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With many exciting releases either on the way (*buntu, MEPIS ) or already here (Mandriva) I find myself trying desperately to switch my primary OS to one of these flavors. The problem is, at the moment, I cannot run Linux as a standalone operating system without at least dual booting with windows XP. Whilst my hardware at the moment is (almost)completely supported by modern Linux my massive upgrade, which is just over the horizon, would likely prevent me from running a Linux OS with full hardware acceleration. I believe this is a problem that many gamers face and I can not see any solution presently. The problem lies in one of the main uses of my PC - gaming.

I play a lot of games and as such, migrating away from an operating system like XP or Vista is a bad idea. Even though quite a few games (Doom 3, America's Army etc) have Linux builds, most games do not. Whilst API compatibility projects such as WINE are making excellent progress, it is generally not sufficient to play modern (i.e. newly released) games properly and with no performance hit. The major sticking point is graphics card drivers. Whilst these are reasonably mature for nVidia, ATi drivers (both binary and to an extent the fglx ones) are substandard. For years ATi has been promising new and improved drivers but at the moment this has not happened. Whilst I was going to have a rant about support of new graphics cards, I am pleasantly surprised to find much improved support in recently announced drivers.

An option of course, is to goto Linux and buy a Xbox 360 / PS3. Whilst I think the simplicity of putting a disc in and playing a game (just like that - no OS, no configuring graphics and tweaking for your hardware etc) is great and a breath of fresh air, the lack of openness in a console environment massively puts me off. I like being able to make my own maps / models etc for games I play. More to the point, some of the most enjoyable games I have played recently have been total conversion mods - something not accommodated for in a console environment like Beyond the red line - a BattleStar Galactica mod. You only have to see the difference a few user made mods make to Oblivion to want to play it all over again.

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