Cedega 6.0 is the latest incarnation of the application that makes it possible to run Windows-based games under Linux. A regular misconception is that Cedega (or Wine, which is its ancestor) is an emulator and when people hear the word emulator they usually think of poor performance and bugs. This is not true. Cedega is a translator, a compatibility layer for Linux and now that TransGaming has released the latest version it praises Cedega more than ever. The list of updates long and rich, where you can also see that they have listened to its users and subscribers.
The number of support games have been increased and the number of graphical functions and technologies supported now include Shader Model 2.0, Volume textures, Anti-Aliasing, Dynamic CPU speed support, Copy Protection improvements (SafeDisc 4.x), New memory allocator and many more.
At TechGage they’ve taken a closer look at the new version and they are surprisingly happy with the new version. TechGage does a short walkthrough where they test a number of games and are really pleased with they see, even if it takes some tweaking in some cases. They are a bit disappointed with how Steam works though, but that is partly due to the fact that Valve has switched to Microsoft’s new installation format, while TransGaming wasn’t able to include all of the updates for Steam with this version.
At Phoronix they’ve done a different kind of comparison. They compare the performance of Enemy Territory and Doom 3 with different operating systems. They’ve chosen to use these two as they are both available as native Linux installations as well. This test shows that the performance under Linux and Linux runnings the games via Cedega has identical performance.
They actually even perform better than Windows XP in some tests. The article leaves you with a number of questions, but they promise more tests and updates soon and we will keep you updated when we hear more about this. We should point out that the Open Source father Wine offers practically identical performance in these tests.
Those who wants to try Cedega 6.0 can head over to TransGaming’s website. Cedega requires a subscription which can be either monthly or yearly. It costs $5/€5/£3 a month, for at least three months or $55/€55/£33 per year.
