Who says (take 2) that games can’t be played under Linux? We’ll it was my perception before that Linux is purely for servers and has no opportunity for desktop games and multimedia. But once again, they proved me wrong. After configuring my sexy old PC for desktop effects, changing Firefox’s font and installing ‘The Dock’; It just take a simple and yet a very powerful application to be installed and you’re ready to play. Check this out.

What we need?

WINE – (Wine Is Not an Emulator) can be defined in it’s simplest form as an application capable of executing programs that was originally written in Windows.

How To Play Warcraft III (DOTA) in Ubuntu | Linux Mint ?

Installing WINE
Easy Part (Linux Mint)

• For Linux Mint, click on the ‘Daryna‘ button > Applications > Administration> mintInstall.
• On the pop-up box, type in WINE and click search.
• You will be redirected to Linux Mint’s Software Portal. Click WINE.
• On the upper right hand, click the ‘Install Now‘ Button and save it on your desktop. The file is 33 MB.
• Once you have successfully downloaded the file, double-click on it and type in your user password and install WINE.

Moderate (Ubuntu)

• Open the ‘Terminal’ window and type: wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
• Then we need to add to our system’s list of APT sources. Here are the commands for various Ubuntu versions.

For Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10):
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
For Ubuntu Feisty (7.04):
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/feisty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
For Ubuntu Edgy (6.10): *64-bit packages not available*
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
For Ubuntu Dapper (6.06): *64-bit packages not available*
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/dapper.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

• Then open Synaptic Package Manager under System > Administration and search for WINE. Do a right-click and mark for installation. OR you can install from the ‘Terminal’ by running ‘sudo apt-get update‘ to update APT’s package information and then ‘sudo apt-get install wine‘.

Creating a Shortcut and Playing the Game

• After installing WINE, right click on the desktop and create a launcher of war3.exe (it doesn’t matter even if it is installed in your Windows partition). Browse for the file and type the name of the launcher, ex: DOTA.
• On the command line add WINE and -opengl like this. WINE “/media/hda5/Games/Warcraft III/war3.exe” -opengl

Start Owning! Enjoy!