By James M. Garvin

Let me
clear up a misconception about Linux. It seems many think that there are no
games out there for Linux. You can play plenty of games in Linux! There are
games like Return To
Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Neverwinter Nights that run natively in Linux.
There are also a ton of open source games available. However, I come with even
better news; you can play some Windows games in Linux.

There
is a translator named Cedega. It’s not an emulator, so I think translator is a
far better term. You can get more information about Cedega at http://www.transgaming.com/. As of this
publication Cedega costs $15, that is $5/month for three months. Cedega
supports a bunch of games. Some it supports very well, some it has issues with,
requiring the use of available workarounds, and some games just refuse to work.

The
good news is that World of Warcraft (WoW) is fully supported by the Transgaming.
You might need a little support with patches and such, which is why the Transgaming forum is a
great resource. Here you can find the WoW forum and all the basic information
you may need to get up and running. Since you are playing games on an OS they were
never made to be played on, you sometimes have to mess around with a few
things. Typically it is no worse than following simple instructions posted in
the forums. The best part is if you run into any trouble, the forums are a
great place to find an answer.

If you
want to play games, other than WoW, you’ll have to check and see if they are
supported by checking the Transgaming database.

Click this tag search to find other How Do I… articles and downloads.

Installing Cedega

You
need to grab Cedega from Transgaming.com. It’s only $15, as opposed to at least
$99 for a Windows OS, so stop being so damn cheap and buy it. With that out of
the way, the Transgaming folks have created rpm, tar, and deb
packages for us. You simply need to install the proper package for your system.
Make sure you are in root to install this package. If you are not root simply
type:
# su –

The su command is like switching to administrator. This
will bring up a prompt for the root password, type it now. You can also use sudo.

# sudo rpm –install <package_name>.rpm

Then
put in the root password. The sudo command is like using run as…
in Windows, except it actually works.

To
install your various packages, use the following:

Debian/Ubuntu/Debian
Based Distros

# dpkg -icedega-<version>.deb

Redhat/Fedora/rpm Based Distros

# rpm –install Cedega-<version>.rpm

Ever other flavor of distro

# tar -zxpvf Cedega-<version>.tgz

Now,
that Cedega is installed, we need to run it for the first time. Simply type cedega
at the command line. If you are not root, you will probably need to
change the ownership of your /tmp directory to the user you are
logged in as.

# chown <user>:<group> /tmp

If you
don’t know what group your user is in, it is not a problem. Typically, your
user name and group name will be the same, unless otherwise noted. Let’s say I
was logged in as a user named jmgarvin and my group
was the same. The command would look like:

# chownjmgarvin:jmgarvin /tmp

Now
you can type cedega
at the command line. (See Figure A)

# cedega

Figure A
Running Cedega for the first time.

This
will pop up on the first run of the Cedega GUI. First you must agree to the EULA.
Then you’ll need to download the Cedega engine, the mozfonts,
and mozcontrol packages. Without the Cedega engine
you cannot play games. Without the mozfonts and mozcontrol, you could be missing text and some graphics.
So, go ahead and install these now. If you get a failure on install, your /tmp directory wasn’t chowned
properly. This is a common error and I promise it is your fault. Ok, it might
not be, but it probably is, so let’s double check.

# ls -la /drwxrwxrwx 28 jmgarvinjmgarvin 4096 Apr 14 00:37 tmp

Look
for the /tmp directory. You should see the user
and group name you set it as. If you see root root
instead of your user name, then you didn’t do it properly and need to do it
again. Check the instructions above if you didn’t do it correctly. So let’s get
Cedega working.

After
you enter you valid user name and password and log in, choose the check box for
all the packages. (Figure B)

Figure B
Choose all the boxes

Next
make sure your video card is detected properly, Figure C. If you see Mesa drivers in here, you need to install the
proper video driver. Both ATI and NVidia make Linux
drivers, so don’t worry. You can check my blog for installation instructions of the proper video
drivers. If you don’t have the proper drivers, STOP NOW! Install the video drivers before proceeding. This will
save you some pain later on.

Figure C
Are the proper drivers for your video card installed?

The
final major step to installing and configuring Cedega is letting it test your
system, Figure D. If either ALSA or
OSS fail, you are ok. However, if both fail, you’ll
need to install them and recompile your kernel. This is yet another thing you
can check on my blog.

Figure D
Let Cedega test your system. If both ALSA and OSS a kernel recompile may be
needed.

Now
click Forward, then Finish. You’ve setup Cedega!

WoW

Right,
on to the installation of World of Warcraft! You might want to take a quick bio
break at this point or possibly grab a fresh cup of coffee. If at any point you
have closed Cedega, you just need to type the command cedega at the command line again
and you should be all set. You should see the Cedega GUI, Figure E.

Figure E
The Cedega GUI.

Now
that you are in the Cedega GUI, you simply need to click the install button,
choose the installer executable, and, eventually, swap disks. (Figure F)

Figure F
You’ll have to swap a disk or two during your WoW install.

Fill
in the Program Title box with a good name. I named mine World of Warcraft, but
you can name it anything you like. For the Installer, make sure you choose the Installer.exe on the CD-ROM—autorun.inf tends
to bork things up. The path will probably be /media/cdrecorder/Installer.exe or /media/cdrom/Installer.exe. If you are
running an older distro, you might have path that is /mnt/cdrecorder/Installer.exe. Now click Continue. You will
probably have to wait for a bit as things chug. Don’t worry if nothing seems to
happen for up to a couple minutes. After that short delay, you’ll see the WoW
installer. (Figure G)

Figure G
Finally, the World of Warcraft installer appears.

Now,
you install WoW as you would on a Windows box. There are some caveats though.

  1. Don’t press the eject button on your CDROM more than
    once. This can sometimes cause the next CD not to read properly. It
    sometimes takes a few seconds for the CD to eject, this is normal. Just
    wait it out and you will be fine.
  2. You might get an installer error at the very end of the
    install. Don’t worry. The game installed, it is just one of those things.
  3. Installing the patches is easiest via the command line.
    So get the patch, put it in the WoW install directory, probably .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft, and type:
    # cedega wow-<version>-<language>-patch.exe

For
the 1.10 patch you need to move the Repair.exe out of the install directory,
the path is probably .cedega/World
of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft. You need to be quick about it, so
the up arrow will be your friend.

My
suggestion is to do it like this:

# cd .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft# mv Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files# mv .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft# mv Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files # cedega wow-1.9.4-to-1.10.0-<language>-patch.exe

Now
open up a new term and quickly up arrow until you see the command:

# mv .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft

Now we
can move the Repair.exe back in the World of Warcraft directory. You need to do
this pretty fast as around 10 percent or so of the time you’ll need the
Repair.exe. If you mess up the first time, don’t worry, just try again. You can
just copy and paste in Gnome. So if you don’t see the command, when you up
arrow a couple times, in the new term, just highlight the command in the old
term and press <ctrl><shift>c.
That will copy the command. Switch to the new term and press <ctrl><shift>p to paste the command.

For
most patches you will either need to download them or run the BNUpdate.exe
manually, like this:

# cd .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft # cedega BNUpdate.exe

That
should patch you up from the auto patcher. If you
download them just go to Gamespot, 3dgamer or Fileplanet and grab the patch.

Time to play

That
should do it. WoW is now installed and patched. You can play! Just to prove it,
here’s a screen shot of my box:

Figure H
Up and running and ready to battle those who dare oppose.

If you
have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me. My user name at TechRepublic
is jmgarvin
and my blog is located at

http://www.techrepublic.com/5247-6257-0.html?id=4093177.