Running a Poker Client on your Linux System: Complete Procedure

Just because you love Linux does not mean you can’t love playing poker online as well 🙂 As you may know, poker clients are mainly developed for Windows or Mac. The good thing is that many poker rooms offer the possibility to play poker through your browser, the problem is that often just a portion of the features is available to Linux users.

In a recent article – A Few Easy Steps to Play Online Poker through Linux OS – I described how it is possible to play poker online and for real money on a Linux machine. I’d like to provide here some more details on the procedures necessary to deploy a native Windows poker client on your Linux system.

These procedures will involve the use of the Wine application. You may already be aware of the fact that Wine is the software that allows you to run Windows on the Linux operating system and hence you can install and run Windows-based applications just like you would be in a Windows environment.

To proceed just follow the following steps:

1. install Wine
2. install the standard online poker client for Windows (.exe file) using Wine
3. launch the poker client using Wine

1. Wine Installation

For a Linux system with a Debian package management ( DEB ) such as Debian or Ubuntu run the following command with root privileges:

# apt-get install wine

Instead for a Red Hat installation with redhat package management ( RPM ) and its spin-offs such as Fedora or CentOS, run the following command with root privileges:

# yum install wine

2. Poker Client Installation

Wine should now be installed and working, therefore you can download a poker online client such as 888 Poker and install it using Wine. Do that without root privileges this time. 888 Poker application will be installed locally into your home directory as specified by a bash’s $HOME environment variable.

$ wine 888PokerSetup.exe

You can now install the 888 Poker application exactly as you would do on Windows. It may be necessary to run the Wine boot utility to simulate a Windows reboot first:

$ wineboot

3. Poker Client Start

At this point you should see a shortcut to Wine->888 Poker in your Linux desktop menu through which you can start your online poker client, but if for any reason it is not the case you can run this command:

$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files

to locate the 888Poker installation directory and the relative executable file and launch the application with:

$ wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/888InstDir/888Poker.exe

Conclusions

Unfortunately, there are many factors involved in running a native Windows application on a Linux system that can lead to an unsuccessful deployment or use of your poker client. If the above-described procedures fail you may try CrossOver Software which is a commercial version of wine.

Welcome to Linux Gaming Portal!

Here we'll talk about topics of interest to Linux gamers including game reviews, using software like WINE to run Windows games on Linux, and even touch on developing games for the Linux platform.

Do you want to play those games you use to play on Windows? One of the powerful applications on Linux is Wine. Wine (Wine Is Not Emulator) is free software that lets Linux users run Windows-based software. Wine is not only able to run games but also can be used to run applications.

So you can run Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, .NET Framework, and more. Games for Linux are usually free. Among the most popular games for Linux, there are Tremulous, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Nexuiz, Battle For Wesnoth, and Frets on Fire.

Free Damn Small Linux Games

Many people find that Damn Small Linux is an excellent tool for mastering Linux commands and running the Linux operating system. But what if you have no interest in becoming a computer nerd; can this software still be useful to regular people? The answer is a resounding yes. You can use this tiny operating system whether or not you want to learn the sometimes gruesome details of operating systems. This article presents several free games that are immediately available once you have downloaded and installed Damn Small Linux.

To access these games either click on the DSL button in the lower-left-hand corner or on the Apps icon toward the top of the screen. Then open the Games: there are eleven; Canfield, Freecell, Golf, Mastermind, Minesweeper, Pegged, Slide_Puzzle, Solitaire, Taipei, Thornq, and Xtris and Taiedit which is not a game, but a game editor. We will look at the games in order starting with Slide_Puzzle. As with any gaming system, you must be careful not to get addicted.

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