Hello.

Im about to get myself a new computer. It will be a AMD Athlon 64 6000+, 4gbs of DDR2 Ram, Geforce 8600GT 256mb graphics, etc etc.

Im wanting to partion half my hdd off for Linux, I breify used an old Red hat version ages ago like 4 or so years now. But im wondering what distro would be good for my new system etc.

What im wanting to do is:
A linux distro that is an alternative for windows.
Has to support the full specs of my machine (4gb ram, 64bit CPU etc)
Is it compatable to play windows games (like Counter strike, Civ 4 etc)
Looks nice and fancy (to show off to my freinds lol)
Comes with basic (or advanced if its still free lol) editing software
Can it run Photoshop/Adobe Audition.
Also can it play MP3/MPEG/WMA's etc from another partion.

Basically this is my personal computer used mainly for gaming and a bit of sound/video/picture editing on the side.

So what would you wise people suggest lol.

Thanks

You looking to dual-boot with windows? Just install windows first and leave space for Linux. As far as distro's go, withing days you'll probably have tons of suggestions on here.
Any Linux distro does that.
Depends on the kernel, anything with a 2.6.* kernel will do just fine.
You'll probably need an application like Wine or Cedega for that. I think their has been success with both of those games.
Using compiz-fusion.
You can get Photoshop to run with Wine, no so sure about Audition. You might want to try Audacity.
Totally possible. If the other partition is a Windows partition, you might need to do some very minor tweaking.

My personal preference is Ubuntu. As it uses Gnome, you'd probably be familiar couse Red Hat. Than, again... wait a while ans you'll get more suggestions. Or just search these forums and you'll fine hundreds of the same topics.

What you want I believe is going to be near impossible. As far as I know there is not a linux distro close to being an alternative for Windows. I'm sure most of the latest linux distros will support most of your hardware. I haven't heard of a linux distro that will run a windows designed program without the aide of a program called wine or running windows in linux in a virtual machine. I'm not familiar with either, I made up my mind if I was going to switch, I was going to live in this world. As far as your editing Gimp is as close as you can get to photoshop although I understand photoshop runs decent under wine. As far as you mp3s and 4s and wave should be no problems except due to laws most have to be set up after installation. I will say if you want to grit your teeth and work at it you will be surprised what you will end up with and how you can use it. Your whole idea of using the computer will change.

Yes, but I suggest that you do look for an amd64 or x86_64 distro - the 32 bit versions won' t be able to use all of your RAM.

I agree that Ubuntu makes a good choice but unfortunately it is either 32 bit or 64 bit exclusively. Which, in the first case, means less than 4 GB. And in the second one, all of your 4GB but some potential headaches with a limited set of applications (flash,java, ...) that have not been ported to 64 bit yet. They can generally be made to work but that may be more than you were looking for. All in all, with that kind of system, I would recommend Fedora 7, which combines 32 bit and 64 bit into a single system (providing that you get the x86_64 version, not the 32 bit one) so that you can easily install a 32 bit browser to run flash, java, etc. Or openSUSE. There s a fresh one out just today.

If you need to know whether it looks nice enough look up some screenshots on google.

I suggest Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS

That's quite a lot of power you are packing, what's it all used for? :-o

the clear and only alternative is openSUSE.org

Thanks guys, awesome reponse time too lol.

Um Ive heard of fedora, also Madriva or something was recommended to me.

Do those programs that run windows stuff (wine??) come with these distro's or do ya have to buy them separately. This vitural machine thing.. Ive heard about that and the ability to run windows in linux, how good does that work?

Im open to new software that does similar things to photoshop, audition etc so that isnt a problem just was wondering whether windows stuff is compadable yet lol.

As for the MP3's etc, what sort of tweaking do you mean. Im very profecient on windows (almost to the point of getting it to work properly lol) but havnt had much experience at all on linux at all.

Im getting Windows Vista cause I need a 64bit windows system to run my stuff, and to my surprise Xp 64bit is way more expensive lol or else I would have gone with that. Lol about about the power, I buy a new computer every 3 to 6 years and only get the maxium possible so it lasts the longest if ya know what I mean. And I hate Intel (random loyality to AMD i dont know why lol) so the AMD 6000 is the best lol.

Anymore thoughts on what distro?

I am running Opensuse 10.2 on my dell laptop with nvidia 7600 and 2 gb of ram.


I use Cedega

After trying a dozen different nvidia drivers, I found the release that actually worked properly, and am able to run quake 1-3, Counterstrike source, and Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, and battlefield 2142 with excellant frame rates at quakecon


I would suggest a 32 bit distro for compatibilty sake. You might not get the full benifit of your hardware, but it should still totally rock

Just a question: If you want something exactly like Windows, why don't you stick with Windows?

You'll never make a Windows out of a Linux.

Try Sabayon 3.4 - that looks "nice and fancy" to impress your friends. Don't know if it will fulfil your other needs though.

hi , this site has a distruibution page
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/

there like 200 differnet version and i think they have summmary of each not sure
by the way there all iso images so you will have to get a program to get the installation files like winraw or magic disc

This week my favorites are Fedora7 & PClinux. That will probably change by next week.

I will be getting windows too. Just want to try out linux again. Is Madrivia any good for what I want?

Give it a try and see if you like it