Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista 347
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant in which he tells the story of being so frustrated with gaming on Windows Vista that he tried comparing gaming on Vista to that on Linux using Wine, with surprising results. "This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't have a huge collection of games to try out, but even still with just a few hours of frustrating work, I have been able to show that not only is Linux a reasonable alternative to Vista for gaming (XP is still king though), but also that Linux handles application failures more gracefully than Vista. Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux."
Woah! (Score:2, Funny)
You mean Blizzard made a game before World of Warcraft?
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Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm Hearing Year of the Linux Machine around here a lot again (again, or continuously... you decide).
Strangely, I've yet to hear a kind word from the normals in the real world.
Maybe this Linux thing isn't catching on quite as much as you think it is.
(not trying to troll, just an observation)
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the moment I am running on one of these [fit-pc.com], Ubuntu, everything just worked when I turned it on including sound, Youtube, several different browsers including firefox 3. Runs KDE like a champ, very smooth. While I type, KDE 4 is installing. Not bad for an embedded box I brought in to be my always-on (5 watts!) server and just thought I'd try running KDE on it for fun, which turned out to work really well.
Oh right, time to install openoffice too, you never know when you might need that on a server
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If I want to compile openoffice I will ssh into a faster machine... in another room where I don't hear the noise.
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Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be comfortable declaring this the millenium of Linux on the desktop, i'd even go so far as to say century. Possibly the next decade could be the decade of Linux on the desktop. But I think it's too gradual a shift for there to be a single year we could look back on and say "that was it. that's when it all happened". This is assuming it happens at all of course.
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Strangely, I've yet to hear a kind word from the normals in the real world.
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Maybe you missed the fact that Asus posted Windows XP drivers for their Eee PC on their website. Linux was a way of keeping the cost down. And that's the only reason.
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Until they find out they can't run their kids games or some weird software they've already bought. Then they just call the neighborhood geek to put Windows on it. They might even go about it legally and purchase a boxed copy.
You underestimate the power of consumer laziness my friend. I can assure you, kids are happy with the games that come with standard Linux boxes. I'm watching mine having fun with Tuxpaint right now.
When it comes to serious games, you are just not going to get joy from the Eee. That's when I throw a CD into the PS3.
The Geek in Fantasyland (Score:2)
If he did, he wasn't the only one.
I've yet to see anyone here post actual numbers for sales of the gPC.
The rave reviews came from Geeks. Not from the Walmart customer who needed a functional modem, dial-up at $10 a month. Walmart has a lot of customers who fit that profile.
But one thing that is catching on is "anything but Vista"
You'll find the gPC at Walmart.com. The only Linux box that you will find at Walmart.
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The "problem" with adopting Linux (and/or Vista) is that XP is "good enough". Let's just wait and see if it'd start to turn out that it isn't.
Or, if you don't like sitting and waiting, go burn some Ubuntu CDs and give them away.
Hm. I'm slightly offtopic here too. So, my experience with running windows games on current Debian unstable
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I am purposely ignoring Linux niche markets such as servers et al, we are talking about the home user/gamer/office drone.
I read an interesting review a year ago that compared Vista/XP/Ubuntu as gaming platforms, and Vista and Ubuntu came out tops. The small
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
Y'know, the odd thing is that I have.
For instance, we hosted several young British missionaries (these were religious missionaries, mind you, not Linux missionaries ;-) at our house last summer (I'm in North America), and they all had laptops (nat'chully). To my surprise, one of them was running Ubuntu. I asked him why he chose Ubuntu over Windows, and he replied with admirable British conciseness, "It doesn't crash so much."
I've run across several others in my church who were using Ubuntu when I met them (and that one Suse guy ;-). Yes, it's a big church, but it's a church, not an engineering conference or engineering club. Nor is it a high-tech firm such as where I work, where Linux is a rather commonplace choice, even for the spouses.
I'm no longer surprised to meet "normals" using Linux. I'm more surprised nowadays to find someone like you who hasn't. :-)
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The missionaries and charitable arms have whatever is donated to them.. things like Windows 95 are not uncommon.
Vista is probably 10 years in the future for these kind of organisations.
