Has anyone demonstrated that R3E can be run on a Linux system in a Virtual Machine or in any other way? I copy some content from a post of mine in another forum as explanation why I started to explore whether Linux could be an alternative. Im really reaching the end of my way with Microsoft, after 20 years or so. This W10 thing has killed my last patience with them. --- For the same reason I just ask here (again) whether R3E has made some gains in reaching offline functionality over the last half a year, I asked it 6 month ago or so. Obviously, for reasons that have not even anything to do with R3E itself, I would appreciate not needing to be online playing it.
Probably not. VMWare does decent with games that are older or not as taxing on a system, but rarely runs newer games. Ive tried running R3E on a mac using vm software but had no luck st all. Steam doesnt even play nice with vm software either.
Thats what I feared I would be told. I probably end up with two systems, one with W7 base installation, and games, and another with Linux for surfing, then. All working (means: writing) I already do completely offline and physically disconnected from the web, an old laptop. That makes three systems, to be precise... Sometimes I miss my old mechanical typewriter.
Running anything in a VM adds a fair amount of performance overhead. Doesn't matter if it's VMWare or Virtualbox etc. In general it's fine for desktop apps (I run stuff like Adobe Fireworks in a Win7 VM on my Centos box) but games get a bit slow. Additionally, games make fairly unique demands graphically that a VM typically won't be able to service as it doesn't offer applications direct bare-metal access. WINE might be worth a look, a decent number of games run in that. It's not an emulator, but rather a compatibility layer. Basically it intercepts calls to Windows stuff and supplies its own routines. DirectX stuff works. That said, compatibility isn't 100%, some stuff just doesn't work. https://appdb.winehq.org doesn't list anything for R3E so it might be worth trying it out and letting us know how it goes. Note: If you want to run games on Linux I recommend a decent NVIDIA card and the proprietary drivers. AMD have better open-source drivers but they're not game-ready and AMD tend to stop supporting cards pretty quickly after release. I'd also suggest a more consumer-oriented linux like Mint (a de-crapped version of Ubuntu) instead of a more stable server-oriented distro like Centos or Debian. Also Steam does have a linux version and a decent number of games are now being ported to run in Linux. If Windows pisses you off, I suggest dual-booting and doing what you want in Linux, and stuff that you can't do in Linux do in the Windows partition. Maybe make windows your computer's 'games console' and linux serious work, with a windows vm to handle windows apps that don't play nicely in linux.
I've tried wine as well on a Mac and same issues. Its very spotty even getting programs to run much less perform well. As hariseldon said, you're far better off dual booting. Emulation companies tee me off more than any other companies. They promise that their emulation software works well and will run Windows just as good as a windows machine but they don't. As hariseldon said, too much overhead is required because you're essentially running two programs to try and run one which means doubling up on your hardware. The only games I was ever successful with running in wine were east side hockey manager and championship manager. Even diablo 2 wouldn't run despite the software saying it would.
Tbh I don't have a problem with the emulation companies (actually virtualisation to be strictly accurate, it's a different thing), for the most part they do an excellent job. They don't generally make any promises about games (for instance VirtualBox have Direct3D mode but that's very experimental and you'd need your linux host to have its graphical stuff in really good shape for it to work properly), and in my day-to-day use of Windows 7 in a VM I've found it does a fantastic job of running serious Adobe software and I don't have to reboot to use it. Similarly, my home Windows 8 box has a centos VM with all my work stuff on it and frankly it performs better than my work machine (in part because my home PC is a beast). VMs are fantastic, they really are. However, gaming just isn't going to work with them in the main, as they basically segment off a bit of CPU time and offer an interface to other hardware resources but still have to compete with the host operating system for those. Given the complexity of what most games do with the graphical side of things, that tends to simply not work, but there aren't too many VM companies saying it does. Wine works differently, just being a compatibility layer, and tbh it does an amazing job at being more efficient than a VM. An example of Wine's brilliance is that iRacing's linux version is actually iRacing packaged in a preconfigured Wine wrapper, and it works reasonably well. Sure, a lot of games don't work but if you look at wine's AppDB you'll see a hell of a lot of stuff works really well, anything rated gold or platinum you'll not notice many problems and I've had good results with some items marked silver, and some marked badly just haven't had the reviews updated in a while and now actually work. With Wine and Steam's many linux ports (plus loads on Gog and in Humble Bundles) you can actually do a fair amount of gaming in Linux these days, plus there are native games like Super Tux Kart. Last but not least, old Windows games (ie Win95/98 era) work really well in Wine, but don't work in modern Windows, so if you have an interest in nostalgia and getting that stuff running, it's brilliant. We have Dosbox to run old Dos games, and most XP-and-beyond era games work ok but that little stretch of 5 years or so is really hit and miss in Windows, so having an alternative way to run that stuff is brilliant.
