You said, 'to make the final decision' - No one's making you make a decision, hehe.. you don't even have to. Linux has rockin' everything - networking, programming environments, graphics & progs (GIMP Yeah!), sound card support, smashing choice of GUIs and all that ****.. and even a few versions of quake, hehe...

Windows.. has many many games... And good ones too.. but it's got it's problems.. they all do.. every distro and windows ver..

Linux runs on damn near anything... so if you want to experiment.. go buy yourself a cheap 233 MMX, with (or throw) an old ATI RAGE 64 or 128 bit-based (All-In-Wonder PRO) board in there, and a 16-bit ISA.. and everything'll be as straight forward as can be for installation and config options.. and a linux distro like Debian will SCREAM on it compared to a i586 specific distro like redhat 8.x. You'd have to drop to redhat 7.1 or something to get i386 kernels outta the box, which is a headache for a new user..

That kinda machine would cost you 200 bux tops in the paper to buy.. and you can leave your 10 or 20 gig windoze box as is.. windoze is a bitch, it needs the memory and processing power.. in order to actually enjoy windows, you might as well let it have the bigger better box.. all that.. might as well just have two to start with, to get you trained. Chances are your browser under blackbox or a lightweight window manager might outperform IE on the faster machine anyways, hehe...

So don't make a choice.. acheive a zen-like balance, hehe


I'd hate

****16-Bit ISA Soundcard is what I meant.. a traditional AWE 64 works real good...

there is a a couple of windows emulators ... WINE + WINEX (two programs.. ones' the emulation 'layer' and the other is like a directX layer, but, not.... functionally the same... one allows you to play solitare, two are needed for diable II or Ultima Online or whatever.. and your other option... Run BOCHS or VMware and simulate an entire PC in memory and an area of your disks, install windows + direct x to that and then all your games and stuff... but both options have there problems at this point.