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I have decided that I am sick to fucking death of Windows and have decided that my next PC is going to be Linux. Of course I like to play games and stuff on my PC and although more stuff is Linux compatable now, its not nearly as commonplace as it should be. I have heard a lot of Linux users talk about WINE and I was wondering if 1) its as useful as they say and 2) its easy to use. Suggestion on a good flavor of Linux would be helpful, too. I am a single dad, I work 12 hour days and I dont have a lot of time to dick around with my OS. I need it to work when I sit down at the PC, not after searching for updates or RPMs or whatever to make it work. However I know C++ fair-to-middling and a little assembly, so I can handle a little tinkering as long as its not a constant thing.

Cedega is the best thing for gaming on Linux, IIRC. It costs like five dollars a month though.

Wine is not simple. At least I've never had much luck with it. If you're wanting to play games you should not count on Wine.

My first suggestion is to tell you to buy a Mac. But I assume you already thought of that and dismissed it. So my next piece of advice is this: buy a boxed version of Linux. I use Mandrake/Mandriva, and have been quite happy with it. The latest Mandriva is 2005 and is available to order online as a DVD. It's not being sold in stores, since they decided to skip the commercial support on this version and focus on their next version, but it's perfectly fine for home users. There is a big community around Mandriva/Mandrake and you can usually get help any time you run into problems. That's why I like it.

The official for-money versions of Linux usually have all the extra goodies like Flash and nVidia drivers and Java. You would have to set that all up by hand otherwise.

The other advice: use Wine from Codeweavers. It costs a little bit of money (there is a free trial available) but it automates the whole Wine process. Easiest thing ever, just point and click.

I dont like Macs, I used to support them and I hated it. Of course that was the 8.5 - 9.0 days. Ive never used OS X. I was under the assumption that there was even less software available than for PC, and that you still cant upgrade on the component level. If that has all changed, I may consider one. I also wanted to switch to Linux because Linus Torvalds moved his family and his Open Source Development labs to Beaverton, which is like 10 minutes away so Im pretty close to all the action. I dont know if their proximity will have any actual benefits as far as getting stuff first, but there are shitloads of people who know Linux here so there is a lot of local support. I will look into Mandrake and that Codeweaver thing. Thanks!

Ravengrim wrote:I dont like Macs, I used to support them and I hated it. Of course that was the 8.5 - 9.0 days. Ive never used OS X. I was under the assumption that there was even less software available than for PC, and that you still cant upgrade on the component level. If that has all changed, I may consider one. I also wanted to switch to Linux because Linus Torvalds moved his family and his Open Source Development labs to Beaverton, which is like 10 minutes away so Im pretty close to all the action. I dont know if their proximity will have any actual benefits as far as getting stuff first, but there are shitloads of people who know Linux here so there is a lot of local support. I will look into Mandrake and that Codeweaver thing. Thanks!

Just something to consider.

Mac OS 9 sucked so bad its not even funny. They started from SCRATCH with OS X essentially, throwing OS 9 out the window. They went with FreeBSD.

Mac OS X is basicly an ultimate version of FreeBSD at this point. Fully UNIX based. Terminal is always fun to play with. OpenGL, PDF-based rendering system, work offloaded to the graphics card, excellent SMP support, extremely good multitasking (remember the days when Macs couldn't run more than one program at once? OS X does multitasking better than Windows), etc. You can even install KDE. NONE of the problems of old Macs. Further you can install Linux on the Mac too.

As for upgradeability, depends on the Macs. The PowerMac G4's are actually more upgradeable than any PC. Not only can you replace the hard drive, graphics card, PCI slots, hard drive, etc like any normal PC, but you can go buy a single 400 MHz G4, swap out the daughtercard, and turn it into a DUAL 1.5 GHz system. Go find me a single processor PC that you can buy and then upgrade to a dual processor system at over 3 times the clock speed...

The Mac Mini has limited upgradeability, iMac has no upgradeability, PowerMac G5 has almost the same upgradeability as normal PC's (you can replace all the internal components except the processor since you can't buy G5's on the market).

And they use standard RAM, standard hard drives, and the only difference between the graphics cards is a different bios.

