Re:Poll: What is your primary operating system
by buster on Monday April 02, 2012 @08:17AM
(#3787668)
I'd argue that specifically for the standard tasks Internet, Mail, Video, Music, Linux is just as fine from a usability point of view. Of course the user doesn't have a benefit of using Linux if his Laptop comes preinstalled with Windows/MacOSX. But that was my point ;)
Re:Poll: What is your primary operating system
by derrida on Monday April 02, 2012 @08:31AM
(#3787718)
I still keep windows around for games. Have you used Wine recently? I'm not a serious gamer, but last time I checked, it ran everything I needed.
Re:Poll: What is your primary operating system
by jiggy2011 on Monday April 02, 2012 @09:58AM
(#3788093)
Wine for games is still a massive crapshoot.
Firstly you will get compatibility problems with many DRM systems which is a killer if you plan or running your legally licensed games without cracking them.
Assuming you can then get the game to work , expect graphical glitches a plenty , occasional/not so occasional crashes , slower performance and issue with the audio and visuals being out of sync.
There are a bunch of older games (GTA3 etc) that work fine in wine, and some indie games that have been built for it to begin with but I couldn't recommend it to anyone as a gaming experience that is close to that available in Windows 7.
Re:Poll: What is your primary operating system
by moystard on Monday April 02, 2012 @01:04PM
(#3789050)
Completely agree with you. If you are a gamer, the only solution is Windows, there is no alternative.
Steam on OSX brought some hope, but performances are just not there yet, and in any case, as long as developers will stick to Direct X, there won't be any other choice than having a Windows installation. I cannot blame them, Direct X seems to be largely above OpenGL, notably accessibility wise.
Since XP the instability issues have Windows have been a thing of the past and the Windows 7 user experience has been pretty solid in my experience. Granted I don't do anything complicated under Windows (like I said, unix wins for programming), but neither do most "normal" people.
Edit: Also, note I'm not saying that Linux isn't usable, it is just that most trivial desktop tasks take me significantly more effort to get done nicely under Linux. Whether the benefit of other tasks (scripting your system/whatever) taking less effort outweighs this extra effort depends on the frequency of the different types of tasks.