"We're here to dispell the myths, not spread them."

When did policy change?

(Must resist pointing out that dispel was misspelled)

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Thanks for pointing out the (di)spelling mistake. Cheers.

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I kid of course. My years as a proofreader haunt me.

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Great little post; I'm currently undergoing an Unbuntu re-introduction to Linux (last used Linux with RedHat 5!) - so far I am very pleased! I am impressed with the maturing of Linux over the past few years... I'll not be getting rid of my Windows partition quite yet, but I must say that I am impressed enough to be trying it as my primary non-gaming OS (I know, Linux *can* run games - heheheheh.... baby steps man, baby steps).

Oh, and if you are like me and hope people point out mistakes: "OSX will force you get a Liberal Arts degree and recycle... " is missing a 'to' between 'you' and 'get'. If you don't like people pointing it out, please forgive me. :)

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That last point seems like a half-truth to me -- sure, 5-10 of the most popular Windows games will run natively in Linux (if your video card drivers have been ported...), but what about the other several thousand? Sure, some might work in Wine or Crossover or whatever, but we'll probably never see Linux emerge as a proper PC gaming platform, especially if the "Games for Windows" tag takes off the way Billy G hopes it will.

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Wow. That Linux Beryl looks very good. :O

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It's a shame that I couldn't get iTunes to work properly in Ubuntu, or have my printer's full set of features supported. Don't get me started on my scanner...

Linux has a long way to go before I look at it again.

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WOW, that beryl video is INSANELY SLICK. Have never really used linux, am seriously thinking about it now... but where do i start?

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I suggest you get on ubuntu.com. Check the os out and the community supporting it. Then download a cd image of Edgy Eft (v6.10). This cd is called a "live" cd. Pop it in your cd drive, and, if your bios are compatible, your computer will boot up ubuntu for you to try. Your xp bootup will not be touched, so you don't need to worry. If you like it you can install it.

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Ugh... Linux can't play games worth a DAMN... Try playing a Linux game that is more than 2+ years old, and no longer supported by the community or the original developers... Example: Mind Rover.. Great game, but it sure as heck doesn't work properly in any of the latest distros.. You gotta spend hours searching around and installing obsolete library files to get the fonts to show up in the game correctly inside their little text boxes..

Playing the same game on Windows XP works FLAWLESSLY, exactly the same as it ran on Windows 95. No problems whatsoever, you don't need to install ANYTHING.. It just installs and runs... For windows, the game is 8+ years old.. And you can still use your original disk!

The linux release of Mind Rover was only a few years ago, and the original manuf. stopped supporting it, and it is a non-open source game... So it just doesn't work now after a few years.. I spent like 50+ hours trying to get it to work, gave up, formatted my drive, and then just installed an obsolete version of linux to play the obsolete linux games that I bought and were no longer supported. The answer from the linux community: Talk the software vendor into patching their game. HA!! You gotta be kidding me... The community also says... Don't use the old libararies!! They have security holes!! Oh no!! Use the fixed libararies, the community says.. But then the old games don't work the way they're supposed to! So you're screwed anyway..


Linux can't even touch Windows when it comes to gaming.. You'll always be the ones that get accidently banned from World of Warcraft (google it), or where the game just stops working after a couple years because a feature was removed from a libarary to fix a security vulnerability and instead of rewriting it, they just moved on to something totally different.. Breaking backwards compatibilty..

Most of the demos for Windows Vista is showing how productivity is enhanced, how you can do more things and faster (with the ribbon in Office 2007 for example).. Most of the demos for Linux desktop is showing pure eye-candy.. Ooooooo Pretty!!! But how the hell does that really enhance my productivity, or improve the gaming experience, or listen to music, or do whatever it is I like to do on my computer.. Unless you like to watch the little cube spin virtual desktops around all day long, you'll get bored of the LInux eyecandy fast and move back to Windows as I have so I can play games without all the BS...

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"Most of the demos for Linux desktop is showing pure eye-candy.. Ooooooo Pretty!!!"

Not just pretty, useful. Having the four desktops on cube faces is a good way to visualize your workspaces. But the fact is that Beryl has many functionality enhancements, such as the expose-like Scale plugin, the Show Desktop plugin, Windows thumbnails, a visual Program Switcher, Zoom functionalities, etc.

The main advantage it has to the Vista equivalent (though it's not much of an equivalent) is that Beryl is easily expanded through plugins, and development is *very* active.

"But how the hell does that really enhance my productivity, or improve the gaming experience..."

You *do* realize the two are mutually exclusive, right? Improving the gaming experience on a PC is a sure way of decreasing productivity!

In any case, the gaming scene has mostly moved over to consoles by now. Apart from WoW, the most popular titles are all on consoles, including the vast majority of "hardcore gaming" titles. With the Wii, a whole new population of gamers has arrived. For an increasingly larger proportion of people, computers are used for other things than gaming.

