Since I did a really good job of screwing up my Windows XP installation (that is, I killed it by accident) I’ve been spending a lot of time using Linux (Gentoo) and KDE 4.3. I love it, but there are a few problems that one can run into now and again.
Facebook games, for instance, are a crap shoot. Some will work fine and others are not so fine. Since I can’t do anything about this directly I thought I would do the next best thing: bitch about it on a blog and hope someone that can fix it will.
So here is my list of Facebook games that I use with Linux.
I’ll mention that I use Firefox 3.5.2 and Flash 10.0.32.18, which is the latest I can get with Gentoo.
- Restaurant City (Playfish) – I’ve never been able to get into this one. I always get a message saying that it’s unable to make a connection to Restaurant City. I get this often on Windows, too, but it’s a constant on Linux.
- Crazy Planets (Playfish) – This one always gets stuck at 10% on the loading screen.
- YoVille (Zynga) – It looks like Zynga fixed the problem where you couldn’t click on the game thing. Or I just managed to skip it. In any case, it looks like YoVille is now working. Wait, I take that back. The inventory screen only shows the first item in your inventory. Still, not too bad.
- Farm Town (Slashkey) – Farm Town has some display issues but that’s common with Windows, too. The only problem that I can see with Farm Town is that there are no scroll bars in the store so you can only see the stuff that’s on top. This is a minor issue until you really want something that you can’t get to.
- Farmville (Zynga) – Seems to work just fine. I haven’t seen any problem yet.
- Pet Society (Playfish) – Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Again, this is also something that happens in Windows. When PS is working in Linux it works fine.
- BeJeweled Blitz (PopCap) – As addictive as crack, Bejeweled Blitz works great with Linux. Which is unfortunate because it’s such a time sink.
- Farkle (Viral Games) – Farkle works fine. I think it cheats, but it works.
- My City (????) – This one works in Classic View. Silverlight might work with Moonlight, but I can’t be bothered to install it. The only problem I see with this one is that there doesn’t seem to be a point to it.
- Pathwords (Zynga) – Works fine. I just suck.
- Geo Challenge (Playfish) – Hmmm. Maybe Playfish has a problem with their network code that doesn’t work too well with Linux. Same problem as Restaurant City in that it can’t establish a connection.
- Word Challenge (Playfish) – Unable to establish a connection. I’m seeing a pattern here.
- Bowling Buddies (Playfish) – Same.
- Word Whomp Derby (Pogo) – Works great. No problems.
- Minigolf Party (Playfish) – Yep, won’t establish a connection. I see a common thread here.
- Uno (Gamehouse) – First, I think it’s great that this card game is on Facebook. Also, I think GH did a great job with it. It also works great.
- Kidnap! (Travel Channel) – Works fine.
- Pirates, Mob Wars, Mafia, etc – All the ones that you just click on stuff work fine, but that shouldn’t be too surprising.
It would be nice if the rest of the world would start realizing that more and more people are using an operating system other Windows. While I’m not a huge fan of Apple, I do like diversity so Playfish, Adobe, and others should do a better job of checking their stuff against other OS’s.
Garden of Entropy 
can we play this game at computer
Facebook Playfish Pet Society bots and cheats are Released !
Download it on
http://www.facebookcheatbot.com
It’s not really a problem the fact of playing in Linux the problem, maybe just the browser. I’ve been playing a lot of Facebook games, like Restaurant City, in Linux with Firefox with no problems at all 😉 (Linux Mint, Firefox 3.5, Flash Player 10 and a 386 architecture; however the very same settings with a x64 architectuire it’s giving me problems =( Any ideas why???)
I too am using Linux Mint (Helena) with Firefox 3.5 and Flash 10. I have found that I can’t get the slider to work in the store (and though I can still chat my chat box does not show as a white text box). What I’ve discovered is that Seamonkey will let me use the sliders(the old version in Synaptic is fine). So I do everything else in Firefox up to purchasing things and then switch to Seamonkey for that task. I also determined that if you fall back to Flash 9 Facebook and Firefox behave very well together, but it introduced a whole bunch of other problems with other websites.
I think I figured out some of my problem.
I was running a 64-bit version of Firefox with a 64-bit version of Flash 10, and that’s what didn’t work. Then I installed the 32-bit version of both and I was able to get into a lot more games that weren’t working before. Some, like YoVille, still don’t connect to the server.
I believe there might be a problem somewhere with the 64-bit version of the Flash player. I’m not even sure if it’s official or not.
Well, here with Debian on a 64-bit machine, Iceweasel (Firefox) 3.5 and Flash 10.x, the Restaurant City game does not work 😦
If you have the option, try using a 32-bit version of Firefox and see if it works with that. And Flash 32-bit.
Also the 99% of games on facebook (i didnt try them all, but i see that with the 20-25 games i try includiding zynga poker) did not work properly on Mandriva 2010. Firefox latest, adobe Flash latest, i wanted so badly use linux kernel but i hate to admit that it will never do what i want it to do. Just in case anyone finds a solution for Mandriva post it on the net man, hate to see all posts about older Mandrivas.
What version are you using, Nyo? 32- or 64-bit?
NEW zynga poker bot
64 bit machines can be a problem. I have experienced problems with many simple application sthat just do not run properly too.
That’s why I use 32-bit versions of Flash and Firefox. Less troubles. But the Linux version of Flash, I think, isn’t as feature complete as the Windows and Mac versions.