Ask Slashdot: Linux Distributions and Games
February 13th, 2005 by CrusaderIn an installment of Ask Slashdot last week, a reader solicited opinions from Linux gamers on which Linux distribution they favor.
What distributions do y’all use? What have you been happy (or unhappy) with in the past?
February 13th, 2005 at 9:51 pm
I learned on slackware, tried out redhat and suse, temporarily settled on debian, and after switching to gentoo can’t imagine going back to a precompiled binary distribution.
February 13th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
I dont get what the distribution has to do with getting games to work?? If you cant install cedega or run a game on your distro, thats your fault, not the distro’s.
February 13th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
ARCH!!!! ARCH>GENTOO!!! YEAAAHHH!!!
/end arch spam
February 13th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Weird, there’s already an arch fanboy post. Not too many arch users I thought, either way, arch get’s my vote as well.
February 14th, 2005 at 12:58 am
I’ve tried Gentoo on x86 and Alpha, it was a waste of time, every update or upgrade costs a lot of time.
I can do more with that time on a binary distribution than with Gentoo.
Just an opninion………
February 14th, 2005 at 4:06 am
deb, but honestly, it’s all i’ve ever used, and all i’m ever likely to use.
February 14th, 2005 at 5:51 am
I use Gentoo but at the end of the day whether you use Gentoo, Fedora, Debian..etc whatever flavour.. At the end of the day its linux and you will need to have the correct kernel, libs..etc for the game to run…
People should just continue to use their fav. distro. and keep it up to date so that there systems comply with game requirements.
February 14th, 2005 at 6:20 am
If you just want an easy to use Linux, just go to Mandrake or Suse.
However, if you really want to *know* Linux, you might be better with either Gentoo/Debian/Slack/…
February 14th, 2005 at 6:46 am
Ubuntu or another Debian derivied distro.
February 14th, 2005 at 7:28 am
Sound is a non-issue. Video — mostly meaning 3D — is best supported on Nvidia’s hardware…and the drivers are closed. Because of that, any distro that bundles Nvidia’s drivers will be “the best” for gaming under Linux.
That said, I know how to download and run an install script and it doesn’t take much effort beyond that so I don’t mind using Fedora Core 3.
February 20th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
I use Xandros, because it just works and I don’t have to poke at it to get my media to play on it.