# considering linux



## 20machinm (Jun 3, 2008)

I love gaming, messing about with my pc(nothing too technical).

Getting tired of winows b*llsh!t (who isnt?)

not 100% sure if I can switch to linux - can someone give me sum useful info. also are gfx card rivers available for linux?

Cheers


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 3, 2008)

20machinm said:


> I love gaming, messing about with my pc(nothing too technical).
> 
> Getting tired of winows b*llsh!t (who isnt?)
> 
> ...



well if you love gaming then i would not suggest going with linux. sure, there are some fun 3d games, but nothing too great.


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## Davidelmo (Jun 3, 2008)

You can dual boot so that you can get experience with Linux without being stuck with no windows.

I wouldn't really suggest linux for gaming. There are usually linux drivers out for graphics cards but most games are for install on Windows.


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## blobster21 (Jun 3, 2008)

+ the "nothing too technical" is the primary reason not to move to linux

Sooner or later, you'll have to dig the forums in search for those bribes of abstract code in order to enable features and whatnot....

at least that's my own experience with ubuntu 7.10 & 8.04


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## Egneil (Jun 4, 2008)

actually Linux isn't all that bad, but for gaming you will want to dual boot. It's great for programming and dual boot gives you flexibility when you need it. then there's Wine at http://www.winehq.org which will allow you to play certain games on linux, and its first stable release is scheduled to come out on june 6th*.
but you may need to use Microsoft DLL's

*or june 20th/july 4th if not then


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## Solaris17 (Jun 4, 2008)

linux is good if you want to game as said before than dual boot but you can use wine if you want. Also their are a couple games that have native support for linux most are open GL and include unreal tournament never winter nights etc. for graphics drivers nvida ones tend to be the easiest to install. but ATI might have changed tehirs.

some good beggining no hasle distros to look into would be

Suse
Ubuntu
Fedora
elive.


and imo in that order.


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## MiST91 (Jun 4, 2008)

if you are new to linux i would definitly sugest the one you have used already, Ubuntu or Kubuntu, but like Davidelmo said, i would definitly dual boot with windows for gaming (with 2 seperate Hard disk drives.


Also i would do a fresh reinstall of windows and optimise it for gaming (i.e disable ALL unneeded tasks, services and programs


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 4, 2008)

i dont want to post jack, but does anyone know if vmware is freely available for ubuntu or any similiar flavor? just curious because if it is you could easily install ubuntu and then install vmware and use windows through it. if it works as well as it does on a mac, you will be quite happy. (windows xp runs better on a mac through vmware than natively.)


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 4, 2008)

Linux is terrible. Hard to use, DON'T USE IT! It's open source, which means it's not really fully complete. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGGUkLrpa-E&NR=1


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## dark2099 (Jun 4, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> Linux is terrible. Hard to use, DON'T USE IT! It's open source, which means it's not really fully complete.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGGUkLrpa-E&NR=1



It also is completely secure from any virus', malware, spyware, and such.  And just because it is open source it doesn't mean it is not fully complete, making it open source allows for anyone to modify it to how they like.  And Easy Rhino, I think you can, I had a nice guide for Ubuntu 7.04 I think.  I can PM you the link for it.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 4, 2008)

Yeah, a hacker could modify it to make it unsecure, and have security holes. Tell me how secure it would be then...


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 4, 2008)

dark2099 said:


> It also is completely secure from any virus', malware, spyware, and such.  And just because it is open source it doesn't mean it is not fully complete, making it open source allows for anyone to modify it to how they like.  And Easy Rhino, I think you can, I had a nice guide for Ubuntu 7.04 I think.  I can PM you the link for it.



yea PM it please. i wonder how well it works if i install ubuntu 8 on my rig and then install vmware and run windows vista through it. i wonder if i can game like that.


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## v-zero (Jun 4, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> Yeah, a hacker could modify it to make it unsecure, and have security holes. Tell me how secure it would be then...



Idiot alert... You sir, are a complete moron. Linux is: a) Not difficult to use, b) beautifully adaptable, c) free and frequently updated, d) very hardware-efficient, e) highly community-supported and customizable, e) the best and most stable platform for open-source software, f) extremely secure.

