Newb here.Ubuntu 9.10, ATI Adeon x1270, trying to run Steam.

[vitamin]

Sick of Vista, don't want to give MS another $200 for another bloated crappy OS. My old laptop had Ubuntu 8.04, but it was incapable of running Steam games, so I'm new to this Wine stuff. So here it goes, I've been away from linux for the last 2 years, but when 9.10 came out, I decided it was time to come back and give it another look. I have everything up and running, with the drivers that come out of the box with 9.10.  Wine is installed, I have a bunch of older games, Quake 2 for example, and they run great. OpenGL seems to be working fine, and linux native openGL games run great. I can turn on and use all the desktop effects, but I have to turn them off to get Quake2 to run in WINE. When I do...NICE! But I install Steam, load up Half Life 2, it looks good through the splash screens and logos, but when the game loads, I can't read the menus, and there is a noticeable diagonal line through the middle of the screen, from top right to bottom left. The only difference I can think of is Half Life 2 is a directx game, not opengl. Anyhow, I can't get this stupid game to run.

I've tried installing ATI drivers, but it breaks my install...by the way, where in the hell did xorg.conf go??? WTF? According to ATI, the last version of of Catalyst that supports my card is 9.2, which is incompatable with Ubuntu's new Xserver version. Tried downgrading that, then installing the 9.2 ATI, everything got hosed. Tried the older open source drivers, no 3d at all.  I'm kind of at a loss here, not sure where the xorg.conf went.

My level of expertise with linux is pretty much copying and pasting lines into the terminal, that was enough a couple years ago, when I was running 8.04, everything worked....

Anyone have any suggestions? I just want to play Team fortress without having this 25 gigabyte monster called Vista on my system!

[FatButtLarry]

Wayne,

I love your post for two reasons, first is you still play quake 2, and
second because you represent most people trying to move to linux:  advanced
enough to troubleshoot but dangerous enough to blow it all up. :)

I have half-life 2 installed on 9.04 and it works ok.  It runs for about 5
minutes and then crashes.  I haven't tried running it on 9.10 yet.

The fact that opengl works illustrates your video card is set up properly.
I had to lower the directx level using the "dxlevel" command.  I found that
suggested on many forums.  Have you tried this yet?

-Tres

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 6:10 PM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...>wrote:

> Sick of Vista, don't want to give MS another $200 for another bloated
> crappy OS. My old laptop had Ubuntu 8.04, but it was incapable of running
> Steam games, so I'm new to this Wine stuff. So here it goes, I've been away
> from linux for the last 2 years, but when 9.10 came out, I decided it was
> time to come back and give it another look. I have everything up and
> running, with the drivers that come out of the box with 9.10.  Wine is
> installed, I have a bunch of older games, Quake 2 for example, and they run
> great. OpenGL seems to be working fine, and linux native openGL games run
> great. I can turn on and use all the desktop effects, but I have to turn
> them off to get Quake2 to run in WINE. When I do...NICE! But I install
> Steam, load up Half Life 2, it looks good through the splash screens and
> logos, but when the game loads, I can't read the menus, and there is a
> noticeable diagonal line through the middle of the screen, from top right to
> bottom left. The only difference I can think of is Half Life 2 is a directx
> game, not opengl. Anyhow, I can't get this stupid game to run.
>
> I've tried installing ATI drivers, but it breaks my install...by the way,
> where in the hell did xorg.conf go??? WTF? According to ATI, the last
> version of of Catalyst that supports my card is 9.2, which is incompatable
> with Ubuntu's new Xserver version. Tried downgrading that, then installing
> the 9.2 ATI, everything got hosed. Tried the older open source drivers, no
> 3d at all.  I'm kind of at a loss here, not sure where the xorg.conf went.
>
> My level of expertise with linux is pretty much copying and pasting lines
> into the terminal, that was enough a couple years ago, when I was running
> 8.04, everything worked....
>
> Anyone have any suggestions? I just want to play Team fortress without
> having this 25 gigabyte monster called Vista on my system!
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
- Tres.Finocchiaro@...
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[vitamin]

FatButtLarry wrote:

