Looking for opinions / advice on running Linux / Ubuntu

[Blank_Redge]

Right then. First off: I know exactly f?!k all about Linux or Ubuntu. Hence, the creation of this thread.

I'm building a gaming PC for my daughter, specifically so she can play The Sims. Win 8 hasn't been out long enough for me to trust it as a platform for gaming. I was just going to install Win 7 on said PC, but my wife is hellbent on me installing Ubuntu.

Again, I know f?!k all about Ubuntu. My wife is the same, actually. =p I think the only reason she's all hopped up on the idea is because some of the peeps at the hackerspace we're (very, very casually) involved with use it.

So, looking for opinions / advice / answers to the following questions:

1. How difficult would it be to download the kernel / make an installer?

2. What would be the learning curve, navigating around Ubuntu's GUI, for someone who's predominantly a Windows user?

3. How difficult is it to run a Windows optimized game inside an Ubuntu / Linux architecture?


Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[Infinital-NG]

1. Installing linux is so much easier than it used to be.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download

2. Navigating the GUI shouldn't take you too long to figure out.

3. You can use Wine to run PC programs on Linux, but don't think it works for anything.

If your wanting to try it out, try a Livecd first, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD . You can put it on a flash drive or CD/DVD and not make any changes to your system. Just to get a feel for it.

 

[BobK]

1. Piece of cake.

2. Probably not too hard, although it actually used to be easier.

3. Good chance you're out of luck here. It depends on the game, really, and the only people who would know for sure about a particular game are those who've tried it. As a general rule the older a game is the more likely it is to be runnable under Wine but no guarantees here either way.

 

[sesselpupser]

You might like to check out the Linux section on Steam if you want to be playing games on it, none of them are particularly huge titles but there are some great games there.

You could always dual boot, couldn't you?

 

[Grayfox]

If you want to try out a linux distro.

Look at one called Zorin OS.

It has a windows like GUI which can be set to look like Win 7, Win XP or ubuntu Gnome.

It also has WINE on it so you can run some of your windows programs.

 

[Pako]

I say just go for it! If it doesn't work out, you can always fall back on Win7. I had Ubuntu running on a box for my kids for a while until the hardware finally gave out. It worked fine for the kids, but I couldn't get any windows titles to work properly.

 

[BobK]

Not even Solitaire? In moments of boredom I still play the 95/XT version of Solitaire. On my Linux box.

 

[nick09]

I would run a dual boot if you intend to run games but use Ubuntu for everything else. Though before you dual boot you can try CrossOver, a program that I've read that runs programs and games better than wine. It says here that the sims 3 will run without problems through this program.

 

[Doth1s]

Steam is now available for Linux, but I don't know what the titles look like.

 

[shmogt]

A lot of positive reviews for it BUT I suggest dual boot. I have windows xp on a old computer which I had hooked up to my tv however windows took up so much space and I personally hate it so I decided to install ubuntu to give this old computer new life. Best and worst decision of my life. The newest version was 12.10 or something like that and it wouldn't load the desktop. Tried everything but had to try the older 12.04 instead. That worked great and is basically the same anyway. I really like it a lot and got used to it pretty quick. However the one thing I wanted to do which was s video the computer onto my tv no longer works... I really don't wanna out windows back on but it's kind of a waste of a computer since the one function I wanted doesn't work. That's why I suggest partition and run both just on case. It's pretty easy to do.

 

[nick09]

Shmogt, have you tried installing the proprietary drivers? Most of the time doing this fixes the problems.

 

[David]

Steam is now available for Linux, but I don't know what the titles look like.

Valve has ported a handful of their titles and then there are some random indie games available for it, but the library is not huge yet.

Using Wine inside of Linux will work for some lightweight and older games. It's not a workable solution for the average user for playing modern, system intensive games.

@Blank
Why is your wife so hellbent on using Ubuntu if she has no experience with Linux either? Most flavors allow all kinds of GUI customization so you can set it up to be very similar to Windows if you want, but even in an easy to use distro like Ubuntu (or derivatives built on it like Mint), sometimes the simplest things can be a huge pain in the ass to get working correctly.

Anyway the answers given to your three questions seem kind of irrelevant when you stated that you are building a PC specifically for your daughter to game on and predominately play Sims 3. I'd really recommend sticking to Windows if that is the intent.

 

[shmogt]

Shmogt, have you tried installing the proprietary drivers? Most of the time doing this fixes the problems.

Yes I tried before and it made it 10x worse. Before it showed on the tv just it was black and white and scrolled non stop. After installing the drivers it doesn't even show 2 screens in the menu.

 

[Pharohbender]

just use virtual box to test is out !!! virtualize system if you like it then you can install it if you don't like it then you delete the virtual machine and continue using windows ahhh windows...so easy so simple
i have tried and tried to use linux but the text and interface looks are not as good as mac or windows but i guess you could change all that in time but screw that i want to play games.
ill experiment in virtual machines.