Do you know what the best firewalls use as an OS, a variant on the Linux or Unix codebase perhaps?!

AS for advice. Linux is not for gaming, full stop. However, it is a great replacement for Windows or Mac OSX for most uses. I use Linux almost exclusively now (this is being typed in Ubuntu Hardy), and only return to Windows and Mac OS for Dreamweaver, Fireworks and some gaming. I do a lot of my design work in The Gimp and then import it to Fireworks/Dreamweaver...

For something visually impressive check out Sabayon at www.sabayonlinux.org .


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## dark2099 (Jun 4, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> Yeah, a hacker could modify it to make it unsecure, and have security holes. Tell me how secure it would be then...



That hacker would also have to be able to market it well enough for that to work efficiently.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 4, 2008)

v-zero said:


> Idiot alert... You sir, are a complete moron. Linux is: a) Not difficult to use, b) beautifully adaptable, c) free and frequently updated, d) very hardware-efficient, e) highly community-supported and customizable, e) the best and most stable platform for open-source software, f) extremely secure.
> 
> Do you know what the best firewalls use as an OS, a variant on the Linux or Unix codebase perhaps?!



You are just a linux fanboy. Linux has a terrible GUI, it's tough to navigate, and runs like crap. How do you know it's secure? NOTHING is secure, there will always be holes in software (Vista, anyone?)

Anyway, I don't appreciate you calling me a idiot/moron.


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## Solaris17 (Jun 4, 2008)

um...in the years iv used linux i never had a stability problem and the GUI's of the distros i listed above are so windows like its perfect for a n00b and vista mind you is absolutely NO comparison to linux.


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## dark2099 (Jun 4, 2008)

And with all the options for distributions, it would be easy to find a nice GUI, plus you probably can find a guide online to modify or change the GUI of any distro.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 4, 2008)

V-zero, I'm going to give sabayon a chance.


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 4, 2008)

how can linux have a horrible GUI when there are like 30 different GUIs out there and most of them are entirely configurable for your specific needs. sheesh.


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## v-zero (Jun 4, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> Anyway, I don't appreciate you calling me a idiot/moron.



I wouldn't have to if it wasn't true. Just because you fail to understand, can't find the best looking GUIs (and there are many gorgeous choices), and love to bash operating systems it doesn't make you a meaningful part of this thread - it makes you a silly prat.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 4, 2008)

Not bashing, just pointing out flaws.

I could do the same with windows. 

besides, I'm convincing him to stay away from linux, only because I don't like it.


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## v-zero (Jun 4, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> V-zero, I'm going to give sabayon a chance.



Sabayon is very nice, and beryl makes the GUI very configurable, but it can be difficult. It is based on the Gentoo codebase rather than the more common debian codebase (ubuntu etc...), so some things take a bit more configuring - it's all useful knowledge though, and everybody should have some experience of 'the bash'.


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## v-zero (Jun 4, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> Not bashing, just pointing out flaws.
> I'm convincing him to stay away from linux, only because I don't like it.


Which is not a good reason.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 4, 2008)

v-zero said:


> Which is not a good reason.



ok so what is a good reason to stay away from linux?

you won't find one because your obviously a fanboy

by the way, you know, my first post was the reason. not because i dont like it


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 5, 2008)

the only reason NOT to use linux is if you play directx games. if you play games that support opengl then go for it. in that case you could indeed install something like ubuntu and install wine and run your opengl games that way.


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> ok so what is a good reason to stay away from linux?
> 
> you won't find one because your obviously a fanboy
> 
> by the way, you know, my first post was the reason. not because i dont like it



I'm not a fanboy. I use all three major OS's and am comfortable to do so. It is the case that I prefer using Linux when possible as I find it the most responsive and pleasant environment of the three. I would advise gamers to steer clear, but for virtually all others to at least give Linux a few weeks of trial. There are massive monetary savings to be had in using Linux across a network, and for most tasks productivity is just as good if not better under the less hardware-intensive environment.


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## allen337 (Jun 5, 2008)

Good points - FREE -fanboy supported

Bad Points - No Raid- need 2 weeks of solid reading to learn how to install drivers-

Other thoughts- You get what you pay for


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

+1 on you get what u pay for.


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

-2 on you get what you pay for.


