AO Linux HOWTO

[Telperion]

I had tried to install AO before on my linux, following the guide provided but I could not get it going. However I want to try again but use Xubuntu? Does anyone have it installed with that version of ubuntu and did you have any difficulty getting it to run?

Also I was wondering is the guide on the first page of the post upto date and can I still use it to install AO, I do not have Cedega or a subscription so I am thinking of using cvs/wine?

Please any help will be appreciated, my computer is old and slow lol...but with xubuntu made for slower machines I am hoping to get AO to play a little faster on it then WinXP.

I Thank You all for ur time.

AO is unlikely to run any faster under Linux than under XP. At least that's what most of us seem to be experiencing. The distro doesn't seem to change anything, performance-wise: the key always is your hardware config. I'm probably gonna switch from Ubuntu to Mandriva soon though, so maybe i can tell more afterwards.

Personnally, i installed AO with Cedega and later switched to Wine.
If you simply "wine" the AO installer, the whole AO folder will be installed in a .wine invisible folder: it may be handy to move it afterwards for easier access, so you don't have to type a hundred characters every time you want to launch the game from a terminal.
Unfortunately, i'm far far away from home atm, so i can't get more into details or even check if what i'm saying here is true.

On another subject: i'm sure someome already explained how tro reconfigure an AO installation for Testlive, but could someome repost the link or PM it to me please? I'd like to return to Testlive, and especially do some Linux testing there...

[Hacre]

AO is unlikely to run any faster under Linux than under XP. At least that's what most of us seem to be experiencing. The distro doesn't seem to change anything, performance-wise: the key always is your hardware config. I'm probably gonna switch from Ubuntu to Mandriva soon though, so maybe i can tell more afterwards.

Personnally, i installed AO with Cedega and later switched to Wine.
If you simply "wine" the AO installer, the whole AO folder will be installed in a .wine invisible folder: it may be handy to move it afterwards for easier access, so you don't have to type a hundred characters every time you want to launch the game from a terminal.
Unfortunately, i'm far far away from home atm, so i can't get more into details or even check if what i'm saying here is true.

On another subject: i'm sure someome already explained how tro reconfigure an AO installation for Testlive, but could someome repost the link or PM it to me please? I'd like to return to Testlive, and especially do some Linux testing there...

The OS makes a difference in regards to loading data from disk. I've found consistently that AO on Linux suffers with much less door lag/load lag.

[Khalem]

The OS makes a difference in regards to loading data from disk. I've found consistently that AO on Linux suffers with much less door lag/load lag.

Linux has superior I/O handling compared to Win2k/WinXP. However if you test it with Vista which has new and improved I/O handling you will notice the same speed increase.

I usually boot into Vista nowadays to play AO if i'm going to be using Windows for something else around the same time.

[Misat0]

AO is unlikely to run any faster under Linux than under XP. At least that's what most of us seem to be experiencing. The distro doesn't seem to change anything, performance-wise: the key always is your hardware config. I'm probably gonna switch from Ubuntu to Mandriva soon though, so maybe i can tell more afterwards.

Hardware is of the essence, but OS is too. AO did run much faster on Linux for me with every wine version from .37 up. As said before OS has a much better I/O handling than XP and earlier windows versions and a better (means more intelligent) memory management, too.
As for Vista I can't say anything as at the time I was testing AO there, the nVidia graphics drivers for Vista were such a mess that AO ran very very slow, this might have changed by now.

Personnally, i installed AO with Cedega and later switched to Wine.
If you simply "wine" the AO installer, the whole AO folder will be installed in a .wine invisible folder: it may be handy to move it afterwards for easier access, so you don't have to type a hundred characters every time you want to launch the game from a terminal.

Symlinks are your best friends. Small shellscripts are your friends, too.

[Telperion]

For me, the decrease in performance when under Linux is significant, to the point of having to tone down some graphic effects. On another hand, it's true doorlag is gone.

I'm about to upgrade my hardware config very soon anyway, so i guess all these issues will be gone then

The only remaining question is: am i going to stay under Linux or reinstall Windows on my new comp... It's going to depend whether AO still crashes and on whether AoC is Linux-friendly or not...

[Telperion]

Back from holidays and back to AO!

Here is the link about getting Testlive to work under Linux: Clicky
I no longer crash near the grids, either on Test or on Live, so maybe the new Wine version has fixed that... But i'm getting weird font effects now.

What about you guys?

