Updated: SL via WINE

Has anyone else tried the latest release of WINE (0.9.12)? After applying the sound and OpenGL patches (didn't try without them, so might not matter), everything works... literally, as far as I can tell.


Mouse hovering works again (stopped for me in the last 2 WINE releases)
Sound is smooth (presumably due to the sound patch)
Great FPS
Everything else I can think of to test, really.

Anyone else confirm or deny?

Thanks,

Val

Casually it's pretty good. My main complaint is that the frame-rate is pretty poor, most especially compared to the reasonably snappy Linux version. Alpha on clothing still often doesn't work, here. Secondarily some other things don't work, like embedded Quicktime, and memory consumption seems much higher under WINE, causing me swap-pains that the Linux version doesn't.

Ahh, yeah... somehow forgot about testing video... guess because I never used it before anyways. Did you try applying that OpenGL patch? My FPS is actually pretty high amd about the same as the Linux client (avg in the low 20s). I will have to watch the memory usage more closely, I have a ton of RAM in this PC so I didn't notice anything.

Thanks for the response.

--Val

The GL thunk optimizations have been checked into WineHQ and are in the latest release. So make sure you are fully up to date with Wine.

Unless the bug in SL itself was fixed I do not know what could have fixed the alpha texture issues .... maybe new drivers? I don't think much has changed in the OpenGL layer lately.

As to memory usage, bear in mind that the Linux client doesn't detect memory properly so will always use as little as possible, even at the expense of not fully loading any textures!

When you say drivers, do you mean actual system drivers for the video card, or the stuff in WINE? While there was an updated nVidia driver for Linux released this month, I've not installed it yet (still running 1.0-8178 from December). Not sure what fixed it either, was surprised and only even noticed it by accident.

Thanks,

Val

Could one of you guys put up a basic "how to get SL running in Wine" post? Or let me know if I just missed the post when I searched...

I can't get past the DirectX/OpenGL errors when the app launches. I figured it was because I didn't have Cedega, but Validus mentions Wine 0.9.12 which sounds like the regular version.

Thanks!

What are the DirectX/OpenGL errors?

I seem to remember getting complaints about directX the first time I ran it under wine, but after that it ran fine. I am on Debian FWIW.

When I start the SL exe it gripes that it can't find DirectX 9a. Then I get a second error about openGL (not in front of that computer at the moment so I don't have the exact error...) and the program exits.

I was using the RPM from the Fedora repository though...I'll try it with the version from the WineHQ site tonight...

You mention two patches. I've seen the sound patch, but what is the openGL patch?

You might try renaming your ~/.wine directory to something like ~/.winebak temporarily and giving it a shot... over the last few versions of WINE I've had to do that at times to resolve seemingly odd issues.

Anyway, all I've done was this.

1. Ensure I had the proper nVidia drivers installed for my card
2. Download WINE 0.9.12 from winhq.com
3. Apply audio patch (OpenGL patch is apparently no longer needed)
4. Built and install new binary RPM
5. Set WINE to run as Windows XP
6. run 'wine /path/to/SecondLife.exe'

That's it... nothing especially weird.

--Val

I downloaded the windows 1.9.0.21 installer and installed flawlessly on my computer using current wine.

Start the second life exe and get the warning about missing directx 9.0. Click Yes to continue and my entire screen turns black. In fact all virtual screens turn black and I have to exit my X session and restart X. I get no other errors showing, so I don't really know where else to look for a source of the issue.

I am running a sapphire ati mobility radeon 9600 card, 256 MB, so dunno if it's a card specific issue or not. Running the most recent ati drivers to this date as well.

Figured I would post this in case others out there find it does not work for them.

Oh, and yes, I started with a new ~/.wine directory. Set the default OS as win xp in winecfg, etc, etc. Unfortunately it just will not work here at this time. Oh well.

Hrm... could be a video card/drivers thing, I guess. I've never had great luck with ATI cards on Linux. What version of X are you running? Any composite type extensions enabled?

--Val

Rizzermon, try telling Wine to run in a virtual desktop of the size you wish to play at.

If you get errors about OpenGL it may be that the binaries were not built correctly. Building Wine binaries is notoriously hard and many distros get it wrong. Your best bet is to do it yourself and make sure you have all the -dev packages installed.

Not sure what distro you're using, Rizzermon, but here is how I build my RPMs if you're interested (running SuSE 10 and 10.1RC1):

1. Download the source rpm (*.src.rpm) from WineHQ and place in /usr/src/packages/SRPMS then run "rpm -Uhv <filename>.src.rpm"

2. Place the audio patch in /usr/src/packages/SOURCES and call it audio.diff

3. Edit the wine.spec file in /usr/src/packages/SPECS and add audio.diff to the patch list in the beginning (You'll see something like "Patch0: wine.diff", just add "Patch1: audio.diff" under it. Then search for %patch0 (it may have some other characters at the end) and add %patch1 right below it (no other characters necessary). Then close/save

4. Run "rpmbuild -ba wine.spec" from within the SPECS directory... it will either start running or tell you about dependency issues just as the rpm command normally would. If missing dependencies, install them as normal.

