My Google-fu led me here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...982#post3396982

So if I switched to Linux Mint, I would be kissing The Sims goodbye? That is, unless I can start it in a Windows environment somehow? How would I do this? I recently I have been really kinda wanting to try Linux (Mint), but I can't give up the Sims. (Not that I have time to play much of it these days, but still....)


I could look elsewhere for OS info, but obviously a Sims community would know the most about the Sims. For me, changes in Operating Systems are something that happen so rare that I don't really know much about the process. What I learn, I forget.

Okay, bear with me a little bit as I'm not a full Linux expert, but my mother is pretty into it so I've gleaned some info from her. Albeit my experience is with Ubuntu/Kubuntu, but it still should apply.

If you're trying to play TS2? Nope. As far as I'm aware, no one ever managed to get TS2 running successfully on Linux or an emulator.

We had the Sims 3 running shortly after its release in a very unsteady state on Ubuntu itself. I say "unsteady" because it was impossible to push the graphics higher than Low without crashing, and due to having to be set up in a very roundabout manner it was impossible to install .package files, limiting CC to only Sims3Packs. At the time only World Adventures was out and it wasn't possible to run that so we were stuck with the basegame. I have no idea if the people who were working on getting TS3 running are still at it, maybe they still are.

If you really don't want to lose the Sims, you should look into a dual-boot system, that is, running both Windows and Linux on a computer at the same time. It's similar to running BootCamp on a Mac. Currently my mom runs a dual-boot with Windows 8 installed for Sims and Kubuntu for everything else. Dual-booting with Linux requires a little bit of work (my mom advises having two hard drives, one for each system, and having Windows installed first) but it's doable.
The best advice I/we can give is to go to Google, search for dual-booting with your current OS, whatever version of Windows you have, and you should find plenty of video tutorials and explanations. Check a couple different sites for the best range of info.

If you're just looking to try the system out though, you might want to try a Live CD or key, which would just boot from the key/CD and run the system on top of your current one without touching it, and you can try Mint out without losing any of your current OS data. I'm probably not explaining it too well so I would suggest looking things up. Hope this wall of text helped!

As far as I know, Live keys are an Ubuntu thing rather than a Linux thing generally, although I could be wrong. They are extraordinarily useful - especially for retrieving data when your OS is corrupted or unbootable.

According to WineHQ, TS3 playability under Wine has improved, though I have sometimes found their info to be misleading. They don't seem to have a rating for TS2.

I think Live CDs exist for most of the major Linux distros at this point - I just did a search on the Minty site for "live" and found a bunch of references for one for it. Ubuntu is just the most visible distro that uses it, I think.

I don't think anyone every managed to "crack" Sims 2 for Wine, so to speak. I believe it had to do with how the game was structured...? That made it hard to run on an emulator or similar. I remember back before I got my Windows PC, when my house was running Linux exclusively, that I were looking very hard to see if I could run the copy of Sims 2 I had...with no luck. But, that was years ago, so maybe things have changed? I kind of doubt it though as most focus is on TS3 for the most part.

Man, so many distros that offer live keys, and still no-one has made a debian utility for creating bootable USB keys which doesn't have all its documentation in Russian?

I have run sims through wine before, it's a wrapper so there will always be issues, but it worked.
But that was also on a mac, with a variety of other variables...

Which sims game?

The sims 3. I wanted to try a different wrapper other than cider.
Which wine is definitely better, I still had issues, I mean it's gaming on OSX, but overall it worked better.
It took a fair bit of set up and I tried a variety of wine versions, but in the end I could run sims.

The set up was mostly related to wine on OSX with Macports and Xcode, building etc.

I know some versions of wine will not run sims 3, I've tried. But others will. And since most are designed for linux you probably would have a better shot then I did.

It's been a while since I've used it though, since I have switched over to Windows .

Thanks for the insight, everyone. ( I didn't forget about this thread...I've just been busy with things.)

I found an additional hard drive on which I could load Mint. So, yeah, a separate OS on a separate hard drive.