Playing Video Game DVD/CDs

I want to know if its at all possible to play a video game from your dvd drive with Ubuntu 14. I can play with windows but for some reason I can't get windows installed on my laptop ( \system32\hal.dll issue).

How can I play the game from the drive, from a download, I don't care. I just want to play my one video game, gta san andreas. I played it on my desktop with Windows XP but the hard drive crapped out. Now I have a compaq pressario laptop and I just want to play the game again. I really DON'T like windows. I'd prefer Ubuntu over Windows, but I just can't seem to do all of the same things in Ubuntu that I could in Windows.

2 Answers

Actually, it's entirely possible to play Windows games on Linux, as long as the game is supported by Wine and your hardware doesn't meltdown loading it. There are two ways to go about installing.

I would recommend installing WINE and PlayOnLinux to make installing GTA:SA easier.(NOTE: Even with it being 'easier', you may have to work at it to get things running. Be persistent, and don't be afraid to ask questions and search with your preferred search engine.)

Installing Wine is pretty straightforward, since it's already in the repositories. Just open up the terminal and type sudo apt-get install wine. Once Wine is installed, it's a simple matter of installing PlayOnLinux using sudo apt-get install playonlinux. If you're uncomfortable with the terminal, you can always look it up in the software center.

Once you've installed both Wine and POL, we have to either pop in the disc or get the installer. When installing a game, PlayOnLinux should ask what you want you want to do. It's a pretty straight forward process, similar to Windows 'wizards' that we're all used to from the days before we found Linux.

The alternative way is to install Wine (just like before), install Steam.exe (which can be downloaded from here), and install GTA:SA through Steam.

By the way, here's a link to Wine HQ showing a positive user experience for GTA:SA. And here's the link to the PlayOnLinux website, which would have more in depth answers for anything related to POL, and includes a compatibility list of all games supported.

Ubuntu does NOT have the same video rendering libraries as Windows (DirectX, OpenGL, Direct3D). Therefore, the developers of a hypothetical game have to redesign their game for the other platform. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was never meant to be designed for Linux (because in 2000, Linux was really for developers and not for casual use), so you won't be able to play that. Games made by Valve (Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike), for example, have been reworked to work on Linux, so you can play those types of games on Linux. Honestly, it really is out of your control on which games you can play on Linux. Sorry, but if you play lots of games on your PC, I'd suggest Windows due to its near-monopoly in PC games.