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The tendency for its partisans to distort the truth regarding the flaws of Windows systems has made me gun-shy of any OS that has these kinds of advocates. The article itself, and its easy debunking, are case-in-point. Running Windows games in either Linux or OS/2 (back in the day) was a fraught, troubled exercise. I wasted a great deal of time trying to get things to run, while reading fant
WoW (Score:2, Interesting)
WoW on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing which does not work is the Microphone - but it won't work the Linux version of Skype either so the trouble is elsewhere.
See my installation aid: http://martin.krischik.com/index.php/Main/WoWOnLinux [krischik.com]
Martin
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install per Skype's instructions,
install one missing library,
make an echo call - didn't work
adjust mic levels in kmixer - didn't work
adjust input levels in kmixers - didn't work
un-mute microphone and input lines- woooohh that worked;
muted un-necessary mics and line and adjusted to sane levels.
hardly a good test (Score:2, Informative)
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Please, explain to me again, why Qbix and the rest of the DOSBox crew should be making emulation software for Microsoft, when they chose not to implement it themselves? It's not really DOSBox's duty to ensure compatibility for Vista.
The fact that DOSBox and Wine are around as packages to help install and run older software is a bonus.
Fact is, this software USED to work in older Microsoft Operating Systems... Yet, the article is saying that alternati
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The test was designed to test Vista`s compatibility, so the choice of games wasnt bad.
It included an old DOS-title, several Indie games (not optimized for Vista, but made for XP) and pretty recent well known game (CIV 4).
Im also pretty sure that DOS-compatibility is at least equal on linux as compared to Vista, based on my own experience.
I dont know about the coding quality of the indie games but i guess point is, Vista is not compatible to XP. Ok who would have guessed
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On the contrary, the choice is very bad. It would not surprise me if someone could come up with a set of 5 games that run flawlessly on vista, but fail under wine, which would also say nothing whatsoever about the _general_ compatibility of either platform.
If I take a look at 5 trees in my city and conclude they are sick, I cannot conclude that all trees are sick. If I test 10 keyboards and conclude they all suck, I cannot make the claim that all keyboards suck.
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I'll hold :-)
It is virtually impossible to make 2 different platforms 100% compatible. I was simply commenting that the methodology used is flawed. I am prepared to accept any claim, as long as the methodology used is correct.
If you take the 20 best-selling games of the last 2 or 3 years and run them on xp, vista and wine (preferably multiple distros), then you can make decent claims about compatibility and performance as the general public is probably faced with. Taking 5 games from personal taste says
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By the way, I tried playing Worms last year in DOSBox and Parallels with FreeDOS. I thought it would be faster in Parallels, but it turns out that Para
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What do you expect? (Score:2)
Re:hardly a good test (Score:5, Insightful)
Let us take a look at a definition of flamebait (wikipedia): Flamebait is a message posted to a public Internet discussion group, such as a forum, newsgroup or mailing list, with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame") or argument over a topic the troll often has no real interest in.
As a professional software developer I have a professional interest in the performance of OS-es, even when it comes to gaming. My message was in no way intended to provoke emotional response; I even replaced the names of the OS-es with placeholders to indicate my argument has nothing to do with the OS-es themselves, but with the methodology followed in the article. Please elaborate why my posting should be modded 'flamebait', for I fail to see a valid reason.
No, I have said no such thing whatsoever. If apps written for A run better on B, it is indeed news. The article however fails miserably in showing evidence for such a claim.
My vision on another subject that is remotely related to the one we are discussing is irrelevant. Please stick to the issue you are debating.
Which was the point I was making, together with the fact that it is bad practice to (non-randomly) pick 5 out of a population of thousands and make assumptions based solely on those 5.
Lets take a look at a definition of a troll (wikipedia): An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response.
I fail to see how my post is controversial; I also fail to see any intention of provoking an emotional response. You simply calling my post 'trolling' has no relevance.
The only point the author can make is that for his obscure and very small subset of all possible games, they run better on wine than on vista. My point is that that says absolutely nothing about vista in general.
Re:hardly a good test (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see: the article is titled "Linux has better Windows compatibility than Vista"; it's even in the url. Comparisons between operating systems have (traditionally) high emotional responses in discussion groups (I recall comp.os.*.advocacy newsgroups in the pre-www days). Making such a claim (os A > os B) while offering the worst possible 'evidence' (non random 5 out of thousands) can certainly be called trolling/flamebaiting.
