It doesn't matter which is cheaper if Linux can only play a very small subset of the games. I certainly wouldn't spend $200+ on a video card and then limit myself in my game selection by refusing to spend an extra $100 on the OS.
Personally, I've never actually been able to get Linux to run properly on arbitrary hardware that I happened to own. I'm sure you could put together a machine with specific hardware that is known to work well with Linux, but if you just pick random parts off the shelf based on per
I'm not saying that the hardware doesn't work at all, but rather that it doesn't work as expected. This article is the perfect example. Sure the $550 Radeon card will work, but it won't work as one expects it to work. This has been the same in most of my experiences. There will be video drivers that work fine for the desktop, but as soon as you try to do something like a game, they either won't work or will run much slower than they would on Windows. I've also had problems getting certain wireless chipse
Wireless and graphics are the two pieces of hardware Linux has occasional problems with, and that's become much more of a rarity in the past several years. Many wireless chips require a non-free firmware package to be installed, so if you run a "pure" os like Debian, you'll have to manually tell it to do that. Older and Intel graphics cards just work. The issue has always been getting good performance out of newer ATI and Nvidia cards.
Speaking as someone who uses Linux on my home machine, the most annoying part are peripherals like gaming mice and keyboards. Using all the buttons or changing settings is a pain in Linux. Companies like MadCatz and Razer just don't care. It will be interesting when people try to plug them into Steam machines and find they barely work
Here's what I heard: (Score:2)
Linux+Nvidia is cheaper than Windows+anything.
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't matter which is cheaper if Linux can only play a very small subset of the games. I certainly wouldn't spend $200+ on a video card and then limit myself in my game selection by refusing to spend an extra $100 on the OS.
Personally, I've never actually been able to get Linux to run properly on arbitrary hardware that I happened to own. I'm sure you could put together a machine with specific hardware that is known to work well with Linux, but if you just pick random parts off the shelf based on per
Re: Here's what I heard: (Score:0)
This might have been true in the early 2000s but I have yet to encounter hardware that doesn't work at all in the last six years.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying that the hardware doesn't work at all, but rather that it doesn't work as expected. This article is the perfect example. Sure the $550 Radeon card will work, but it won't work as one expects it to work. This has been the same in most of my experiences. There will be video drivers that work fine for the desktop, but as soon as you try to do something like a game, they either won't work or will run much slower than they would on Windows. I've also had problems getting certain wireless chipse
Re: Here's what I heard: (Score:3)
Wireless and graphics are the two pieces of hardware Linux has occasional problems with, and that's become much more of a rarity in the past several years.
Many wireless chips require a non-free firmware package to be installed, so if you run a "pure" os like Debian, you'll have to manually tell it to do that.
Older and Intel graphics cards just work. The issue has always been getting good performance out of newer ATI and Nvidia cards.
Speaking as someone who uses Linux on my home machine, the most annoying part are peripherals like gaming mice and keyboards. Using all the buttons or changing settings is a pain in Linux. Companies like MadCatz and Razer just don't care. It will be interesting when people try to plug them into Steam machines and find they barely work
Re: (Score:0)
Hopefully the steam OS, since it is being built for gaming, will have proper support for gaming peripherals.