Hello everybody, and let me show my respect to the people who make things happen around here - you're doing a more than great job.

I'm quite new to Linux (about 3-4 weeks ago I decided to make the critical step - erase Windows and install Linux - Fedora Core 2). I've been reading a whole lot of dox , I managed to do some damage to the install only 3-4 times, the first time I reinstalled it, cos' I didn't know what to do anymore, but the times after I managed to restore it myself to a rather functional state. Lucky I had another computer aside, on which I could check forums, documentation a.s.o.

Since I plan on implementing Linux on 20 machines in a Internet & Gaming Cafe I have opened, there is a question that has bothered and will bother many: which Linux implementation is, at this time, the most suitable for gaming ???

Well, this goes out to the more experienced Linux users , await your detailed replies, with many thanks.

In case it matters (obviously it does ), the configuration of the systems is

Asus A7V600 with SATA support
AMD Sempron 2200+ 1500 MHz
128 MB PC3200 DDR (to become 256 quite soon)
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 rpm 2 MB buffer
Gigabyte FX5200 128 MB 128-bit
the rest is unimportant and on-board

I chose components for easy upgradeability and decent ot better performance.

Thanks for any comments,


Alin

No doubt someone will suggest Gentoo. You should look at WineX - allows you to play quite a few Windows games on Linux.

Regards,

Samsara

Edit: On second thought, if your gaming cafe faces any local competition from gaming cafes running windows, you're going to face a struggle. I don't say this lightly, but it sounds like you want to stick with Windows - unless your clients are happy with the narrow range of games that currently run on Windows or WineX. Keep in mind it always takes considerable time between a game coming out for Windows and it eventually being supported in WineX, if ever!

Hi & thanx,

Should I take it that Gentoo is the most multimedia / gaming-oriented implementation?

On the other hand, I didn't mention that I updated all the packages under FC2, including the kernel, but apparently the update did a kernel compile itself (from 2.6.3-521 something to 2.6.8-21 some other thing), probably using the ks it used during the initial CD install. Later, I downloaded kernel 2.6.9 form kernel.org, went through make menuconfig, make bZimage and everything, by-the-book, changed grub.conf accordingly, but it wouldn't boot with the image I created (got stuck at Ok, booting the kernel .......). Reverted to 2.6.821, where I had some unsolvable problems with the video driver Nvidia 1.0-6111, which demanded a kernel recompile in the first place. Kept using NV video driver, which seemed pretty stable on desktop.

Then - and this is where I tried to get - I compiled wine, not wineX, and got it to work, managed to play some insignificant card or small Windows games, but when trying to install Age of Empires 2, just to see how it works, it jammed. So far, this is my experience with Linux, and that's why I'm seeking professional council.

Regarding your other remark,

Well, if Linux proved to be a viable alternative gaming-wise, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment in switching to Linux right away, regardless of how much more work and documentation I'd have to undertake. And some of the games I run here already have a Linux version, supplied by manufacturers themselves (i.e. Counterstrike and Unreal Tournament), while others are claimed to have been succesfully tested under Linux using wine or wineX or whatever.

Thank you for your reply, once again,

That's what they say. For your gaming cafe, you should probably set aside two machines, one as a compiling server (so you don't need downtime on the other machines to do this; you can download all compiled packages from your compiler server to all the other machines) and one as a test machine (because Gentoo is very cutting-edge; you don't want to install something that disrupts your business). At least the test machine should be identical in hardware to your productive machines.

HTH,

Samsara

I'll give a quick reply of the easy issues here, and recommend you open another thread about your Nvidia driver problems.
Kernels are downloaded as rpm packages. For compiling a kernel under Fedora Core 2, you need to install the kernel-source or kernel-sourcecode package (forget what it's called). That kernel already has Fedora-specific patches applied to it, so it will work much better than a "vanilla" kernel (i.e. unpatched, from kernel.org).

I would recommend you stick with the 2.6.7 series for FC2, that's what I did until I graduated to FC3, and it worked beautifully. My mantra is: Never update a kernel unless a) there is a significant security vulnerability in your old one, or b) you badly need something that only the new kernel can offer.

HTH,

Samsara