New Release -- June 7th, 2010

[lnthomp]

Originally Posted by SueW170

Interesting to hear from a Linux user. I'm a Mac user and computer consultant and my friend who is the local Mac dealer and grew up with computers (and is a genuine guru), swears than Linux is the best operating system from a technical point of view. I have a friend who is a computer technician and consultant in South Africa who also has good things to say about Linux despite the fact most of her customers are PC users, so she works primarily with Windows computers -- and has a few less than complimentary things to say about Microsoft systems (with which I often agree).
How does Linux work out for doing FT and other online games in general?

I mostly don't play online games, so I can't comment in detail...Flash Player has minor differences in the Linux version that made a few things look different for a long time. Either the Flash Player updates have improved it, or the developers of Farm Town fixed something recently, or both, now FT looks the same on my computer as it does on my wife's WindowsXP computer.

There is a Linux version of Second Life that I've looked at, but don't play.

Linux has the same advantage as Macs in terms of viruses and malware--it just isn't as attractive a target, with the smaller market penetration. Linux has an additional advantage in that anyone with programming skills who discovers a way to fix a security flaw (or any bug for that matter) can submit the fix and have it available to Linux users everywhere in a matter of days, rather than having to wait for a monolithic company headquarters-released fix.

There is also the same disadvantage Macs have, which is if a company makes a proprietary Windows-based game (or other software), it simply won't work on Linux. Beyond that, most game companies work out ways to release Mac versions of their Windows software, but not so many find it worthwhile to make Linux versions.

But there are programmers around the world writing stuff for Linux all the time, and there aren't a lot of things that don't have either a Linux version or a Linux-based competitor with similar functionality. Some web sites claim to only work on Windows and Mac computers, but work fine in Linux. But tech support lines mostly refuse to have anything to do with Linux if you have issues, like with my internet service provider.