Building a rig with Linux?

Hardware Build a PC
1

So I was thinking about saving myself $100 on my rig by just getting Linux.

 

I'm not a programmer or a hacker, but it's free. Anyways, is it possible to install windows programs, including games on the Linux OS?

 

Thanks

2

Yep, it's possible, it's not recommended, but there are several way of making it happen. There is no need to install Windows programs at all on linux, the open source linux native applications are generally much better, some lesser applications that haven't evolved much are about the same as Windows applications. Games is another thing, sometimes there is a linux native or platform independent version, most often there is not. You can check winehq online to check which games work, but their database is not always accurate or current. Wine has come so far these days that most games work, sometimes with some configuration. Typically, you may have to use different versions of windows dll's to make games work because games sometimes use old versions. All the files you need for this, are freely available in the KB, if something like this happens, it's always the result of a Windows bug, and most of these were treated at one time or another in the KB.

3

I'm sure I'm gonna sound stupid here, but what's KB?

4

No it's nowhere near a stupid question lolz... it stand for Knowledge Base, it's Microsoft's way of letting people solve their own problems instead of doing it for them. It's a website where you can download specific repairs for specific Windows bugs basically.

5

And you can always use http://www.playonlinux.com/en/ to install your favorite games. PlayOnLinux has generated scripts that download everything you need (including different wine versions) for a game, then installs that game itself, but it only works for certain games.

If it doesn't come with a pre-generated script for the game that you want to install, you can always build your own, the tutorial is pretty easy to follow.

If you are not into coding, you can simply use it to switch between wine versions. If you search for a certain game on http://www.winehq.org/ you will see that with certain wine versions it works better than with others.

6

PlayOnLinux is decent - I simply installed Steam via WINE, and every game I have tried has worked. Installed Morrowind via PlayOnLinux to test it, and it ran fine, as well.