I have clearly stated why I think this article is flamebait. You have still failed to give proper argumentation why my response is flamebait or trolling. In fact, on my question: 'why is this flamebait?' you answer: 'you called the article flamebait'. So in your logic, stating that something is flamebait is flamebait in itself?
I am not complaining, I am calling for valid arguments. You continue to fail to give them.
Please, look at the title again. The title of TFA that is. The whole point the writer is making is that vista is worse than wine, because his non-randomly selected 5 games run better on wine. That makes it flamebait to me.
Please stick to argumentation and stop picking on words. The message I am trying to get across to you is that you have not pointed out why my response is flamebait. 'I fail to see' is a friendly way of saying 'you did not make it clear'.
Ah, now we are getting somewhere. As you might know we slashdotters are not able to mod or censor articles. On regular occasions comments are given like 'nothing to see here, please move along' or '-1, Flamebait'. They are not ment to really censor the article, but comment on its newsworthyness. Such comments are lingua franca on slashdot, just like RTFA, IANAL or references to the goatse man. That you are emotionally provoked by such a statement surprises me, to say the least.
Well, if you do not appreciate that, than do not accuse me of things I clearly did not. Keep in mind you have NOT given any valid argument why my response should be modded flamebait, so I cannot reach any other conclusion than that you incorrectly accused me of something because you did not 'appreciate' what I said. I find that a bit sad.
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Now prey tell what was YOUR point since you think the "serious discussion" was "lost" "2 posts back"?
Well, exactly that, really. This isn't a serious discussion any longer, it's you screaming 'TROOOOOOLL' at fairly reasonably points and then crying when people call you a troll because you've shown little to no interest in debating the content of the article, only the way that the OP is arguing.
Also, it's "pray", not "prey".
You both just need to learn to skip over what you don't want to read instead of being so rude as to tell people to shut up.
When did I say that?
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Posting "anonymously" in response to criticism or getting a friend to do it is childish.
There was nothing beautiful about it. The opening poster wanted the article "modded flamebait" ie. censored and I objected to that.
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Well, I would hope that any news about Office compatibility would use a rather bigger sample size and more research than this particular 'study' on games compatibility did.
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Does he have a point? Yes.
Is the article interesting? Yes.
Is it biased? Yes.
Re:hardly a good test (Score:4, Insightful)
Game 1: Basically didn't work. Oh sure, he got Soldat running in WINE eventually, after tweaking, and gives the impression that it was unplayable. Vista 0 - Linux 0.
Game 2: Darwinia, patched to the latest version (a reasonable suggestion for any game, really, in this day and age) ran with a horrible frame rate in Vista, but "runs fine under Wine (even at a tolerable speed)" Not at "a normal" or "expected" framerate, but at "a tolerable speed." I have no idea what that means. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, but someone might want to share the fact that Darwinia is available in a native Linux version. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 3: DOSBox under Vista hangs, and he says it's basically a DOSBox problem. Okay, fine...so he tries it in Linux and it also fails, though in a different way. In Vista he tries to shut off the sound in the config, and nothing, but in Linux he changes the config from SBPro to SB. I'd like to know, did he try that in Vista? (First rule of troubleshooting...assume nothing.) I don't think I can give Linux a point on this because there's just not enough information. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 4: Civ 4. The author of the article says he's a big Civ fan, and frankly so am I. Great game series. He gets a message that indicates known compatibility issues, so tries to run it anyway (why not...might as well see what happens.) It hangs on him. Now, anecdotes are anecdotes, but my buddy and I have been playing the Civ games together for sometime, and he recently (within the last year) put Vista on his machine. Afterward we both purchased Civ 4 (I'm running it on XP.) He installed it, loaded it, and (drum roll)...it worked. No window claiming "known compatibility issues", it didn't hang his machine. It's not even a state of the art machine. We've been playing for several months now, and neither of us has had any issues with Windows "hanging", which suggests to me that there is more going on here than just a windows issue (even though windows could be involved.) He does say that after patching the game (there it is again), well, I'm not sure what he says.
Using highly refined comparitive techniques similar to those in the "rant", and given that my friend's experience running Civ under Vista has been completely smooth, I'm gonna give Vista a point on this one. Vista 1 - Linux 1.
