Any of you guys run linux?

I just started messing around with Fedora 8 and man do I love it. I wish I had made the switch earlier. I'll never go back to win xp (except for games if I have to). The cube thing just rox and there's just soo much stuff you can do.

Anyhow, any of you guys run linux? Are you guys able to play these rpg pc games on linux? Do you guys use wine?

Yes, no, and no.

I run Linux on my home server, and on my work desktop computer. Ubuntu 7.10, to be precise.

And… it's okay.

Some things work better, other things not as well. Generally speaking, the further you get from the kernel, the hairier it gets: at the file system, permissions, and networking level it's a marvel, but once you get to productivity applications -- you know, office, image processing, that sort of thing -- things get noticeably dodgy compared to their Windows equivalents.

In a nutshell, IMO Linux is very good for servers, lightweight "web surfing" machines, pretty good to excellent for software development (depending on what you do and what tools you use), somewhat dodgy for "office work," and not much good at all for games.

But it's getting there.

I have tried Ubuntu on two machines and had issues on both. On my laptop, it wouldn't install (figured out later it needs to 256MB ram to install, but not run, and I had 224MB). I got Xubuntu to install, but it has pretty piss poor support for wireless G cards and the PDF printer refuses to work.

I also tried it on my desktop. The 64 bit version wouldn't install at all. Wouldn't even load the liveCD. I got the 32bit version to install (though it crashed twice due to problems configuring my video card, an eVGA 8800GT), but again had wireless G issues that remain unresolved.

I finally bought a book on Ubuntu to learn some of the command line stuff because all the solutions I find seem to use it, but no one really ever explains what each individual command means!

I´m running Open Suse 10.1 on a ultra-low-end PC. I was very surprised how much faster Linux is compared to WinXP. Web surfing is far better on Linux. (Apart from the occasional incompatibility if a site demands the latest strange technology.)
Installation on old hardware was no problem, even for a Linux noob. Just install the thing, find out the internet doesn´t work, stumble through the system control center until you see something like "network", click on "use this device". Done.

Installing software is a bit uneven. It´s very comfortable if you can find it on a public Linux directory somewhere because then the standard system utility can be used. It tracks all software and version numbers. Select everything you want to (un)install or update, let the process run through, bam - 20 programs updated automatically. But if some strage piece of software is not on the list it gets a bit more demanding …

A few years ago I had four laptops at work - one Windows, one Mac, one NeXT and one Linux. As PJ said, Linux is wonderful for low-level stuff and for single purpose stuff written directly for it, but inelegant at other stuff. I'm now just Mac & PC.

My main comp is WinXP, but I've had Ubuntu on the laptop since version 6.06. It's perfect for what I do on it - some browsing, some office-like stuff, occasional development, but don't expect to find many games for it. Still, it (mostly) just works, and I'm happy.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
I finally bought a book on Ubuntu to learn some of the command line stuff because all the solutions I find seem to use it, but no one really ever explains what each individual command means!

I think there's lots of circular logic involved in Linux, and you know, to understand circular logic you first have to understand circular logic.

I was using Gentoo Linux some time ago, was quite fun and interesting. There were lots of things I liked better than in Windows: surfing, chatting in IRC, mplayer, the handling of windows etc. But as PJ said: when it comes to certain applications like Photoshop and the like, it can be a bit of a hassle. I switched back to Windows when my Linux hard drive died, if only because I find gaming easier that way.

I was running SuSE 9 on one of my NWN servers and it was stable. The problem I found was the at the learning curve for me was slow on it. I was figuring things out, it just took me about 3 or 4x longer.

I recognize its power and efficiency. For example, I accidentally managed to assign the server two seperate IP addresses. I was in the process of of trying to turn the DHCP off on the OS's startup and did that by acident before just giving up and leaving it the way it was. After all, it worked.

The reason I chose SuSE is because only it and Gentoo had nVidia drivers built in. Fedora was a nightmare at the time as Red Hat just used it to beta their commercial version.

I'm running Ubuntu, and I'm very pleased.

As soon as I buy myself a new HD, I'll try Suse as well.

The only drawbacks imho are the limited printing support (Linux is an networking OS, not an printing OS … ) and the lack of good games (I have Wesnoth on both my Windows system AND my Ubuntu system.)

Apart from that, I like it. It starts even much faster than my windows system.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
Fedora was a nightmare at the time as Red Hat just used it to beta their commercial version.

That's why I won't use Fedora. I just want to suppoort a company that abandons its own system in favour for more money, cynically speaking.

To me, it was just an act of arrogance to "give the kids something to play" meanwhile exploting the results of this play and incorporating them into something that produces money.

