TransGaming promised the ability to play Windows-based games seamlessly and (almost) effortlessly. Cedega delivers on the promise. Cedega also makes it possible to predict potential problems in advance via Point2Play's System Tests tab.

• Test for Hardware 3D Graphics Acceleration tests whether or not your framebuffer will run 3D games adequately and if the framebuffer has been properly configured. Click the button, wait for the glxgears box to open, run, and close, and look at two graphs, one for OpenGL Direct Rendering and one for rendering speed. I got a green graph (green is good) for OpenGL, but a red (slow) for rendering speed. The red bar for rendering speed had me scrambling to the NVIDIA documentation to fix the my configuration. After tweaking /etc/X11/xorg.conf, the red bar was replaced by green one.
• Test for Sound Support does precisely that: it plays a sound and then makes sure you heard it. If you didn't, Cedega tells you to refer to your distribution's documentation. I heard the sound, so all was well.
• Test if POSIX threads (pthreads) are Required evaluates whether or not you need to use pthreads. Evidently, I failed this test, but it really wasn't clear from the dialog box. First, the dialog told me that, on my distribution, Cedega requires pthreads and that my stack size (which is a little over 2K) might not be big enough for some games. That part I understood. The next part left me utterly clueless: "When using Cedega 3.2 or newer, you may not need to use pthreads which can help avoid these problems."

  I got a yellow graph on this test. The summary message, "Some Games Might Have Problems," told me what I needed to know: I might have problems. I hope TransGaming clarifies this message in the released version.

• Test CD/DVD Drive makes sure your CD-ROM or DVD drive is accessible and that it supports copy-protected games. I got a yellow green light here. It you don't, Cedega's documentation tells you what you need to know.

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