> Wayne,
>
> I love your post for two reasons, first is you still play quake 2, and
> second because you represent most people trying to move to linux:  advanced
> enough to troubleshoot but dangerous enough to blow it all up. :)
>
> I have half-life 2 installed on 9.04 and it works ok.  It runs for about 5
> minutes and then crashes.  I haven't tried running it on 9.10 yet.
>
> The fact that opengl works illustrates your video card is set up properly.
> I had to lower the directx level using the "dxlevel" command.  I found that
> suggested on many forums.  Have you tried this yet?
>
> -Tres
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 6:10 PM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...>wrote:
>
>
> > Sick of Vista, don't want to give MS another $200 for another bloated
> > crappy OS. My old laptop had Ubuntu 8.04, but it was incapable of running
> > Steam games, so I'm new to this Wine stuff. So here it goes, I've been away
> > from linux for the last 2 years, but when 9.10 came out, I decided it was
> > time to come back and give it another look. I have everything up and
> > running, with the drivers that come out of the box with 9.10.  Wine is
> > installed, I have a bunch of older games, Quake 2 for example, and they run
> > great. OpenGL seems to be working fine, and linux native openGL games run
> > great. I can turn on and use all the desktop effects, but I have to turn
> > them off to get Quake2 to run in WINE. When I do...NICE! But I install
> > Steam, load up Half Life 2, it looks good through the splash screens and
> > logos, but when the game loads, I can't read the menus, and there is a
> > noticeable diagonal line through the middle of the screen, from top right to
> > bottom left. The only difference I can think of is Half Life 2 is a directx
> > game, not opengl. Anyhow, I can't get this stupid game to run.
> >
> > I've tried installing ATI drivers, but it breaks my install...by the way,
> > where in the hell did xorg.conf go??? WTF? According to ATI, the last
> > version of of Catalyst that supports my card is 9.2, which is incompatable
> > with Ubuntu's new Xserver version. Tried downgrading that, then installing
> > the 9.2 ATI, everything got hosed. Tried the older open source drivers, no
> > 3d at all.  I'm kind of at a loss here, not sure where the xorg.conf went.
> >
> > My level of expertise with linux is pretty much copying and pasting lines
> > into the terminal, that was enough a couple years ago, when I was running
> > 8.04, everything worked....
> >
> > Anyone have any suggestions? I just want to play Team fortress without
> > having this 25 gigabyte monster called Vista on my system!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> - Tres.Finocchiaro@...
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20091110/adad62e4/attachment.htm>

Yeah, I've blown it all up about 8 times now. Luckily, it's just been Wubi installs, which takes me less than ten minutes to get back up and running. Can't remember the last time I played quake 2, I just found it buried in my desk drawer and knew it was an opengl game, so it would be about perfect to test with. No, i haven't tried the dxlevel command yet, that will probably be my next step, but I'm not too optimistic. From what I read, that command will improve my frame rate, but what I have now needs a lot more help than that.  

 I just downloaded the Dell Ubuntu 9.04 reinstall ISO from Dell, It's supposed to have all the ATI drivers installed out of the box. Going to try that. I have a one year old Latitude D531, maybe that will give me better results. If nothing else, I found an old Windows 2000 disk, I'll just dual boot and use that for gaming, providing it will see my SATA drive. Or, I could just put 9.10 on it and give up on that game, but it really is about the only game I play.  I'm just tired of looking at this boring Vista. Yech!

[FatButtLarry]

Wayne,

What I find particularly interesting is this page by Cedega:

http://www.cedega.com/explore/cedega_ready/

Read the bottom part about video cards.

If you're not familiar with Cedega, its a version of Wine geared
specifically for gaming.  Read their video card recommendations.

-Tres

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:56 AM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...>wrote:

