portal on OSX under Crossover
Unless you live under the sea, you know a few ways to run windows apps on a Mac. Obviously, the only ‘windows apps’ worth having are games, which means DirectX support. Options include:
- BootCamp is pretty fast, but rebooting into windows is no way to spend your time.
- Parallels somehow trashed my BootCamp partition. We hates it.
- VMware Fusion has DirectX support, and Unity mode (which lets apps run in ‘native’ windows).
a golden hammer to crack a nut
VMware runs a full Windows install, which has plenty of downsides:
- you waste a windows install worth of disk space (a big deal on a laptop)
- you waste a lot of ram running another OS
- windows needs baby sitting : patching, virus scanning
- you need a windows license
- you need a VMware license
- (pet hate) my Dvorak keyboard layout, trackpad gestures etc. don’t carry over into VMware
The real problem here is that I’m using a virtualized OS to run 1 program.
I’d argue that most people don’t want a Windows installation, they just need to run a few Windows apps (I’d also argue that’s true on non VMed Windows machines, but that’s another rant).
merlot the magician
WINE is an implementation of the win32 APIs on *NIX. Instead of a VM, you just run .EXEs on your UNIX machine.
Back in my NetBSD days, I used it to run things like Morpheus and Kazaa - setup was a bit fiddly, but performance was good and it saved me having to reboot.
Crossover is a commercial app that lets you run multiple WINE ‘bottles’ (essentially a directory tree and a config file). There’s a free 30 day trial and it supports Steam, so thought I’d try it out. Choose ‘Steam’ from the list of supported apps, Crossover makes a new bottle for it, installs some fonts and off we go:
After creating a Steam account, it set off and downloaded Portal from the Net. Installation couldn’t have been easier, and Crossover plays nicely with OSX - clicking links in the Steam app opens webpages in Safari, for example. Hardware support is impressive - the microphone works fine, for example :
cd install gotcha
When you insert a Windows CD, Crossover runs Setup.exe and builds a bottle for the app on the fly.
You can get stuck at the ‘please insert disk 2’ messages; OSX can’t eject because Crossover has the disk in use.
Just open Terminal.app and run ‘sudo umount -f /Volumes/Orange\ Box’.Then hit F12 to eject the disk, put in disk 2 and let OSX remount it.
tweak settings
I run it windowed because I want to see my desktop (otherwise I might as well BootCamp and be done). A nice man has some very useful launch options for Orange Box on a Macbook - my Macbook Pro seemed happy with :
-heapsize 512000 -width 1440 -height 900 –window -novid
you will be baked, and then there will be cake
Crossover costs around 30 quid with an education discount.
Civ4 for mac is 40 quid (and no cheaper on ebay). Windows Civ4 is about a tenner. So Crossover and Civ4 pays for itself, whether or not you get Windows for free. A few of my old PC games look like they’d work too.
I’d rather buy native Mac games where possible, but this is seems like a good solid fallback.