What about gaming? I have (and play) everything from old DOS classics like Space Quest and XCom to the latest shooters like Crysis and Fallout 3.

I don’t do a lot of gaming on my PCs, preferring instead to use the Playstation 3. For a lot of what might be considred older PC games, wine (a windows application layer for linux) will allow a lot of these games to run just fine. Cedega, from Transgaming, is a commercial application that uses wine and some licensed tech from Microsoft to make this even easier. Using a virtual machine, or dual booting are two other options for those who simply can’t leave some of their games behind.

On the other hand, there are some decent open-source games available as well.

BTW, Greg, could you block Mr. “very good sites mcx” somehow? It’s not terrible, but rather annoying to see him trying to promote some chat site in every thread.

I have it.

It took a while to get it straightened out, then I was happy. Then Ubuntu updated the driver, and now I’m unhappy.

I haven’t had the time to fix it again yet, and when I do I’ll have to figure out how to make sure it doesn’t reupdate the damned driver.

I kinda like that with WinXP, I just install the game and go (for modern games, anyways – I generally have to use emulators for the old DOS games). Granted, the install time on some games are crazy (two hours to get WoW and all the expansions installed!), but otherwise I’m pretty happy with XP. How does Linux stack up for games? In particular, what kind of performance can be expected? Does it take a lot of tweaking to get games to even work, or is it idiot proof? Bear in mind that I’m pretty good with a computer, but haven’t touched Linux with a plastic fork since 1996, and even that was just a cursory examination.

On the other hand Ubuntu can’t access the internet. That’s news to me…

Kind of a shocker here, too — would someone explain how I’m doing these posts?

For those who don’t know the difference, Greg is a Ubuntu user, I am a Kubuntu user; the difference is in the default user interface. It’s a matter of taste and you can choose, or change your mind, or have it both ways.

Or you can use Xubuntu, which uses XFCE. Feels like GNOME without all the useless bells and whistles and runs more snappily.

On the other hand Ubuntu can’t access the internet. That’s news to me…

rdesktop should connect to Server 2008, maybe give it a try (or retry).

Ian: Of course, google docs etc. is running on Linux.

Virgil: Right. The guy at the inquirer is obvsiously a paid hack or a moron. A few items from his review in which he makes the claim that this new version of windows will shut down Linux:

“Installation is still slower than anything Linux could dream up,… a couple of times I feared that the process had frozen up. … it did offer to upgrade XP for me…

After installation, Windows 7 could not find my wireless dongle… In the end I had to install a Vista version of the thing which sort of worked. Oddly Windows 7 could not find my webcam either,… Skype was another problem….

Windows 7 ships with Internet Explode… I was getting all sorts of hanging and other problems from IE. In the end I downloaded Firefox …It is a bit strange that Internet Exploder is more flakey with Windows 7 than it is on Vista, …

I installed Open Office which worked fine …

Speed wise my perception is that it is about the same speed as XP and Ubuntu (64-bit version).[clearly, a moron, if he thinks Linux and XP are running at the same effective operating speed. Perhaps all he uses his computer for is moving icons back and forth on the desktop)

…it was chewing up a lot more power running eye candy than I use in Ubuntu.

Running and shutting down still takes longer than Ubuntu …

A couple of screen freezes when things went wrong with some installation. …

Windows 7 also has a habit of forgetting about drives when they go wrong. The icons just vanish from the screen. ”

Right. Like I want THAT crap in my house…