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Comment by mindcrash | Hacker News Reader

A problem which Valve is currently solving.

They're solving it for the future, sure. According to SteamDB I currently have 269 products in my Steam account of which only 78 are compatible with Linux; I doubt the majority of the rest will ever be ported to run on SteamOS/Linux.

Also, not every developer/publisher has - or is willing to commit - the resources to release their games on Linux/SteamOS. It's difficult enough to release a game for Windows that runs reliably on the multitude of hardware configurations out there. Duplicating that effort to release on another OS is a massive undertaking for some.

WINE has been solving it much longer ;)

If by "solving" you mean "adding even more problems". It's a crutch at best and a nightmare at worst. Why would you ever prefer WinE over a native version?

>It's a crutch at best

And sometimes it is a crutch that Microsoft doesn't provide. I recall Windows Vista causing some pain for old games - such as requiring the Screen/Resolution window open otherwise Starcraft would run with corrupt colours. Wine isn't perfect, and I expect it never will be. But short of a full virtualised Windows XP, it is one of the best ways to run those old games that aren't getting treatment from the likes of GOG.

WINE is an amazing piece of software, one of the most impressive out there. I prefer it because it lets me do what I need to do without disrupting everything else I have going on. I do usually have to use a VM since the programs I need most struggle on WINE, but to the extent that I can run something in WINE, I really appreciate it. It's definitely better than having to lose 10GB+ of RAM and 100GB+ of disk to a VM. With games, a VM is usually not an option due to the need to virtualize video hardware; WINE allowed me to play Source-engine games in Linux for hundreds of hours over the years before native ports came out. I wish they would get DX11 support out some day so I can play recent games, though.

WINE can make a lot of really cool stuff happen. I suggest you take another look.

Disclaimer: I contributed a patchset to WINE 4 years ago.

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