Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Well, I'd love to run Linux to have more control over my computer, but if I'd do so, I'd run into:
- Having to fiddle with WINE to get my games to run (if they'll even run)
- Switching from one software package to another for several applications, where there is a great Windows version, and nothing that even comes close on Linux
- Run into the fact that there's NO alternative for some applications I use, so it's WINE again.
- Even if I get everything to run, the system parts are chained to one another: if you upgrade X, you often upgrade library A, which makes program Y break, so the package manager upgrades that as well, but that one also uses library B which is then upgraded as also, which makes program Z break, which then can't be upgraded because the maintainer is a jackass and and refuses to use the new version of library B because the curly brace style in the code has changed from K&R to Allmann. (True story, that one.)
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If you are a gamer, you run Windows. No choice.
Years back, there was a Win9X tweaker from an Australian vendor. The developer had painstakingly worked through what the minimum Windows modules were to have a system that booted and ran, and his package
removed everything from Windows that was not absolutely required. One of the things removed was Internet Explorer, which Microsoft back then swore blind couldn't be removed and still have a working Windows system. (It was in the days when MS was getting a lot of flak over bundling a browser, and making it difficult to use something else, like Netscape.)
The intended market for the package was gamers who wanted a lean, mean, gaming machine dedicated to gaming, with just enough of Windows to run the games.
WINE is noteworrthy, but not everything successfully runs under it, and as you noticed, there are many Windows apps that simply don't have decent Linux equivalents.
If I were a serious gamer, I'd either set up my system to dual boot if I wanted Linux in the mix, or have a separate Linux machine entirely with a KVM switch to pick which on my monitor, keyboard, and mouse were connected to at any particular time.
And one reason for preferring Ubuntu these days is good package management - select a package to install, and the installer looks at what I already have and bundles any pre-requisites I don't have with the install. It's been a while since I've had to chase down libraries, or set $LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the script that ran the app to point at the location of the specific library it should use if there was more than one version installed.
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Dennis