Looking at changing OS, on occasion I do play some games, but essentially my pc has become a file server. Is gaming possible, if so is it relatively easy to setup?

There's tonnes of games for Linux - some even have ANSI graphics these days.

But if your referring to Windows games running under Linux than Transgaming/Cedega have a game emulation type product thats cheap - otherwise you'll have to battle with using WineX.

I've used Cedega and it works 85% of the time. Some games are compatible, some aren't, some will crash, some will require updates from Cedega that may take time, etc.

It's possible - but there's a reason I canned Linux and went back to XP. It's just easier and I can't be f***ed spending the time it takes to get stuff to work under Linux anymore (gaming wise).

What sort of games do you play?

Can I suggest if you're looking at gaming under linux that you note first what graphics chipsets you have available wherever you are. I think you'd be a little underwhelmed by the ATI support under linux at the moment. The xorg 7.1 opensource radeon driver is stable but a few of the applications I develop at work are zomg-slow in opengl under it compared to even the xorg i810 driver.

cliffs notes:
make sure you have an nvidia card before you switch if you want to play opengl games. ATI binary blobs don't just suck to install, their performance is awful too :)

[edit]
You should really look around for native games as well as the same old wine/cedega stuff. Try the linux game tome for a start.

I'll also note that dosbox and dosboxfe work flawlessly under bsds and linux if that's your thing.

last edited by dafugg at 15:22:45 17/Nov/06

Kubuntu, Nvidia graphics and Cedega ftw

Is gaming possible, if so is it relatively easy to setup?

Every idsoftware game since Doom in 1993 has had a Linux version, so hopefully ET:QW will continue this tradition :)

Apart from that, as mentioned .. Cedega works, but often requires much messing around. I got UT2004, Farcry, etc working but the performance was not very good. Some other games actually perform better than their Windows counterparts. I heard you can get banned in WoW for using Cedega.

In summary if games are an afterthought and not the main goal in this adventure, that should be fine. If you game heavily though (which you say you don't) I'd just stick to Windows.

I heard you can get banned in WoW for using Cedega.

There's been some people bitching about that on the WoW forums, I'm not really sure if its not an excuse tho.

Blues have stated that running the game under Cedega is not a violation of the TOS, and they will / are investigating any false positives returned by Warden through its use.

That said, even under Linux the game is still pretty s*** at level 60 :p

even under Linux the game is still pretty s*** at level 60 :p

Fixed to remove redundancy.

you can now install linux on ps3. legit may i add

linux on gaming? :P

http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html

www.wesnoth.org

A free RTS i've had a go at. Rated #1 free game for linux.