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 5, 2008)

allen337 said:


> Good points - FREE -fanboy supported
> 
> Bad Points - No Raid- need 2 weeks of solid reading to learn how to install drivers-
> 
> Other thoughts- You get what you pay for



it is free and there is a lot of support for it and a lot of updates and a lot of free software. there is raid support, it is called dmraid and it isnt very difficult to setup. and i dont understand how you can say 'you get what you pay for' in this situation.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

*"Good points - FREE -fanboy supported"* Well, this supports V-ZERO


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> *"Good points - FREE -fanboy supported"* Well, this supports V-ZERO


What is your problem? Just because I'm not so closed minded as you I'm immediately tarred as a fanboy. I like Windows, I like OSX, I like Linux and lean towards it overall - where's the single minded fanboyism?


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

your posts show your fanboyism.

windows>mac>linux

thats my order of best to shit.

one last thing, for the OP, stay on Windows, and you'll be better off.

v-zero, your an asshole. You called me an idiot ,and i was only trying to make a point.


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> your posts show your fanboyism.
> 
> windows>mac>linux
> 
> ...



No, you made a statement backed up with no personal experience, knowledge or proof - ergo you're an idiotic moron who can help nobody. You're a shithead, leave.


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> windows>mac>linux



based on what?


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## Solaris17 (Jun 5, 2008)

you both need to stop......now


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## dark2099 (Jun 5, 2008)

You both stopped helping the OP after your 2nd posts, and have just turned into a couple of immature people who just keep trying to 1 up each other.  You both should leave.


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

Despite the fact that I backed up my arguments? Don't tell me to leave when I can and have supplied useful information and explanations of my personal experience with Linux. I came here to help, but I cannot abide by trolls - if people hate Linux they should stay out of the Linux forum!?


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## Solaris17 (Jun 5, 2008)

seriously though this isnt appropriate at all you tell the op why you wouldnt if another member asked y not and it turns out you have no experiance or w/e than the OP will take that into consideration now you just scared him off and made this forum look like a bunch of 13 year old girls who just had an epiphany. Their is room for fun and debate in this forum and no one said anything about rules being to strickt but i and many others have taken it as general consensus to make this as professional a place as possible at which point neither one of you are being very professional nor informative. their may be good points in your posts but if i need to read through a paragraph of hissy fits to get it id give up after line 1.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

v-zero said:


> No, you made a statement backed up with no personal experience, knowledge or proof - ergo you're an idiotic moron who can help nobody. You're a shithead, leave.



How do u know I have no experience? I have no knowledge, because I tried it once, and it sucks. How would I have proof?


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

Easy Rhino said:


> based on what?



Personal opinion.


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## Solaris17 (Jun 5, 2008)

this is becoming a mistake really quicklly calm down..i dont have anything against either of you but i wont hesistate to clean this up.


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## allen337 (Jun 5, 2008)

Easy Rhino said:


> it is free and there is a lot of support for it and a lot of updates and a lot of free software. there is raid support, it is called dmraid and it isnt very difficult to setup. and i dont understand how you can say 'you get what you pay for' in this situation.





Ive tried the raid on every intel mobo ive had back to 875p, along with linux not supporting my raid it dont support-Lan-cdrom/dvdrom-wireless. When you have to edit the install to get it to see a cdrom somethings wrong. Then you edit it to make it see your raid and it dont have any options in setup for raid just choose a drive it doesnt raid them just puts the seperate. Now after 4 hours of editing everything to get linux installed guess what- no drivers now you can spend another 4 hours on each driver you want to see if you can figure out how to get it to install.Oh thats on another machine also because no internet on linux remember no lan or wireless support. But after that you have a windows 95 install thats taking up space and doesnt do anything, wait, I like win 95 better I had internet.  ALLEN


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

ok I'll start over..

OP, I don't think that you should switch to linux, because it's a pain to navigate, and there are way to many versions. Also, drivers aren't easy- at all to work with (in my personal experience). These are based on ubuntu 7.something. but I would assume all the driver handling would be the same, as it's (afaik) based on one core part.


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> I tried it once, and it sucks. How the fuck would I have proof?


