[u-u] COVID-19 craziness

[David Gilbert]

On 2020-04-04 12:28, Jim Mercer wrote:

> so,
>
> somehow, the surreal nature of our current condition, has caused some people
> to do strange things.
>
> for me, it has been to largely migrate my desktop from Windows to Ubuntu/Gnome.
>

Congratulations, really.  It is non-trivial and it's trivial things that 
make it both non-trivial and than later livable.  My own quest is to 
have a Windows that can boot FreeBSD as a guest and have that same 
FreeBSD that can boot that same windows as a guest.  I have this 
partially working at the moment.


> next on my plate is Eve Online.
>
> i have found a number of walk-throughs which purport to get it running under
> wine, however, in my journey to get Vsphere working, i know that getting things
> running under wine requires generous amounts of luck, patience and googling.
>
> since Eve is really the only game i play (i don't do console/nintendo/etc,
> and i recently got addicted, then unaddicted, to games on my phone), i'm also
> not really familiar with the current state of PC gaming.
>
> apparently there is this Steam thing, which may or may not have a role in
> running Eve on linux.  but it seems to want to insert itself between me
> and CCP (the company that i pay for the privilege of playing).
>
> another route i'm finding on google is Lutris.  this seems to be some kinda
> wrapper around games, which also includes a "linux launcher".
>
> any advice on this would be appreciated.

It has been awhile since Eve was my passion.  There are parts of my 
personality that don't do well with it.  But your goal of gaming on 
non-windows was my goal when I was playing Eve, so I'll talk about my 
experiences.

First of all, as you know, the Eve client (and servers) are written in 
python.  I believe it's Iron Python or a variant, but I'm willing to be 
missrembering that.  There was, at one time, about 7 or 10 years ago, a 
client for Eve that ran on Linux.  In their "great wisdom," CCP decided 
to discontinue the linux client back then... that it was too much work 
... or that a feature they wanted to implement was not available in 
OpenGL, I don't remember.

But most importantly, any hack you bring to the table to run Eve (be it 
wine-base, vm-based, or python-linux based), know that any update (from 
CCP) can break you and you're at the whim of your solution as to when it 
will be fixed.  If I play skyrim with a wine hack; first of all, it 
doesn't update often, and second, I can refuse an update.  Not update 
until the solution is at hand. I do this to keep my copy of SKSE 
working.  You don't have this choice for eve.  In the end, the solution 
you choose may have you out-of-action for some number of days unless you 
have a windows install waiting in the wings that is functional enough to 
tide you over.

As to "which is best" ... you need a system by which DX10 or DX11 (I 
forget... I don't think they use 12) is converted to OpenGL. Wine is the 
source of this nonsense.  There is Wine and then there are instances of 
wine curated and marketed by someone who wants you to pay (and 
inevitably might provide a slightly better experience when things break).

Just my 0.02.

Dave.