WoWLinuxTools shows progress on open source WoW
by Mike Schramm 
May 15th 2007 at 9:12AM
Anybody out there brave enough to be running WoW on Linux? I'm not, but WorldofWar.net has announced that players are one step closer to getting Azeroth running on your favorite open source flavor. A user named Yaccin has posted a small app called WoWLinuxTools over on KDE-Apps.org. It's as early as early gets-- the version number is 0.0.0-prev5a-- but it's a start.Now, from what I know (and admittedly, what I know about Linux isn't a lot), the best way to get WoW running on Linux is to run it from within Wine, a Windows emulator (Yes, I know Wine Is Not an Emulator, but work with me here). But even running it from within Wine doesn't let you change certain settings like sound and video, and apparently that's what this WoWLinuxTools program is supposed to do. As I said, it's very early on in the process, so unless you know your way around Linux, you should probably stay away (or just dual boot Windows to play WoW), but what's there looks promising, and if a few more code monkeys get their hands on it, we could see something great.
Filed under: Fan stuff, Odds and ends, News items, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dan May 15th 2007 9:34AM
Just out of curiosity, what's it like under WINE? I always assumed performance would be awful (no proper 3D acceleration, etc.), but then, the last time I used WINE was around 1995. What are frame rates and stability like these days?
Jonas May 15th 2007 9:42AM
I've been running wow under either Wine or Cedega (mostly cedega, but wine for a period of time when cedega had some problems) since US beta. (Played korean beta at a friends house on his windows machine though). Performance is about the same as in windows for me, maby 5-10 FPS less, but no biggie. I run wow with all setting as max @ 1680x1050 in d3d mode and I have around 30FPS in a 25 man raid, and over 40 when soloing. Around 70-80 indoors. This is on a nvidia 6600GT gfx card.
IKT May 15th 2007 9:43AM
I'm one of those brave enough, it actually does a pretty decent job, but yeah the settings situation is pretty :/ so this tool will be great!
good news!
Jonas May 15th 2007 9:45AM
Regarding poster #1's question about stability: I've never had a crash caused by cedega since WoW release. And I play alot ;)
jarvik May 15th 2007 10:47AM
I have it setup on my computer and its not bad. I took the easy way out and copied my windows install rather that install fresh.
Its a little off visually, like the AA stuff, but very playable. Also the Alt-key wasn't working for commands but then I don't have many of those I use, so I didn't look into solving it.
But FPS was par, only would crash when trying to change the settings this tool is for :-)
Pinqvin May 15th 2007 9:53AM
I don't know about stability (Wine has yet to crash for me when playing, even thought i'm running it with beryl), but framerate loss isn't THAT bad. I mean, sure, it's noticeabl, but doesn't make the game unenjoyable.
I'ld say the framerate suffers about a 10-15% overall, greater loss with older computers and with crowded areas ofcourse. The loss of framerate would also be affected by your distro of choice.
Code_Man65 May 15th 2007 10:57PM
I run WoW under Gentoo Linux via Cedega. The performance is actually BETTER then it is on Windows funnily enough. I can only surmise that I have much less over-head.
Steve May 15th 2007 10:09AM
Not exactly a fix for the video options, but I've always used Apply To Forehead to access them. It disables a few things, but nothing you can't change in your Config.wtf.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info5202-ApplyToForehead.html
Dave May 15th 2007 10:42AM
As an Apple user, I would love to try running WoW under Linux (Ubuntu is easy for me to install) to see if I get any improved performance, but because I'm using a PowerPC processor, I don't have many options. Well, as far as I know, I have no options other than to run WoW on OS X.
Karl May 15th 2007 11:53AM
@10....Huh? & the game runs significantly faster under Wine than it does under Windows.
You may very well need to qualify that statement. The game was built for Windows and runs better under Windows given the same system. I have run it under both for some time now. My Windows system (which is the same spec as my Linux box) runs WoW much better by around 20% with number comparisons (sorry I don't have hard figures in front of me, I am at work).
System specs...(both systems are the same)
ASUS A8N32-SLI; AMD 64x2 4600+ CPU; 4 Gig Mem; nVidia 8800 (BFG) x2 (SLI)
Windows Vista
Linux RedHat
Mystrana May 15th 2007 11:57AM
well I use windows on my computer at home, but when I'm at my boyfriends house, I use his computer, and he has linux. I don't really notice a difference.
Rysc May 15th 2007 1:08PM
I've been running WoW using wine since TBC release. No real issues. Have found that ATI cards will lock the computer up after character choice (driver issue which if not already fixed, will be soon). Nvidia cards run like a dream. I dont have to pay for a Microsoft license ever again and thats a good thing.
novelty22 May 15th 2007 2:09PM
FWIW i've had it crash less in wine than windows. I've also been running it in both since release.
Barnabas May 15th 2007 3:50PM
I run WoW in Linux. Pretty easy to do. That tool looks extra convenient so I can play around the game settings and not have to modify files by hand. My latency is always lower when I run WoW on Gentoo versus XP. So that is a plus I guess.
Alex May 16th 2007 9:19AM
I've been running WoW on Linux for quite some while now and have noticed performance and framerates well over that of Windows.
I conducted tests on a minimal Windows install which I stripped down to about 70MB of memory (I think that's fair to start with) when idle. Running WoW, your memory use goes through the roof, HDD access goes crazy and performance takes a dive as soon as you get lots of things on the screen.
In Linux, because it is only emulating the API and not the entire system, it isn't obligated to emulate Windows compulsive tendency to cache to HDD for no good reason. It also has way better memory management. This is exemplified by what I call the "zeppelin test" where you go on a zep or boat with tons of people and see how long it takes for others to zone in after you. In some cases, I've been zoned in a good one to two seconds before other people start popping in. Overall, load times and memory use is better.
You have to bear in mind that if you're getting poorer graphical performance, you may not have enabled OpenGL mode, which is essential. WoW runs in either OGL or D3D in Linux, and depending on which API you're using makes a world of (warcraft) difference.
In the case of OGL, it's just mapping calls made for Windows directly to the same calls on Linux. In D3D, there may be more logic involved.
I've shown this to several people, and it's fairly unanimous, WoW runs better on WINE than it does on Windows, which is going to become more and more common for lots of things as time goes on.