I just recently installed both “Wine” and “Play on Linux” in a Mint 20 cinnamon system. They work together and this set up worked great for Windows games a friend could not live without.
It sets up each game install into it’s own individual Windows Virtual Machine environment and adds a desk top Icon for you. It boots the VM and switches the hardware over for you to play that Windows game.
Each game requires it’s own install from source medium, the Play on Linux makes this much easier for you while using Wine as the base.
Never fooled with Wine, even though it’s been available for ages. 15 years ago it didn’t get good reviews, these days I’m hearing they’ve worked the bugs out.
What I’m interested in are a few small linux based arcade games, like Frozen Bubble that was installed (by choice) with Mandrake, I’d love to have the Methane Bros clone of Mario Bros, and a couple others like that. The Xtris clone of Tetris, can’t think of the others. I did get one of the solitaire games working.
Downloaded a few installation files a while back, got Xtris to work, one or two others, don’t think Frozen Bubble will judging by info I looked up, or methane bros.
Very little in the way of windows games is needed, the win7 laptop runs Deus Ex and Wolfenstein well, yeah I’m way behind...really don’t need windows games, just a few mostly arcade style linux based games, haven’t figured out how to get them installed and working.
One particular file type is supposed to just install exactly the same as windows does, double click the file, it seems to run but if the icon shows up, it does nothing. No idea why, I don’t know much about how Linux works, the exact opposite of windows, I built and repaired windows systems since win 95 was in use and 98 hadn’t been released yet. Got out of it when windows 10 showed up, that monstrosity was/is just a mess.
Which leaves me in a dilemma, if I buy a new machine, they force windows 10 on you, I’d have to format it the very same day and put linux on. Then I won’t know diddly about my OS...
I’ll probably look for a good used one and fix it up. Half the price and half the headaches. Since I’m not putting it online, windows updates can be turned off, no forced win 10 install...that’s probably what damaged the eMachines I bought at a yard sale, $3. Runs great, but windows is practically useless. Someone rebooted halfway through a win 10 “upgrade”, which is now forced. eMachines website says they no longer have the restore cd for that machine so I can’t just run the restore cd. The one it creates is a clone of the damaged system.
Which is why I downloaded Mint, if I can try it on cd or usb, it might just get installed completely but I don’t like to install with no idea what it looks or performs like, one of ghe best things about the live cd linux versions - puppy, damn small, feather, knoppix etc. Running puppy o it now, never have installed it. Create a small log file, it remembers my settings, including anything I install that works.
I would like to get back the KDE ability to use 4 separate desktops, each with its own background...puppy uses 4, but all share the same background picture.
Side note - I tried to bog down Linux a few years ago. Not hard to do with windows. I put Mandrake 9 on a 266MHz P-II laptop. Opened everything I could find that would keep actively running, like system monitors. Then opened Frozen Bubble, one of the most graphics intensive games in Mandrake. Still took near 30 minutes playing Frozen Bubble before it finally locked up. Ran the Mandrake 9 desktop for 4 years nonstop, couldn’t tell any change in performance. Reinstalled XP twice because it was bogging down. Identical machines I built myself.