Unofficial Patch Brings OnLive to Linux

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Unofficial Patch Brings OnLive to Linux

An unofficial hack has OnLive working on Linux.

Penguin Tribe rejoice! A Linux version of OnLive is apparently on the way [http://onliveinformer.com/2011/07/20/onlive-is-working-on-an-official-linux-client/] but while the clock ticks on that, one of your own has figured out a way to make it work on your OS of choice right freakin' now. With no small about of dicking around, of course, but if you're such a diehard Linux nut that you'd rather do without OnLive than tolerate Windows on your PC, that's probably second nature for you anyway.

Here's a bit of a heads-up about what's in store. The very first thing you'll to do to get these wheels turning is open a terminal window and type this:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install git && sudo apt-get install autoconf && sudo apt-get build-dep wine1.3 && sudo apt-get install checkinstall && sudo apt-get install wine1.3

That's no joke and it's also the first [and, admittedly, worst] of about 13 steps involved in making the magic happen. But if you don't feel like waiting for OnLive to flip the switch of officialdom or just enjoy tinkering with this sort of thing, the patch apparently works pretty well. There are a few bumps in the road; the audio cuts out occasionally, which can be fixed by exiting OnLive and "resetting pulse," whatever that means, and some users have noted that the mouse sometimes only offers 180 degrees of movement, an issue the creator is still working on.

For those in the "this is too hard" or "I'm lazy and dangerous" camps, a premade package is available that can simplify the process, although the author makes it clear that it's a "very dirty way" of installing the patch and says he doesn't recommend using it. The instructions for getting OnLive running on Linux, along with an ongoing help thread, are up at OnLive Informer [http://onliveinformer.com/2011/09/04/community-hack-allows-linuxwine-users-to-experience-onlive/], which claims it sat on the story for a few days and put the author through "extensive testing and rewrites" to make sure the patch actually works as promised. Good luck!



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ZeroMachine

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Oct 11, 2008
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At first, I thought "AWESOME!"

But then I said "fuck it, I'm waiting until I can get a laptop with Windows again."

I hate Ubuntu.
 

FogHornG36

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Jan 29, 2011
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basement dwellers rejoice!

Makes sense that this shouldn't be hard to do, at least not as hard as installing it, and running in Linux
 

kitsuta

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Jan 10, 2011
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ZeroMachine said:
At first, I thought "AWESOME!"

But then I said "fuck it, I'm waiting until I can get a laptop with Windows again."

I hate Ubuntu.
To be fair to Ubuntu, this is (for once) all Wine [http://winehq.org]. Wine's goal - to be able to seamlessly run programs made for Windows inside Linux without actual emulation - is incredibly lofty considering the differences between the two systems. Imagine a console with seamless backward compatibility for every Nintendo console ever released, including all third party accessories; Wine is trying to do something more complicated than that. It's kind of amazing it ever works at all.

For the curious, the instructions linked in the article essentially have you downloading the code for, patching, compiling, building, and running your own special version of Wine using the latest "development" (alpha) version of Wine and a custom patch. Hopefully, OnLive will write a good port and this won't be necessary for long.

Andy Chalk said:
There are a few bumps in the road; the audio cuts out occasionally, which can be fixed by exiting OnLive and "resetting pulse," whatever that means
Pulse (actually called Pulse Audio, which makes way more sense) is the program that controls sound in most Linux systems. Wine sometimes has... difficulty... interfacing with Pulse. Alternatively, this could actually be a problem with Pulse integration in Ubuntu, though you'd think they'd have figured it out by now.

Good luck to anyone willing to try this for themselves. The instructions look solid and thorough, but as always, Your Mileage May Vary.
 

ZeroMachine

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kitsuta said:
ZeroMachine said:
At first, I thought "AWESOME!"

But then I said "fuck it, I'm waiting until I can get a laptop with Windows again."

I hate Ubuntu.
To be fair to Ubuntu, this is (for once) all Wine [http://winehq.org]. Wine's goal - to be able to seamlessly run programs made for Windows inside Linux without actual emulation - is incredibly lofty considering the differences between the two systems. Imagine a console with seamless backward compatibility for every Nintendo console ever released, including all third party accessories; Wine is trying to do something more complicated than that. It's kind of amazing it ever works at all.

