I'm sure it does. That's not the compatibility issue here. From what I was told, it did work fine then an update to Win10 effectively killed the compatibility.

My point there was that people would have a license, so they at least have that option.

OK fair point, but Mac affectionados wouldn't call that an option. You know what they're like. :P

Today I have much less time for gaming, choice of Linux games is much better, drivers are of better quality and WINE pretty much runs almost everything that uses Directx 9. So I mostly use Linux for gaming. But I do use Windows ocassionaly. I had to install it a while back for work related purposes so why not use it for gaming too. There are still some titles not available either natively, either via WINE.

But truth to be said, if you are satisfied with Linux gaming offer, you don't need Windows at all for your gaming needs. Although you should watch-out for bad ports (Steam). GOG Linux offer is both good and bad. Good because the games are tested and guaranteed working, bad because they fit their packages to Ubuntu/Mint. If you use any other distro, you'll have to hack the games into working (luckily for at least some users, there are 3rd party scripts for that). I wonder if they could pack the games more universally, at least for installers and tgz archives. Although if you use "Mintbuntu" you probably don't care.

Re: Windows version. Personaly, I still use Windows 7. I'm afraid of "upgrading" to Windows 10. It looks like a monstrosity made for tablets and retrofitted to desktop. I see some people like it and feel very strongly about that. But to me, there's too much of cons to overlook them.

From what I've read, with new mojosetup installers GOG games work fine under various distros even though not officialy supported.

The installers work fine. The problem is they bundle some libs with the games. Those libs are often not compatible with system libs. So, to run a game, I have first to delete GOG helper scripts and the bundled libs. Only then the games really work. Rare are the games that work ootb.

Anyway, as I said, if you use "Mintbuntu", that is non-problem for you. :)

Zenwalk, sadly, seems to be almost dead. But I don't know about Salix. They did slow down a bit, but I don't think they're gone. You'll see when Slackware 14.2 gets out (currently in beta). I bet you we will see a new Salix release. :)

Thats even worse. Throw that book in the trash! Its like reading "Windows Guide for Users". The more you read it, the more it confuses you. Much better is to have internet and some kind of notetaking software. Perhaps, when you have concrete questions, then such books help - but otherwise they just sap time.

You know, all these [url=http://keithp.com/keithp/resume/]just pretend to be working.

You are consumer. Please don't even try Linux.

Nah. It's about preference. Do you prefer Windows or Linux? I prefer Linux. For me, Windows is not as comfortable to work in. Even if I dual boot, that is rarely. I spend most time in Linux.

Not really. In reallity you rarely need "Windows software". It's more of you (or anyone else) being used to particular solutions for particular general computing tasks. If some specific piece of software is not available on Linux, there are usually alternatives.

Everyone is either consumer or developer of OS. To which of those 2 categories do you belong?

Performance-wise and software-wise Windows is vastly superior by many orders of magnitude. Linux is good for security, for sites, servers and such, and that's what it was mostly made for. Using Linux for games is like using microwave oven to dry clothes.

I am not even sure why it is still being discussed. The only big plus of Linux is that it is free, and that's probably the only reason why it has some popularity among normal "consumers", as paying for someone's work isn't popular among people nowadays, sadly. You can bash Microsoft how much you want, but despite some recent dips in their reputation (because of Windows 8/10) they still provide quality OS, quality Office, quality DirectX APIs, etc., etc., etc. This is not deniable. I wanted to cut my expenses by using Open/LibreOffice and such, but they don't stand anywhere near close to MS Office and have extremely bad compatibility with MS Word/Excel (which might be fine if you are dilettante, but not for any serious work).

Also from what I read, people who bash Windows simply don't know how to use PC and have hands growing from wrong place.

And yet again, there are many many millions of issues with games on Linux. This fact is absolute. Stop deceiving OP. And don't mention Wine and Alpha versions of Linux builds which have some Windows software support - why go through so many loopholes when you can just install Windows and not deal with all this? It is like buying washing machine and using it as dinner table while washing everything manually.

Hacker. Aka prosumer.

, [url=http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_windows81_ubuntu&num=4]yeah.

I've got a surprise for you. Its very very often the very same code under the hood.

No, Linux servers are pretty easily rooted, if they are outdated or have no intrusion detection what so ever. The reason why RHEL, OES, Debian, Gentoo are secure, is because they use very stable tested code, hardened and at same time recieve near zeroday security updates.

You should start selling such microwaves, it works very good.

Surprise, Linux isn't free. Its Free Software, but not free (like "freeware"). Free Software means you can't sell copies(edit: I mean, you can't make a right "to make a copy" exclusive, "reserved" to just you; you can sell a copy and charge anything - just someone copies your copy and sells it too, you can't prohibit that), because that will limit right to copy(copy-right) to users; but you can sell everything else.
None of my friends use Linux, because its free to get. All use it, because its - in gaming terms - it has awesome software and is "moddable" to any need.

Point me exactly where I did that.

Owww. Should I remind you how they destroyed(yes, destroyed) Nokia?

That consumes 1.5 GiB of RAM, 40 GB of drive space, slow on dual-core, whilst providing no positive payload.

Thats personal, but the best Office was Office XP, which LibreOffice is after.
Actually, I am personally okay with Abiword. Office is office, its for document markup.

