EDIT: M@GOid *just* beat me to that first point! :)

System76, at least, take a lot of the guesswork out of knowing whether or not more recent hardware will actually work on Linux. Absolutely it would be cheaper to build your own, but there is the rare occasion where recent hardware just doesn't want to talk with the kernel.

System76 also made sense for us at the time because our last machine died from static, and we were paranoid about getting a machine that would last and definitely not have any ESD exposure whatsoever.

It's also fun to customize the machines offered. You can make the price more reasonable, and I noticed that they have 1-year financing offers now.

Bought a Wild Dog system with two big SSDs (120 or 160G, don't remember...) several years back for around $1000, haven't regretted it. Installed Arch on it almost immediately, and the hardware's been solid since. (*Not paid to say any of this, just a happy user.*)

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Thanks for the key, hope to be of help. :)

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I've been playing Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. It's a constantly evolving free fantasy roguelike and becoming more accesible to everyone with every update. It's probably the hardest roguelike I've played and has a fairly attractive tileset (but you could always go for the text-based interface like I do, too, use your imagination more ;).

Also been knee-deep in the summer Gun Mettle update for Team Fortress 2.

This War of Mine has been an emotional ride I'll never forget. It's a great example of a story-heavy game that has good gameplay to match, neither one of them overrides the other and both serve each other well.

TIS-100, it's programming-like, at least, but teaches nothing but basic commands, a text version of Spacechem. It's good to hone one's logic muscles, and printing the manual really is quite useful.

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Hm. That "primarily" question is a bit difficult. I use a wireless bluetooth mouse and keyboard, or a controller, and I use the machine from the couch for everything. The system itself is a desktop-style computer (for general use plus gaming) with a single user account set aside for Steam Big Picture. My family shares their Steam games, so this way we only have one instance of each game installed. It saves space and time, for sure.

Since we use that computer for more than gaming, though, I identified it as a "desktop" in the survey.

Perhaps these answers would suit the style of question better? I'd consider a gaming-exclusive partition to be equal to an entire machine's worth of space, since it's for a dedicated purpose.

What kind of machine do you use primarily for gaming?

* a general purpose desktop with games installed
* a general purpose laptop with games installed
* a gaming-exclusive desktop (or desktop partition)
* a gaming-exclusive laptop (or laptop partition) *edit for clarity

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Quoting: AnxiousInfusionHell will freeze over before Nintendo, masters of gaming as a prison, ever release a title on Linux.

Oof, harsh one, but true.

So long as it's something new for Linux, with no waiting, I'm excited. :)

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It's a game that should exist, whether or not the premise makes me uncomfortable. I'm not going to buy it, but that's because the subject matter and gameplay don't appeal to me.

Stil, every game that gets a Linux port is a good thing, no matter what.

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I am frustrated when it seems like people confuse Linux users in general with uncompromising free software advocates (and I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's a legitimate choice). Their voices tend to be louder than those who don't mind compromise with proprietary and closed source software. It's a matter of practicality.

I would love all OSes to be (at least) open source and community-improved, as it helps solve problems and security flaws at lightning speed (something the press often neglects to mention about Linux). Realistically, it won't happen... at least not for a very long time. It's also completely the opposite of how Windows and Mac currently work as operating systems.

Anyone who games on Linux should at least be aware of this, and any Linux user of Steam knows this. We are also very generous with our praise of every developer who supports Linux, even sometimes with non-recommended distributions. Every time I've bought a game on Steam that supports Linux, there are at least 1 to 5 threads in the game's Steam discussion boards thanking the devs. We are also very good at providing specific bug reporting and rarely fail to mention our hardware and software specs.

Right now, Valve is building up resources for developers to help them transition from one-OS development to OS-agnostic development, and this can only lead to more games for everybody.

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Ok, this is getting a bit ridiculous. It's one thing to say that one person prefers games to be made by people with a lot of knowledge than someone with (comparatively) little knowledge and made-for-purpose tools, but another to say that his opinion doesn't belong anywhere aside from "Microsoftland".

I think a dev's genuine effort to make their progam work right, even when it means learning and working more, is more important to me than exactly how much they know. A pro who hand-wrote code can be a dick who won't listen or change anything, and a one-game dev can be willing to learn and keep fixing things until they work.

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Quoting: WorMzy... i3 is still there for some reason.. :huh:

i3 is great, it makes (some) gaming on my old netbook possible with minimal overhead, does just as well for the bigger (Intel) i5 machine, too. Sometimes you want to minmax with your machines, too, right?

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