Which Linux for me?

[Bartzy]

Hi All,

I have a gaming system. Recently viruses came through and disabled my AV Software and prevents from AV from being installed.

Luckily my data is backed up, so am ok with reinstalling and reconfiguring.

Now instead of Windows XP I was thinking Linux. I can't afford Windows 7 at the moment.

I play games; counterstrike; with Steam. And use Internet etc. all that basic.

I used Fedora 12 last time, but Audio Drivers drop out and back in, and is basically unstable. I have some knowledge of linux, and linux commands.

So, which would be suitable for me?

Mandriva? Ubuntu? OpenSuse? Linux Mint?

[Capt. Fozdike]

I personally like Kubuntu but that's just my preference. Ubuntu isn't bad. Linux Mint is ok. But Kubuntu is my personal preference. That's what I have on a netbook I just bought.

How can you play games on Linux though? Through Wine?

[Bartzy]

Yeah Wine, and another app called Play On Linux.

[Capt. Fozdike]

Ok never heard of them. I should give em a go.

[karamazovmm]

Those apps are not good enough, aside that it bowls down to the drivers performance on linux, which is also not as good as it is in windows

[Awqa Puriq]

Linux for gaming isn't such a hot idea, took me forever to get Medieval II to work on Ubuntu, and even so there are bugs and some glitches. I've never tried another Linux other than Ubuntu, which is pretty decent, but I'm guessing Fozdike tried them all so go with his recommendation.

[Capt. Fozdike]

I've used a lot of Linux systems back in the day when I was building them. I must say that Kubuntu, Fedora, Knoppix and SliTaz would be my favorites.

If you have the bandwidth or ability I'd say try all of those and see which one you like the most. But if you don't have much time or anything, have a look at Kubuntu, Fedora and SliTaz.

But get Win7 when you can afford it. It kicks Linux's arse and it's built for gaming.

[Simetrical]

Do not use Linux for gaming unless you don't mind the fact that

1. A significant number of games will not work. E.g., Crysis still does not work reliably, despite being more than two years old.
2. Most games that do work will take significant effort to get running and still might have serious glitches. (There are some tools you can get that are supposed to help you set up games more easily, but I haven't tried them, so I can't report on their efficacy.)
3. You'll get noticeably (although not massively) worse performance. Games will usually still be playable, but you might have to turn settings down significantly.

For a relatively stable and user-friendly Linux version, I'd recommend Ubuntu. An Ubuntu variant like Kubuntu could work, but Ubuntu is the most widely-used and gets more development effort, so I'd stick with that. You can easily switch from Ubuntu to Kubuntu or Xubuntu later, if you want to give them a try – only the interface is different, basically.

Fedora has a reputation of being less stable than Ubuntu. Other desktop distributions are much lower-profile than Ubuntu or Fedora, so you'll be more likely to run into problems that no one else has and not be able to find solutions easily.

Yeah Wine, and another app called Play On Linux.

PlayOnLinux is still Wine. It streamlines the installation process, but it's not going to get games to run if they wouldn't otherwise run on Wine somehow. It also doesn't seem to support very many games.

But get Win7 when you can afford it. It kicks Linux's arse and it's built for gaming.

It kicks Linux's arse at gaming, and at some other things, but not at everything. I greatly prefer it to any version of Windows for my desktop. (I have a separate computer with XP for gaming.)

[Capt. Fozdike]

Fedora has a reputation of being less stable than Ubuntu. Other desktop distributions are much lower-profile than Ubuntu or Fedora, so you'll be more likely to run into problems that no one else has and not be able to find solutions easily.

PlayOnLinux is still Wine. It streamlines the installation process, but it's not going to get games to run if they wouldn't otherwise run on Wine somehow. It also doesn't seem to support very many games.

It kicks Linux's arse at gaming, and at some other things, but not at everything. I greatly prefer it to any version of Windows for my desktop. (I have a separate computer with XP for gaming.)

Ah ok. I didn't use Fedora for very long since I was just building it, installing some software and off to the customer it goes. I didn't have much time to explore it.

But I have a question, why does everyone that has Linux have an extra partition for Windows to game? Why not just use Windows? What makes Lunix so good that it's worth going to the trouble of putting in a partition and switching from OS to OS all the time? I don't really get it. I've used Windows for years and Linux on one computer and I find that Linux and Windows are very similar except Windows is better for gaming, so if you're going to fork out for Windows, what's the point in Linux?

My missus has Unbuntu netbook remix version and it's awesome but back on-topic , I tried to run a few games on WINE and found it very difficult. A lot of friendly people in the support forums though.

Yeah I had the same trouble. I tried to run AOE2 on WINE and I had a lot of trouble with it.

[Simetrical]

Ah ok. I didn't use Fedora for very long since I was just building it, installing some software and off to the customer it goes. I didn't have much time to explore it.

