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Comment by ktizo | Hacker News Reader

PC games players are speed junkies. If this all goes through, then I would not be surprised to see games players migrate to linux in droves.

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They're 'irritant avoiders', not 'speed junkies'. Once you get a framerate that's fluid, the drive to up speed even further is largely confined to a tight niche. Computers are generally fast enough now - I used to know a few overclockers back when it made a difference, now I don't know any.

>Computers are generally fast enough now

No, not really. There is still lots of room for improvement, especially if you want high resolution (retina or large display), 3D, multi-monitor configuration, and/or high levels of anti-aliasing. And providing stable 60FPS on 1080p can be difficult if you have mid-end or couple of generations old hardware.

And that's probably why we're not going to get a retina macbook air anytime soon. I don't think a GPU that is fast enough to give a good experience on retina-level resolutions could be put in a MBA without severe consequences related to heat.

I don't know, the current macbook air can drive 2 large external displays.

Not to mention input lag, and display lag.

I thought "fast enough now" explicitly excluded hardware a couple of generations old.

That was reference to the fact that current mid-end is fairly equivalent to couple generations old high-end.

If you read my comment again, I wasn't saying that overclockers no longer exist. They don't exist in the droves that they used to - computers are fast enough now for most gamers to have acceptably fluid FPS.

Those gamers that demand 1080p@60Hz under load are a niche, not the standard for 'pc gamers'. And for those who demand it, shelling out a few extra dollars for hardware that exists (previously it didn't) is much easier than messing around with hardware voltages and crossing your fingers that your gpu is one of the lucky ones.

And frankly, the idea that gamers will flock en masse to linux for a few FPS is utterly absurd.

A bit of a generalization there. For all of the players cranking away at Starcraft II, Quake III, and Counter Strike, you have plenty of "slow" players enjoying games like Skyrim, a gazillion indie games, etc.

Oh, and Farmville ;)

Usually the gaming community does not care about open source.

Gamers use whatever platform their favorite games are available on.

I really don't see this happening. They might give it a try, sure, but I'd bet the lion's share of them would be back on Windows in a week. Linux is just not as easy to use for most people, and when push comes to shove they'll go back where they feel safe knowing how things work, and knowing that things will work in the first place.

I know many people are diehard about Linux, but it's a big commitment to switch and it isn't easy. Even so, many users might make the switch to find Linux seems to introduce a lot of headache and perceived restrictions on capabilities that Windows doesn't. Sure, they could probably tweak their way past the difficulties, but after troubleshooting on a wiki or in forums for a couple of hours it would lose the flavor for the masses.

Given how ridiculously easy it is on most hardware to install a second ubuntu partition on a windows box these days, I am not sure that is really too much of an issue.

Also, the least hassle I have had with migrating people to linux has been with people who really have no idea about computers, possibly as they have no expectations of how things should be and don't fiddle with things as much.

And besides, there is no real switching. I run osx, windows7 and linux mint, mostly, (often on the same computer, although I have found triple boot on hackintoshes to be a bit temperamental). Using a new OS doesn't mean you no longer use the old one. It doesn't restrict you really at all, it just gives you more perspective and a wider range of expertise. I highly recommend it. Linux mint is not a bad place to start as it is compatible with ubuntu (and therefore debian, to a large extent), but currently has a bit more polish. - http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

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