So yeah, Macs sucking is a thing of the past.

And Mac OS X Tiger is being released in two weeks, and has almost every feature Microsoft has promised for Longhorn in two years.


As for software, there is less, but still a lot. The only place it really lags behind is games, because developers take six months to a year to port, so Mac users get games late. Star Wars Battlefront is coming to Mac soon, for example. Doom 3 just came out for Mac.

But there's a LOT more games than Linux has


Might I recommend reading through http://www.apple.com/macosx/ briefly? Especially the tech specs section under key technologies. You'll see how much Apple has changed- X11 is even built in. A LOT more open source stuff and a LOT less proprietary junk like in OS 9.

What version of Windows were you using?

If it isnt Windows 2000, Windows XP or (if you are somewhat insane and ahve money to blow) Windows 2003 then you arent using a modern OS.

Windows 95/98/ME are not acceptable OSes.

And from the orginal post, it probably will be easier to just slap a copy of Windows XP sp2 and use Firefox. Windows is down right trivial to install(you get sick of the fucking music during the install wizard very very fast), to the point were a semi-computer literate can do it on baseline hardware these days.

I'm using XP Pro, but only SP1. My main bitch is Windows Rot. It fucking gets slower and slower and the only way to fix it is a format, and then reinstall all my shit,and then reconfigure the way I like it. I even have Windows on its own partition but even if I just reinstall on the partition, Windows isnt smart enough to re-associate all of my installed programs. Its just a pain in the ass. I may take another look at Macs though. One thing I DO know it that they are 1.5 to 2 times the cost of a PC, but if they are practically headache-free, it'd be worth it. So I'm assuming that since they went to a Linux based system, they did away with that shit-ass AppleTalk as the main network network protocol, right?

Ravengrim wrote:I'm using XP Pro, but only SP1. My main bitch is Windows Rot. It fucking gets slower and slower and the only way to fix it is a format, and then reinstall all my shit,and then reconfigure the way I like it. I even have Windows on its own partition but even if I just reinstall on the partition, Windows isnt smart enough to re-associate all of my installed programs. Its just a pain in the ass. I may take another look at Macs though. One thing I DO know it that they are 1.5 to 2 times the cost of a PC, but if they are practically headache-free, it'd be worth it. So I'm assuming that since they went to a Linux based system, they did away with that shit-ass AppleTalk as the main network network protocol, right?

Yeah, AppleTalk is now a little thing they threw in on the side for working with old systems now.

IIRC the main protocol was AFS or something like that. It also has Samba built in, so Windows file sharing is no problem at all.

Also, the being vastly more expensive thing is no longer true in every way...some systems still are vastly overpriced (for example, the single processor PowerMac. For the exact same price you can get an iMac with the exact same specs AND a 17-inch LCD. Another example is the gap between the 12" and 15" PB, its $400 just to upgrade the screen), but others are very decent.

The $499 Mac Mini are fair priced in comparison to the competition, as is the $999 iBook, for example. None of the systems are a steal though.

Give it a try, you might be surprised by massive improvements.

Best Buy carries Mac Minis, CompUSA carries all Apple computers.

Praxis wrote:Mac OS X is basicly an ultimate version of FreeBSD at this point. Fully UNIX based.

OS X is more of a bastard son of NeXT than UNIX. It does have FreeBSD components in it, of course, but its lineage is not UNIX.

Terminal is always fun to play with. OpenGL, PDF-based rendering system, work offloaded to the graphics card, excellent SMP support, extremely good multitasking (remember the days when Macs couldn't run more than one program at once? OS X does multitasking better than Windows), etc. You can even install KDE. NONE of the problems of old Macs. Further you can install Linux on the Mac too.

I somehow doubt MacOS X does multitasking better than Windows. It is good but so is Windows' kernel. Not all work is offloaded to the GPU either (even under Quartz Extreme and Core Image, IIRC).

As for upgradeability, depends on the Macs. The PowerMac G4's are actually more upgradeable than any PC. Not only can you replace the hard drive, graphics card, PCI slots, hard drive, etc like any normal PC, but you can go buy a single 400 MHz G4, swap out the daughtercard, and turn it into a DUAL 1.5 GHz system. Go find me a single processor PC that you can buy and then upgrade to a dual processor system at over 3 times the clock speed...