5. It will likely ask you what file to patch, the file is /usr/src/packages/BUILD/wine-0.9.12/server/thread.c (the wine-0.9.12 will obviously be based on the version of WINE at that time).

6. Sit back and wait as it builds, might take a while.

7. Install finished RPMs that are placed in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i586

Hope this is useful.

--Val

A complete black screen usually occurs when SL tries to start in fullscreen mode. You should switch off fullscreen before running SL. Copy your linux settings.ini to the appropriate folder and try again.

Weird, not that I prefer Full Screen mode, but it does seem to work well enough for me if I enable it.

--Val

Still not working unfortunately. I have placed my settings.ini in the appropriate wine folder under Application Data/SecondLife/user_settings. I have opengl overlay turned on for my ati card. I have tried with the opengl overlay off as well and the results are similar, but now I do receive a few errors:

when I click Yes to the warning about missing direct x I get this error:

Can't activate GL rendering context

I also see the following warnings in my console window:

INFO: Initializing window...
WARNING: No ARB WGL render texture extensions
INFO: Swap Method: Unknown
INFO: GL buffer: Color Bits 32 Alpha Bits 8 Depth Bits 24
WARNING: Release of DC and RC failed
err:xvidmode:ComputeGammaFromRamp strange gamma ramp ([2]=2313 for 12809->25960), rejected
WARNING: LLWindowManager::create() : Error creating window.
WARNING: Unable to create window, be sure screen is set at 32-bit color in Control Panels->Display->Settings
INFO: remove_marker_file()

I do have my xorg.conf screen settings for depth 24 (which amounts to the corresponding 32 required ), my screen size is 1024x768, but since I am not running SL fullscreen, that would amount to 800x600. I have my audio set to emulation as per recommendations elsewhere in this forum. I even have tried setting my winecfg graphics setup from hardware to emulation and vice versa and still receiving errors or the black screen.

I am using xorg 6.9.0 and wine 0.9.12 and the most recent ati-drivers, which are 8.24.8 . I have opengl overlay set to on for the drivers. When I set it to off, then I get the black screen again. So I am making progress it seems, but still no go.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone who responded with helpful hints. I am running a gentoo system by the way. My kernel is a 2.6.14. I guess I'll get it to run eventually, just still no success, but thanks to all who tried to offer help.

Update: I even tried removing the gentoo ebuild and installing from source (which is what the gentoo ebuild does anyhow, but eh) and still receiving either a black screen if I enable xvideo overlay in xorg.conf and if I disable the xvideo overlay and enable opengl overlay (can't enable both the xvideo and opengl overlay at the same time) then I get the error about not being able to activate GL rendering context as indicated above. Guess I'll have to remain patient on this one.

Normal sound works great for me in 0.9.12, but streaming audio skips a lot. Here are specs:

gentoo Linux with kernel 2.6.15 gentoo + CK (ck-sources)
current alsa drivers for audio. Might be the ~x86 ones.
audio card is onboard. lspci tell me it's a "VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller" from VIA.
wine 0.9.12 + whatever patches gentoo applies.

Streaming audio seems to work better if I set bits per sample in winecfg to 16. Going to play with sampling rates later... might get better performance at a lower rate?

Edit: I can also play music in xmms or mplayer and still get the normal sounds in SL. Which is nice.

Darkside,

Did you apply that audio patch? It corrected all the streaming sound as well as some popping and other little problems when a lot of sound occured at once.

--Val

Strange...I deleted my .wine directory, removed wine, reinstalled wine and tried again and it worked perfectly. Not really sure what happened that first time.

Anyway...anyone managed to get Quicktime support working w/o Cedega? I found a copy of Quicktime 6 (nothing newer would install) and it works, but SL crashes when trying to load "Quicktime Support". No good errors on what it's having a problem with.

Have you tried Quicktime Alternative? I couldn't get the latest version of Quicktime to install in Wine either, but QA installed fine and I can play .mov files in VLC.

Don't use a settings.ini from the Linux client with the Windows client. Try altering the gamma values in your settings.ini to be within the specified range (or delete it)

Just out of interest, is there a howto specific to SL + Wine that covers all the patching, getting sound to work, etc etc ?

Not that I have seen, although the only things I had to do (literally), I went over step by step in this thread. The general steps taken and then in depth regarding how I do the patching, although this process would obviously be different for some distros or just based on preference of the user.

--Val

You can skip the patching process by using my wineserver, if it works:

http://plan99.net/~mike/files/wineserver

It has to go in /usr/bin/wineserver. Make sure you remember to chmod it properly. You'll see errors and warnings if you don't.

chmod +sx /usr/bin/wineserver

Have fun.

Good suggestion, I hadn't heard of QA before. I'm downloading it now.


Damn...crashes SL at the same place. Has anyone got this working?