Trying out Linux.

[Serpha]

As the title, I want to try Linux again (after 8 years) and I'm open for suggestions. Which one are you using?

[Jakexe]

I use to use Ubuntu at home and uni. I found it to be my go to choice for linux although I haven't bothered to re-install since my rebuild.

[vesseblah]

As the title, I want to try Linux again (after 8 years) and I'm open for suggestions.

Whatever linux you're going to try, here's two most important suggestions you can get:

1) Linux can not replace Windows in a gaming computer. Not 8 years ago and not today.
2) Use live linux CD or USB stick first for at least few hours before committing to normal install.

[Deleted]

I wish Linux enters the gaming market some time soon. Microsoft's got too much of a monopoly on gaming OS's. Is it hard to port a game to Linux?

[vesseblah]

I wish Linux enters the gaming market some time soon. Microsoft's got too much of a monopoly on gaming OS's. Is it hard to port a game to Linux?

Problem with Linux on gaming computer is the open nature of the system. When there's at least 3-4 competing systems for sound drivers alone no game companies will want to officially support that mess. Microsoft fixed it almost 20 years ago with DirectX which meant (in theory) game writers never need to worry about what brand of graphics card or who wrote the drivers since DX will always be the intermediary piece of software that glues shit together. Since that goes directly against the philosophy of "pick and mix" your own OS with linux it will never see widespread game support.

Things like Steambox work because it's basically linux that is pre-selected and picked for you and the essential pieces can not be changed making it semi-closed system. Apple did one step further with their own brand of linux making it completely closed system so that software writers can rely on things staying unchanged for years.

Wine works because with that nobody offers any kind of tech support for the game. There's no official WoW client for linux because Blizzard does not want to hire hundreds of new tech support people to troubleshoot all the compatibility issues that happen when your sound library is self-compiled instead of the default one that ships with Ubuntu 13.4.

[Shamypriest]

Apple did one step further with their own brand of linux making it completely closed system so that software writers can rely on things staying unchanged for years.

One small correction; OS X is a BSD derivative and not a Linux derivative. One of the reasons Apple based NextStep on FreeBSD was that the BSD license did not mandate redistribution of source code. This is obviously better if your goal is to make a proprietary OS. Otherwise your post was spot on. Sorry for being such a pedant.

As for the topic at hand, I've been using Ubuntu 10.10 for a while now. Since you haven't used Linux in 8 years, I'm going to assume you don't have an attachment to any particular desktop environment, so you may as well go with the latest release. As was mentioned earlier, you could try making a live CD, or another alternative, if your system supports hardware virtualization and you have enough RAM, you could download virtualbox and run a virtual machine with it installed. The latter case is actually how I do most of my work in linux.