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My question is if we should really answer questions regarding games run on top of Wine. Or should we not try to support such questions? MY objection to answering this is that it is too specialized and it is wasting energy to answer questions related to activities that are just not native to Ubuntu.

It may sound awkward up until now, but let me demonstrate my point with an example:

I would rather put effort in answering these questions:

Rather than these:

Do not get me wrong here. I understand that gaming is important to a lot of people, and that they want to be able to port gaming in linux while they are trying it out, BUT unless Valve and or others make an official port of their clients and games in linux, I believe that we should not encourage people asking about games, and that relative questions should be closed.

As is, there is a very high percentage of questions regarding Wine. Now I do not care trying to answer some of them, but I am not here to provide technical support for Wine. That's wine's community problem. I am here to answer Ubuntu related problems. I understand that wine is useful, and that occasionaly someone might do good use of it, but answering questions about games not being able to run properly on a compatibility layer I believe is beyond the scope of this site. Not only are those questions too localized per faq, but they also push other more important questions out of the front page.

What do you feel about it? Should we vote to close, flag questions regarding Windows games and Wine? Or should we just answer them, (well those who can anyway), anyway?

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I personally think we shouldn't be closing such Wine questions as off topic because a significant number of people play Windows-based games on Ubuntu using Wine and they do run into issues that they want some help on.

I think as long as the question is not a bug (E.g. Sound doesn't work in so-and-so game, in which case such questions would be closed as off-topic) or related to a very obscure game (which would be rightfully closed as too localized), we should let them be asked on here.

Hopefully, someone who knows how to handle the issue and help fix the problems of these questions will come around and satisfactorily answer these questions.

If you think your energy can be better invested in Ubuntu-related questions, by all means, go ahead and answer those questions. We get enough questions that aren't related to Wine at all. At the time of writing, we have had 63000+ questions with 634 of them about Wine and just 70 of them about games played through Wine*. So, I think it is not a matter of concern at this point of time as we clearly aren't getting drowned in questions regarding buggy Wine support for Windows-based games.

To round up, just because Wine questions are currently considered on-topic shouldn't be the deciding factor on what questions you should answer. You brought up a valid topic for discussion, but probably not at the best time.

* Assuming all the questions are tagged properly.

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As is, there is a very high percentage of questions regarding Wine.

questions are just shy of 1% of all questions, so I wouldn't call that high.

The ones that are basically bug reports are already offtopic and should be marked as such. Most of the wine questions I run into are like this, so I just flag them along with all the other ones, but I think having the tag be offtopic is probably going too far, I'm sure there has to be a few good questions in there somewhere. :)

If you want to ignore wine completely put it in your ignored tags (on the right side of the front page) and then in your preferences make it so it doesn't show them at all and then you'll never see wine questions again.

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    Thank you for your answer, though you misunderstood my point. I want to make it clear that this is not about me and wine, rather, if we as a community should invest energy in trying to spot the cause of a particular issue, and taking action to come up with a solution to it. Apparently, it was made clear to me that there is no problem with it, and that's just fine with me.
    – NlightNFotis
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 19:31
  • shrug, people will use it since it ships with ubuntu, not much we can do about that.
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 19:33
  • (From eyeballing a sample a bunch of them are offtopic for being bug reports anyway, but you can make that argument for any tag on the site.)
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 19:35
  • My particular issue with games was that people do not understand, that they are running their games in a compatibility layer, meaning that you DO know there are going to be issues. You are not running them in windows, you are running them in wine. You should expect it to not work properly. The problem is that people expect wine to be a one-size, fit-all solution that was supposed to magically run all their windows software, without any limitations and that we should find a solution for an issue that they should know it's there, before you start working with it.
    – NlightNFotis
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 19:44
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    You are preaching to the choir, you don't need to convince me wine sucks. :)
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 19:45
  • @NlightNFotis: I think people know this to some extent. I've answered my fair share of Wine related questions, and I don't really see the problem. If a game doesn't run well on Wine, all I do is say so.
    – RolandiXor
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 22:57
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I think, If the question is about issues related with playing the Game with WINE such as installing, un-installing, tweaking WINE for the game, then it is OK, we should not close such questions,

BUT, if the question is related with actual the game, such as a trick to play nice, God mod, changing game options which do not depends on WINE, then I think those question should be better asked on the respective game support site or forums and we should definitely close them.

Because, tweaking game performance which is not specific to WINE and which can be as generic as questionable on any forums (regardless of WINE, such as a Windows forum or the game support sites) should not be asked on Ask Ubuntu.

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Maybe automatically refer them to http://www.winehq.org/help/?

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  • Or comment to ask for confirmation if they have done so or not? That is if it is not referred to in question.
    – geezanansa
    Commented Apr 15, 2013 at 22:27
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We should just answer them.

Wine is supported, and hence, running any software (game or not) on Wine is supported. Just because you don't like games, or don't like Wine, or don't care to answer them, does not mean that we should close questions related to gaming on Wine. Improving the experience of those gaming on Wine is just as important as helping someone configure their apache server.

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  • I am not trying to bash on games, and I do not see why you are attacking me personally, but my point is this, in an attempt to make it more clear: Why waste energy on trying to answer questions about a compatibility layer? This site is about UBUNTU questions, not wine. I can tolerate with the occasional wine question when it has to do with getting Excel for example to work, but getting all those questions about wine and windows games I feel is highly irrelevant to the site and it's specific scope.
    – NlightNFotis
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 15:40
  • @NlightNFotis how is this a personal attack? The word you does not have to refer to you the person. Also I gave a number of possible reasons why someone ("you" - referring to any person (as without a face) reading the answer for guidance as to how to go about it) - would probably want to see such questions closed.
    – RolandiXor
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 15:45
  • Ok, sorry for getting offended.
    – NlightNFotis
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 15:47
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    @NlightNFotis This is a reply to just the "Why waste energy on trying to answer questions about a compatibility layer?" part. The answer: Because that compatibility layer (wine) is part of Ubuntu, and thus fundamentally part of what Ask Ubuntu is about helping people with. However, I do think that it's reasonable to ask if all questions about getting particular programs to work on it are still really questions about Wine itself. (I'm inclined to agree with Roland Taylor that we should have a very broad view toward what we welcome in this vein, but I can see how others may disagree.)
    – Eliah Kagan
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 16:41
  • Thank you for the clarification @EliahKagan
    – NlightNFotis
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 19:24
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If they are asking about a bug in wine, when running a program, or a certain bug with running that program with wine, I say close them. Like this one about a bug with a game freezing, https://askubuntu.com/questions/183119/diablo-3-freezes-periodically

If it is about how to install wine or to configure it, that is good.

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  • There are examples of apps/games (@AppDB) needing kernel options adapted for improvement of chances for working under wine or changing graphics card buffer settings that could mean using older drivers etc which all makes it directly related to Ubuntu since wine runs from within Ubuntu.
    – geezanansa
    Commented Apr 15, 2013 at 23:26

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