New to Linux and want to learn
 

I am new to PCLinuxOS. I am interested in installing it. My goal is to replace that awful OS (windows) and do my gaming through wine. I have a Gtx 460 and competent processor. It is enough to play bf4, skyrim, minecraft, and other games of that caliber. Are these games able to be run at a modest frame rate of even 40 fps? The description in the about page for PCLinuxOS states I 'can do anything I could' on a Windows. Please help a rookie out. I wish to embrace this, but without game support, I won't move to it. What kind of lose in fps will an average game see running through wine? And is the list of AAA titles that are fully supported large?

Cheers

Getting things to work on wine is not always exact science. Some things work, some things don't, some things need a lot of tweaking, sometimes you even need to patch wine (which means building wine from source code).

IIRC wine doesn't support anything beyond DX9 (correct me if I'm wrong).

If you plan to make your first venture into linux one heavily involved in WINE, it will be a frustrating and irritating entry.
This style of entry:
The result is generally:
If you plan to use the Y operating system, please use software made for Y. Later if you are confident with operating system Y, then try to get some X software to work. More likely though, you won't need too since native software for Y is often better.
Sometimes though there is software made for XY, which works on both X and Y. Regarding games, steam is making a good push on this.
Otherwise, dual booting just for the X only games will probably be less frustrating.

IF you make the determination to go ahead and install,
you may wish to read Installing PCLinuxOS - Full tutorial
wrt:
Linux is not a replacement for Windows, it is an alternative to it. And if you quit the "awful OS", do you intend to play games designed for Windows?

GTX 360 is good.
Wireless may be an issue, so I recommend a good NIC. This one is $37.00 USD

Battlefield 4 does currently not work with Wine.
Skyrim works fine on my system with settings cranked to the max (Phenom II X6 CPU, GTX760, 16GB RAM).
Minecraft has a Linux version, IIRC.
That depends highly on the game, no general answer can be given.
Through Wine or native?
Through Wine you will get many titles to run, many not (especially those that need DX10 or 11 will give problems, if they start at all).
Native support for AAA titles is lacking (especially from EA, Bethesda and Ubisoft), but growing. We may see a major change in this once/if Steam machines are successful.

Have a look at Steam it works with Ubuntu-

http://store.steampowered.com/about/
https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applicat...team-launcher/

I agree with ugjka. Wine can be a hit-or-miss thing. If games that work only on Windows are that important to you, play them on Windows. Windows can be annoying, but Windows isn't evil (Microsoft may be evil, but that's another discussion).

I can't get my brother to take the plunge because he wants to be able to play is old Star Wars--or maybe it's Star Trek--games. I think he's missing the forest for the trees, but they are his trees and his forest.

If you still really want to learn Linux for its own sake, pick up a used/reconditioned computer somewhere (TigerDirect.com, a local secondhand computer shop, maybe even a local thrift store) and use it to learn Linux. Then, when you are familiar with Linux, go for it.

If you do want to continue, check the Wine AppDB for your games first, if you have not already done so.

for gamming you WILL want to keep a copy of windows around

also as everything above

WINE will mostly / sort of / kind of/ may be work ???

notice all the hedging of the bet


i have found that for some games YOU WILL!!! need to hack the "wine" version of the Microsoft system registry
you CAN ???? hack the windows reg ???? right ????
if not -- then LEARN what a HKEY_???????? is and and how to use "regedit.exe"

YOU WILL need to use the wine "regedit.exe" ( and the MS Windows regedit.exe to make registry BACK UPS ) to move games you PAID for over to wine from windows
( as in you WILL need the windows registry sections FOR the games YOU BOUGHT )

or
rebuy the games for a second time

First off a big welcome to the forums!

Unfortunately I'm going to say the same as the others n give them a big plus 1 - I don't recommend getting rid of windows, especially if you love playing games.

I strongly recommend you listen to those who have been there before on this one, it will save you a lot of hassle. I generally don't recommend removing windows or mac from your computer anyway - You've already paid for it, why should you have to give it up so you can join the Linux community? In your case you have a games library for windows, so steam's not really a sensible option - why buy the same games again?

I will also level with you about Windows - unless you're running 95, 98 or earlier, it just isn't terrible. It's very stable, compatible with nearly all consumer hardware and with the biggest software library ever known. Sure it's massively resource heavy for an OS designed to browse and type, and it's limitations drive me mad at times, but if you are having performance issues on a windows PC with the version of windows that came with it, I'm afraid it's likely user error, and the same practices will lead to the same results or worse on linux.

Please install PCLOS in a virtual machine first, get a feel for it, then try out a live CD to get an idea how it performs on your hardware - PCLOS won't even boot on my ACER because of a incompatibility with the UEFI BIOS I have: The computer boots the bootloader, but the bootloader can't access my USB devices. I had to copy the installer onto a HDD partition to install.

Another advantage of installing in virtualbox is that you can use your existing windows at the same time, so when you break it - and you will, we all did when we started out - you can jump on the forums and have a look for some help.

Linux is amazing, it gives you all the power you'll ever want out of an OS, but it's also definitely NOT Windows. Windows assumes you have no idea what you are doing and puts all the knives and fireworks on the top shelf, Linux just says 'be careful with those' then goes back to what it was doing.

I've used Linux as my primary OS since 2008, and have gone through two raspberry Pi's, two macs, three desktops a netbook two laptops and a macbook in that time. The only ones that have been 100 linux were the Raspberry Pi's, although these days I tend to just have windows 10 in a VM, and not bother installing it on the hardware. But then my idea of gaming is still my Sega Master System... and Clash of Clans of course ;)

We're not trying to curb your enthusiasm, just ground you a bit. When I first looked into linux in 2001, it was a very different world. I spent 4 days trying to install debian using mailing lists and IRC chat. After two weeks I finally gave up. We've come a long long way but nothing is perfect and all super powers have their dark sides. I want you to enjoy linux and build the community with us, I don't want you to miss out on 7 years of awesome because you went into it with unrealistic expectations like me.

All the best

JJ

If you own a game on Steam that also has a Linux version you don't have to buy it again to install it on Linux.

Ah sorry I was referring to a presumed games library outside of the steam platform.

JJ

What I would recommend, assuming you have the space, is to either go the virtual machine route (like Jjex2 recommend) or to try dual-booting, before entirely hopping over. That way, you have your games available, while being able to spend the time trying to get some/all of them to work in Linux (either natively, or through wine). That being said, this relies on having the requisite space to do an effective dual-boot with games. I've been running both operating systems for a while, so I've got windows when I need it (mostly games, some work-related programs), but I get to spend most of my time in Linux.

The other advantage is that if you try it for a while, and end up not wanting to make the switch, you can just kill the linux partition and use windows exclusively.

All this said, of course, backup EVERYTHING repeatedly before starting this process, since things can go wrong during partition resizing for a linux install, even though some guides don't even mention it.

Unless you have a second powerful videocard with a driver that supports passing it through to a VM, plus a CPU and a motherboard that are IOMMU capable, gaming in a VM is not something you want to do, especially with games that are demanding on the GPU and/or need somewhat newer features, like Skyrim or BF4.