A Linux User's Perspective Of Microsoft Windows 8

[crazycheese]

You didn't listen to the question then.

You are serious that opensource platform has enough power to compete with 99% preinstalled hardware or software locked garbage pile named "Windows"?

Because "AAA" does not mean any "serious" or "interesting" or "good" game, it merely means "huge" game studio behind. And huge game studios tend to maximize profit, hence PS3. As locked down as it gets, plenty of "AAA" and crappy company behind as a "bonus".

[Kano]

Maybe you did not notice that there are lots of games out there that work only on consoles. PC gaming is already a smaller part of the gaming scene. Sure you can use high power gfx cards but most games beside a few special ones which use all effects possible are console conversations which run with 3-5y old hardware (geforce 8 series is enough and was introduced 2006/7) as well - even the latest ones like Rage - so do the steam engine games. So best choice: get a console, some games types like beat em ups are very rare on pcs.

[Hamish Wilson]

An avid gamer walks up to you and asks " I really want to play a lot of kick ass games on the PC. What OS do I get to do so?" what would your reply be?

Does not really matter - my point is not that Linux is the best gaming platform, but whether or not games are available for it. Again, stop changing the focus of the original statement.

My old nokia feature phone has a couple games on it but that does not really make it a gaming console.

No, but it does make it a gaming platform.

[deanjo]

Maybe you did not notice that there are lots of games out there that work only on consoles. PC gaming is already a smaller part of the gaming scene. Sure you can use high power gfx cards but most games beside a few special ones which use all effects possible are console conversations which run with 3-5y old hardware (geforce 8 series is enough and was introduced 2006/7) as well - even the latest ones like Rage - so do the steam engine games. So best choice: get a console, some games types like beat em ups are very rare on pcs.

That all is dependent on the game genre Kano. FPS's suck on a console when compared to a PC, RPG's are joke as a general rule on consoles and consoles can't do any type of simulation other then driving games worthwhile either.

[Hamish Wilson]

So best choice: get a console, some games types like beat em ups are very rare on pcs.

Well, those games are innately better with console controllers anyway, and that is the reason. Yes, you can hook up Gamepads to a PC, but that is not the focus of your average PC gamer.

That is why Lugaru/Overgrowth are so interesting, as those titles are one of the few fighting games optimized for PC controls.

[Hamish Wilson]

That all is dependent on the game genre Kano. FPS's suck on a console when compared to a PC, RPG's are joke as a general rule on consoles and consoles can't do any type of simulation other then driving games worthwhile either.

Well, at least we agree on something.

[deanjo]

Does not really matter - my point is not that Linux is the best gaming platform, but whether or not games are available for it. Again, stop changing the focus of the original statement.

I'm not changing the original statement. You are just reading more into it then how it was intended. It was meant more as a comment like "Those Maple Leafs don't know how to play hockey".

[Hamish Wilson]

I'm not changing the original statement. You are just reading more into it then how it was intended. It was meant more as a comment like "Those Maple Leafs don't know how to play hockey".

As hyperbole, it is stretching the truth; the problem is you repeat that statement often enough people will believe it, and if they think it is true then they are believing a lie. That is why I take exception to that statement - there are plenty of developers supporting our platform, and I do not like people using an unfair sleight of hand to say they do not exist.

[0xBADCODE]

Yea, that. It gets even rather ludicrous: if you are trying to use the MS Office 2010 To Go feature, you must be logged in as an administrator. It never asks you to enter Administrator credentials, either, just fails with a completely unrelated "the server return an unknown response" error. Makes you wonder how many MS devs themselves use their own security features...

Absolute mindwreck. On unrelated note, what to expect from guys whose TESTING CENTER program is FULL OF BUGS and fails here and there? And enterprise system management tools are awful bunch of crashes and

And yes, redirection of files and directories. Their "Virtualisation" of the Program Files folder is one of the worst things possible, as it simply eats files. The files programs put there are moved to another folder and made invisible to the user. In what way that helps security I have no clue. It's pretty much worse than silent IO failure. Thankfully, with a bit of fiddling around in the registry or the Management Console, that can be disabled.

Thankfully, now there is Linux so I have to deal with this mindwreck seriously less than I otherwise have to. Dang, it's so nice when there is at least some competition.

That's on Windows 7, though. Not sure how they changed it in Win8, but I'm definitely not going to find out any time soon.

As for me I seen it and I really dislike it. For example it's damn inconvenient to run installed programs now and hitting Win button brings you to new intrusive "start" menu equivalent with a nasty eye-annoying bright colors, dumb squares and so on. Looks like the most funded feature of this OS has been ... aggressive marketing rather than something useful for users. Because anything else has become worse or haven't changed in better case.

At least they now have ReFS... ...except it's only on servers. What else is on servers? Metro UI. Yeah...

They promised they will have it. Sometimes. Maybe. They also promised the same for WinFS. And after all they dropped this feature since it never made it in time and reasonable quality. The only problem is: 9 womans will not give you a child in one month. Same goes here. It takes years to create such filesystems designs. And it takes a bunch of highly skilled guys. MS seems to be boring and outdated corpotation. Such persons will hit administrative walls soon. Then they will leave for better places as they need to have some fun from their work and it's clearly not about MS. So I guess MS would have some troubles to actually deliver ReFS and make it anyhow competetive. They did almost nothing for ~20 years. Other developed better designs. So they want to catch up and outperform these in a instant? No way, they could only compete in marketing bullshit at the moment. After all they were greedy and IFS SDK has been always problematic to get and use since MS wanted to control everything themselves. Including which FS goes where. This haves some price: there are almost no devs familiar with IFS and creating filesystems for windows. So this part of windows now become their competetive disadvantage. That's what I call shooting own legs...

[Kano]

@deanjo

Not fully correct. I even played Rage with my Xbox 360 pad (even on Linux possible) as that game is a mixture of racing and fps. Usually you can enable assisted aiming on consoles if not default already, so maybe not for hardcore fps fans (you could add usb keyboard/mouse in theory as well, but who does that) but those who play every game using a pad those do not worry. What do you think is Halo, it was even a launch title for Xbox and came later to PC.