Very specific gaming needs

[mage492]

Okay, I'm looking for a Linux box purely for running some Windoze games (their ONLY saving grace). The part that makes it somewhat more interesting is that I ONLY play MechCommander (original) and Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Eventually, I might pick up some more games of those two series (early ones), but nothing spectacular.

Basically, does anyone else have any experience with these? What kind of hardware minimums am I looking at for halfway decent gameplay? Should I go with the manufacturers recommendations if I'm using Linux? Any specific distro recommendations? Essentially, I plan to take off anything I don't need for games, to clear space and speed it up. I don't need anything fancy. I don't even anticipate internet play.

What it all comes down to is: What's the bare minimum hardware to run some of these older games under Linux? I'm a bit short on money, so I can't afford a 2.4 GHz machine, here!

Thanks in advance!

[LinuxLuke]

Well, I would suggest a Duron, it's cheap, and it's actually quite good

[Icarus]

You don't need much to run those games, a 1Ghz anything would be more then enough, but...

neither of those games currently work under Wine, I've tried :(

C&C:TS can't find any of the hard drives so there is no available space to install (I hear it will install with Codeweavers though, but when I tried that it still didn't run)

Mech Commander won't install either, once you get to the install options and hit anything it bombs out and locks the install. I haven't tried anything else with this, just WineX 1.0-3.0 :(

[miker]

it may be worth mentioning at this point that vmware4 does directx directsound audio and directdraw 2d very well. not sure about tibsun but i can play starcraft fine, i'd think it could do red alert.

maybe one day the vmware svga-ii driver will do the 3d api's ... but i wouldn't hold my breath!

[mage492]

mahdi:

Well, I'll have to see if I can get my hands on something that fast (my basic computer philosophy is to pick up whatever other people are throwing out). That should work pretty good, though!

As for MC bombing out on the install, I had the same problem installing the demo on my Apple. The problem turned out being that the program itself was corrupted. I tried a cd-based demo, and it worked just fine. Could this be the same thing?

Luke:

Okay, I'm looking into those. As I mentioned, though, it's mainly going to depend on what I can get my hands on. (Of course, I could just break down and buy one, but I love saving old computers from the landfill.) They're looking pretty good, though...

all:

Thanks for the help!