I voted for Unix in the poll because I don't feel strongly enough to vote 'other' and be vague...I certainly wouldn't recommend using any version of Windows for most things, though it's true to say that if you're mainly using the machine for games, Windows will probably not disappoint you. It's incorrect, though, to say that nobody writes games for Linux; Doom and the Quake series spring immediately to mind. Also, using WINE, you can run a lot of games on Linux (check the wine homepage at http://www.winehq.com/ for lists; I seem to remember Half Life was one of the highlights) and a fair few Windows apps, including Office 2k of all things.

If you're mainly in it for the games, though, why not just buy a console? I've heard nice things about the new Nintento console, and the Playstation 2 looks very nice. I'm not a gamer myself and have little direct experience of the recent games machines, but as far as I can see they're going to be more reliable and a lot cheaper than a PC. Of course, you could argue that you'd also like to do a bit of Word Processing or software development, it's just that you like games too - in which case, get a Linux PC and a games machine and your problem is solved reasonably cheaply (bear in mind you can respectably run Linux - in fact, very comfortably run Linux - on a small MMX Pentium (say, a 233) with 64 Megs of RAM and about 4Gb of disk, which is going to easily make up in savings for the extra your Playstation 2 (or whatever) is going to cost you.

- Freon