I have a 300mhz celeron rig which used to sit in the corner pretty much useless.

Then I decided to mess around with some linux distros trying to create a light weight desktop & webbrowsing box. And I did it. I liked debian the best.
I installed it in expert mode disabling everything I could with only minimal options.
Then I built a custom kernel tailored for the machine at hand again disabling and removing support for everything I did not need or did not know what it was. The results were unbelievable. It boots faster than I've ever seen anything boot.

Then I started adding software by hand from the debian repository.
X-server, ALSA, IceWM window manager, some editors, web browser, file browser and some miscellaneous tools. IceWM is a wonderfull WM by the way. Highly recommended. Those heavy "desktop enviroments" (kde/gnome) eat up more resources than windows.. kinda defeats the purpose for me. XFCE was okay though.

So back to the 300mhz box. I'm still running it as a lite desktop box.
And it was a great learning experience too!
It works like a charm and it's lightning fast.

If you want an "out-of-the-box" experience try vector linux. It was rather nice.

Linux gaming? Don't even think about it. Seriously. And why would you want to?

And to .. "know" .. linux you'll have to look beyond the fancy graphical decorations of the default "desktop environment".

Originally Posted by Zakhary
XFCE was okay though. It works like a charm and it's lightning fast.

Fluxbox is also nice and minimalistic, I had some fun with it.

Have run various Linux distros in the past on spare boxes - particularly when I was in IT. Now that I'm in a different industry, I just don't see the advantage of switching between OSs for minor web surfing improvements and the like. For the foreseeable future, my gaming will be on Windows, and rebooting (or fiddling with WINE) is too much hassle for little gain.

I've noticed that if you have win xp on your system and you put the fedora install disk in, it won't boot into the fedora install menu. The same goes for the total opposite, where if you had fedora installed on your system, the win xp install cd won't boot up to the win xp install.

I've heard this happens because both win xp and linux create a /boot partition with different file systems. This goes to the guy who said linux wouldn't even boot. Anyhow, I dont know, I just like linux. I've been using dos/win 3.0/win 95 all the way up to win xp. I feel like I'm just limited in win xp. Sure you can run games and edit photos etc, but I wanna feel smart and be able to type in commands in terminal. I want to be able to setup virtual machines and irc chat servers. I'm sure you could do all this in win xp but using terminal just makes me feel more like a hacker hehe. Plus that cube thing with a different background thing just rox. Having 4 workspaces is just awesome. Maybe Fedora 8 is much better than the old versions of linux that you guys have tried. Supposedly, wine has come a long way and you can play most pc games. Anyhow, just my two cents.

Oh, I'm not being critical - if you enjoy it, go for it.

We have a Linux network here at home; my home office workstation is a triple boot machine, with Kubuntu Linux for office and net apps. The other two setups are WinXP and Vista; while I boot up XP from time to time to play, say, Catacomb Apocalypse or some other oldie, I haven't used Vista in a long time (not since DMoMM, to be exact). And since I discovered some online gem swapping games that work under Linux, I find myself visiting the Windows setups less and less.
I haven't played a PC RPG in ages, so I have no idea if one of them might work under Wine.

Originally Posted by thartanian
I've noticed that if you have win xp on your system and you put the fedora install disk in, it won't boot into the fedora install menu. The same goes for the total opposite, where if you had fedora installed on your system, the win xp install cd won't boot up to the win xp install.

You need to set your BIOS to try to boot from the CD before trying the HD. This has nothing to do with your OS/bootloader.

I've been dual-booting Debian and XP for a couple of years.

Knoppix is also a very small distribution, although the developers don't encourage the internet use with it, because it's made rather to be lightweight and for single PCs, not connected PCs (security reasons).

Interesting link from Digg for PlayOnLinux

Looks interesting.

Kazeklubey, I did change the bios and set the dvd-rom as the only boot device. Even then, it wouldn't load the installations screen.

I have an old P3 running Xubuntu for visitors. A basic internet and office machine. I also have a virtual Ubuntu running in XP when I want to mess around and learn it more.
It's possible to get games to work on linux, but can involve a fair bit of fiddeling around. Though, I tend to find I play the little timewaster card/mahjong type games when not in WinXP.

thartanian- I've seen this happen a few times. Last year I was setting up ubuntu on two dozen or so machines, identical hardware and BIOS settings. It would absolutley refuse to boot of the linux CD. (Windows cd boot was fine).
Burning the origional .iso file again to a different CD fixed the problem, but did not let me know why it only happened on about 3 out of 24 computers.