L.I.N.U.X.

[Sun Tzu]

I've picked up a couple books in the past few days on Linux, and it sounds interesting. I am seriously considering partitioning my HD and giving Linux (Fedora) 15-20GB of space to fool around with. However I do have one major concern that I am having problems finding relavent information to on the net. I have heard of people running Games on Linux on much older computers with results that blow Windows away. Has anybody here had success running games (FOF, Madden, etc...) on a Linux system? What advantages/disadvantages does Linux have compared to Windows XP just in general have you found? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

System Specs - (I built this rig about a year and a half ago...upgrade coming soon)

Asus P4533 Mobo
P4 1.7 OC'ed @ 1.9
512 2700 DDR
ATI 9600 Pro
Win XP Home SP1
Integrated sound
52x CD-ROM
52x32x52 Lite-On

[k0ruptr]

well since FOF and madden are made for the windows operating system, they are incompatible with linux as far as i know. The games these people talk about are probably ports, I know games like quake and such have been ported to linux and what not. as far as linux goes tho, it is an extremely stable operating system that usually far surpasses windows in speed and reliability. but windows is compatible with a lot more things.

[druez]

I've picked up a couple books in the past few days on Linux, and it sounds interesting. I am seriously considering partitioning my HD and giving Linux (Fedora) 15-20GB of space to fool around with. However I do have one major concern that I am having problems finding relavent information to on the net. I have heard of people running Games on Linux on much older computers with results that blow Windows away. Has anybody here had success running games (FOF, Madden, etc...) on a Linux system? What advantages/disadvantages does Linux have compared to Windows XP just in general have you found? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

System Specs - (I built this rig about a year and a half ago...upgrade coming soon)

Asus P4533 Mobo
P4 1.7 OC'ed @ 1.9
512 2700 DDR
ATI 9600 Pro
Win XP Home SP1
Integrated sound
52x CD-ROM
52x32x52 Lite-On

Hi,

Unless the game is ported to Linux it wouldn't run, unless you are running some kind of emmulator/layer.

http://www.winehq.com/ is one such thing for Unix.

Yes, Linux is nice and stable but for gaming it isn't the greatest. This is simply because of the lack of ports/games on UNIX. But in terms of raw performance its great, especially for hosting as a server. i.e. Neverwinter nights, Quake, UT, BFV etc....

Thats my take...

[Fritz]

why did you put periods in the name?

[SackAttack]

To get it past the spam filters, of course.

[dixieflatline]

I am seriously considering partitioning my HD and giving Linux (Fedora) 15-20GB of space to fool around with

I highly recommend that you look at Mandrake 9.2 before installing Fedora. Mandrake installation is much easier and they have more precompiled drivers and very nice gui interfaces that make the conversion from windows to linux much easier. Even if you decide to use Fedora I would then recommend that you use KDE instead of gnome as your desktop. Much more user friendly in my opinion.

If you are looking to play games that aren't ported to linux you will have to use wine which should come for free with the mandrake installation. You probably won't see any speed increases over windows though so if your going duel boot you probably will end up having windows be the gaming OS. There are lot's of fun free games for linux though.

[SirFozzie]

Mandrake 10 is out (I'm using it on my linux box)

[cartman]

Also another option you might want to look at is to use VMWare Workstation instead of repartitioning your hard drive. VMWare allows you to install a virtual machine inside of Windows, and the virtual machine is a fully functioning version of the OS. I use VMWare all of the time at work. It keeps me from having to reboot into another OS, and it's easy to boot multiple, concurrent OSes. So you can have Windows and Linux both up at the same time.

That being said, if you ask 5 Linux users what they recommend, you will get 5 different answers :) My vote is for RedHat or SuSE, using Ximian as the desktop system. Although SuSE isn't available via ISOs, it is available via FTP install, as long as you have a broadband connection. As for running Windows apps, what others have said before is true, the only chance of them running on Linux is by using an emulator, and that's not always a guarantee.

[Tekneek]

Mandrake is definitely the easiest for new users. Most people seem to abandon it once they get a little familiar with Linux. I used it on a laptop once. I have ran Red Hat the most, and have used Suse a bit as well. I currently have two Linux boxes in here now, a RedHat one handling our mail, and one I built using the Gentoo distribution that is handling the webserver duties.

It is fun to mess around with to learn. If you are curious about it, I would say to give it a try. Fedora Core might not be the best way to go. I tested that a few weeks ago and while it was pretty, updating packages proved to be a nightmare.

[Tekneek]

At work we have found that Wine is capable of running a whole lot more than we previously imagined.

[primelord]

I don't have a ton to add what other people have said. Fedora and Mandrake are both excellent distributions to get started with. However you can really go with any distro you want. The core linux kernel is the same for all of them so it really just depends on the bells and whistles you want.

As other people have mentioned Linux is not a particularly good gaming platform. There are some games that have been ported to Linux and even more that can be run under Wine and WineX. WineX was designed specifically for gaming. You can take a look at it at:

http://www.transgaming.com/

As for getting games like FOF etc to run I have had no luck. Ciperl, who used to post here, had a little luck getting TCY to run under WineX, but it had a lot of problems. I know some people have had success getting OOTP to run under WineX.

