Alright, few more details about version numbers where I everything tested and retested. I don't run bleeding edge systems, but prefer older stuff /w long term supports. Generally it should work on any newer linux installation, you may only have problems if you go with even older wine versions...
Kernel: 3.4
Wine: 1.5.15 and 1.7.4
So those both work fine, even tho they are several years old. I also tried to test on distro based on Ubuntu LTS from 2012 and there I failed. W3l.exe alone works fine, but xpam launcher is no-go. Maybe because even Visual C++ 2010 runtimes on that even older wine needs some workarounds to install.
Few more tips for linux w3 gamers:
I like to rebind Num7 and Num8 (inventory hotkeys) to something else, so I use few commands as alternative to this: [URL]http://drjones.dk/customkeys/extensionscript.php[/URL]
Code:
xmodmap -e "keycode 65 = KP_7"
xmodmap -e "keycode 9 = KP_8"
This rebinds Num7 and 8 to 'Space bar' and 'Escape'. And this turns it back to normal:
Code:
xmodmap -e "keycode 65 = space"
xmodmap -e "keycode 9 = Escape"
You can put those commands in a script (just add #!/bin/sh on the beginning of file), and tell your Gnome/KDE/Xfce/etc to bind it on F5 and F6 keys to activate/deactivate. To make it even fancier sound effect could be added as well, just add another line utilising handy tool named aplay (simple as aplay /path/to/your/sound.wav).
As alt-tab from fullscreen on linux knows to be bit shitty, I like to play in windowed mode. Now I haven't really found good solution to confine mouse to window (and if you know of some, I'd LOVE to hear about it) but for now I have my workaround which may be useful to some. Basically I resize game window to precisely cover 3 edges (for me thats top and sides, as I run pretty much windows-like taskbar on bottom). Now ingame mouse scroll cam works everywhere nicely except on bottom. And because I only need to fix that one side I use this handy tool: [URL]http://eeg.cz/=forro=/dead_space.tar.gz[/URL] (extract and run make in dir to compile it). I'm on 1680x1050 resolution so for me this parameters work nicely: ./dead_space 0 1015 1680 50. Of course, you could put compiled dead_space utility somewhere in your $PATH (/usr/bin/ or sth) and add that line as well to the script from above to activate on F5 and disable on F6 along with inventory keys (for disabling I guess line containing "pkill dead_space" should work just fine).