>
> FatButtLarry wrote:
> > Wayne,
> >
> > I love your post for two reasons, first is you still play quake 2, and
> > second because you represent most people trying to move to linux:
>  advanced
> > enough to troubleshoot but dangerous enough to blow it all up. :)
> >
> > I have half-life 2 installed on 9.04 and it works ok.  It runs for about
> 5
> > minutes and then crashes.  I haven't tried running it on 9.10 yet.
> >
> > The fact that opengl works illustrates your video card is set up
> properly.
> > I had to lower the directx level using the "dxlevel" command.  I found
> that
> > suggested on many forums.  Have you tried this yet?
> >
> > -Tres
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 6:10 PM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...
> >wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Sick of Vista, don't want to give MS another $200 for another bloated
> > > crappy OS. My old laptop had Ubuntu 8.04, but it was incapable of
> running
> > > Steam games, so I'm new to this Wine stuff. So here it goes, I've been
> away
> > > from linux for the last 2 years, but when 9.10 came out, I decided it
> was
> > > time to come back and give it another look. I have everything up and
> > > running, with the drivers that come out of the box with 9.10.  Wine is
> > > installed, I have a bunch of older games, Quake 2 for example, and they
> run
> > > great. OpenGL seems to be working fine, and linux native openGL games
> run
> > > great. I can turn on and use all the desktop effects, but I have to
> turn
> > > them off to get Quake2 to run in WINE. When I do...NICE! But I install
> > > Steam, load up Half Life 2, it looks good through the splash screens
> and
> > > logos, but when the game loads, I can't read the menus, and there is a
> > > noticeable diagonal line through the middle of the screen, from top
> right to
> > > bottom left. The only difference I can think of is Half Life 2 is a
> directx
> > > game, not opengl. Anyhow, I can't get this stupid game to run.
> > >
> > > I've tried installing ATI drivers, but it breaks my install...by the
> way,
> > > where in the hell did xorg.conf go??? WTF? According to ATI, the last
> > > version of of Catalyst that supports my card is 9.2, which is
> incompatable
> > > with Ubuntu's new Xserver version. Tried downgrading that, then
> installing
> > > the 9.2 ATI, everything got hosed. Tried the older open source drivers,
> no
> > > 3d at all.  I'm kind of at a loss here, not sure where the xorg.conf
> went.
> > >
> > > My level of expertise with linux is pretty much copying and pasting
> lines
> > > into the terminal, that was enough a couple years ago, when I was
> running
> > > 8.04, everything worked....
> > >
> > > Anyone have any suggestions? I just want to play Team fortress without
> > > having this 25 gigabyte monster called Vista on my system!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > - Tres.Finocchiaro@...
> > -------------- next part --------------
> > An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> > URL: <
> http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20091110/adad62e4/attachment.htm
> >
>
>
>
>
> Yeah, I've blown it all up about 8 times now. Luckily, it's just been Wubi
> installs, which takes me less than ten minutes to get back up and running.
> Can't remember the last time I played quake 2, I just found it buried in my
> desk drawer and knew it was an opengl game, so it would be about perfect to
> test with. No, i haven't tried the dxlevel command yet, that will probably
> be my next step, but I'm not too optimistic. From what I read, that command
> will improve my frame rate, but what I have now needs a lot more help than
> that.
>
>  I just downloaded the Dell Ubuntu 9.04 reinstall ISO from Dell, It's
> supposed to have all the ATI drivers installed out of the box. Going to try
> that. I have a one year old Latitude D531, maybe that will give me better
> results. If nothing else, I found an old Windows 2000 disk, I'll just dual
> boot and use that for gaming, providing it will see my SATA drive. Or, I
> could just put 9.10 on it and give up on that game, but it really is about
> the only game I play.  I'm just tired of looking at this boring Vista. Yech!
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
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[vitamin]

Cedega is a version of an old version of Wine since they branched off from the original source. Therefore, some games might work due to their own work, but a lot that work in normal Wine won't under Cedega. So if you decide to give it a try, be careful!

I recommend you try dxlevel before anything else. It'll use an older DirectX implementation, which are generally a lot better supported with Wine.

[vitamin]

Well  thanks  guys. I'm going to try the -dxlevel, next time I get some down time, but I'm not too optimistic.   With my job, the work comes in spurts, and everything  has been busy at the moment. I bought this Dell laptop brand new less than a year ago, and ATI is telling me the video card is too old for them to support. Lesson learned, I'll never buy equipment with ATI in it again. It came with a lousy 120 gig hard drive. I was hoping to use Ubuntu as my lone OS, but thanks to  ATI, that's not gonna happen. I got 25 gigs of Vista, so my dual boot options are 1. Buy a bigger hard drive, 2. Install a smaller version of Windows.  I have an old Windows 2000 disk laying here, tried that, nope, couldn't see my SATA drive. Oh well, it would look like crap on a 15 inch LCD monitor anyway. After some searching, I found a program called vLite, which will shrink Vista down by removing services and extras. They claim Vista has two gigs worth of foreign languages in it. One tutorial site from a user claims he shrank Vista down with vLite to enough to fit on a 700 megabyte CD. So, barring miraculous results from the -dxlevel 8 command, I'm going to go this way give windows 40 gigs so I can game, and Ubuntu 80 gigs.

[vitamin]

DaVince wrote:
> Cedega is a version of an old version of Wine since they branched off from the original source. Therefore, some games might work due to their own work, but a lot that work in normal Wine won't under Cedega. So if you decide to give it a try, be careful!
>
> I recommend you try dxlevel before anything else. It'll use an older DirectX implementation, which are generally a lot better supported with Wine.



This is why I want off the Windows platform. It used to be the commercial product was always better than the freeware or open source software, that's no longer the case in most situations.

[vitamin]

If you really need Windows, then get yourself a used XP license from eBay. XP is smaller, faster, cheaper. Most games still run on XP, and that will probably be the case for the next few years.

