Switch to Linux?

[J.Vaughan]

So I've been doing some research into Linux and although I'm not close to finished yet I figured there were a few folks in here that know their way around linux to answer some of my questions.

I'm considering putting Linux on to my Dell XPS m1530 notebook but I'm weary to do so because lets face it, mainstream application developers don't make applications for Linux (yet.) Mostly because any productivity application can be found as a free Linux application. But I want a clean, simple OS that doesn't use many resources and can play games.

My worries are finding drivers, and being able to run large games such as Battlefield 2, Eve-Online, and of course Warzone (the latter of which doesn't seem to pose much of a problem since WZ is open source now too, they're on the same concept.)

So if I have to dual boot forget it, might as well run everything on one partition. I've got Win7 dual booted as well and am not impressed. I know about WINE and such but how well does it work?

If I go out and buy a windows program from what I understand it wont install or run correctly on a linux box. It's not that I want to run windows programs but that any programs that I buy in the store typically don't have a linux compatible install.

If anyone could correct me or shed some light about how to live with Linux I'd greatly appreciate it. In terms of Warzone I've seen a few posts on here of people who don't have any problems running it on their linux box so I'm confident I could figure that out.

Thanks,
Justin

[Zarel]

Going out to a store and buying an application will nearly always get you something much worse than you can download online for free. You should never be doing it in the first place.

The only exceptions are:

- Games from Blizzard, EA, or another well-known studio.
- Microsoft Office, Apple iOffice.
- Adobe CS.

There are some other specialized paid applications that are better than free applications (CAD software, Mathematica, etc), but they're generally too specialized to be found in most stores in the first place.

As for games, Wine may let you run most games, and there are some pretty good open-source games (Warzone and Wesnoth, mainly). If you really need a game without Wine support, you'll need Windows, though.

As for Office, and Adobe CS, there are open-source equivalents that aren't nearly as good, but they're good enough for general usage: OpenOffice, GIMP...

Drivers are usually not an issue, especially nowadays.

What's wrong with Windows 7? If the taskbar is throwing you off, you can go to Taskbar Properties, check "use small icons", and set "taskbar buttons" to "combine when taskbar is full".

[J.Vaughan]

I've never really been one of those people who disliked vista, to be honest I've never had many problems with it. Windows 7 is nice in the fact that they promised a clean up of the code (which they did) and it does run a lot smoother. The GUI isn't what turns me off, in fact I love it (especially the sideshow desktops but I'm sure you could have downloaded for any other version of windows and if you're into that stuff look up deskscapes.) Enough Digressing, the thing that bothers me about Windows 7, is that although the code is cleaned up It still uses a large amount of resources for a lot of features that I use maybe 1% of the time. Microsoft essentially gave up on creating a business friendly OS, that was backwards compatible and the same features as XP. Their solution was to simply run a virtual instance (even if it's not graphical) of XP in Windows 7. I don't own a business, but the fact that this was their solution to the Vista Nightmare (on the business side, I don't see why home users are complaining... It can do anything that XP could do on the level that they need) makes me a little bitter.

^lol just to answer your question about why I don't like Windows 7, it seems like a bit of a botched solution to me. Businesses would be better just reinstalling XP and for home users that have to use Virtual Private Networking connections they're getting screwed over either way because they'd have to upgrade just to be able to connect in to work if the work place went Win 7.

Its like being a hacker and creating viruses so you can make money off people buying your anti-virus software or the leader of skateboard manufacturing is also the leading cast materials manufacturer. There is better analogies but you get the point, they profit from two angles.

[psychopompos]

if i could buy direct x as a seperate package in order to have working games, i would save the cash myself.

i have had few issues with w7 though, other then homeworld 2 chugging & thinking my gtx 260 is an agp card :-S

[fisk0]

Wine works really well actually. I've been able to run most games and programs with it after some configuration (most problems have been due to bugs in ubuntu though, it randomly removed my user from the permission to use the video card user group, resulting in that I could not run any full screen wine programs or use 3d acceleration).

I must warn you about one thing though, one that I most often forget about before installing linux, and most often get problems with - I've had a lot of issues with getting the sound working. Once you stray away from the most common sound cards (like sound blasters and basic ac97 integrated chipsets), you do best looking up that ALSA supports your card before installing linux, if you want to avoid having a system which you can't do anything useful in (by useful I mean watching movies, listen to music, playing games and all that stuff that requires sound. Not just basic word processing - an 286 can do that).
I've tried several linux distributions on my laptop, but I haven't managed to get the sound working on any of them, so before you begin installing I recommend you look up what sound chipset you have in the laptop and make sure it's in the ALSA compatibility list.
Mine is a Compaq and they've used some integrated sound chip from IDT which I just can't get to work in Linux.

[LinuxSneaker]

I've been a Linux user since '97. Never regretted the move, but that is me.

If you want to "try before you buy", recommend you download a LiveCD version. My favourite is the KDE spin of Fedora, and you can either make a bootable CD or a bootable USB drive (if your BIOS supports it). I recommend KDE (vs Gnome) because KDE is more "windows like", and Gnome is more "Mac like", even though you can change each to be what you want. Several people like Ubuntu, so that is an option.

I add to the "wine works" mentioned. After I did a "yum install wine", I was able to run Starcraft, Broodwar, and install the patches with zero problems. YMMV.