linux

[uzziah]

wondering how many of you use it, how it works, and if it's a reasonable possibility for me. i'm building a pc to play music, surf the internet, and do basic word processing. would love not to have to pay for windows. let me know!

 

[uzziah]

can i play old games like doom, wing commander etc. etc. on linux?

 

[gsferrari]

I use Linux (Mandrake 10.1) and here is a list of things I can do :-

* Browse Internet - Mozilla Firefox
* IM - Hotmail (yahoo is hard to figure out for me so I use the java version)
* Music using XMMS
* video/dvd using Totem
* LOADS of games...the arcade style games...soooo much fun

* Wolfenstein 3D - Linux based multiplayer game...pretty cool
* Quake 3 - again Linux version of the game...VERY good frame rates compared to windows
* Word Processing
* FTP, SSH etc.
* Email - Mozilla Thunderbird

man...loads of things...it has "almost" replaced windows for me. I only jump into windows to :-

* Play games (Half Life 2, Doom 3 etc. etc.)
* Update my website ( I use windows only tools for editing and changing my website)
* Foobar 2000
* DVD-A 5.1
* Movie DVD's with surround sound


I am sure all of the above can be made to work in Linux but it is not something I am keen on exploring

BTW - most of my posts are made through linux

 

[uzziah]

mandrake 10.1 is probably what i'll use as well. someone was saying i could use foobar through linux. that would be the big "if" for me

 

[soulblaze]

I've used linux as my main os for about 3 years..only use windows for counter-strike: source. There's a port of doom for linux..actually, there's probably about five or six ports of doom..Including that one that lets you play doom through the internet if you have a low latency connection. The older wing commander games would probably run fine in a dos emulator, such as dosemu. (almost all the dos emulators are also available for windows) not sure how well the new ones would run (the ones with mark hammel i believe), but with a fast enough pc they should run fine.

half-life 2 does work with cedega (basically a windows emulator based on wine.. used to be called wineX) doom3 has a linux port now, but due to the lack of some code optimizations it doesn't run as fast as the windows version.

I believe xine and possibly mplayer support surround sound in dvds. No DVD-A players though. I use xmms to play music and it works fine for me. There's also bluefish as an html editor and there's various ways you can upload the website (I use a program called weex that'll upload whatever changes you make..have to keep all the files from the website in the same directory format for this to work right)

gaim supports a variety of im protocols, including yahoo.

so, yeah..unless you need windows only programs you'll be fine running linux. And even then a majority of the programs have linux alternatives.

 

[blessingx]

Get a 'Live CD' and boot into it and play around and see if you like it. Although I'm about 99% on either OS X (preference) or XP, every once in a while I need Linux on a Wintel box, so I carry a copy of Knoppix around. It will give you a taste.

If you're a gamer though, you should stick to Windows.

 

[uzziah]

what about emu sound cards?

 

[Aman]

Gaming works fine in Linux. Use cedega (www.transgaming.com) for running windows games on the binaries - almost like emulation for Linux - and then the rest of them are compatable with Linux anyway.

Look, Linux is just amazing. Do whatever the hell you want, with whatever customizations you want, whatever window manager you want, with whatever programs you wish to use - all free.

I use Gentoo, a completely source-built distro. Great stuff.

I run the following system:

Xorg 6.9 with the fantastic true transparency setup
Enlightenment DR17 with the amazing new WM released only a few days ago
Firefox
Open Office (better than M$ office, IMO)
Many MANY games
ALSA (Sound quality gets better and better with every release)
Other misc. things I don't feel like mentioning

Look, performance is better, stability is better, compatability is MUCH better (believe it or not) and audio performance is now up to par with all Windows sound. No, you can't use E-MU cards in Linux (alsa = no support) but I don't like them anyway. The 24/96 ice1712 cards are fully supported.

Open source is the ONLY way to go now. If you know how to use a computer, then you will not believe what you have been missing. SWITCH NOW!!

 

[uzziah]

i think i'm pretty much sold on linux. i think i'll consider a sound card with good optical out and an aos piccolo or scott nixon dac.

will this work on linux? does the chaintech av-710 have linux support? as i see that as a popular card for its optical out.

thoughts?

 

[IstariAsuka]

Also, if you like iTunes or similar things, linux has JuK which, from when I briefly used it, seemed better then iTunes: more powerful and I liked it quite a bit more.

Anyways, it was I who thought that it may be possible to emulate Foobar within linux. Anyone know if this is possible? Wine perhaps?

 

[uzziah]

wondering, if i could run half life 2 and counter strike source through linux, as well as unreal tournament 2k4 etc.

 

[uzziah]

and can i use foobar, flac files, etc.?

 

[soulblaze]

ut2k4 has a native linux client. I believe it's included on the cd, but i'm not totally sure on that one.. half-life 2 is suposed to run fine in cedega.. I'd assume cs:s does also. I've never heard of anyone using foobar with wine, nor do I see the reason why you would as you wouldn't get any improved sound quality by doing it that way. flac is supported, as is shn and most of the others. APE files are not, but you can find an ape decompression tool to convert them from ape to flac.

 

[uzziah]

ok, couple more questions

foobar? (not that important since i'll be using chaintech av710 at first anyway

half-life (not half life 2, the first one)

these questions are getting more out there. which definitely means i'm running out of excuses. a good thing!

is cedega free? looked like transgaming.com wanted my $$$$

 

[dallasstar]

Hardware compatibility was a severe detracting factor for me when I used Linux. I'm back to Windows until I find stuff that isn't impossible for Linux.