I considered getting linux for a pc im hoping to build as oppose to Windows xp professional but was recently dissuaded by a fellow computer enthusiast (who knows rather more than me, I must admit ). The issue was that with linux, playing computer games on the system may be difficult if not impossible, due to no directx availability. I was just wondering whether this was true because when I looked into using linux I didnt encounter anyone having troubles of this nature. Please can you tell me if this is a problem, and perhaps how it can be bypassed if I felt like reconsidering my OS.

rv13uk

Games can be a little bit of a problem with Linux. That said, there are people here far more experienced than a newbie to linux such as myself that may know ways around the issue. That said, there's nothing at all stopping you having a dual boot system with windows AND linux, linux after all being free.

I've never seen any systems running linux or unix that had any games worth a dang on them.... all of those systems were used for industrial work.

You'll see many of the Quake 3 engine games on linux. You'll also see the Unreal Tournament games on linux. For most others you'll have to use something like Wine/WineX/Cedega - but the good versions aren't free.

interesting. I have never come across linux or unix games. I have come across Unix systems at work that had windows 2000 running underneith inside a shell. These however, were Radar systems being used by the Army.

& certainly not the place where you would find gaming systems in the first place.

We'd hope not! But you know us Army guys!

Games that have been made for Linux have no problems ("no problems" in theory) running under Linux.

If you have a game that has been made for Windows then it is pretty obvious that you may run into trouble trying to run it under Linux.

Guess I may as well stick with windows then...as much as I hate their practical monopoly. Thanks for the advice anyway, this site never lets me down

The cedega project as well as a free project called wine d3d9 strive to make playing windows games on linux a possibility.

With the latest version of Cedega (formerly winex), it is fairly simple and quite possible to play the majority of Windows games in Linux.

I routinely play games like Starcraft, Guild Wars, Morrowind and others in Linux with little issue.

Then again, I am a pure-linux guy.

never really messed with linux much. I was and old school DOS type a long time ago and really hated memorizing commands to get stuff done.

When windows came along it was great.

This is greater than windows could ever hope to be

http://www.whattheboat.com/kde2.png

And that's just the plain old vanilla desktop.