Linux and Online Poker?

I know that PokerRoom and skins have a Java interface for Linux/Mac users. IMO, the interface kind of sucks and I'm wondering if anyone out there has had any success getting Paradise, Party, or Stars up and running with WINE.

I'm running the latest Fedora and it's a bit annoying for me to have to reboot into Windows anytime I want to take a break and play some poker.

[tinhat]

Pokerstars will run with crossover office so it's likely it will work with WINE. But I could never get ultimatebet to work (always complained about some html file). Never tried party (or pokertracker for that matter).

How about running xp in vmware? I had a little trouble getting networking through samba working because of my firewall but once I got that sorted out it works great.

Mike

Cool, thanks for the reply.

I'll probably try some experimenting with the latest WINE this weekend. I'll post my results when I'm done just in case there are other penguin-types out there who are looking for clean low-cost poker solutions.

Crossover and VMWare are good options too. If I'm less than successful with WINE, I'll probably use some bonus $$ to get VMWare.

It's great to know that there's at least one success story out there.

[CORed]

I had Party Poker's client running under crossover office, after a lot of fiddling with dll's, but either one of the security patches for my linux distribution (SUSE 9.0) or one of Party's upgrades (I'm not sure which) broke it, and I haven't been able to get it working again. Paradis's client works, except for the "chat bubbles feature" and duplicate entries with some garbage characters in the chat text display. I haven't tried any other poker clients in Linux.

[CORed]

VMware should work, because it is basicly a software emulation of a PC that you install Windows (or any PC OS) into. Crossover office is really a user-friendly frontend for WINE, with prebuilt configuration files for supported applications. It was worth the forty bucks or so to get Internet Explorer, which the Party client requires running. It can be done in WINE, but takes quite a bit of fiddling with config files to make it work. With WINE or crossover office and an unsupported application, it often takes a lot of fiddling to get anything to work. A lot of the WINE or crossover office emulation DLL's are incomplete, and you need to use actual Windows dll's. Some of the lower level Windows DLL's don't work with WINE or crossover office. I love Linux, and it is a great OS for a web server or network file server, and it has some decent productivity applications available now, but for a desktop system, there is so much software (including poker clients), that it's hard to get along without Windows. This means you either need to dual boot, use VMware, or use two networked PC's, one with Linux and one with Windows, and either use a Windows X server on the Windows box (Cywin includes a decent free one, and there are lots of commercial ones available) or use rdesktop to access your Windows box from your Linux box (XP Pro is needed on the Windows box for this).

[tinhat]

I've been extremely happy with vmware (4.52 IIRC). I absolutely can't stand using windows and this is (IMO) the best alternative if you require windows programs. I run @1600 but the vmware window I normally run @800 so it takes up no more space than a GUI emailer or browser (and fits one poker table perfectly; I switch vmware to 1280 for 2 or 1600 for 4. vmware also has a fullscreen mode so I can switch back and forth between a full 1600 xp desktop and my linux desktops since nearly all window mgrs support multiple desktops/workspaces). If I could figure out what image size if best for posts I'd include a screenshot.

WINE is pretty good for some things but I've wasted an awful lot of hours trying to get different things to work over the years. For me that's the main appeal of vmware - windows programs are running natively so everything runs, and runs very well with no fussing.

There are some windows games you can run this way but others conflict with video so I left xp installed on its own partition so I can boot it when necessary. The xp I'm running in vmware for poker is actually another separate install which can only be started through vmware. I use samba so the vmware xp can talk to the hardware managed by linux (printer, DSL, the outside world, etc.).

pm me if you want. Or keep posting here so we can have a couple threads others might get some use out of...

Mike

Using the CVS WINE, Pokerstars works OK except the fonts end up looking a bit funky. Also, when leaving a table the Window Manager panics and sets the display to 1 pixel. Ultimate Bet won't install because the latest WINE breaks the Internet Explorer Installer.

At this point, I gave up on WINE. I'll probably invest in a copy of VMWare when I clear my next bonus.

Thanks a bunch to the guys who responded to this thread.

[TacoVendor]

I want to revive this for a question to those that have the Party / Party skins clients working in VMWare...

Is the speed that the client runs at still acceptable? How does it relate to the speed when running the client on a Windows installed machine?

I figured that it would just be far too slow so I never gave much thought to doing it. If it is acceptable, then it would let me completely ditch the Windows box I have setup for the poker clients.

Thanks.