Rhomal

> 1.It's free and it's OpenSource. Unless you are a dev for said OS I don't see the big deal with it being open source. Plenty of great freeware out there that is closed source. > 2.It's more stable than a MS OS (I did not have a CTD or BsoD in Ubuntu yet. I wonder why that is?) I can't recall the last time I had a BSoD on my xp box (been years, pre sp2) or 2003 server (never). And CTD vast majority of the time of the time is a issue with the application or conflicting background app, not the OS. As a power user I'd expect you to know this. > 3.No driver installation required. Exception: graphics card drivers, but even in this case Ubuntu is superior, since it properly recognizes your graphics card and offers to download and install the latest drivers, without you having to visit the manufacturer's site). If I recall windows update has a driver section it offers to install certified drivers. > 7.Bundled software, incl. Games: Ubuntu comes bundled with a full Office Suite and other software, incl. simple games. Where a MS OS, has two or three Solitaire games, for example, Ubuntu has a full Solitaire Suite. So let me get this strait, if MS bundles competing s/w they are being a big bad monopoly. If they don't they are being cheap. So there's really no winning for them apparently by this double standard. With all that said your other points seem very valid and a credit to the OS.

Clearly you never played shadowrun and do not know the goodness it holds. Vastly more then yet another steampunk setting.

Don't pretend to question my intellect on the topic or imply you know what I do. If you folks would listen to yourself and see how silly you sound. Just because I hit a raw nerve don't lash out as the messenger kiddo. Grow up. With that said, Your opening statement means little with the topic at hand. BeOS was a more efficient OS memory wise then win32 did that mean it was superior in gaming? However the key to your post is 'properly ported', even if it is by some of the few examples given here I didn't see these old games wipe the floor of the win32 version. As was said above win32 did better in some tests then others. It was clearly no one clear winner across the board. So aside from your arse where are you getting this opinion? Let me guess they weren't ported properly or one of the other hundred excuses linux folks have. *shrugs* Or pull out the good old reliable 'could have, should have, would have' bag of tricks linux ppl seem to enjoy digging into. 'well if it was ported properly, and the moon is full and when the next version of the driver is released and the groundhog sees its shadow it would work better and beat windows..' *shrugs* like I said.. zealots.

You somewhat proved my point by using 2 dinosaur games as a example. But yes thats my point, linux is not a gaming platform. It can do games but thats not its main goal or function. Web or related server sure does a good job, gaming box not so much.

> Bemusingly, you posted the results of a search query and claimed that was 'hard data'. Of course people were going to laugh at you. 'search' for data on THAT SITE. Its a internal site search. No different then using the search here to find a specific post or post by someone. How else you want me to find the references, go though thousands of pages of exploit reports manually? You really don't know when yo toss in the towel do you? I have yet to hear the words out of your mouth 'thats info is false' or 'thats not a reputable security site'. You has tossed everything else at the wall hoping it will stick.. hehe > It's most probable a game natively compiled on Linux would run faster than the same game natively compiled on Windows, yes. That wasn't a stipulation of the question. I am referring to modern games (2006+) port or no port. That aside nice opinion, got any facts to back then up none the less?

Thanks. For comparison sakes here is a antivirus review done by a independent site. This lists detection % by the various scanners of threats in their definition files; http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2008_02.php This lists the % of 'new' threats not in their deff files using their herustic ability to detect; http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2008_11.php While most all do very will if its a defined threat detecting a unknown threat seems only a few have a decent chance and that was my general concern.

I hope that was a joke. I have a AMD X2 5200+ 2gig ram and a 8800GT card, by all accounts a upper mid range system, nothing close to bleeding edge or very expensive and I am able to run nwn2 with everything on max. Since xp1 most all performance complaints have trailed off from what I see. Of course if you trying to play this on near min spec I would expect you to encounter issues.

Well seems a pretty solid one sided opinion against AVG.. so strike that. Thanks for the info everyone. I also was pondering avast, while I read good things about its speed and such I heard is fares poor at overall detection. Anyone ever use that?

