Which OS would be a better choice for me?

Question

1: Windows (XP or Vista?)
2: Linux

I'm a gamer, I'm currently learning programming and I also work with office and dreamweaver. I work with the internet too.

Which OS would you go for?

Answer 1

I read the above comments, some I agree with, some not so much.

Look, if u r involved in I.T. you can't go wrong with having experience with all major operating systems. Its easy enough to set up a triple boot or dual boot then you can chop and change and use whichever one is best for the task you are doing at the time. It also allows for direct comparisons and simultaneous experimentation in a way that single boot system doesn't.

Ive been using linux for a long time but recently swapped to xp because I wanted to play games. Linux is a great OS but if you're a gamer it sucks and there's just no way around this. At this stage its less than 5% of the OS market and until it gets a bigger share its unlikely game studios will support it. But for internet and home office its just as good as xp in my humble opinion. As far as user interfaces go, KDE is a better desktop out of the box than xp, no contest.

At this stage xp is a far better proposition than vista unless you want to play dx10 games. Having said this just because its dx10 doesn't mean it'll run faster, most notably crysis which gets better frame rates in the 64bit version of xp. Vista has a whole bunch of hassles that come with it. Don't take my word for this though, just do a search for VISTA in Yahoo! Answers and within about 5-10 posts you should be able to see pretty clearly how badly it sucks in general. There's good reason it was named recently in Cnet's "worst 10 products". There's a service pack soming out for it in first half of next year and this may remedy some of its considerable problems. Remains to be seen the extent to which it is successful in doing this though.

So over to you. Hope your explorations are enjoyable. By the way, if u r considering linux disrtos, personally I think Kubuntu is the pick of the bunch for desktop pc.

Answer 2

Normally I would choose linux for any thing but, your a gamer. If you don't mind paying some money you can install crossover and play all you favorate games on a stable linux system ( SUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu). But XP will work well too and Vista supports new games really well. But with Vista is a b*** to program on, XP would be your microsoft choice.
However, in a few month Microsoft will quit supporting XP so I would go with one of the linux distro above.
Now you need a stable system which all of the distro's I mentioned above give you. But, you also need immidiate access to an straighforward programming enviornment. So I would go with SUSE.

SUSE Linux is easy to use and it uses the very stable RPM system for software distrobution. SUSE with CrossOver installed should do you well

Answer 3

I'll go for Linux hands down.

There are many good games that run on Linux. Have a lok at Ubuntu's or Debian's repositories.

There is openoffice.org which fully supports the official ISO standard for document interoperability across applications.

Then there are quite a few programs such as Emacs, Vim which can be used in the place of dreamweaver as well as any other IDEs.

Linux works well over the Internet. There are good firewalls, proxies alongwith SELinux policies to protect your computer on the web. But many people don't use them and still manage to be safe over the web.

So, as you see, there is nothing left to be desired for if you use Linux. What more? Linux can work on older hardwares or low config hardwares with grace. You can get periodic updates and upgrades. You can choose to avail them at your discretion. All these comes to you at no cost at all.

Answer 4

It depends... if you mostly do office work and internet browsing, it would a better choice to use linux. if you know python, then you could also program in linux. as for dreamweaver and gaming, you might be able to get a few of your games to work in wine, but in my experience its a pain in the ***. dreamweaver has received a silver rating in wine (http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=1054).

if you can live without your games, linux would probably be the best choice. i made the switch over to ubuntu last summer but then switched back to windows after like 4 months because i got bored and wanted to play my games. so really, it all depends on what you want to do

Answer 5

If you wait till Oct. 22 you must be in a position to get home windows 7 for that equal cost as home windows vista, in the end it might be bigger, as all of the studies I have learn state that home windows 7 is what vista must were.

Answer 6

Linux can run most Windows programs using WINE and it comes with most of the programs you will ever need, plus its free, so use it.

I'd recommend Ubuntu Linux, see links below

If you really want to spend half of your bank account, as well as funding the devil, choose a Microsoft product

Answer 7

XP would be a good choice unless your looking to run DX10 games
Games run 10-20% faster On XP vs Vista

Linux is not the best choice for gaming

Office also runs better on XP

Answer 8

windows xp pro. windows vista is 10-40% slower than xp.

Answer 9

definetly windows xp....
vista is too user friendly, you want something that gets to the nitty gritty if you are going to be a programmer. get a good graphics card for games....

hope this helps
~john

Answer 10

Windows Vista.
DX-10 for more realistic effects in games, more compatibility with all of your programs.