What is the best linux download? (newbie)

[silentraver]

Hey what up all,im new and dont know the first thing bout linux, not even wich one to download first. Im trying to get away from windows, because with the new windows xp , it sucks for resources! i have a 64 megabyte 566mhz intel celeron, integrated i810e graphics card, and it sucks playing madden football 2002 on it. i want something that doesnt hog up alot of memory on load and in the background while im playing this game, i cut down all but like 5 services in windows xp , and i still see slow downs in the game. would linux be a good choice to go to? and if so wich is the best to download. lucky i have dsl.

[badkarma]

If you want to only play games, stay far, far away from linux (unless you're particularly fond of FPS games)

[silentraver]

im planning on doing some programming to, but i also want to play games on linux, for one windowsxp hogs to much mem, im hopping my games would run faster on linux? and i did have half life and counter strike i wanted to play with linux to.

[badkarma]

you can play games on linux, and imo they run a lot better too, however your selection in games will be extremely limited. I would also recommend getting more then 64mb of ram.

I believe you can get half life/counterstrike running with wine, though I wouldn't recommend it on a  celeron with 64mb.

However there are also some excellent freeware/open source games available for linux (find some of them at http://www.happypenguin.org)

[silentraver]

im trying to round up some money to get more ram, not that much i know. yeh i know i need more of that most deff. what about mandrake? u think i can get half life, to run on that, and if u know , any os linuxes that would run madden? thanks for the info though.

[penguin]

Mandrake have released a version specially made for games, have a look at their site   .

[badkarma]

The mandrake gaming edition is just mandrake with WineX preinstalled iirc, and imho WineX isn't that much better at running games then the regular wine (every game I tried with winex also worked with normal wine, and games that didn't work didn't work on both, but there were some windows apps which ran with wine but not with winex, so if you ask me that whole winex and mandrake gaming edition is just a bit of a farce ..... (note I didn't do any extensive testing, just some winblows games I had lying around (mainly railroad tycoon 2, rollercoaster tycoon, entrepeneur)

[kardin]

quote::::
If you want to only play games, stay far, far away from linux (unless you're particularly fond of FPS games)

i play games and work such things from photo shop to 3d max, also into games heavly
im interested as what games work on linux, and how do u tell if they would
if that cant be done what games spercificly
.
do you need a linux copy of quake3 or would my copy of win9x version work with linux,, ps i have it cracked and put onto a disk as back up. disk currently lost..

i typed this quickly so if something doesnt make sence ,,dont answer it and move on

[voidmain]

If you have Quake3 on CD (the Windows version) and a recent Linux distro, you can just download the Linux version of the Quake engine from idsoftware.com and use the level files from your Windows CD.  There are instructions out there, just search for "quake3 linux" on google.

[Calum]

I've just met a guy who has been running Linux on his laptop for years. This enrages me, as i don't even know what's in my laptop yet (but am working on it!) so when i try to install Linux, i am unsure how to get all the bits to work. He can just rattle away on his laptop while i am stuck plodding through right click menus, non commandkey assignable commands and other windoze crap generally designed to slow you down.
It's infuriating. His linux distro is www.linuxfromscratch.org
He recommended that i NOT use this one. You get all the code in bits and you scrutinise each bit and build your own OS and programs from scratch, and learn the whole ins and outs in the process, is how i understand it. Not for beginners, he told me (which is certainly what i am when it comes to Linux). I went to their site and they have a 223 page book about how to roughly go about installing! Also, you need to have an existing Linux kernel running on yr machine to install it, i think.
Anyway, just wanted to mention this one, since i haven't seen it mentioned here before, and also because it sounds quite interesting to me. Maybe once i have a consumer type distro running, and am a bit confident, i'll look into this again.

[voidmain]

I remember installing Slackware on a laptop many years ago, I don't recall what model of laptop it was (I think it was a Zenith, that shows you how long ago it was).  This was before there was a RedHat and *long* before Mandrake.  

Getting Xwindows to run was really fun, and I recall only being able to get the MONO server running on it and I believe at less than 640x480.  It *did* work though.  Laptops can still be a pain because they usually have a boat load of proprietary hardware but I have had good luck on Dell laptops...