Im running windows XP right now. It doesnt seem to run my apps very well so im considering downloading linux. I know it involves aloit of programming, but im willing to learn it. it shouldnt be that hard, im 17 and already know BASIC, Java, and HTML extremely well, and a little c++ Im not to happy with XP. Could i get some opinions on linux?... what one to download?... good tutorial books?.. anything is appericated PS: can i still play medal of honor and other games? KJ

Linux is a brilliant OS (but stick to well-known distros like RedHat and Mandrake), but give Windows XP a chance. Are you sure all of your WinXP drivers are up to date and you perform regular chkdsk, disk cleanup and disk defragmenter maintenance on your machine? Also, are you running XP Home? If so, i'd upgrade to Pro. You should also ensure that you have installed Service Pack 1 for WinXP, and all of the critical patches released since. You should find that most XP users are VERY happy with it. Certainly don't become part of the 'Blame Everything On Microsoft' culture'. WinXP's certainly better than Win95/98/ME. Now, for your question: If you want to run your games, you could set up a dual-boot between Linux and WinXP. That way, any tasks that you can't do or find difficult in Linux you can still do under Windows. Using modern distributions like Red Hat 9 or Mandrake 9, dual-booting should be a breeze - just install Windoes XP on a partition taking up part of your HDD, then install Linux to take up the rest of the disk (remember of course the SWAP partition). LILO (or GRUB) should, but don't quote me, set itself up for multi-boot with XP (this will probably show up as NT on the boot loader because Linux cannot tell between Windows NT4,2000 and XP, so uses the general heading of NT which covers them all. I'd suggest you use the latest version of RedHat or MAndrake (I think both are at version 9 at the moment). For slower PCs like Pentium Is, I find RedHat 7.0 works well. I've never used SUSE or Debian Linux so cannot really comment. In terms of instruction manuals, most modern distros have on-line manual pages in HTML or other formats, so you should find those helpful. RedHat and Mandrake are fairly easy to set up anyway. There are a few minor differences to the Windows NT setup that you'll be used to but most is similar. You may need to specify a few extra things though. KDE3 and Gnome that come with Mandrake 9 (I don't know what RH9 comes with) are sufficiently Windows-like window managers, and you should feel quite at home. Make sure you set up plentiful SWAP space on your hard disk and the root (/) filesystem should be a good size too. You can mount your /home and /root folders to different partitions if you want, so settings and data are preserved if you re-install or upgrade Linux. Be careful with memory. On some systems and some distros, Linux doesn't always correctly detect the RAM allocation in your computer. In this case you will need to set it manually by means of kernel parameters, but just post another problem if you need to do that. Maybe you could borrow or buy Linux For Dummies (I think RedHat 7 comes free with it aswell, and it's legal to copy Linux CDs and use them! Remember Linux is free!!!!) As far as programming is concerned, I've yet to need it in Linux. RedHat and Mandrake come with loads of software, including Office packages, small games, design packages and a lot more. If you download open-source apps from the Net you will probably need to compile them for your kernel. You can normally modify these programs to suit your needs too if you so wish, so your programming expertise could come in handy here. I'd learn a bit more C and C++ first though because a lot of Linux programe are written in it, and I have yet to see a BASIC implementation for Linux. I'm a total C++ novice (my forte being Visual Basic), but still get on well with Linux. I think the main consideration is are you really willing to learn a new operating system, would it run all your apps and is Linux really for you? As I say, you can dual-boot and have the best of both worlds. If you never call on one of the operating systems within a year, then remove the unused OS, otherwise keep the dual boot.

Several ways to go with Linux. One is the to treat Linux like you do Windows and see how much you can turn it into Windows. This usually drives people crazy and makes them appreciate Windows a little more. For others, this is some kind of quest. I would avoid this approach. For others, they take a function approach and try to make Linux do something very useful. This can be very rewarding. You can set up a firewall, mail daemon, web daemon, file server, etc. The final way is almost a little too educational and pure for most. You start with Linux as something new, work in the shell a lot (try some shell programming), use the GUI when you need to, and try to make the Linux system work for you. This is probably the most sensible method, though it can take time because there is a lot to learn. " It doesnt seem to run my apps very well so im considering downloading linux." Really depends on the app. There are bad Linux apps too. "can i still play medal of honor and other games?" No. Do not expect to be able to play very much on Linux. There are games, but it is not Windows or even Mac. Any distribution you want to use is fine. As long as it is mainstream (i.e. you can find lots of information about it) you will work about as well as any other. Mainstream would be Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, and Knoppix (forgive me if I neglected anyone's favorite in this list). But do what you want. There is one site to start with and that is tldp.org. It is a wealth of Linux information. Check their regularly to solve problems. Start with the Linux FAQ and Unix and Internet Fundamentals. Also, you should dualboot your system.

Linux is a great os, but it is different and will not run programs made for windows without some kind of shell or such. Even then xp will prob run them better. There are tons of programs, (games) written for Linux thou, so you could find one to suite your needs. I agree, stick with a more common distro, like Red Hat or Makdrake, easier to install and learn than some of the others.

If you switch to linux, I would suggest RedHat Linux 9 because this is the most well known version of linux so most linux programs work on it. The installation pretty easy. And about your games, they won't work on linux, but you can get unreal tournament 2003 for linux which is much like medal of honor, but I would wait until the end of november because that is when unreal tournament 2004 comes out.

If you want a Windows-like Linux distro, try XandrosOS www.xandros.com or LindowsOS www.lindows.com If you want to run Windows software (MS Office, IE, Photoshop, etc) on Linux, get CrossOver www.codeweavers.com (This product is included with XandrosOS). If you want to run Windows games, get WineX. If you want something stable and simple, get FreeBSD (UNIX) www.freebsd.org Slackware Linux www.slackware.com Debian GNU/Linux www.debian.org n0dez

FYI Medal of Honour (as with many other quake engine based games) works great under linux using winex.