That's because the "single G4" was really a dual-processor motherboard that happened to have a single processor installed. And you'd pay an arm and two legs for that dual 1.5GHz G4 upgrade card.

And Mac OS X Tiger is being released in two weeks, and has almost every feature Microsoft has promised for Longhorn in two years.

Umm ... no.

Ravengrim wrote:I'm using XP Pro, but only SP1. My main bitch is Windows Rot. It fucking gets slower and slower and the only way to fix it is a format, and then reinstall all my shit,and then reconfigure the way I like it. I even have Windows on its own partition but even if I just reinstall on the partition, Windows isnt smart enough to re-associate all of my installed programs. Its just a pain in the ass.

That's because you're wiping out the registry and a bunch of other useful data. How else is it supposed to know what data is associated with what application?

I may take another look at Macs though. One thing I DO know it that they are 1.5 to 2 times the cost of a PC, but if they are practically headache-free, it'd be worth it. So I'm assuming that since they went to a Linux based system, they did away with that shit-ass AppleTalk as the main network network protocol, right?

MacOS X is not Linux based in any way, shape or form.

AppleTalk is more or less dead; it mostly uses the various Unix-esque networking protocols along with Apple's psuedo-ZeroConf implementation to emulate some of the old ease of AppleTalk.

If you're really worried about not having ported games, you can always use something like Virtual PC. I honestly don't know how well it'll run games, but it's something to consider.

Thats another thing that I considered, running all my Windows-only apps in a VMWare session on top of Linux. However I am really impatient and it would piss me off to wait for Windows to boot every time I wanted to play a game. As far as why Windows cant remember all of its program associations. I dont care WHY it cant do it. Thats the programmers job to figure out. I know 98 could be reinstalled over the top of itself just fine and I'm sure that they could have figured out how to do it with XP. I know enough about programming and know enough actual programmers to know that Windows is based on shitty, sloppy coding. Its that way on purpose to protect their proprietary steaming turd, because no one can make heads or tails or it. It just sucks and Ive decided to cut the umblilcal.

phongn wrote:

Praxis wrote:Mac OS X is basicly an ultimate version of FreeBSD at this point. Fully UNIX based.

OS X is more of a bastard son of NeXT than UNIX. It does have FreeBSD components in it, of course, but its lineage is not UNIX.

Terminal is always fun to play with. OpenGL, PDF-based rendering system, work offloaded to the graphics card, excellent SMP support, extremely good multitasking (remember the days when Macs couldn't run more than one program at once? OS X does multitasking better than Windows), etc. You can even install KDE. NONE of the problems of old Macs. Further you can install Linux on the Mac too.

I somehow doubt MacOS X does multitasking better than Windows. It is good but so is Windows' kernel. Not all work is offloaded to the GPU either (even under Quartz Extreme and Core Image, IIRC).

Can't seem to find it now, but Mac OS X *is* better at multitasking than Windows at this point. It handles it better. Argh, where is that dang article...

Yeah, it doesn't offload everything to the GPU, but it offloads some.

Sorry, you're right on the other stuff.

As for upgradeability, depends on the Macs. The PowerMac G4's are actually more upgradeable than any PC. Not only can you replace the hard drive, graphics card, PCI slots, hard drive, etc like any normal PC, but you can go buy a single 400 MHz G4, swap out the daughtercard, and turn it into a DUAL 1.5 GHz system. Go find me a single processor PC that you can buy and then upgrade to a dual processor system at over 3 times the clock speed...

That's because the "single G4" was really a dual-processor motherboard that happened to have a single processor installed. And you'd pay an arm and two legs for that dual 1.5GHz G4 upgrade card.

Yep, but it still has that option.

And Mac OS X Tiger is being released in two weeks, and has almost every feature Microsoft has promised for Longhorn in two years.

Umm ... no.

Umm, yeah?

It's got most of the major features. Desktop search (which has been since stripped down), 3d UI offloaded to the GPU, "better security", etc.

Longhorn might have some under the hood improvements things for developers that Tiger does not, but Tiger is out a year earlier I said most, not all.