use it to unlock the achievement.

P.S. Spy is the best class in TF2!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• half
• life
• orange
• box
• ubuntu
• wine

[Babkockdood]

You have no idea how much you fucking amazed me. I have all the games you demonstrated, and Portal (Wine port) takes three times longer to load. Team Fortress 2 (not a Wine port, official Steam for Mac) takes about 20x longer to load. I'm seriously considering permanently switching to Ubuntu. I'm a hobbyist programmer, too, so Linux is awesome for me.

[eff4eye]

@Babkockdood That was a little bit deliberate because I didn't want people watching the video to have to sit there waiting a long time for everything to load. I had already previously loaded up the games once and then exited right before I started the video. Thus, many of the pages were still in memory and didn't have to be fetched from disk. The initial launch of the games takes a little longer.

[ROBLOXisthebestparas]

how do you get steam on linux?

[eff4eye]

@ROBLOXisthebestparas I'm not running Steam directly on Linux -- I am running it under a program called Wine. Do a search for it and you'll find it. It's fairly straightforward to install it in most of the popular distros. Then you can basically just invoke the install through wine like this:

wine msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi

I would highly recommend you copy the contents of the DVDs to your hard drive first -- sometimes the installer hangs if you install directly from the DVD.

[ROBLOXisthebestparas]

i knoooow! i have it too but when i start it, it shows the starting thing at the bottom but then it doesent do anything! :(

[eff4eye]

@ROBLOXisthebestparas Visit the winehq homepage and looks at the apps database page for Steam. There is information about installing Steam there (looks like it can be done mostly via winetricks these days), and if you can't get it working then their forums are a good place to post for help.

[Fisaren]

wow this is awesome. i will change to Ubuntu sooner or later. Im tired of paying for Windows-junk.

[joseanzaldua]

Im personally a windows guy but linux is just a lot of fun to use. and its open source so its awsome

[mattehFLCL]

gotta admit, thats pretty good for a single cpu running a non native program in linux

[vegedor]

Hey man, I installed Wine, I didn't configured anything, I installed Steam through Wine, it worked fine, after that I installed Cs 1.6, and when I try to enter Cs 1.6 it just say Preparing to launch cs 1.6.... and after that the window dissapear and that's all

What to do!? Please!!!

[JonathanX95xboxlive]

@Josekok18 i have the same problem! like after the Valve intro it shows the copyright screen and pretty much crashes right there and dosen't go to the menu :(

[Josekok18]

My problem is that when i run HL2, the screen is could, and don't run the principal screen, only play valve's intro video, and could, nothing more :(