Apparently much to consider. Still two-rigs-solution being top on my list. Or one rig with extractable exchange drives. I do not like to have, for security reasons, two drives with two different installations connected simultaneously to the same hardware. Without physical disconnection, malware and spyware can reach out. Software barriers are not really barriers. More a delay, or obstacle to manouver around, climb over, dig through underneath. Men - cut the wires! Beside a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse, an axe belongs to the items placed on every working table.
Tbh Skybird, you're waaaay off with most of what you're saying. A linux partition can happily be formatted in any number of different ways, all of which Microsoft has no way to touch because Windows doesn't carry drivers to access those partitions (while Linux will happily access your Windows partition because it can read FAT and NTFS). Malware and spyware are just software. They can only do what software can do, and in the main they are limited by the capabilities of the OS on which they reside. I'll add that most malware and spyware serves one of the following functions: 1. Create a bot-net 2. Steal credit card or other sensitive information 3. Ransomware (eg Cryptolocker) - lock your PC or claim there's some nasty porn on it and the FBI want money to keep quiet or a fake antivirus are the typical approaches 4. Compromise a server Out of those.. 1. Bot-net is going to be built for the lowest common denomenator. They want lots of boxes for no effort. They'll typically target Windows machines and increasingly macs, but there isn't any malware that looks for alternate OS installs on separate partitions to compromise them. 2. Steal credit card or other sensitive information: Again, typically these will seek to confuse the naive Windows or Mac user, not much out there for Linux because generally Linux users are pretty tech-savvy and there aren't many of them. If you do your banking and any other sensitive activity on the Linux partition, and use Windows for gaming, you're really not going to have a problem. 3. Ransomware (eg Cryptolocker): Again, low-hanging fruit. Windows machines are where it's at, especially as corporate networks often consist primarily of Windows machines.. crypto-locker an entire company network (and many companies have terrible backup strategies, in most cases no backup strategies, so they just have to pay up) and you've made a tidy sum from a user who won't tell anyone (reputational damage) and has plenty of money to spend. 4. Compromise a server: This is where there's some interest in Linux boxes. Compromise a server (typically a web or mail server) to serve up malware to people or do some spamming. However servers are never dual-boot windows/linux. By their nature they're linux only because you don't want to switch OSs on a live server. If you don't have any server software running on your linux box you'll be safe enough. In terms of how it gets on your computer: 1. Compromised webservers serving malware via 0-day browser/Flash/PDF/Java exploits. [if you want a secure Windows box, rule number one is turn off flash, ditch Adobe PDF in favour of something like Foxit, and stop java applets from running] 2. Flash drives. 3. Compromised machines sharing a network infecting other non-infected machines via exploits. Basically there's security and then there's paranoia, and you've ventured into paranoia. I'll add that if you're still worried you might want to spend time investigating the suppliers of your hard drive (firmware has been hacked by state actors previously, such that drives leave manufacture in a compromised state), keyboard, etc and ensuring that no-one has physical access to your PC (physical access = ownership) - you'll need a suitable lead-lined room with proper secure locks. Also you'll have to kill WiFi and switch back to wired internet. Oh and bin your mobile too. Or you could just stop being paranoid and work within the parameters to get what you need to do done with the minimum risk you can, balanced according to the damage that risk can cause and the value of your activity. I'll add that anything you store on the web is your biggest problem. The servers I maintain are quite a challenge to keep secure to the extent that we have basically had to block all Chinese IP addresses due to the sheer volume of hacking attempts coming from the country and we're not exactly a big target. It seems in this case that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.