Oblivion on Linux

[jimuno]

Been gone awhile and just re-installed Oblivion. I was gone because I no longer had a windows install and needed everything to work under Linux. Well, I am glad to announce that it is indeed up and working. A few minor visual glitches so far, but really looks good most of the time. Also was able to get OBSE and OBMM working. I am currently using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala with wine 1.3 Beta.

 

Was able to get it working through a Wine Gui called PlayOnLinux (POL). While Wine 1.3 Beta is not an option under POL the latest stable 1.2 and 1.2 Geko can be loaded. It handled the loading of .Net Framework easily also. So, if you are tired of the bug and virus machine known as Windows and wish play on your Linux box, check it out. POL is under GPL and is a free download, just like Ubuntu.

[jimuno]

Some updates and technical issues I have noticed.

 

Wine 1.3 and 1.3 Geko can be loaded onto you system separate from POL. In POL settings for the game, select system for wine version. It works. I know this because I only have 1.3 Beta installed. I did not allow POL to install any other versions.

 

Technical issue with Mods.

 

Manual installation of mods is tedious. Linux distros are Caps sensitive while Windows is not. If a modder uses lower case or upper case for folder names makes a difference in Linux. You cannot just unzip into Oblivion or Data and expect the mod to be there. Double check the case of the folders and move them to the appropriate ones.

 

Another option for installing mods is to use OBMM to create OMODS from the archives or from a folder after it has been un-archived. OBMM being designed for use under Windows is not case sensitive and will put everything where it belongs. Don't worry about scripts for creating OMODs. OBMM does just fine if you select the archive/folder and just hit Create OMOD. If you have more than one .esp in the folder or archive, keep track of them when creating the OMOD. It is best to create a separate OMOD for patches and add-ons.

 

Some graphics enhancers help with the small glitches. I have OBGE installed and this seemed to help a lot. The NVIDIA black screen fix does work under Linux as well.

 

I have not had a single crash so far. Previously, Oblivion would crash randomly when sound was turned on. This occurred under Win XP and Linux in the past. Graphics performance does increase drastically if all sounds are turned off, but who wants to play it silent. I am investigating some of the mods and different methods to improve performance. I will update this post as I discover what helps and what does not.

 

If anyone has ways to make Oblivion multi-processor aware and/or ways to improve it's memory usage, please post here. There is one mod posted about increasing the memory usage from 2 gig ram to 3 gig. Apparently, XP had a 2 gig limit on ram it would recognise and this made into the game. I will be checking it out and see if it can be used under wine in the next few days.