I would feel more comforatable if it was done by a reputable, independant site not some fly by night one few folks have heard of. That aside it is what it is, a beta OS comparison vs a non-beta one. *shrugs* So sure I'll agree with it more or less. Lets revist the topic after SP1 for win7 and then lets talk at least then we'll be on even footing for the most part. Hells might as well put win7 on a P4 with 512meg ram and 5400rpm IDE drive while you are at it. Of course any beta is going to perform not as good as something with polish. Common sense really. Now on equal footing do I think the ext file format could still beat win7? Yes its possible depending on the variables. But this means little until win7 is gold at the very least and a equal compariason can then be made. As for vista, its crap so the results don't surprise me I have seen similar results long before this. Hence why I still use XP. But I am sure the linux zelots are going to disagree and flame me with their warped logic... *shrugs*

Well while Mcafee has proven a loyal servent to me since DOS it is time we parted company. It seems from recent compairsons its really slipping in its ability to detect non-virus malware and becoming one of the slower scanners out there (However norton is by far the worst across the board of the big names). With that said I am looking at either Avira or AVG and wondering if anyone here has used either and could help me go in one direction or another. First and foremost high dectection of virii, trojans, worms, rookits amd email scanner are my biggest needs/concerns. Then speed, low system resource usage and false postivites and finally bells and whistles. I don't need a firewall (behind a router) and other such things. The virus/malware aspect is the most important to me, other utils things are nice but not needed. Any input appreciated.

Whats wrong with the nwn2 engine currently? Still looks damn good and performs well.

n00b. Fine I'll give you the attention you crave.. splitting hairs aside you know what my point is. Don't be anal.

How could they, linux would get crushed. Thus it would defeat their goal of showing how uber linux is. Yet another ignorant post by Rhomal. Try looking up these 4 characters some time champ: ext4 This from the card carrying member of the cheerleading squad of open source/linux who does not let little things like hard data get in his way of his views. After I smacked you around in the DNN CMS more secure then most all other PHP CMS's with facts (me) rather then ignorance is bliss (you) I thought you would have learned your lesson. Clearly not. That a side, Your stance is linux can beat a PC in gaming benchmarks overall? Do you really want to go there? Seriouslly?

Thats up to the publisher not the developer.. in this case whatever is standard on most EA titles now will prob be on DA.

My bottom line is simply this, if it works for the linux folks fine, however if its developed on a PC I wouldn't hold back and limit the assets to use just so a handful of folks who want to use alternative non-gaming specific computers can play it. Thats my only stance. Going out of ones way to do so is a waste of time and resources. And before someone asks or makes a comment, I beleive in using the right tool for the job. Linux boxes (and this includes macs which are just another linux distro with nicer eyecandy) have their place and valid uses, however gaming rigs they are not. I don't want to hear about the handful of ports you can list off thinking that somehow justifies the same playing fields vs thousands of native titles the PC has or how uber your linux box is because you got a beta driver to work with a new video card. Not going to change my mind or my opinion as I think any attempt to do so is feeble and a waste of time as all such arguments are paper thin at best. Kitty!! :D

How could they, linux would get crushed. Thus it would defeat their goal of showing how uber linux is.

Such a small fraction of the community I don't see the reason to take that into consideration. Plus most all PC users have at least 1 xp if not both at this point. So the argument is moot. Any mod unless made on a linux/mac box won't be compatible anyways.