 There you go, you tried it once and weren't immediately taken in by it - which distro was this and when? Linux has come a long way in the last two years.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

v-zero said:


> There you go, you tried it once and weren't immediately taken in by it - which distro was this and when? Linux has come a long way in the last two years.



whatever this one is:
http://www.ubuntu.com/

I don't like it at all. The GUI isn't so great. But, maybe with that link on the other page, it's maybe better? I'll have to give it a try! 

Hmm.. I'll have to consider re-trying linux, and maybe I can come to liking it!


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## Solaris17 (Jun 5, 2008)

i agree tom when i first started i went back to wndows because i tried ubuntu years ago..its a feature rich distro now adays but a couple years ago it was a heavy OS to elarn to use. if you ever want to try again in the future sometime on like a secondary rig or something in dual boot mode..id try suse or fedora suse before fedora though i find both equally as good suse is a little more user friendly to people who are starting.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

Hmm..what one is the Sabayon based on? I may try that out, but I'm a linux n00b and dont know anything about it


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## Solaris17 (Jun 5, 2008)

haha Sabayon is its own distro....like suse fedora ubuntu gentoo...however the bare code of every sistro is called a kernal and their are only a couple of those .most distros are built off of the debian or kanoppix code base


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> ok I'll start over..
> 
> OP, I don't think that you should switch to linux, because it's a pain to navigate, and there are way to many versions. Also, drivers aren't easy- at all to work with (in my personal experience). These are based on ubuntu 7.something. but I would assume all the driver handling would be the same, as it's (afaik) based on one core part.



I don't know why you find it a pain to navigate, the window navigation system is very similar to Windows - I accept that the file system layout is a little less intuitive in terms of folder naming, but it's quick to pickup if you do some figuring. Admittedly drivers are less easily configured (you need to get used to command prompts (known as Terminal)), and their hard-wiring into the Kernel is difficult at times, however it is done for a good reason. The branching of drivers under Windows causes instability where in Linux the drivers have direct access to the Kernel, which in turn makes them more difficult to design but also more stable and highly efficient. What's more the now more common availability of drivers for Linux made by the manufacturers is adding to the stability and usability of the driver structure.

I apologize for being rude in my earlier posts Tom, I'm an easily irritated person and wasn't in a particularly good mood - I do stand by my right to defend my position though.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

oh, like i said, I'm a n00b and i am not sure about this linux with distros.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

v-zero said:


> I don't know why you find it a pain to navigate, the window navigation system is very similar to Windows - I accept that the file system layout is a little less intuitive in terms of folder naming, but it's quick to pickup if you do some figuring. Admittedly drivers are less easily configured (you need to get used to command prompts (known as Terminal)), and their hard-wiring into the Kernel is difficult at times, however it is done for a good reason. The branching of drivers under Windows causes instability where in Linux the drivers have direct access to the Kernel, which in turn makes them more difficult to design but also more stable and highly efficient. What's more the now more common availability of drivers for Linux made by the manufacturers is adding to the stability and usability of the driver structure.



hmph. Maybe I'm just too used to windows? I've been on it since 3.1 and I'm still on it till Vista!

With my 10 hours of Linux compared to 10+ years of Windows...then yeah, It'll be hard to adapt to something new. Kinda like when you move from one school to a new one...


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## v-zero (Jun 5, 2008)

TomCat44 said:


> hmph. Maybe I'm just too used to windows? I've been on it since 3.1 and I'm still on it till Vista!
> 
> With my 10 hours of Linux compared to 10+ years of Windows...then yeah, It'll be hard to adapt to something new. Kinda like when you move from one school to a new one...



I found it a little odd initially, however it's quite a satisfying system once you pick it up. 
To answer your earlier question about Sabayon, it is its own distrobution, however it is based largely on the Gentoo codebase (Gentoo is another distro compiled directly from the Linux Kernel source) and is based on the Portage package management system, which makes it a little slower at installing programs, but also quite a lot faster at running them...


