Calling all Mac Users Parallels vs Wine

[Grayhart]

Still in the processes of watching Dulux Oz's videos (very good btw) but one question has risen: I don't see addressed on the forums. Might be because I am not searching for the correct information or it might not be there. I am not familiar with WINE but I am happy to use it, as it's free, IF it gives me the same or glitch free performance the windows version does. Also don't mind running it through Parallels if that is better.

Mac users please tell me what you've found.

If it matters, I bought the Ultimate, I plan on GMing and

Mac specs: OS X El Capitan 4Ghz Core i7 32GB RAM AMD Radeon 4GB

[Blahness98]

Try some of the guides in this post. Might be outdated, but could prove useful.

[Bluster]

I can't speak to Parallels performance but I run a dual boot machine with OS X and Win 10. I have FG installed on both sides and the client runs flawlessly on both. The WINE install can be a little tricky if you're not familiar with such things (I was not) but there are some super helpful step-by-step guides here on the wiki.

My only complaint about running on WINE is that you can't set the client to default to full screen without some strange clipping that occurs. So I've had to get into the habit of launching FG, hiding my dock and manually dragging the window to fullscreen dimensions. That said, it's only a small annoyance and the client runs wonderfully. Certainly much faster than dual booting into Windows.

Your specs are a bit newer than mine (Yosemite, 3.2ghz, i5, 16gb ram, Nvidia GeForce 1g) so assuming there aren't any inherent WINE incompatibilities with your specs (I have not heard of any), you should have absolutely no problem

Hope that helped!

[damned]

The guide is good - Im not a mac user but have used it several times to install for others.
One of the main aims of the Unity build is a native Mac and Linux client too.

Both Wine and Parallels will do what you want.
The Steam install will also do the Wine bit for you...

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[Grayhart]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Doswelk]

I have used both Steam and Parallels for FG (player only not as GM) and both were fine.

I prefer Parallels as then I have a complete Windows Virtual PC which makes my life easier when I am away from home (Windows 10 Desktop at home, and a MacBook as my laptop) and trying to code/theme a ruleset, but as a player Steam is perfect.

[Erbun]

I'm actually going to install Windows 10 via Bootcamp. I'm not sure how it would work in parallels, but I found that I continued to have problems running FG on OS X. Nothing game breaking or anything like that - If you absolutely want to avoid installing Windows, whether virtualized or not, I have used it and found the performance to be satisfactory. My biggest thing is it seems to be slightly buggy and require a restart here and there due to wine emulation and didn't perform as well as it did on my Windows machine.

[jamessmckay]

@Scott,

I play and host on a mac book 13 with 16 gb of ram, an encrypted ssd, a dual core i5 processor without any problems. I suggest you install Fantasy Grounds using Steam, it is easier than setting up wine. (Steam does this under the covers). I have also installed using Wine. When installed via steam, you will need to create a symbolic link to your fg folder so that you can manage it easier. For example mine looks like this:

fgdata -> /Users/mckayj/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Fantasy Grounds/FantasyGrounds.app/drive_c/users/mckayj/Application Data/Fantasy Grounds/

when I run the application i normally renice it to the lowest level too using

sudo renice -n 19 -p <pid>

[thedougalbug]

Hey everyone,

I can't speak for parallels but I use WINE and although the initial setup is complex it's been running fine on a 2011 MacBook Pro for me. I've also had it running full screen with no clipping issues.

Over the course of several sessions I've had only minimal crashes (I think only perhaps one).

Having said all this I've not tried to DM a game so I can't speak towards any potential connection issues that may crop up from that perspective.

All in though I'd trust WINE over parallels as I've seen parralels cause Mac weirdness - because it's essentially an OS running within another OS you can run into real compatibility issues.

I should clarify I've used parralels to run other programs but haven't tried it with FG for the aforementioned reasons ^

Hope this helps!