I am a dedicated Debian user. Love it. But my kids keep getting Windows games and educational software from relatives on birthdays and at Christmas. So they now have a pile of CD's that we can't run. They are not happy about this. It seems to me that I have four options to run these applications for them:

1. Wine
2. Win4Lin
3. VMWare
4. Install Windows on a separate bootable partition (I really don't want to do this!)

I haven't tried any of these applications yet. Most of the games use audio, and a couple use the usb port, so the Linux software has to be robust enough that the application can use hardware.

Suggestions? Which of the above is best for my purposes?

Thanks.

Personally I would allocate a gaming partition for the kids. Environment emulators are good for some things but I would not recommend for anything but the simplest of games. Your or me would be fine tinkering to get a game working but the kids want it working now. These are my experiences :-)

Totally agree with odious1!. The right tool for the right job .

However, the best option to play Windows games in Linux is actually, none of the four above...

WineX/Cedega is actually the best one. It's a modified version of Wine optimized to run DirectX based games.

Though, if you are still with DOS games (as I surely love still), you may want to check DOSBox instead. It's pretty good

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips. I did look into winex/cedega, but it would cost me 5 bucks a month, which I'm not willing to spend so my kids can defeat Darth Vader or make a Lego railroad. I do have an extra hard disk on their machine, so I can put Windows on that (provided I can figure out how to get it to boot through Grub).

Thanks again.

Hi rosslaird!'

Just so you know, it cost 15 bucks only (3 months subscription). After that, you don't have to pay anything else and can use WineX as much as you want. The subscription is more like a symbolic price: It's no more then a pizza and a beer over here... specially when compared with the other options:

Win4Lin = $ 89.99 USD
VMWare = $ 189.00 USD

And they would not be as good as WineX/Cedega, since they are designed for games. With a WineX/Cedega subscription, you also get support and forum access, besides that, you can even vote for your favorite game to be supported. You can check the compatibility list here:

http://www.transgaming.com/searchgame.php

to first see if your game should work. It's also possible to download WineX for free, but that would require that you compile it yourself, and it not always will work. Here is a tutorial to help you installing WineX CVS version:

http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=cedegacvs

Regards!

Winex cedega just costs $15, you don't have to keep up the subscription once you download it if you don't want to. It runs a good selection of games, but not all. What it does run will run better than an emulator. Win4lin will not run many games, unless you are talking solitaire and the like - may run some ed stuff. VMWare will 'run' many if you have a heap of power but they will be very slow - expensive tho, I could buy a good PC or two for that! Wine will run some, but not as easily as winex.

Then there is dual boot. I scrounge old parts/ebay/dump and each of the four kids here has a computer that I slowly upgrade on the cheap... They are up to P3-450/550's and such now They dual boot but the girls live in linux and the boys tend to use win for some games and linux for other games and the rest...

I've persomally felt the kids needed a PC to keep mine safe - they started with just one - the kids PC, but I kept slapping others together since you can do it so cheap and easy if you aren't in a rush. Don't have much money, so it had to be 'real cheap' . But I pick up a lot of stuff for free...