So I downloaded around 200mb of compressed magazine articles last night...a self-extracting multi-rar archive. I've got Wine installed, so the Windows format doesn't bug me...


...
5 minutes later, still extracting...
...
OK, so it a pretty big archive and there's probably thousands of html files in there...not too crappy.
...
20 minutes later, I decide I'll just go watch some TV.
...
5 hours later, still extracting. I notice the extraction is slowing....about 2 seconds per file. Well...it couldn't possibly take forever, so I'll just go to bed and check the files in the morning.
...
This morning, nearly 13 hours after staring the extraction, it's STILL going, now about 6 seconds for each file. My shoddy math skills tell me it's something in the area of 94% complete, and will take at least another hour (given the decreasing speed, probably longer)!

...then finally I thought, well, maybe there's something in linux...
A few minutes later I learn that self-extracting archives can be handled by unrar just like regular archives, ignoring the extra exe piece (yea, most of you probably already knew this. I didn't).

While wine was still running, just in case this didn't work...

...completed in 35 seconds.
261 mb / 12769 files

tl;dr: Wine should be used as a last-resort only. Regardless that it claims to not be an emulator, it can still be unbelievably sloooow. Always check for Linux solutions first.

LOL. Good thing you learned something new.
xArchiver ... plus all the compression tools installed, should tell you pretty fast if it is extractable the easy way. If the exe was using an installer, then wine is your bet again.

Wine doesn't swap memory very well.

Cedega is doing a good job with the games ports though.
I just wish wine would at LEAST let me install Photoshop and have it run smoothly in linux with optimum resources.

I wonder what's wrong with them. Don't they realise how many Pshop users are jonesing on linux?

For the most part I've been satisfied with GIMP, but every once in a great while I hit on something that I prefered in Photoshop.

Even if PS worked perfectly in Wine, I probably wouldn't bother with it. So far the only thing I use Wine for is Flash...and that doesn't run terribly well either.

almost everything else ports to linux
if I could get a decent compositor/vid editor to run and pshop to run I'd leave the m$ bs forever

linux 3D support is better than Mac right now.

Why not use Sun's Virtual Box? Supports OpenGL, and experimental Direct3D.
Works like a charm, once you install XP, then install VirtualBox addons.

I like Virtual box, but since cedega has been finally getting their crap together and supporting steam I just keep hoping they'll fix PShop support in wine.

funny, virtual box in one year made me switch from vmware.
for years I've been using vmware, then they switched to this java interface base. Now Vmware in a host uses almost 240 m of ram. I haven't touched vmware in a year. Vbox uses only 40m for its interface and works pretty solid.