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.
I got my start with Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.3 about 4 years ago. I installed it next to my Win 7 on the same machine. Within a month I realized I would never need my Win 7 again for anything at all. So I reloaded it strictly Linux. Since I have loaded many different versions. The Mint Cinnamon package is the best yet. The 18.3 and the newest 20.x versions are rock solid. Stay clear of the 19.x series, you will not be happy with the hardware bugs.The 18.3 I actually prefer and they also have a 32 bit version for older machines. The 20.x is strictly 64 bit for newer machines.
I understand your concern with wanting to take a look at it before you do it. But I can tell you that you will be pleasantly surprised with the Mint Cinnamon 18.3 or the 20.x. Right off the bat I realized it functions just like Windows 7. Everything in Linux can be customized to how you like it. And with just a couple clicks in “themes” you can even make it look like Win XP if you want. :)
https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes/view/Mint-XP
That Cinnamon “spices” site has tons of themes you can customize your desktop with. And they can all be auto-installed right though your default system settings and options panel with a few clicks. I just dug into my available games and Frozen Bubble is available directly from the repository for auto-install, There are about 20 different Tetris games. “MariO” is a Super Mario clone that can be downloaded and installed from Github, and with “Wine” and “Play on linux” installed you can play your Deus Ex and Wolfenstein on a Linux system if you have the installation disks for windows. The wine is the base, and the POL is the graphical interface that makes wine easier to use.
The key is getting the full Mint Cinnamon package. fully loaded it is still only 2 gigs compared to Win 10 at 18 gigs. It comes with two different software “auto-installers” included. You can search and find what you are looking for and with just a few clicks it not only installs the program, but in the same operation it will self check to see if you need any additional dependencies for that program and go grab them and install them at the same time for you also. Pretty slick... :)
You definitely can put it to a cd or 📀, give it a try, I think you will like it. Linux has several. Tux games that are kinda a lot like Mario cart. Easy to I stay. And run. You c a n even try them out in the cd without installing mint yet, and see if they Wil, be what you like. There are a number of games to try out. All different genres
Probably your best bet is buy a really cheap laptop if you can afford one right now, format, throw jnux on it while keeping your old windows computer for now. You can also dual boot too, which is what I do. If you decide you don’t like Linux at all, no worries, just reclaim the space and expand you windows partition back to what it was for a single boot computer again.
You’ll have to look up how to do partitions though if you aren’t sure. It’s a little involved, but not too bad. Linux cd will have a utility you can install to do just that while in a virtual environmmet..
Another option, cheap one, if you are comfortable with switching out hard drives,, is buy an old used hard drive, format it, and install Linux to that. You’ll need a Linux cd to format it,or a windows cd. I have several old hard drives as backups with windows and Linux on them. My computer is set up for dual hard drives, so I simply unplug my main drive and plug another in. Works well