monohouse wrote:I don't recommend Linux for games, emulated crap, if you want games you should go for winblows, and optimize to death, maybe Deleted Edition with nLite, Linux is good for other things : networking
using Linux is not possible without getting your hands dirty, and yes, every time you change things you may have to spend several hours getting to work properly - the advantage of linux is control, apperantly also it's disadvantage, there is too much control and linux will not work without your control as a result, but I would be fine to live with that if it had any benefits, as a matter of fact, for a long time I have been using the Linux From Scratch "distribution", look at how good it can be:
Main Desk
Main Desk 2
Mixer
Audio Rendering
with PNG Background
Full SSE FFT EQ
XMMS in a new skin
XMMS in another skin
XMMS in a yet another skin
Hardware-accelerated Visualization plugins
The Combination
The Combination 2
Qt really sucks
The official Linux wave Editor
Leeching at it's best
More Styles
unfortunately all that is left from this system is the pics that I made at the time i was using it, I could build it again but I just don't kno why, there isn't much more you can do with it than that, the system is composed of as you can see 2.4 kernel which I am testing after compile, gtk-1 gui only, no gtk2 as it is too slow, the system monitor is torsmo, which does a good job not being a hog on the system and still allowing system status visibility, fluxbox window manager, xnc file manager, firefox browser.
one of the main advantages of linux is the ability to optimize software to your hardware by compiling it, as a good habbit I have done that to all the software, and used optimization flags that consumed half of my 1024x768 screen but I just couldn't do anything with it - I had "optimized" software with which I could not do much, audio design is not good there, ladspa plugins are ghay, there is no way you can compare say for example Atmosphere with the ladspa plugins, I meen where is that and where is that ?
im not sayin linux is bad, on the contrary, it is good, in fact VERY good at the time (before the development of the Deleted Edition) it was much better than the alternative (undeleted win2k/xp/98), but it's X window system is a hog compared to a recent Deleted Edition XP SP0 (which is much faster), Linux is still good, the potential outperforms any other system, but there just isn't anything you can do with it, it's like having a Ferrari but not being able to drive over 100 kph, so yeah the acceleration is good, extremely good, programs run fast and always un, no surprises, want the system to keep going for a year ? no problem....but going for a year doing what ? idling ? using lame audio plugins which are barely useful ? running 2-3 7-year old games (and yes quake3 is the only well-supported game on linux, the only one with frame rates as good as the winblows version), Linux has a lote of potential, the core operating system performance is just amazing, it's just too bad there is nothing you can do with that performance other than playing movies, listening to some music and cruising the web - maybe a few more here and there things like compressing archives, programming, text editing etc, which are hardly sutch big tasks anyway.
the selection of games for linux is very low, and even if there is (emulators) the performance is just damn lame crap, instead if you want good control of your system and you want a gaming system, it's best to optimize winblows xp as mutch as possible, here are a few examples of how good winblows can be:
Processes
Mixer
Mixer 2
File Management
foobar2000
Hardware EQ
Hardware EQ detailed
without Directsound
inspiration for the Deleted Edition
another inspiration
this should proove that winblows can be good, but it takes almost as much work as building a LFS system, I am working on the Deleted Editions for some time now, and I still have winblows directories between 70 and 40 MB, which is just not good enough, that will change, I hope to get to at least 50/40 and im 20 Mb short in the Lan Edition, what im trying to explain is, don't rush into Linux, check first if it is good for you, indeed check with some people (like nuhi, bold fortune, me) if there is something that can be done with winblows as an alternative to an attempt to go for linux, but if you are already going for linux - go with LFS, it's the only one that makes the big difference.
