The Linux Mint 16 distribution is one that will take over from Windows 8.1. The Windows operating system has good gaming performance, but Linux does as well. I have played Corebreach on Fedora Core 19 and it ran very well indeed. There are a few good Linux games that are available for PC. There are consoles that offer gaming such as PS4 and the Xbox One, but those platforms do not offer the modding potential that PC games have. You can create cool maps for UT 2007. The map editor for that game can make some awesome maps. I find it a bit hard to get used to though. Hopefully PC games in the future will have an easier to use but powerful map editor. The thing that sucks about Far Cry 3 in particular is that you cannot make a whole new single-player world. That would require a massive amount of scripting and map editing, but a dedicated team could pull off something cool. The massive size of the gameworld is quite the drawcard. Getting back to Linux Mint, the Linux desktop is getting a lot of attention. Ubuntu was mentioned in the Big Bang Theory television show. Despite the disaster that was 13.10, it is getting better and the 14.04 distribution that I am using right now is as stable as ever.
I have updated all of the packages with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade and there were no problems at all. I am currently downloading Scientific Linux, I want to have a look at that Linux distribution. It is a good alternative to CentOS. CentOS is an annoying Linux distribution. Having to define a service to start automatically and using the RPM and YUM commands is another annoying aspect. But it is quite stable. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has Enterprise level support behind it. You would not install Ubuntu Server in a mission critical application if you had the money for Red Hat supported software. But the Ubuntu Server product does work though. I would steer clear of 13.10. Fedora 19 is very stable and reliable, a good choice for someone who wants to use a stable and usable Linux desktop. Steamboxes are another way that the Linux kernel is getting more propagation, but these may not be an open platform. As long as the PC exists, there will be free and open software. That is what we must protect. Linux in the olden days was quite hard to setup, you had to define the desired resolution(s) of your monitor(s) in the Xfree86 configuration.
Now we have an easier to use Linux that uses KMS and auto-configuration to setup the graphics to the native resolution of your screen easily. The XF86Configurator was used to setup your monitor resolutions. As shown by this old mailing list posting, this is not always the easiest way to setup your graphics. But it did work if you put in the effort. Thank god we have better technology now. The Gnome desktop has changed quite a bit since the early days of the Gnome 2.32.2 desktop. This is what Ubuntu 8.10 looked like. Gnome 2.32.2. This is the classic Gnome desktop layout. Now the MATE desktop available for Linux Mint and Fedora has this same layout available. This is the traditional Linux desktop that is sorely missed in these time when we are obsessed with mobile telephone interfaces and the whiz bang apps that are available therein. I have a Windows 8 phone, but I would not want a desktop Linux computer to have the Modern UI interface. That is just wrong.
