Any new support for Linux?

[Fleet]

I see the stickied topic has not been updated in some time. Is there better support on the horizon? Installing dual-boot windows is a pain, since it trashes my boot loader, and paying for it hurts too.

[Echo35]

I see the stickied topic has not been updated in some time. Is there better support on the horizon? Installing dual-boot windows is a pain, since it trashes my boot loader, and paying for it hurts too.

The problem is the game uses .net which isn't well supported under Linux yet. It's not really a problem we can solve, so much as it is something we're just going to have to wait on the Linux community to fix. Dual boot loaders aren't too hard to fix though, so you can dual boot it in the mean time.

[RCIX]

I find it helpful to install Windows first then linux...

[Echo35]

I find it helpful to install Windows first then linux...

Well yeah, Windows wipes out GRUB and uses it's own boot loader, which is just as functional, it's just hidden.

[mtelesha]

.net is called mono on Linux. Very controversial since it uses the C# language that has tie ins with Microsoft. Personally I think its great for the sake of choice and the apps are cool. What .net are you using? Mono is at full .net 2.0 and is coming soon to .net 3.0. The idea is to be caught up in the next year or so from what I have heard.

Mono is actively supported by Microsoft and C# is a standard language. The OpenSUSE is the best distro for mono currently since this is a Novell project.

I would love to have some Linux love here on A.I. War!


Boot Loader:
If Windows wipes out your boot loader you can always just put in your distros live CD and repair the boot loader. Many helpful tutorials on that one.

[x4000]

It is more than just mono, it also requires wine to work well
with directx (see the stickies thread). I've done basically all that I can toake ai war as Linux compatible as possible, it now even runs on the 2.0 binaries instead of 3.5, but the last player who tested it still found it unplayable there. If there have been updates to mono and or wine in the last few months, might be a great idea to check it out again. But even once it is technically functioning, you still have the speed hurdle -- mono has been vastly slower than .net in the past for some things, though it is constantly evolving and has come a long way. So it all depends on where it is at the moment...

[dumpsterKEEPER]

I see the stickied topic has not been updated in some time. Is there better support on the horizon? Installing dual-boot windows is a pain, since it trashes my boot loader, and paying for it hurts too.

At least one person on the forums (deMangler?) was running AI War on Windows XP within a VM on Linux. If that's a possibility, it would help you with one of those problems.

[x4000]

That's true, AI War has been run in VMs on the Mac and Linux by some players, I have heard.  Seems to work fine in those cases, but of course VMs are not free.  Solves the dual boot problem, though.

[superspeck]

I see that VirtualBox doesn't work well (in the Linux thread)... has that been tested recently? What about different versions of VMWare on different platforms? I'm primarily Mac-based at home and hate installing games on my work laptop...