Windoze or Linux

[Jack]

My computer is crap, and as I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet, I'm going to do the usual reinstall of windoze (XP) to clear it up a bit. However, I'm toying with Linux - I've got a few distros here so could give that a shot instead...?

PC spec is:
AMD AthlonXP 3200+
Gigabyte GA-7VT600 (did have a nice GA-7N400E but that overheated and caught fire lol)
1.8Gb 166mhz RAM
Sapphire ATi Radeon X1650 gfx
and a bunch of hard drives. lol

I was going to just do a fresh install of XP on a spare drive and bung that in, but I do have Red Hat, Ubuntu and Fedora to play with. The only thing stopping me is I have a bunch of applications and games which won't run under Linux, but I could get around this by installing Xen and having a virtual machine with XP on it...

Anyone out there use linux on their home PC?


[edit] Win7 isn't an option at the mo, hardware isn't suitable and I cba to buy it yet. That'll come with the tech refresh.

[edit again] I'm getting hacked off with windows as wireless networking simply does not work, is it any better in Linux? I've only got ethernet experience there

[Lynsey]

I wish I understood what all that meant!

[bobgray]

use both windows on pc and linux on netbook both works fine for me

[Iain]

I use Ubuntu on my daily computer at home, haven't had to boot in to Windows in ages. Perfectly suited to messing about on the web and stuff like that. Tried a new Ubuntu install on my spare machine yesterday and Gnome looks so fancy out of the box now!

Windows XP in a virtual machine works well, think I used VMWare years ago and it was spot on. Maximise it on to your second monitor and it's just like you're running both at once lol Not sure how suited it was to gaming though, dunno if you'd be able to install graphics drivers? (unless by games you mean text based role playing games :p)

[Jack]

Reckon the hardware is strong enough to run a reliable VM though? The CPU is only around 2.2ghz for a start...

Would I need to setup shares with the likes of samba on the Linux host if I wanted the windoze VM to access data stored on there?

[Iain]

Gah don't remember about shares tbh, last time I did that was years ago, but my PC spec wasn't any more than that (AMD 2400 2ghz or something).

[Hayley]

youz so clever.

[Benn]

Gotta say after having my hdd die, getting a new one and Windows 7.

7 is quite nice, has the nice bits from Vista and no bad bits.

Few things that suck tho. Like a messy start bar.

[Stuart]

Hackintosh :D

[Nova_Tek]

I'd go for a second HDD to keep your crap on and a windoze XP clean install on the boot drive. Reason is that you can do so much with windows over the other OS's.

The other two may be a bit quicker but depends what compatibility you want. Windows does everything so overall it's more useful imo

[Southie]

Buy a Mac and have some fun lol You can still install silly pc gubbins :p

[Jack]

I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet


I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet


I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet


I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet


I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet


I can't afford a tech refresh for a couple months yet

So poo to your macs. I wouldn't buy one even if I did have the money.

[Benn]

Macs are wa*k.

[Stuart]

They are great for ****ing yes, pron sites dont add crap to yer machine when you bare back the internets :)

[Sloth]

bbc micro.