Margin of error: 1000 games, either way. I don't care if one "handles application failures more gracefully than" the other. If I'm the average user who wants to game as is implied in the article, I will be as confused by nothing happening as I would be by the computer hanging and restarting. Looks like a tie to me.
Look, folks, I have no love for Vista (tried it, tested it, didn't like it), but this was about as scientific a test of Vista's compatibility as reading tea leaves.
And just to add 2 cents, I don't think any of those games were sold on the assumption that they would run in Vista, just because it's supposed to be backwards compatible.
I'm gonna go with flamebait on this one.
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On the other hand you're saying it ISN'T news for nerds that games built to run on a prior version of Windows don't work in new one but do work on a totally different operating system?
Nothing in the world drives the advancement of computer hardware like porn and video games. While Linux is perfectly acceptable for porn-viewing, the shameful little secret no open source advocate likes to mention is that they keep an XP partition just for the games. Some people have hesitated in switching over their primary rigs due to gaming. Way back in the 90's when my family was deciding on its first computer and the question was Mac or PC, I said "PC, totally." Why? Partially games, partially because
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While I agree on most points (or are not informed enough on some points to comment), I cannot resist but react to two of your points.
Vista really is getting a much worse reputation than it deserves. If you have a fast system with lots of ram and your not a sidebar addict Vista runs pretty good (...)
That bad reputation probably comes from people who run vista on anything else but the latest and greatest. Besides, I would expect an operating system (that has been 5 years in the making) to run more than 'pretty good' on a fast computer with lots of ram.
I think once MS replaces the aged NTFS file system as they had planned on Vista we'll see the Vista kernel grow into something pretty useful.
The new 'filesystem' (some 10+ years in the making now) was in the recent years reported on as a layer on top of ntf
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vista gaming (Score:5, Informative)
Drivers (Score:2)
The two factors here were stability and speed. In terms of stability, it really came down to drivers, and the windows ones blew. I can only partially blame Microsoft for the bugginess of my Creative soundcard drivers, but they - as well as my wireless drivers - were a hefty source of lockups on my PC. The only
Four games (Score:5, Informative)
I also did a search for one of the games listed - Darwinia - first two results on Google gave me a link to an update for Vista on the official site/forum. If he's using that (which he hasn't said either way) and still having lockups, I'd have thought there's some other issue there.
Here's a list of 35 that don't work on Linux (Score:2)
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And absolutely no report on which platform runs nethack better. :p
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Vista works really well with games (Score:5, Insightful)
Quake 1-3, Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2, Unreal (classic), C&C95, Red Alert.
I mean, if Vista can run a DirectX 4 game, 6 major DirectX versions later, that can't be bad. All power to wine if it can do it too, but to suggest Vista is awful with games is pushing it.
Quake 3? (Score:2)
There's a native Linux binary for that :-) /me ducks.
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Come on, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
And you should probably try a few more games than that to be able to draw any conclusions at all.
Icewind Dale 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't play Icewind Dale II in Windows XP. There are issues with many laptop input drivers screwing with the keyboard in that game. I couldn't resolve the problem, so I switched to linux, copied the Icewind Dale II directory, which was patched and had a no-CD crack, and it runs swimmingly. The only issue is that my linux cursor still shows on top of the game, but I rarely notice it.
I also remember trying to play Escape From Monkey Island(tm) in Windows XP, but there was this one part of the game tha
A bit biased? A bit of non sense is more like it (Score:5, Insightful)
First run; no go. Soldat stops responding.
Start explorer, go to soldat directory, open soldat.exe properties. Set compatibility to Windows XP/SP2, disable Aero for this program, run as admin.
Second run; works like a charm. One more popup asking whether Soldat may access the network.
I'm not even going to bother and try the other ones. This guy should have done his homework.
And if he's going to test some games (Score:2)
World of Warcraft
Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Command and Conquer 3
Hitman: Blood Money
Gears of War
Civilization 4: Beyond the Storm
Those are 6 I've got installed on my system right now. They are fairly modern titles, and all quite a bit of fun. All of them run in Vista 64-bit without issue. I haven't had to even turn on the compatibility mode, they all run as is. How's that go under Wine? Can you run all those (and I don't mean
Re:A bit biased? A bit of non sense is more like i (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument that Linux is too complex has been used for years. It still is, but once my mother needs to right-click on an executable and wade through options I'd say "Game Over" for Windows as well. This is not what I call backwards-compatibility as it should be.
