I'm pretty sure the reason why it works selecting OSS is because Ubuntu has a compatibility layer between OSS and ALSA.

Guilty Gear works great.

Not by default. Ubuntu does include the ALSA plugin that allows ALSA apps to use the OSS driver, but does not include the wrapper that allows OSS applications to use ALSA. You can install that separately, but it is not part of the default Ubuntu installation. The reason selecting OSS works probably has more to do with the fact that Pulse is a drop-in replacement for OSS (technically, it really replaces ESD, but has plugin support that allows it to also replace OSS), so it should naturally work (somewhat) correctly with that.

Thanks hyperagathon, I've added it to the list.

Why would Ubuntu include a wrapper for OSS when it uses ALSA by default? That doesn't make sense to me..

It doesn't use ALSA by default, it uses PulseAudio by default, but includes some ALSA functionality for compatibility purposes. It's been like that for at least the last three versions of Ubuntu.

PA is a sound server - ALSA is a sound architecture. Different things, different purposes. As for why would anyone include OSS emulation - some apps require it or work better with it.

Yes, they are technically different (a more accurate comparison would be Pulse to ALSA's dmix or JACK or ESD), but in the context being discussed here, Pulse is capable of replacing ALSA, if applications support it. Ubuntu is pushing towards that goal with Pulse (as are several other distros), hence why the inclusion of ALSA is really only for compatibility purposes and the basic device driver type communication it provides.

Correct. I was under the (wrong) impression that you somehow thought PA replaces it in the absolute sense, ie you could remove ALSA right now and still have sound, while it's actually the other way around (well, you could use OSS+PA, but that's beside the point).

I've stumbled into a nasty issue - when trying to play a player vs player game, the joypad ends up controlling both players. To make it even worse, this didn't happen in the Japanese version of the game (BTW, why the hell is this version ~100 MB smaller?). I've googled and discovered that Wine pretends it's two devices - so one solution would be deleting /dev/js* and/or /dev/input/js* (for me it was only the latter). However, this means you have to replug it if you want to play a Linux native game with it. After a few hours of trying different things out (the wine didn't help :p), I've come up with the following: assign P1 the P1 joypad buttons, but leave it all on "Not used" for P2 _except_ for one of the analog keys - for whatever reasons, assigning P2 Button8 to it "fixed" the problem. What if you actually have analog sticks? Stick to the first solution, I guess.

I hope this saves someone wanting to beat up their younger sibling in GGX2 some time.

GemRB - http://www.gemrb.org/ - can be used to play the Baldur's Gate games and Icewind Dale. No extensions yet, though.

Commando Ammo Pack works pretty well under Wine, only the avi cutscenes are missing.

The Witcher "works" under Wine, but some of the gui is missing (noticably the life bar) and it is even less stable than under Windows. It also needs some dll overrides.

I was just about to post this, because it's the same with Wine for the Mac. Some of the stability issues appear to be related graphical distortions: puppeteer lines + transparent bodies where you see the mouth and eyeballs floating in mid air - the latter is very disturbing actually. The puppeteer lines from the main character and NPCs are more common and it's still relatively playable (despite some missing GUI elements). Both usually go away after shutting down the computer in between play sessions (sometimes several times). When the graphical bugs are there the game is less stable, when the graphical problems aren't there, the game seems stable. From the winehq AppDB section, this seems to be the general experience for both Linux and OS X users running The Witcher v1.5 in Wine (it is reported that Wine version 1.3.20 also adds a mouse bug to the game in the "over the shoulder viewpoint"). All in all, the game is certainly playable under Wine in OS X and Linux, but it is far from working perfectly.

Honestly, I think the game looks better without enemy health bars and your own health bar cluttering up the screen and breaking immersion, but graphical bugs like the sky missing in the dike and the models failing to load are problematic.

Interesting side note, if the birds on the left side of the main menu aren't present when you start a game, you'll have the floating features problems.

Agreed that the failing to load the graphics properly is the main problem. The other UI graphical issues are far less important - in fact I almost agree with you about the health bars - at least to the extent that the Witcher is very playable without them and I can see what you mean about immersion.

Huh ... that is interesting. I hadn't noticed that!

Rayman 2 mostly works in Linux using Wine. However, there are some objects not rendered, at least for me using Mesa+Nouveau and Mesa+LLVMpipe:

1. Lums (of all colors)
2. Rayman's fist when he shoots it
3. The sparks when Rayman's fist hits a wall
4. The blue lasers used to keep Rayman in his cell in the opening sequence

Could someone here test the game with the proprietary Nvidia or ATI drivers to see if you have the same rendering problems? With that information, I can know whether to file a bug against Wine or Mesa.

Everything else in the game works perfectly, except for keyboard input, which can be fixed by running "winetricks dinput".