Below is a list of all the games that are known to run under WineX to atleast soem degree.

http://www.transgaming.com/dogamesearch.php?order=working&showall=1

[Sun Tzu]

Awesome, great advice guys, really appreciated. I will be defraging/partitioning tonight. I have decided to go with Mandrake using the info I have gotten in this thread and research I have done on the net. I am pretty computer savvy, however since I am jumping into a new OS, I will go with the one that is known as being the most user friendly.

Now another question I have for you all. What kind of word processor/spreadsheet programs are available for Linux? How do they compare to MS Office? Will Office run under Linux?

[chinaski]

For newbies to linux, i suggest RedHat. I personally hate it, but it seems to be the easiest distro for people to get their feet wet on. I suggest Debian or the FreeBSD route over anything else.

If you can get a hold of VMWare, definitely give it a try, its very cool. Ive used it for many years at work.

Wine is a major pain in the ass, and for sure not for beginners.

[SirFozzie]

Awesome, great advice guys, really appreciated. I will be defraging/partitioning tonight. I have decided to go with Mandrake using the info I have gotten in this thread and research I have done on the net. I am pretty computer savvy, however since I am jumping into a new OS, I will go with the one that is known as being the most user friendly.

Now another question I have for you all. What kind of word processor/spreadsheet programs are available for Linux? How do they compare to MS Office? Will Office run under Linux?

no, MS Office won't run.

try OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org I believe)

Runs on everything. I have it twice, once on my windows box (replacing Office, which costs mucho money, compared to the Free OpenOffice) and once on my linux box.

Seems to have everything a casual user (and most advanced users) would need from a office-suite

[primelord]

Well Fedora and Mandrake were both based off of RedHat and both use RPM's just like RedHat so I don't see any problem with a new user going with mandrake. Fedora is the non enterprise version of RedHat now.

VMWare is very nice, but it is expensive and not somethign I would think you want to get if you are just playign around with Linux. It is very cool though.

As for office solutions the best solution is to go with www.openoffice.org. It is very similar to Microsoft Office and is capable of both read MS Office documents and creating documents that can be read by MS Office. It ahs a windows port as well if you want to play with it in windows.

You can also look at http://www.codeweavers.com/ for their cross over product if you really want to run the MS Office stuff on Linux.

[druez]

For newbies to linux, i suggest RedHat. I personally hate it, but it seems to be the easiest distro for people to get thier feet wet on. I suggest Debain or the FreeBSD route over anything else.

If you can get a hold of VMWare, definitely give it a try, its very cool. Ive used it for many years at work.

Wine is a major pain in the ass, and for sure not for beginners.

All of our servers here at my company that do real time data, are Freebsd. That is UNIX and based off the berkley stuff I believe. I love freebsd, thought it is not for novices IMHO.

[chinaski]

Just ran across this on yahoo..sounded great for this thread. I forgot about Knoppix, glad to see it still going strong.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ttpcworld/20040422/tc_techtues_pcworld/115771&cid=1740&ncid=1729

[Glengoyne]

I am actually a linux hater. Well linux hater is too strong. I hate that it has become the new shiny toy that many many management types feel they need to implement. It has it's strong points, but it also has some weaknesses as well, especially in enterprise environments(not what this thread is about I know). A lot of distributions are painful to administer, but that really can be overcome. I use them in our company as mail, web, and sftp servers. We also use them to maintain VPNs to our remote offices. I think linux is perfect for those type of infrastructure uses.

Where it falls down is in actual mission critical tasks. For this you really need to buy a supported distribution, and pay licensing fees. Thereby eliminating THE primary thing that makes linux a good choice, price. I don't mind paying for things, but really the support of the distributions I have tried pales in comparison to that of any of the UNIX alternatives like AIX, HP, and Solaris. I'd gladly pay a little more for hardware(one time), than pay anual license fees on an OS with subpar administrative utilities, and matching support.

[dixieflatline]

Now another question I have for you all. What kind of word processor/spreadsheet programs are available for Linux? How do they compare to MS Office? Will Office run under Linux?

Actually, on the wine homepage they show office running with wine but I wouldn't recommend that. Like Primelord said Openoffice is probably the way to go as it seems like the best of the office suites for linux. With your choice of Mandrake openoffice comes with the distribution so as long as you select in the install. You probably also will get kOffice if you choose KDE as your desktop. I think openoffice is better and will read complex MS word and excel documents better than kOffice but I know several people that use kOffice and like the interface better.

One last thing. It was mentioned that Mandrake 10 is out using the new 2.6 kernel. This is the only current distribution that I know of that is using the new kernel and it should be a great distribution but 9.2 should do everything that you want from it and it has been out for about a year so you shouldn't have any problems with it. I am still running 9.2 at home though I will move to 10 sometime in the near future.

[Sun Tzu]

Thank you all again.