Which Distro is best for me? Suggestions?

[Krevan88]

I recently started getting notifications about my Windows 7 64-bit is "unregistered" or hacked or something. I bought this computer a year ago, and never changed anything on it. I tried calling Micro$oft, but they won't help me because the computer didn't come with a sticker on the bottom.

So, my question to the wonderful users of this forum, and viewers of this section of the boards is, which distro is best for a computer like mine? I play a few PC games, but mainly play World of Warcraft, CS Source and Team Fortress sometimes.

I will post my computer specs too...

AMD Athlon(tm) II P360 Dual-Core Processor - 2.3 GHz
3.7 GB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 Video Card
Basic High Definition Audio Device
Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-7585H ATA Device


I have been looking at Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch Linux.

[Irithori]

Technically, there is a way of running *some* windows programs on linux, with various degrees of usefullness.
But you need to keep in mind, that this is an environment that the game developers dont use, dont test and dont care about.

If your main usage is windows gaming, then buy a windows license.

Of course, for other purposes you are encouraged to use linux

[Krevan88]

I don't have the money to buy a $100+ license for Windows or else I would have already. I do a lot of internet surfing and such so I was interested in Linux as well.

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!

For your Windows applications, you may have some level of success with Wine, so you may want to look at the Wine Data Base and check out your specific programs.
It's a hit and miss type of thing, though. For example, I can run certain Windows games flawlessly in Wine on one distro, but can't get past the installer on another distro.

[Irithori]

Any of the distributions you mentioned is suitable for internet browsing.
It is a matter of taste, which is the right for you.

The windows installation seems to be useless anyway by now.
So I would suggest to backup your data to an external storage,
and then give all three a testrun on your machine.

This might help you:
The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 15 i686 (GNOME) | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

Also: Many concepts are different to windows
For a quick and somehow amusing introduction:
Linux is NOT Windows

[cynwulf]

If you're going to play games with wine, then you want a stable distro, not a bleeding edge thing which could break the proprietary video drivers on the next round of updates. Debian stable with the latest proprietary catalyst driver (fglrx) and the latest wine is probably your best bet IMHO. The stable release only gets security updates so there should be no nasty surprised, but debian is not really a beginners distro, so you would have to be prepared to do some work to get things working to your liking.

And yes you will need to check wine's appdb to see what is supported and what isn't before taking the plunge.

[elija]

I agree with the stability point raised by caravel. To get the stability of Debian with most of the work done for you you could look at Linux Mint Debian Editon, Simply Mepis or Crunchbang among others. However, whichever distro you end up using, Wine is an odd beast; some games will run on the latest version but not old ones and others will require an older version and refusre point blank to even install under the latest. You can end up pulling your hair out getting things to work.

To be honest, if Windows gaming is a must for you, then Windows is going to be the best place to do it.

[cynwulf]

As far as I am aware LMDE is based on the testing branch, so for stability, that may not be such a good idea. At the moment fglrx 11.8 is removed from testing and broken in unstable as well. 11.9 is available from AMD but I have tried it and it won't start on xorg 1.11.1

[elija]

The latest LMDE uses it's own repos which do ultimately track testing. Updates are not sent to it until it is reasonably stable (in the falling over sense) and if there are known issues you will get information on how to fix them if you update using the MintUpdate tool. It's a nice compromise.

[edit]
But in the sense of change, you are quite right. If you can get the older release of LMDE, you can just point the repos at stable and away you go. DOn't try this with the latest release though. The pain won't be worth it
[/edit]

[MASONTX]

A search for gaming distro's on distrowatch.com returned the following:
The following distributions match your criteria:


1. linuX-gamers Live DVD
The linuX-gamers Live DVD is a bootable medium with a collection of popular 3D games. It contains both the NVIDIA and ATI proprietary Linux drivers and includes the following games: BzFLag, Enemy Territory, Glest, Nexuiz, Sauerbraten, Torcs, Tremulous, True Combat: Elite, Warsow and World of Padman. Although the live DVD is based on Arch Linux, it does not offer any desktop Linux functionality except gaming.

2. LinuxConsole
LinuxConsole is an independently developed Linux live CD with different editions designed for desktops, servers, gaming consoles, and old computers. Its primary characteristics are easy installation, extensive choice of software in the form of modules, and excellent hardware detection.

3. SuperGamer
SuperGamer is a live DVD based on VectorLinux, intended to showcase gaming on Linux. The distribution is optimised for a gaming computer environment, with some tweaks to help speed up running from the live DVD. Extra games are added along with some demo editions of proprietary games. All games are native Linux games, but users wishing to run Windows games may install WINE or a related emulator, such as Cedega.

4. Ultimate Edition
Ultimate Edition, first released in December 2006, is a fork of Ubuntu. The goal of the project is to create a complete, seamlessly integrated, visually stimulating, and easy-to-install operating system. Single-button upgrade is one of several special characteristics of this distribution. Other main features include custom desktop and theme with 3D effects, support for a wide range of networking options, including WiFi and Bluetooth, and integration of many extra applications and package repositories.