[porter]

I no longer crash near the grids, either on Test or on Live, so maybe the new Wine version has fixed that... But i'm getting weird font effects now.

What about you guys?

I've downloaded the 0.9.41 source but did not compile it yet. It takes approximately an hour to do that with my aging computer and somehow I've recently rather just rebooted to XP when I want to play AO... I'll try it as soon as I can

[Hacre]

About to try latest CVS and test. Will report back.

[Hacre]

err:seh:setup_exception stack overflow 4 bytes in thread 0010 eip 7bc317da esp 00240ffc stack 0x241000-0x350000

Crashed approaching neuters from Newland City entrance (from grid).

Back to cedega then...

[Stormgiver]

I'm using Cedega and cannot remember when the game crashed last time.

It's faster than Wine - for me about 16 fps in Wine compared to 29 using Cedega. Even alien ships work smoothly. In Wine there is a drastical decrease in performance there. The water surfaces (Rome red e.g.) are there.

Note: when trying Cedega, it depends on the settings a lot. Best are the ones shipped with the program. If anyone is interested and wants to build it from CVS, I can post them here.

p.s. Font issues are normally related to wrong dependecies during compiling. (Wine)

[Hacre]

I'm using Cedega and cannot remember when the game crashed last time.

It's faster than Wine - for me about 16 fps in Wine compared to 29 using Cedega. Even alien ships work smoothly. In Wine there is a drastical decrease in performance there. The water surfaces (Rome red e.g.) are there.

Note: when trying Cedega, it depends on the settings a lot. Best are the ones shipped with the program. If anyone is interested and wants to build it from CVS, I can post them here.

p.s. Font issues are normally related to wrong dependecies during compiling. (Wine)

How well does it work with the none paid for cvs version? I'd be interested in trying this.

With cedega I get an odd issue. A freshly booted system, cedega works beautifully, I cannot tell the difference (genuinely) between cedega and windows. But after a few hours, things change...sound becomes distorted, graphics are "stuttery" I try to move around to the left slightly and end up spinning 180 degrees, I can run up to the door then the very next frame I'm through it and the next door or stuck in some geometry somewhere. Rebooting, fixes the problem.

Wine however, does not suffer with this. At all. But now since 17.4 it crashes randomly.

So now I play AO for a few hours then reboot, or play in wine til I get a segfault.

WTS

[Stormgiver]

Well, I paid for it because I am a lazy guy. 15 bucks is really no pain.

On my system (ubuntu 7.04) I run AO for somethimes 12 hours without any troubles.

My guess is that the CVS doen't differ - except that you have to build it from source.
Be sure to get both - Cedega itself and the Cedega engine.

[meatybtz]

it differs quite a bit, the CVS is ancient and outdated. Read: unsupported. In other words dont use it. Either pay your money or use wine. And really folks 5 bucks a month to THE company supporting linux gaming is not that much to ask. Or 15 for an outright buy but then no updates.

[rubera]

I wonder if cedega is still **** on freebsd.

Edit: still is.

[Alexanderw]

hey running Fedora Core 4 (only OS I can get running on my system atm but that is another story)

I got the client installed under wine and have fully patched up. now I can log in but the client only gives me a black screen. any ideas ?

think it may be a driver issue but I'm lost when it comes to installing drivers on linux

[Doctorhyde]

Do you use any other 3D graphics that use hardware acceleration? It sounds like the game isn't working with the accelerator.

[Alexanderw]

using a NVIDIA 440 MSI build

[Stormgiver]

What type of window manager do you use?

For me I get a blank screen (but can hear sound) using XFCE. It works in Gnome...

[Hacre]

using a NVIDIA 440 MSI build

If you open a command prompt in your GUI and type glxinfo | grep rendering what output does it give? It -should- give a yes.

Also, what version of wine? With the latest version I am having some weird stability issues but haven't managed to track down the cause yet.

Other times I've had a black screen at loading of AO, switching to another virtual desktop then back again (CTRL+F1, CTRL+F2 etc in kde) resolves the issue but YMMV.

[Alexanderw]

grep rendering ... now when you say that do you mean direct rendering ?

cause if so it is set to "no" and because I've never used linux as a gaming platform I dont know how to switch it

also using the wine I got off yum V 0.9.27


ok found some nvidia drivers and tried to install them from yum but after reboot I can not get into gui so I had to back up and use the default fedora drivers

stil have not figured out how to get the device rendering to show as yes