For the curious, the instructions linked in the article essentially have you downloading the code for, patching, compiling, building, and running your own special version of Wine using the latest "development" (alpha) version of Wine and a custom patch. Hopefully, OnLive will write a good port and this won't be necessary for long.

Andy Chalk said:
There are a few bumps in the road; the audio cuts out occasionally, which can be fixed by exiting OnLive and "resetting pulse," whatever that means
Pulse (actually called Pulse Audio, which makes way more sense) is the program that controls sound in most Linux systems. Wine sometimes has... difficulty... interfacing with Pulse. Alternatively, this could actually be a problem with Pulse integration in Ubuntu, though you'd think they'd have figured it out by now.

Good luck to anyone willing to try this for themselves. The instructions look solid and thorough, but as always, Your Mileage May Vary.
Yeah, I know. I was just raised on Windows, and after a terrible lab accident, my laptop got bathed in radiation. Soon after, it started fighting crime, but after a climactic battle, it gave it's life (see: hard drive) for the greater good.

So a friend gave me a new hard drive with Ubuntu on it, and I don't know shit about Linux, so it's just a pain in the ass.
 

Aardvark Soup

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kitsuta said:
ZeroMachine said:
At first, I thought "AWESOME!"

But then I said "fuck it, I'm waiting until I can get a laptop with Windows again."

I hate Ubuntu.
To be fair to Ubuntu, this is (for once) all Wine [http://winehq.org]. Wine's goal - to be able to seamlessly run programs made for Windows inside Linux without actual emulation - is incredibly lofty considering the differences between the two systems. Imagine a console with seamless backward compatibility for every Nintendo console ever released, including all third party accessories; Wine is trying to do something more complicated than that. It's kind of amazing it ever works at all.
To be fair, Wine only works on an x86 CPU architecture and therefore only needs to simulate system calls without emulating any hardware. It's also far from perfect, especially when it comes to games. I'm a Linux user, but when I want to play a Windows game I just reboot in my Windows XP partition.
 

Lattyware

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Jun 15, 2011
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Aardvark Soup said:
To be fair, Wine only works on an x86 CPU architecture
Not true at all. I run WINE on my 64-bit CPU, running a 64-bit distro (Arch x64). It only works to emulate a 32-bit environment well (wine64 does exist, but is far less developed), but you can use it on a 64-bit CPU and OS fine.

The idea that Linux is hard to use is one perpetuated by people who haven't really used it, or got used to it. Yes, it's not windows, but it's not hard to use. The article implies the difficulty by giving a long command, but the reality is that the command line is simply easier to use - if you want, you could do it all via a GUI, but when you are giving someone something to do, it's easier to give them one command to copy and paste than a series of instructions on 'where to click'.
 

dr.introvert

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Mar 15, 2010
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^
|I agree completely -- although manually installing wine is slightly harder on amd64

Is that terminal code really what is considered complicated? I understand that it looks difficult, but all you have to do is copy and paste that into a terminal. Honestly the later steps seem more complicated in that they aren't things that are done as commonly

The real complicated part comes later when you need to manually install wine. If you don't use Linux you wouldn't know this, but manual instillation is much harder than using apt. I got it working eventually though, so it wasn't a complete waste of an hour. (most of that time was spent waiting for things to happen--My connection isn't the best)

Ironically, I personally use a Windows 7 boot for gaming (wine isn't all that accurate at even at the best of times, and there are a variety of issues with it; that said, it is indispensable for the rare, usually work related, situations where you have to use a windows program)

@ZeroMachine What's stopping you from backing up your files and installing windows?
 

Aardvark Soup

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Lattyware said:
Aardvark Soup said:
To be fair, Wine only works on an x86 CPU architecture
Not true at all. I run WINE on my 64-bit CPU, running a 64-bit distro (Arch x64). It only works to emulate a 32-bit environment well (wine64 does exist, but is far less developed), but you can use it on a 64-bit CPU and OS fine.
Your 64-bit CPU is also based on an extension of the x64-architecture. In fact, the x86 instruction set was already used in the late seventies by 16-bit processors (on which Wine obviously wouldn't run, rendering my statement partially incorrect).


Oh yeah, when I said this:

Aardvark Soup said:
kitsuta said:
I'm a Linux user, but when I want to play a Windows game I just reboot in my Windows XP partition.
I completely forgot how OnLive actually works. Actually, this is pretty awesome after all!