This article is very much subjective and bares no relevance for those that like pretty graphics and consolegames. But I know for a fact that there are a lot of people out there who couldn’t care less about graphics and are interested in gameplay only. For those people I have a shocking revelation: Cease buying new computersystems, stop working with the bloatware that calls itself Windows and start discovering the hundreds and hundreds of browserbased games out there. All you need is a browser and broadband.
From my own experience I can assure you the following, Ubuntu installs better, performs better and connects to the internet (except wireless) better then Windows ever will be able to. I am talking about Vista here, but even XP drops the ball against Ubuntu. Take a look yourself, you will find it is clean, smooth and humane: http://www.ubuntu.com. The Humane reference is no coincidence. I think the secret behind Ubuntu is that it does not have the computer as central theme but the user. It comes with a good selection of programs, but no more then needed. It comes with an excellent application to install more programs, should you need them, without having to pay for them. It looks smart (once you fixed the resolution and refreshrate, I do wish they would consider including proprietary drivers for ATI and GeForce straight away!) and it performs ‘out of the box’. My father in law, who is 80 odd and although enthusiastic also quite cynical about computers, has now installed it, and after I installed the ATI driver he was quite impressed!
This elaboration about Ubuntu is necessary because it proved a difficult decision for me to switch to Ubuntu completely. I am a fanatic gamer, and although all the games I love have no graphic grandeur whatsoever (Football Manager, Civilization and other strategy games) I couldn’t bare leaving them behind because I can’t play them on Linux. Yet now I bit the bullet I don’t miss them that much at all. Basically this is due to the fact that I play browser games now, Tribalwars being the most obvious (I am game-admin so am I really playing???) but I also try my hand at other games, even silly Flash games can be fun every now and then.
This made me think, the future of PC gaming is changing, and the developers are cottoning on to this at an increasing rate. Football Manager will launch a proper online version where you play in leagues against other real life people, finally! Game publishers are starting to invest in new technologies whereby games get ‘mirrored’ on your computer and you pay for the time that you actualy play instead of a fixed-fee. They are also increasingly investing in browsergames.
So good news for people that are getting fed-up with the cost of playing PC games, things are about to get fairer and you can use Linux from now on to get proper computing!