To be fair, running a game using Wine is probably more complicated for most.
Side note, I had problems running Baldurs Gate on my new AMD 64bit dual core with WinXP 32bit. Graphics were wrong and sound mis-aligned. Whatever I tried, I could not improve it. Then I decided to run it using Wine (never used wine before) in OpenSuSe 10.3, 64bit and guess what: works like a charm.
Reemi.
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I'll just say that the title is:
Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista
While the article claims:
What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox.
These tell two completely different stories.
That there are exceptions to the rule that games in general work better on Windows Vista than on Linux.
But that's pretty much it.
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How will emulators etc. deal with Vista? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how projects such as Wine will ultimately deal with this issue.
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"Darwinia for a whopping $1.40" (Score:2)
Darwinia not working under Vista? (Score:2)
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Perhaps he had some squirrely hardware or a bad driver. Can others at least replicate his problems with the same games?
Bad comparison, ignorant author (Score:5, Informative)
This is a pretty poor "comparison". The author makes some dodgy statements (Aero uses more CPU? not on my PC, where dwm.exe, the Desktop Window Manager that manages Aero Glass, averages around 0-2% CPU at any given time), links to some questionable sources (an article about how Vista Beta 2 sucks for gaming? Beta 2 is over a year and a half old), claiming to have used Vista for "over a year" yet having started with Beta 1 (there was no "Beta 1", but a series of CTPs, or Community Technology Previews, over two years ago and went straight to Beta 2 in May 2006 after the "feature complete" February 2006 CTP that could be considered "Beta 1"), and then finishes off by choosing a poor set of games to compare.
Since this article is all about the games, how about we look at those?
- Soldat works just fine with Vista, if you take the time to make it work. Why do you have to "make" it work? Because the Soldat installer is broken for Vista. It installs into c:\soldat by default, which is not a good idea for non-admin users (apparently it can't read the game textures from there when running as non-admin. If it installed into %programfiles% as it should, things may work better but I'd have to test that by forcing an install into %programfiles%. As it is, to get Soldat working you have to run it as admin (right-click the shortcut, choose "Run as Administrator"). That will fix the lack of graphics issue the author complained about. I didn't suffer any lockups.
- I haven't played Darwinia, but I have played DefCon and Uplink on my Vista box (from the same developers) and it works perfectly. That doesn't mean Darwinia doesn't have problems, but I find it highly suspect that one game would break on Vista when all others from that developer work perfectly.
- I don't have Blackthorne, but I've played a number of games in DOSBox that work perfectly fine in Vista, with audio. If he's getting an audio error, either it's a problem with Blackthorne itself or with his DOSBox configuration. He confirmed that by seeing the same error in Linux. My guess is this was simple user error, being unable to properly run DOSBox. If he can't figure that out, there are plenty of frontends (I like D-Fend [wikipedia.org] even though it's been "dead" for two years) that he can use to abstract that away.
- I just fired up Civ IV to prove it works on Vista and it ran just fine even, though I was already running patch 1.61 (I haven't played Civ IV for probably a year now, yet I was still fully patched. Why wasn't the author?). The original run of Civ IV (which I'm using, and apparently the author is using as well) had a disc printing problem. The second disc was incorrectly labelled "Play", and you're supposed to use the "Install" disk in order to play. If the author is truly as big of a Civ fan as he claims ("When you mess with Civilization, its personal." and "I'd have a better time playing with a steaming pool of diarrhea."), he would've already known this. I didn't suffer any lockups.
That's 3 for 4 working perfectly in Vista for me (I'd call it 4 for 4 if I could replace Darwinia with DefCon), effectively debunking this article with my own set of empirical data.For posterity, I'm testing on a 2.5 year old Dell laptop with a 1.73GHz Pentium M CPU and an ATI x300 GPU, running on 2GB of RAM and running Vista Ultimate since launch. I'm not a huge PC gamer, but then neither is the author so it's a fair comparison. These days, about the only game I play on this laptop is Galactic Civilizations II, which again works flawlessly under Vista.
Also, I'm not getting into performance here because a) I don't really care to do benchmarking -- if a game works well enough for me to play, that's good enough for me, and b) my machine is a laptop, and an old one at that, so it wouldn't really be a fair comparison to the latest and greatest laptops and desktops of today.