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## Solaris17 (Jun 5, 2008)

if you dont mind tom i can break it down though you may already know some of this so im in no way insulting your IQ


distros=distributions

distributions are the different OS's

Gentoo, Suse, Overclockix, Fedora, elive

are all different distributions and are all different OS's

though ever distro is different the source code is usually very similar between them the source code like windows makes up the kernel.

the kernel is the core component to the OS

now though their are thousands of versions of linux their are only a few different kernels as these are open source they can be tweaked to build new versions of linux off of. which is why their are so many their are a few code bases (kernels) that are used the most.

these are

Debian
Knoppix
ubuntu
Gentoo
RPM
Fedora
Red hat
Slack ware

etc etc

all of which have their own version

for example with the gentoo code base their is a gentoo linux with the fedora code base Fedora etc...

also though linux can infact have a few glitches when first installed and if your new they seem to come at you even faster unlike wondows which is built to support multiple platforms linux while installing adjusts options and packages(software bundles) to fit your machine like a glove. That in itself makes it not as bloated or slow as you may think over the years with new ways of detection linux has become exremely fast. infact linux is used in over 500 of the worlds super computers.

that and unlike wondows which will need a reinstall if you screw up the system files if you manage to break linux you can DL a new kernel via update or command line to get your distro working tip top in no time 

hope that helps.


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## UnkAsn93 (Jun 5, 2008)

Downloading Sabayon right now!


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## 20machinm (Jun 5, 2008)

I installed ubuntu anyway even before the first reply to this post. Still have to get my head around the file system but other than that its great. Boot times reduced, stuff loads instantly. I've learned a lot just plugging away over the past 2 days. Having a great time as well with some Quake engine games.


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## Wile E (Jun 6, 2008)

allen337 said:


> Ive tried the raid on every intel mobo ive had back to 875p, along with linux not supporting my raid it dont support-Lan-cdrom/dvdrom-wireless. When you have to edit the install to get it to see a cdrom somethings wrong. Then you edit it to make it see your raid and it dont have any options in setup for raid just choose a drive it doesnt raid them just puts the seperate. Now after 4 hours of editing everything to get linux installed guess what- no drivers now you can spend another 4 hours on each driver you want to see if you can figure out how to get it to install.Oh thats on another machine also because no internet on linux remember no lan or wireless support. But after that you have a windows 95 install thats taking up space and doesnt do anything, wait, I like win 95 better I had internet.  ALLEN


I have Fedora 9 installed on my RAID0 array on my ICH9R controller, and I didn't have to configure, change, type in the command line, or anything at all except click on the partition I wanted to format and install on. It's on the same array as both of my Windows partitions, and my NTFS formatted storage partition. I have full access to all partitions, and all I had to do to be able to read/write my NTFS partitions is click a few checkboxes in a settings gui.

I also had wired internet without touching anything. Once I enabled a 3rd party repo (Livna), in which all I had to do to enable it was download and double click an rpm file, I was able to install the nVidia driver via the "add/remove programs" application.

All this while never once touching the command line.

The level of difficulty depends strictly on the Distro you choose.


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## AlmicheV (Jun 9, 2008)

Have been looking into Linux for a few days now.  I use my pc for digital art, video editing and very light gaming (alien vs predator - and thats it).  Which version would be the best and the most straight forward?


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## johnnyfiive (Jun 9, 2008)

20machinm said:


> *I love gaming*, messing about with my pc(nothing too technical).
> 
> Getting tired of winows b*llsh!t (who isnt?)
> 
> ...



This is what is going to happen if you want to game on a linux box: 
Dual boot, that would be my best advice. Linux for learning Linux, Windows for games. 
As for the best distribution for Linux newcomers, I suggest Ubuntu, Mandriva or Open SuSE.


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## zithe (Jul 9, 2008)

Windows + virtual machine + linux = nice, easy, and effective. My friend and I both do our gaming in safe mode. XD
For gaming go for SuSe. I hear it's really easy to configure. Next in line would be Ubuntu (7.10, avoid 8.04) and Fedora core 8 (not 9, no 3d acceleration yet).


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## Wile E (Jul 10, 2008)

zithe said:


> Windows + virtual machine + linux = nice, easy, and effective. My friend and I both do our gaming in safe mode. XD
> For gaming go for SuSe. I hear it's really easy to configure. Next in line would be Ubuntu (7.10, avoid 8.04) and Fedora core 8 (not 9, no 3d acceleration yet).



Fedora 9 has 3D acceleration for nVidia. Not sure about ATI at the moment tho.


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