Linux/Fedora Core info

_X_

I just started up a Linux course at college and today we just installed the operating system with VMWare. I can figure out most of the stuff I'm interested in asking now as I go through the course but I'm kind of impatient about waiting for it in class.
I'm currently on Windows XP Pro and am looking for a bit of a change from it so I'm considering Linux. Question is though, how does Linux control the drivers for things and is it easy to find drivers for the things I'm using now? Also for gaming, will I have problems trying to run certain games? I guess if I did I could install VMWare and Windows XP on my home machine for that.
If anyone has some quick info that would be helpful in this situation that would be great. Thanks.

Chake99

Depends on what the drivers are for, I believe that USB drivers and mouse and keyboard, speaker, burner, and printer ones are all built into the kernel.

I did a fresh install of linux and windows after a reformat. On windows my speakers, printer, burner and internet didn´t work without other drivers I had lost. On linux they all worked by default.

Proprietary drivers are released by most companies for the linux operating system but they are not as good as the windows ones. ATI, Nvidia, Adobe (is the flash codec considered a driver? w/e) do this. There are also open source non-evil drivers for nearly everything but they are often not as good, and are not guaranteed to work in the proper way.

Games :S. There are lots of small independant games for linux, most of the Unreal and Quake franchise run on linux, but other than that its pretty much tough luck for native support.

With Wine (free) or Cedega (non-free) however you can emulate many more windows games, including nearly anything from blizzard, although they are slower than when played natively.

I would not suggest trying to play a game with VMware. From what I know it would be ridiculously slow, although you can always dual boot and just keep a windows partition for gaming.

If you are choosing a distro, I would recommend Kubuntu.

Weaver

Go with Cedega as Wine tends to be iffy with a lot of stuff for the free version.

Menthol

Chake99 wrote:

If you are choosing a distro, I would recommend Kubuntu.

:^:

I'm still a bot of a n00b myself, but I love my Kubuntu. Suse is good if you're looking to have a file server, but it's rather bloated. I also run around with a Puppy live CD just because I like to think I'm some sort of ninja who may need a secure, virtually untraceable OS to use on any computer at any time.

I've found wine to only be useful for running retardedly simple games... think SKIFREE. I haven't played with Cedega primarily because I have a windows 2000 installation for my gaming needs.

As for drivers... the biggest problems I've had has been finding proper drivers for my monitor (on suse) and my video card (kubuntu). It took a whole lot of tinkering with sax2 and xconfig (respectively) to get my stuff working right.

Overall, though, I'm thrilled with my linux.

twmjr

I would skip the WINE/Cedega difficulties entirely and run a dual boot system. You can use Linux (Kubuntu as suggested is a good choice) for your primary desktop needs and just fire up Windows when you want to play a game.

_X_

That sounds great, I'll go with Windows 2000 for gaming. I have a cd laying around with an unused Win2k key still from classes at my last college.
When you mention Kubuntu, is that the type of Linux OS on it? I'm not too knowledgable with those yet. I have a Fedore Core 5 disk that came with my textbook (Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core), is that a good thing to be running? I'll mess around with it during my Windows/DOS class today if time permits and see what its like. I'd try it out here at home but my power supply doesnt want to boot up my hard drive that I use for school, stupid thing is busted and replacement on the way soon.

twmjr

Kubuntu is a specific Linux distribution. More information and downloads can be found at: http://www.kubuntu.org/

Fedora Core 5 isn't a bad distribution either, though it may not be quite as user friendly; however, if that's what you're going to be working with in class it might be worth it to stick to it at home as well.