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After pretty extensive poking around, I've come up with only 2 reasons that sound sane to me. Reason no. 1 is if you have a Tablet systems; I've had this proved to me, Vista Really rocks for Tablet systems, lots & lots of support built in.
Reason no. 2 is a little less clear, but I can see it; if you've got a fast multicore system with 2GB+ of RAM and a Blazing fast Video Card, Vista w/ Aero is pretty, and there are enough free resources th
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Because I can? Because it works? Because the laptop runs it quite well and saves me money not having to buy a new laptop (probably in the cards for this year if I get any more dead pixels in the LCD or if my battery starts dying, though)? The laptop is not dual-core, though I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM and a 7200RPM hard drive (did that back with XP just as a general hardware refresh, not in prep for Vista). Functionality-wise, Aero Glass
Bleh, article is weaktastic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Damned if they do, damned if they don't! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Compatibility Issues dialogue for Civ 4 (Score:4, Insightful)
Check to see if a solution is available on the Microsoft website
TFA's response to this? To not allow the compatibility shimmer to check MS's website, but rather run the program anyway, with the comment "If you [Microsoft] know something is wrong, fix it." This despite the fact that, to any sentient observer, the dialogue box is attempting to get him to let Microsoft do... Ummm, just that. Presumably the author of TFA would prefer Microsoft to break into his house and install newly developed compatibility shims without his knowledge, rather than have to tolerate the chutzpah of -- *gasp!* -- asking him...
WINE (Score:2)
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Worst self serving headline ever. This fox news? (Score:3)
I call bs (Score:2)
But not only Warcraft 3, but all other games we tried that night didn't cause any problems with Vista. We had all kinds of games, old and new.
The point is that even with XP many games made for 9x don't work anymore. Same with Dos and Windows 9x. So with old games your success rate wi
Clueless (Score:2)
Also it seems that he has some serious (graphical?) driver issues on Vista, as the system shouldn't normally freeze just when running an incompatible game.
Last, the Blackthorne comparison is actually comparison of Dosbox (as the emulated game should run identically), but he didn't say which
Association (Score:2)
Halo (Score:2)
it's the only reason i have for a windows partition.
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lol (Score:2)
If Falcon 4: Allied force, and the other Falcon 4 variants will run satisfactorily under WINE, i'll go back to Linux full time (have run it since 96 in various jobs including desktop, but my home pc is for games), but i'm too much of a flight sim nerd to give up Falcon... :|
Not necessarily a good thing (Score:2)
Re:Cant even start wine (Score:5, Interesting)
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Microsoft bought VirtualPC from Connectix(?) a few years back; they now give it away. So just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I just popped up a DOS 6.22 window with Masters of Magic, a Win98SE window with Starcraft, and for giggles a Debian window running Americas Army. All run fine, simultaneously.
Of course, this is on Win2k. and Americas Army didn't have a great frame rate. but thats probably because the machine only has 1gb of ram and a Geforce4 MX 4000 card.
It also works on
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Filesystem (Score:5, Interesting)
Merits of the OS as a whole aside, the windows world has seen pretty much nothing new except unmaterialized promises in the filesystem arena, whilst 'nix filesystems have experience regular updates and steady growth.
Re:Not a wine problem -- check your graphics drive (Score:3, Informative)
The NVIDIA proprietary graphics driver is rarely the cause of X or kernel hangs and crashes. In 2 years of using NVIDIA drivers on bleeding edge vanilla mainline kernels i've only had to wait for a new release *once* and *never* had a kernel panic that resulted from it.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Informative)
Darwinia on Vista x64. [photobucket.com]
Soldat on Vista x64. [photobucket.com]
Civilization 4 on Vista x64. [photobucket.com]
Blackthorne on Vista x64 in DOSBox. [photobucket.com]
TFA is verifiably false, and the title is misleading.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But, I am interested in one thing; what criteria do you use when selecting an OS? That I am curious about.
1 - It just came installed
2 - I have an investment in applications
3 - I evaluated it (on performance/cost/other factors)
4 - I trust the vendor
5 - It is the platform needed for a desired application
6 - It is the platform I suspect I need for a future application
or some other reason?