Linux Mint: Half-Life 2 Worked!

Amazingly enough, Half-Life 2 actually worked under Linux Mint – and did so first try. No fuss, no muss, no crashes, no glitches.

Before you take a look at the video below, a few notes:

I was correct, the performance definitely isn’t as good (for Windows games) as it is on an XP box. However, the thing to bear in mind is that it worked. Just getting to that point alone is just.. huge. It means that if you’re willing to sacrifice a little quality for an OS other than Windows on a PC, you can run Mint and it will happily chug along just fine.

I got a few more notes to add after the video so read that after you’re done watching.

A few notes to the die-hard Linux fanatics:

I know you hate Linux Mint. You hate the fact it has Microsoft-enabling stuff in it. You hate the fact you can do a ton of stuff without any CLI b.s. You hate the fact it comes bundled with codecs that are 100% not in the spirit of open source whatsoever.

Hate it all you want.

I seriously dig this distro. Mint kicks ass in all the right places. The way it works is solid. It runs a ton of Windows apps without complaint. It’s super-easy to configure and makes very excellent use of the GNOME desktop environment.

Ubuntu needs to be more like this if not exactly like this. I’m not saying Ubuntu is bad. Not at all. But the stuff you hate is what makes Mint so great. This is a Linux I can actually use, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.

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Justin Hitchborn (hitchface)
This…is so stinkin’ exciting.
Matthijs Groen
I have a unbuntu only box, purchased the orange box and everything runs smooth. So yeah, Hafl-Life 2 runs under linux, and it runs great. You could see that on the wine app-db. This is more showing how really greate Wine is, instead of linux-mint.
anonymous
I first tryed HL2 in december 2007 when I’ve got my new PC. I use Mandriva 2008, with default wine install, HL2 plays just fine, with little slappy in outdor views, but playable under any circumstances.
I’m now looking for tweeking wine settings to speed up a little bit HL2, that’s how I found this site … great demonstration btw.
Chris
I’m sold. Have been administering Linux servers for a few years at work, but have always been a windows man at home. Am blowing away XP on my laptop for Mint as we speak, and following testing I’ll be making it my main OS on the desktop too.