For those users whose gaming needs do not absolutely require Windows, Linux is a good alternative. For those who do, dual-booting is quite acceptable, considering that it actually *helps* your productivity by making it just a bit harder to get to your games. :-)

"or listen to music, or do whatever it is I like to do on my computer.."

Listen to music? What gave you the idea that you couldn't do this on Linux? You obviously have never tried amaroK - it blows away anything that is available on Windows or OSX...don't worry, it'll be available for Windows one day, so you'll have access to it...

The rest of your post was a predictable flamebait from a MS fanboy. You don't like Linux, fine. Don't try to discourage others if they want to find out by themselves, especially since the author has provided a nice guide for potential newbies.

I also highly recommend this for new Ubuntu/Kubuntu users:

http://www.ubuntuguide.org

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Dear Mr. Smith,

It's obvious you just can't handle simple applications like Cedega and Wine. Stop whining. Reading your post made my eyes bleed.

Vista is definitely showing a lot of progress in increasing your productivity - all you need to do is clicking all those fancy little warning boxes popping up every second, when you want to install something, run something, or.. Uhmm... Do something creative or... Uhmm... Do pretty much anything at all. As Vista comes bundled with Internet Explorer 7, which has an astonishing number of compatibility problems with services written for IE6, I'd say all that fanboy whining has no solid ground to be based on.

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David Smith, that's the biggest piece of bs I ever heard. Does 0$ enhance your productivity? Hell yea! Does the fact that you need not search for programs and then download the installer (after paying for the program of course, and then installing it) increase your productivity? Hell yea.

Itunes guy: All the software you need is in the repository. Use the Linux replacements. Don't try moving Word and Winzip and Itunes over, use the replacements.

Jono, start by backing up your important files on CD. Either download a Ubuntu iso and burn it, or ask them to ship you free cds at shipit.ubuntu.org. Install, then restore your files. If you need any help, post back.

There are great games for Linux, but sadly no one ever hears of them. True Combat Elite is amazingly good, as is Doom 3. Sauerbraten and Alien Arena are also good, but my favorite is Wolfenstein ET.

Vista is lucky though, Crysis will save it from gaming doom.

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Grant, if you SERIOUSLY want to dispel myths about Linux, shouldn't you... not perpetuate them in the very post you're trying to dispel myths in?!

"Photoshop's functionality can be found in The Gimp, or better yet with GimpShop."

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TO bad every single piece of software I use on Windows is "Untested" on Linux. I have Ubuntu on 2 of my computers, including this Laptop. Unfortunatly, Sony Vegas, After Effects, Illustrator, Sound Forge, Flash, Dreamweaver, and a host of other multimedia programs I use on a daily basis won't function. I am not willing to try doing this. I need to work, not play around of weeks on end just to get one program to work that works fine across the room. Case in point, I recently spent WEEKS trying to get DMX4LINUX working so I could run my lighting system on my Linux laptop. After talking with developers and posting in forums something that was suposedly supported and working failed on both of these installs. It worked fine first time on my Windows box.

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argh, it cut off my rant... I guess that's a cue to keep it short. Anyhow, as anyone who makes a living in the graphic arts will tell you, gimp is as good a replacement for photoshop as a tricycle would be for an escalade. If you doubt me, then please show me where the cmyk support (which is ESSENTIAL for print work), or how about the layer styles are? And those are just two of the hundreds of missing features. Maybe gimp is a decent replacment for your purposes, but honestly if that's the case, you were never the target market for photoshop to begin with (if you were, it's missing features would have been immediately apparent)

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Sorry to be off-topic... but is this the same Grant Robertson who used to work at the Museum of Science and Industry in L.A. in the late 80s?

If so, Jim wants to know where to contact you...

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I've used Linux and Windows at home on various systems for years, Linux still needs serious work. As much as I admire Linux projects - Fedora, Ubuntu, etc - they have lightyears still to go to fix all the compatibility issues .. As slick as that video was I ever got my Linux boxes to the level I needed and Windows even under all the criticism never gave me the hassles that Linux still does.

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another myth is that linux it is an OS, which it is not.

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While I admire Linux (I was re-introduced through Ubuntu after many years), it still hasn't got to the point where you can be completely productive without going through hassle. For Example, I use a laptop with a docking station and I cannot get my external monitor to work at a different resolution from my laptop screen. Similarly, my back and forward buttons do not work with firefox. These are things that one is just simply used to doing without thinking. While I'm sure patches are available, it is not worth the time to go around finding them.

As for price, most systems you buy come preloaded with Windows (XP/Vista or whatever) or OSX, and as far as I can tell, the price is about $80 bucks less when you buy without an OS, which in the grand scheme of a grand, isn't much.

Just my 2c.

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