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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

I got burnt by this. My insider edition of Windows 10 refused to upgrade, so I did a clean upgrade, and now I'm stuck with a very limited Windows partition. I'll probably just wipe it -- I only used it for games anyways, and any game I care about is already on Linux or is coming to Linux soon (Witcher 3). I could reinstall my valid edition of XP, but Linux now has better game support than Windows XP.

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> Linux now has better game support than Windows XP.

That is probably only roughly true if you look at a small subset of the games market and limit it to the past few years.

Many older games now run good to perfect on wine.

There's a community-maintained database of Wine compatibility, https://appdb.winehq.org/

Not if you try something like PlayOnLinux. I've managed to run quite a few golden oldies that way.

I experienced something similar. I installed Insider on one partition. On launch day, I got it to upgrade to RTM. Thinking my machine was already activated, I did a clean install on another drive (SSD). When the installation completed, the one on that partition did not activate. To get it work, I took an image of the partition with the activated Windows 10, restored it on the SSD, rebooted and voila - it was activated. I then did a Windows reset on the SSD copy and it did reset with an activated status.

Thanks for the advice.

I've currently got the technical preview on an old Macbook Pro. Only used it for flashing an SD card for IoT core insider preview. I've since discovered a better way [0] but I'll probably upgrade to the public release once it's bedded in a bit.

The hardest part was convincing Boot Camp that it would install fine. Took a bit of trickery. Can write up if anyone is interested?

[0] https://unop.uk/dev/windows-10-iot-core-public-release-for-r...

I'm interested. Thanks in advance.

Right-o. In the drafts queue.

Here you go: https://unop.uk/dev/installing-windows-10-on-an-old-macbook-...

This article came exactly 1 day too late for me - I literally just blew away one of our test machines yesterday morning, only to find I can't activate it unless I re-install Windows 7. To make matters more fun I chucked the Win7 install disk in the trash thinking, I won't need this again!

This is why I always bought a full copy of Windows; because having to install the previous version in order to install the current version is bullshit.

You can download the Windows 7 DVD from Microsoft here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery

They used to have it on Digital River but it's been removed from there http://www.howtogeek.com/186775/how-to-download-windows-7-8-...

awesome, thank you!

I never toss any of my OS install disks, because you never know. I think I still have Win3.1 on floppy in the closet somewhere.

Are you saying that Linux has the facilities for supporting more games now than Windows XP or do you mean that Linux has more games than Windows XP had?

Someone here yesterday stated that only about 15% of Steam games run on Linux. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but honestly even as a casual gamer I couldn't imagine having access to that low a percentage of games. If I were running games on Linux I would have missed out on Rocket League which is now probably one of my all-time favorite games.

So, I guess I just don't see the point of using Linux for games at all. The phrase "cutting of your nose to spite your face" comes to mind because I can't think of one reason that isn't purely ideological.

Anyway, the info about the Windows 10 upgrade has been out for some time. I managed to cleanly upgrade all of the machines that I wanted to without hassle.

He was probably talking about Wine, not about Linux per se.

50 percent of new games on steam have a Linux port now. Your numbers are old.

I said "games on steam" not "new games on steam". Looks like it's actually about 20% - https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2tctl1/is_there_anyw...

The numbers you cite are six months old. Linux/SteamOS has 2,628 games, up from 915 six months ago.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=#so...

1395 it says, but i could be searching incorrectly. My main point though is that I don't want to miss any of them, so I run whatever I want instead of limiting myself to one platform for ideological reasons. I love Linux, but just not for games and desktop stuff.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=&sort_by=_ASC&os=...

2,629 games. You were searching incorrectly.

No, you are searching incorrectly because you didn't select "Games", just "Linux". If I do the same for Windows I get 13,112. So 2,629 is still only 20% of that.

We were discussing Linux numbers. Why would I select games for all systems? There's a neat drop-down at the top menu where you can select games for each category. You chose "Linux" AND "Linux/SteamOS", which artificially lowered the numbers. I'm not sure that was on purpose, but it was a rather convenient nerfing of the numbers.

Further, despite your attempt to move the goalposts, my original statement still stands: 50% of current releases have a Linux port.

You did say that "my numbers are old" after quoting your 50% number for a completely different statistic. So you moved the goal posts, not I.

But the search links speak for themselves, thanks. Not sure who you're trying to convince here.

(Thanks for putting your spin on it though - it's always entertaining to watch people twist numbers so that they sound good for their argument. 50% of current releases (probably of mostly crappy indie games) certainly sounds much better than 20% of existing titles.)

I guess I'd also like some evidence for your 50% number, which nobody has seen yet. Anyway - enjoy having half the games that I do because of your fanatical ideology!

With this post, your replies have reached XKCD-386 compliance.

Well, according to you at least. I won't be letting it concern me too much ;)

Even with that, "about 15% of Steam games run on Linux" applies to the large, existing body of software on Steam. Many of those have been around for 10+ years.

you should probably add "natively" to your quote. WINE makes those numbers far higher.

Linux has more games I currently care about than Windows XP. That's a small list and doesn't consist of much more than Civ 5, Cities Skylines, Witcher 3. Witcher 3 doesn't run on XP.

Reasons to use Linux for gaming:

- I save $100 by not buying Windows

- I don't have to worry about administering two OS's

- I don't have to ever wait for Windows updates. I boot into Windows so infrequently that it upgrades pretty much every time I do so.

- I don't have to shut down all my work programs and windows that I have open in Linux to reboot into Windows

Frankly, it's the last one that's the biggie. My computer often has virtual desktops, windows, editors, VM's and browsers open for 3-5 different projects, and it's just annoying to start those up again.

That's pretty much what I've come to. Linux is the way forward. Not Windows, and not Mac.

Most of my toolchain exists in Linux, and much of it is developed and tested in Linux before anywhere else. WINE allows most windows programs to run, and do so well. WINE plus X allows x tunneling like Citrix, but over ssh.

And if I need a Windows VM, I can spin one up relatively easily. Admittedly, I just get a recent TPB Win10 install with activation removed/emulated, so I can do whatever meager testing I need to do.

workwise, in many cases yes (mine included, it's even better!) multimedia wise, NOK. most games somehow run != all games run without issue, 100% Win performance. for many devices drivers suck - not linux fault, but no user really cares.

It is definitely a case of "good enough," not "perfect." But Windows is not without its warts, so it's a question of which warts you are willing to put up with.

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