Can Linus Do Things Like Steam And BF3?

Ubuntu will turn out to be a good choice since a native Steam client is coming soon. No official date yet though. I heard the first games will be Left for Dead 2 and Portal 2. Others should follow.

Skype runs natively. Not sure about a C++ IDE but I'm sure there is something. I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure what to recommend.

I'm running Steam and Counter-Strike Source on Mint via PlayOnLinux. It works relatively well.

I am happy to hear you want to you linux. Ubuntu is great for first time users. For C ++ you can use eclipse for your IDE. I have only used eclipse for my Java work but have been told it works great for C ++. Linux is a great choice for programming. The school i attend(Auburn University) has started recommending it along with( in certian classes) requiring it. So if eclipse doesn't suit your needs im sure there is something out there.

As for steam. The short answer is no, at least not yet. Steam is not native to linux yet(keyword yet). Valve is (from what i understand) getting fed up with windows and has started native support for steam in linux. The testing is going on in Ubuntu so Ubuntu is probally a great choice for you. I personally would usually recomend a different distro even for new users, but if you really want steam support then Ubuntu is a good choice for you.

As mentioned above you can use a form of wine. I love what wine is trying to do but it may be better to dual boot your machine if you really want to play windows games. Once again i personally dont like dual-booting. But my setup allows me to not need to do this( I have a dedicated linux machine for my school work and a high powered desktop for window gaming). Even when Steam Becomes Native it will only offer support for Valve games for an unknown period of time. I have high hopes for steam on linux, but as for now i think the best answer to the gaming side of things would be no youll need Windows for that. This is atleast my opinion on the matter. Anyone else is more than welcome to say differently.

The reason why id say no to wine btw, is because i ussully get a lose in performance with wine. And when i play games i want there to be the best quality my machine can handle.

One more thing to note is that Netflix does not work nativly under linux. So this could(depending on whether you use this or not) be another reason to dualboot with windows.

I really do hope you choose to stick with linux as it is such a clean and fast group of operating systems.

I also want to add, that native linux gaming is on the rise but since you mentioned BF3 i think you should dual boot.

But for your programming youll have no problems.

You have an option on running games in a Vm. This is also not a good idea since a vm will not take full advantage of your graphics. I do however use a Vm on my linux machine. This is because i wanted netflix for the rare times i watch it on this machine but refuse to dual boot anything on here. Thats me being a little stuborn though

Forgive me if i left any information out.

I doubt Linus even plays these games. He's involved in kernel admin full time, and I don't think he runs windows.

Question- once steam is available native to linux- how dificult is it to setup triple monitor displays (eyefinity for me since I use AMD cards)

Ok so before i answer this question let me start with i have never used the ATI graphics library on linux. My information should be slightly wrong. I use intel integrated graphics on an arch linux laptop however and have dual monitor support.

Do you have a graphics driver installed on linux?

I would assume that if you had the linux version of the ATI card installed then it would be as simple as going to monitor settings and configuring it through that. Similar to that of how windows 7 would work.

However like i mentioned before, sometimes graphic cards dont perform as well in linux as they do in windows 7 due to support. This is of course case by case and is also a problem that is increasingly getting better over time.

Like i said earlier if gaming is a huge deal to you dual boot with windows 7. Im not even all that big of a gamer and i have a seperate windows rig for gaming. I think that youll find all the extra power that gaming rig brings you is hardly needed in even Ubuntu. My Arch linux setup boots up with 200mb of ram using Kde4. And hardly ever uses over a gig of ram when im doing a full work load.

And by not having a dedicated graphics card i can still do all my everyday stuff and extend battery life.

However if you insist on playing games through linux then to simply answer your question: Yes id do believe you can and all i think it will take to do so is go and mess with some settings in gnome or kde(depending on which DE you choose to use). Simple googling however can probally give you more specific instructions