Processor and OS support

DancingBugbear

Am interested whether the BG2:EE will be distributed in a native Linux version, or whether the Windows version is expected to work on an Intel Core Duo (1.06GH 32bit) machine on Wine, considering the incompatibility of Beamdog and Wine. If so, would like to know if a purchase of a Windows version could be transferred to a Linux one, when it becomes available. Also interested whether the BG:EE original release will support Intel Core Duo processors, too.

If there's already a discussion related to this, this could be removed. The latest Linux related thread seemed to be closed by something to do with which people's children were going to the wrong psychologists.

If you're lucky, a troll will eat your psychologist, and play whimsical games with your children. Trolls bring great XP.

TJ_Hooker

This thread might interest you: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/20616/trent-confirms-linux-version-still-in-the-plan

AendaeronBluescale

As long as your hardware supports OpenGL 2.0* (NOTE: Intel IGPs have a driver-sided flaw and are thus unsupported) and has 512MB RAM it will run on it.

*) nVidia GeForce 7xxx Gxx or newer (GeForce 7000, 8000, 9000, GT? 200 and up)
*) ATI Radeon 9500 or newer (all Radeon HD GPUs, all Radeon Xyyy or X1xxx GPUs and up)

Because BG:EE and BG2:EE use OpenGL, it should be easily WINEable though (no DirectX rewrapping needed)

DancingBugbear

The profile of BG2:EE in BeamDog lists Intel Core Duo (i386) as the minimum required processor. If the same platform is transferred to BG:EE original release, it should work. The consideration is whether a 1.06GHx2 processor would be sufficient with emulation.

AendaeronBluescale

WINE is *not* an emulator, but a runtime environment for Windows programs under Linux and MacOS. Because there's next to no rewrapping needed (OpenGL can be taken 1:1 from Windows to Linux), WINE's overhead is negligible.

BG:EE is btw rated Platinum compatible under WINE: (Google cache version, the server seems to have issues)

It will run fine on Linux-based OSes using WINE, even with a 1.06GHz dual core CPU.

DancingBugbear

It requires extra processes, and indirect procedures, so sometimes runs faster than MS Windows, and sometimes slower. It provides *access* (re. us. of *...* block in preceding post) and support for MS Windows programs. On an existing GUI, it makes a separate platform that makes many redundant activities.

AendaeronBluescale

It does not require extra processes, because this WinAPI replacement (Which WINE is in essence) is completely rewritten and runs natively. There is no virtualization layer needed in WINE. Some OpenGL Windows based games run even faster on WINE+Linux than on Windows because the hardware abstraction layer (that is on Windows, Linux directly accesses the GPU through the driver) is bypassed.

Windows:
BG:EE -> WinAPI -> Hardware Abstraction Layer -> OpenGL driver -> GPU

Linux:
BG:EE -> WINE -> OpenGL driver -> GPU

Again:
WINE is not emulating
WINE is a WinAPI replacement, there is no virtualization and extra processes involved.

DancingBugbear

Wine provides processes that run MS Windows components. Some of them are extra made. They have to run alongside the Linux apps I have running, that use other systems. Fortunately Linux has low overhead, and most apps require few Windows components.