OpenGL, Vulcan? You know, stuff that does not cause vendor lockin.

(above)

MS Office is also extremely badly compatible with LibreOffice.
You know, I also wanted to cut my expenses, but the document, which I saved in ODT format, which it had denied for a long time, on MSO 10 had broken formatting even when reopened by very same MSO.
Since then I have taken portable LibreOffice to environiments where MS OS is an obligation.

Are you implying that you need to fix Windows constantly? Isn't the very same argument used by some pro-Linux people, ie "you don't know how to cook it"? Well, Linux is not a product(with some exceptions), but an environiment - yet Windows is a product. And for a product, an argument "you don't know how to use it" is actually an accusation, rather than compliment.

There are also many many trillions of issues with games on Windows. This fact is equally absolute.

What?

Wine.

What is an alpha version? Linux builds of what? OS or Kernel? Linux kernel never had an "alpha" version, its either unstable or stable, also recently - RC, LTS, current.

Because you will have to deal with Windows.
Because wine is installed in less than 1 minute. Its just a library.

Which is what you do. Windows is not table, but - HOUSE. You buy WHOLE HOUSE, because you need just a dinner table. Sure you can. But "table" would be a gaming console - (re-)strictly for gaming.
Also, why can't you use washing machine as table? You are restricting users of freedom, you know.

You basically laugh people out for using their cell phone to take pictures, video, do instant messaging, internet, play games; instead of just calling. This is totally improper and sign of sillyness, right?

I meant for fun ;)

I understand, but personally I found that when it comes to technical area, applied learning is far more efficient than academic.

I had numerous good books about PC architecture, hardware, VGA programming, even Windows and Linux guides of various type. They were all only good as a reference, and trying to get into the subject by reading them always ended as a wasted time and failure.

This is a good way to actually get behind implementation and start messing with it; then use book or manual only as a reference. Reading through also works, but only when I am somewhat confident with the subject already.

In 2006, it was really the Linux book, that prevented me to use Linux. Parodoxal, but true - huge, boring and dry in substance, there is hardly any better method to get the potential user bored and get him to loose interest.

Most of people who started using PC with Windows, learned by direct approach - and then got to internet or got book when they had a problem.

Get some Mac user to learn Windows - by first requiring him to read a (typical) 800-page "User Guide", which for Windows comes with huge (pointless) screenshots, where for same guide but for Linux would come with equally pointless huge man(ual page) printouts (pointless, as "man command" gives full reference to command).

I mean, I enjoyed Solaris (which is pretty similar with Linux in took and feel) a lot, more than Windows actually - before I even messed with Linux, because just like with Windows and its mspaint in 199x, I was given an account and ability to freeroam around, taking notes on case-by-case basis.

This is why "give him a book" method (perhaps for people like me) is a sure way to drive me away. :)

Forgive me, linuxers, for I have failed.

Or at least am too frustrated, down currently to bother with it for now. I had got the idea that I could use my windows boot for work, and then linux for gaming, as counter-intuitive as that may have been, but...circumstances were against me.

Surprisingly, it was the having MORE advanced hardware that was my downfall. My old linux system was a laptop with an integrated mobile graphics card, nominal specs, and I knew what wouldn't work, so I didn't even try it. Since I got a more advanced laptop, I figured I'd try to be more adventurous (still keeping in mind minimum specs, of course), but I wasn't successful. After a lot of hunting for appropriate drivers, finally tried some games...didn't work. Did some googling and tried some fixes, advanced a bit, still didn't work. Did some more googling, tried some more fixes, still didn't work.

Caved and installed Torchlight 2 on my windows partition and have been enjoying it on ultra. I realise the linux community is incredibly helpful, and I'm sure to get assistance to get what can work working, and I might get back to linux for gaming at some point, especially since I actually prefer it, but that time is not now.

No, you didn't fail. I've used Linux since one of its first distributions (yggdrasil), and to me, it was fun to tweak it, recompile the core OS and reboot my computer with those new tweaks.

However, that was back in the day when I had too much time on my hands. Over time, I thought of Linux was more of an OS for programmers and rebels than it was being an actual 'everyday' platform. Nowadays it is the platform of many mobile devices (the "internet of things").

One thing I love about Linux was the statement - you don't have to use a mainstream operating system on your computer, I think OS2 (and Warp) as well NeXT and BeOS were same.

However, people trying to make money are going to go mainstream; with game engines being multi-platform, there's not really a reason to not be able to support multiple platforms unless you want a heavily customized or proprietary engine.

The more mainstream PC platforms these days run Windows, you can't go to a retail outlet these days to buy a desktop or laptop off the shelf without it having some OEM installed version of Microsoft's OS.

While I would certainly like to be rebellious against business practices and whatnot, I'd rather like to be able to play a really cool game running on awesome graphics hardware supported by its OS. While I don't go to retail outlets to buy PCs, I still put my own together. My current rig is AMD with nVidia and it runs Windows 10 (I like it much better than 8.1 which I have to use at work,).

So, basically, I've found that if you want a gaming platform which isn't specifically targeted for gaming (i.e. XBox, Playstation), and you want to have control over how it evolves, a PC running an OS which uses the latest cross-platform game engines is the next best thing. You OS could be Windows (which I find more well supported) or Linux, just make sure you have the appropriate hardware *and* drivers installed.