[vitamin]

lahmbi5678 wrote:
> If you really need Windows, then get yourself a used XP license from eBay. XP is smaller, faster, cheaper. Most games still run on XP, and that will probably be the case for the next few years.



And give Microsoft more money? Not if I can help it. besides vlite to dissect Vista looks like it might be kind of fun.

[FatButtLarry]

Off topic, but wouldn't he be giving the money to a person, not Microsoft?
:)

If you do stick with Wine, please post your success.

-Tres

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:13 PM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...>wrote:

>
> lahmbi5678 wrote:
> > If you really need Windows, then get yourself a used XP license from
> eBay. XP is smaller, faster, cheaper. Most games still run on XP, and that
> will probably be the case for the next few years.
>
>
>
> And give Microsoft more money? Not if I can help it. besides vlite to
> dissect Vista looks like it might be kind of fun.
>
>
>
>
>
>

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[vitamin]

Success!!

The problem: ATI doesn't support my card with any of the newer running xorg. At my first post, one suggestion had me trying to downgrade my xserver. Well , screw it. I put a variant of Ubuntu 8.10, Linux Mint actually, and it automatically picked up on that I had an ATI driver and installed a driver for it. Next, I downloaded Wine. Installed Steam. Installed Half-life 2. Launched it. Looked beautiful, but ran sluggish. Then I launched it with the
 -dxlevel 80 command. It fired up, not looking quite as good, but much more playable. Things look a little washed out in the game when there is a lot of light, in the game, for instance, in the opening scene when G. Freeman step off the train and into the sunlight, the colors aren't all that great. But it runs!! And with all the compiz effects still turned on in my desktop. Turning them on or off pretty much has no effect.


Bottom line, If you have one of these unsupported ATI cards, 8.10
in the Ubuntu family of distros is as about as high as you can go. Anything newer will cripple your card.


Thanks for the help!


FatButtLarry wrote:

> Off topic, but wouldn't he be giving the money to a person, not Microsoft?
> :)
>
> If you do stick with Wine, please post your success.
>
> -Tres
>
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:13 PM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...>wrote:
>
>
> >
> > lahmbi5678 wrote:
> >
> > > If you really need Windows, then get yourself a used XP license from
> > >
> > eBay. XP is smaller, faster, cheaper. Most games still run on XP, and that
> > will probably be the case for the next few years.
> >
> >
> >
> > And give Microsoft more money? Not if I can help it. besides vlite to
> > dissect Vista looks like it might be kind of fun.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> - Tres.Finocchiaro@...
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20091112/aa281276/attachment.htm>

[FatButtLarry]

Thanks for the feedback, it will help others for sure.

On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 2:01 AM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...>wrote:

> Success!!
>
> The problem: ATI doesn't support my card with any of the newer running
> xorg. At my first post, one suggestion had me trying to downgrade my
> xserver. Well , screw it. I put a variant of Ubuntu 8.10, Linux Mint
> actually, and it automatically picked up on that I had an ATI driver and
> installed a driver for it. Next, I downloaded Wine. Installed Steam.
> Installed Half-life 2. Launched it. Looked beautiful, but ran sluggish. Then
> I launched it with the
>  -dxlevel 80 command. It fired up, not looking quite as good, but much more
> playable. Things look a little washed out in the game when there is a lot of
> light, in the game, for instance, in the opening scene when G. Freeman step
> off the train and into the sunlight, the colors aren't all that great. But
> it runs!! And with all the compiz effects still turned on in my desktop.
> Turning them on or off pretty much has no effect.
>
>
> Bottom line, If you have one of these unsupported ATI cards, 8.10
> in the Ubuntu family of distros is as about as high as you can go. Anything
> newer will cripple your card.
>
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
>
> FatButtLarry wrote:
> > Off topic, but wouldn't he be giving the money to a person, not
> Microsoft?
> > :)
> >
> > If you do stick with Wine, please post your success.
> >
> > -Tres
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:13 PM, waynefoutz <wineforum-user@...
> >wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > lahmbi5678 wrote:
> > >
> > > > If you really need Windows, then get yourself a used XP license from
> > > >
> > > eBay. XP is smaller, faster, cheaper. Most games still run on XP, and
> that
> > > will probably be the case for the next few years.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > And give Microsoft more money? Not if I can help it. besides vlite to
> > > dissect Vista looks like it might be kind of fun.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > - Tres.Finocchiaro@...
> > -------------- next part --------------
> > An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> > URL: <
> http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20091112/aa281276/attachment.htm
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
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