Hi, my brother wants to buy a gaming pc and I'm not sure what operating system would be best for him.

I am studying a computer course and I've also done one for 2 years before so I know quite alot about windows but close to nothing on Linux.

I have already suggest to my brother that he should build his own pc since it would work out to be more valuable whilst still spending the same amount of money on our as he would to a ready build one. Plus i can help him build it.

Now as far as i know with Linux, a few of the advantages are:

It's free, he won't have to pay for a window license.
Is less likely to get viruses than Windows, more secure.
And although i haven't actually used our properly, I've seen videos of it and think it generally looks nicer than Windows.

The main thing i really want to know, is can it run most ganes and can it run them good?

He wants to play things like minecraft, old call of duty games like waw etc, and install mods on them. He will also want to play some of the latest games on it.

So really, the question is, can linux actually run these games and are the compatible mods that can be downloaded?

I also read on another site that theres this subscription based software that you can use called cedega? Is this any good?

If anyone could let me know I'd be most grateful.

Cheers! =)

P.s. I'm studying linux during my course next year. =)

I would say the simple answer is that if you want to play Windows games buy a Windows license. There are things like WINE/Play On Linux/Crossover which allow Windows games to be played on Linux but that is by no means guaranteed and you may find that some which are supposed to work do not or take a lot of fiddling around to get working.
Don't get me wrong, Linux distributions are great and I use them almost exclusively myself and with Steam being released many games have come to Linux. It is just that Linux is not a free substitute for Windows and I don't think one should install Linux with the sole or, indeed, main intention of running Windows programs.

World at War is already an "old call of duty game"?

Anyway, Minecraft works natively on Linux. For the rest, the short answer is: "not really."

Cedega hasn't been used by anyone in, like, a decade. The best solution for running Windows games on Linux today seems to be PlayOnLinux, which uses Wine as its back end. And while PlayOnLinux can generally run games that are two or more years old (see the Wine AppDB for compatibility reports), they won't always run as well or as bug-free as they do on Windows

Another option is to run Windows under one of the Linux VM emulators. Only do so if you have a powerful enough PC to do it on. Here's some of the pitfalls I have come across in trying to get 3D apps and games to work under Linux. Windows apps and games that rely on DirectX may or may not work in Wine depending on your graphics card gpu. Intel gpu's are notoriously bad in this regard which is what I have. The only 3D stuff I've ever gotten to work in Wine are opengl apps (Stellarium/windows 9x opengl screen savers). The other pitfall I've come across applies to both Windows and Linux games that use opengl, but use S3TC textures. S3TC is patented and so the open source Linux 3D drivers don't support this. There is an external library called s3tc_dxtn that you can install in hopes of getting S3TC texture games to work. Once again this might or might not work depending on your gpu. Intel gpu's seem to flunk out in this area as well. You'll want to research the gpu's that work the best under Linux where 3D is concerned. Oh yes, one other thing on S3TC under Linux. This is a grey area and might not be legal to use the s3tc_dxtn library depending on what country you are in. The user assumes all risks in this regard.

There are two fields where Linux is useless - Gaming and Office work.