But I have a question, why does everyone that has Linux have an extra partition for Windows to game? Why not just use Windows? What makes Lunix so good that it's worth going to the trouble of putting in a partition and switching from OS to OS all the time? I don't really get it. I've used Windows for years and Linux on one computer and I find that Linux and Windows are very similar except Windows is better for gaming, so if you're going to fork out for Windows, what's the point in Linux?

It's personal preference. It's the same as running Boot Camp on Mac. If you don't like Linux more than Windows, there's no point. If you do prefer Linux to Windows for whatever reason, then it makes sense, because you have to use Windows a lot less. As long as you like Linux more than Windows by a large enough margin to outweigh the rebooting.

In my case, I actually use two computers, so that's not any hassle either. I had both machines lying around anyway, so no significant extra expense. So when I want to play a game, I turn on the Windows machine, and continue what I was doing on Linux. Then use the KVM switch to go to Windows, start up the game. If I get bored at a loading screen, or want to check my e-mail, or want to look something up, I can switch back to Linux and have the computer's full resources available, without having to worry about interfering with the game.

There are a couple of other practical advantages as well. Everything you really care about is on Linux, and you're running Linux most of the time, so you don't have to bother with firewalls or antivirus on the Windows partition if you don't want to. If Windows gets infected or stops working for whatever reason, you can still do everything fine except play games.

But as I say, it really only makes sense if you significantly prefer Linux (or Mac, mutatis mutandis).

Yeah I had the same trouble. I tried to run AOE2 on WINE and I had a lot of trouble with it.

I managed to fully play through Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (gave up on unreasonable last boss), Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Mount&Blade, Neverwinter Nights 2 plus expansion, StarCraft (all campaigns once IIRC, although I had already played them on Windows), Supreme Commander (played first campaign, then I got bored with it), The Witcher, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Theme Hospital (not the whole thing, only until I got bored) on Wine. Plus probably some others.

Actually, the reason I don't usually play stuff on Wine anymore is mostly because I don't want to contaminate my system with a closed-source graphics driver. I don't mind playing 2D games, if I can get them to work. Maybe in a year or two nouveau will be good enough to make reasonably recent games playable. But I'm a masochist, and I don't recommend anyone else try to play games on Wine unless they really really really don't like Windows.

[GrnEyedDvl]

(I have a separate computer with XP for gaming.)

You have just ruined your reputation with me.

[Bartzy]

Thank you all for the great responses. I have a good idea now

Gonna go with Ubuntu on a seperate machine, and save up for Windows 7 on current one.

[Leonidas The Lion]

Get Ubuntu I have it and it works, And like Sim said have a copy of Windows on a partition or another comp for gaming.

[Noble Savage]

My missus has Unbuntu netbook remix version and it's awesome but back on-topic , I tried to run a few games on WINE and found it very difficult. A lot of friendly people in the support forums though.

[Strelok]

About using Wine on Linux, I find different distributions have different performance/stability results and different games will work in one way or not between different distributions, their versions, the game and game patch versions.

Even if I get a game working with 100%, I get much less FPS. The best performance I ever got was on Doom3 a couple years ago on my AMD 6000+/8600GT system running at 40FPS on Ubuntu 7.10 (or was it called 7.12?) average instead of 60FPS average on Windows Vista.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (gave up on unreasonable last boss)

I was able to do it with a singular character with a level 30 Monk. I did all side quests through SOA and TOB along with the best possible items in the game for a Monk playing on the core D&D rules setting. Of course I've been playing through the game at least once a year since it's release, along with Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment - I can practically play them blind-folded. Could try playing through again getting to the highest level possible, reading Wiki's for the best items possible and trying it again.

I once installed this mod that doubled the HP of all creatures to match the HP gain rate that the main character gets. Now that makes the main boss truly unreasonable. Can't beat her with that mod, at least with a single character (never tried a full party).

[Simetrical]

You have just ruined your reputation with me.

Well, I played games on Linux for a year or two. But I got too lazy. I'll go back to Linux when there's a good open-source driver, probably.

I was able to do it with a singular character with a level 30 Monk. I did all side quests through SOA and TOB along with the best possible items in the game for a Monk playing on the core D&D rules setting. Of course I've been playing through the game at least once a year since it's release, along with Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment - I can practically play them blind-folded. Could try playing through again getting to the highest level possible, reading Wiki's for the best items possible and trying it again.

I once installed this mod that doubled the HP of all creatures to match the HP gain rate that the main character gets. Now that makes the main boss truly unreasonable. Can't beat her with that mod, at least with a single character (never tried a full party).

My biggest problem, IIRC, was that I had basically no potions. Tons of money, but couldn't find a store that sold them. So I got through the first couple of rounds of the final fight, but I just had no way to get further, because I ran out of healing.

Obviously it's totally different if you've played before, especially multiple times. Then you know all the right things to do and aren't taken by surprise. I did stuff like that with Deus Ex – played through the whole game using only melee weapons and no augs or skills (trivial once you get the Dragontooth Sword), and again not killing anyone, and partway through without even attacking anyone. There's even one crazy guy who beat the game without picking up any items. He would kill commandos by repeatedly throwing crates at them and running away, insane stuff like that.