My bad... did some research to refresh my memory you are right it is vastly more.. but still when we are talking about this amount of RAM odds are nothing we have to worry about for quite some time, theres lower OS limits then the h/w ones in either case. from wikipedia (technology one of the few topics at pedia that I give credit to); Most 64-bit microprocessors on the market today have an artificial limit on the amount of memory they can address, because physical constraints make it highly unlikely that one will need support for the full 16.8 million terabyte capacity. For example, the AMD Athlon X2 has a 40-bit address bus and recognizes only 48 bits of the 64-bit virtual address[1]. The newer Barcelona X4 supports a 48-bit of physical address and 48 bits of the 64-bit virtual address. The primary benefit of moving to 64 bit is the increase in the maximum allocatable system memory (RAM). A single process on a 32 bit Windows operating system is limited to a total of 2 GiB by default or upto 3 GiB if special switches are passed in the Boot.ini file. Windows XP x64 can support much more memory; although the theoretical memory limit a 64 bit computer can address is 16 exbibytes, Windows XP x64 is limited to 128 GiB of physical memory and 8 tebibytes of virtual memory per process.

Supposedly there is a much lower limit on RAM depending on what version of Vista you are using. 8GB for Basic, 16GB for Premium, 128GB for everything else. I dunno if that's accurate, mainly because I don't know anyone who has more than 7GB of ram in their system. oh I see what you are saying... you are talking about coded limits in the OS not the 64bit spec itself. On that level it may be, don't quite recall if MS put a cap on it. But even if true with those caps you posted the odds beyond a handful of ppl will reach/break that is slim and mostly a non-issue. Since myself and many others in the tech industry I know are simply going to skip vista and go strait to win7 from xp32/64 will be interesting to see what the hardcoded limit is on it, if any.

All 64bit OSs can recognize that What's the cap at the moment? I heard they don't recognize the full 64-bit addressing at this time. 4 terrabytes is the max ram for 64bit OS. On a retail/comsumer level I don't know any PC that has even come close to that cap. However systems with dozens of gigs have been made using win64 without issue. Not sure what you 'heard' but I have not read or see any issue with high amount of ram in win64 or linux64.

Only if you plan on doing more than just game. Which is exactly the case he is trying to make.. and failing at which I pointed out. I also think, the console excels at certain games as does the PC. I do not subscribe to the fact all games work better on one platform or the other. Fighting, racing and certain FPS's I'd say the console has the edge. CRPGs, MMO's, strategy and sims PC has the edge.

Yet another predicatable, but highly entertaining poster. Ditto my last post.

I knew you would focus in on that and totaly ignore my main points which you have no retort for. Predictable but entertaining none the less. Console < PC. End of discussion.

Just to add fuel into the heat According to Sony, PS3 will last you 7 more years http://games.techwhack.com/557-playstation...o-last-a-decade Sure and look like Atari 2600 lvl gfx vs PCs by then.. *shrugs* if that floats your boat all the power to you. I like my mouse, kb and ability to do other things, thank you. Ehm... Keyboard and mouse could be attached in some games even to PS2, for PS3 is that normal, and as i wrote few posts before you can install linux inside PS3 aswell... so you can do other "PC only" things on PS3 aswell, how shocking... And you know there are lot of PS1 or Sega Genesis/Megadrive or SuperNES games are still awesome and bigger fun than half of the "nextgen console/pc games" released last 3 years, but you AMAGAD MY LARA CRAFT HAZ BOOBZ OF ZILLION POLYGOONZ ON MY NEW GeFARCEOVERNINETHOUSAND!!! type of game lovers will never understand that... please if you are going to use a mouse, kb and use the console as a PC then USE A PC.. gezz. Talk about taking the long way to get to the same destination. You enjoy trying to make the console into a PC.. I'll use the real thing thanks and save myself 1/2 the headaches. Plus I want to game, dev .net code, edit media, synch my phone/mp3 player, work on my web site with my PC.. not compile drivers and use the command prompt for every other task... linux means 0 to me.

To answer your question, HIGHLY improbable. The next big game they are working on is gal civ3 and their own CRPG IP if I recall their schedule correctly. With that said SD is a GREAT company and one worthy of supporting like obsidian. Their is virtually no copy protection on any of their s/w and they have a wide selection of games from classic remakes such as 'defender of the crown' to the recent hit sins of the solar empire or x4 game galactic civ2. All very reasonibly priced.