buying notebook :p

[SirFrog]

I would recommend the latest Ubuntu for a first-time Linux user, or possibly Mint or Mageia if you feel like so. You can have a look at http://distrowatch.com/ to get a good idea. There's also the fact that they're all free.

As for gaming, a search for Linux + SteamOS on Steam gives us a list of 1887 games at the moment of writing. I'm unsure how well your hardware is supported by drivers and such, but there are usually a solution to most such problems.


Oh yeah, that's an alternative too. SteamOS. It's a Linux distro specifically designed to run games.

Anyway, if Linux is not an option, stay away from XP unless you really have to. It's very unsafe since Microsoft pulled support from it. I'd say Windows 7 is a solid option, and 8 (since 8.1) is apparently very good as well, although I have no personal experience of it. Windows 10 (the Release Candidate edition) is apparently still buggier than a warm, wet summer in a swamp.

[Bamboori]

steamos looks like a nice thing!
maybe ill go with dual booting stramos and win8.1

do you know how good steamos performs againt ubuntu/lubuntu/other linux distros?
cause while its obviously optimized for gaming its probably aimed at high performance pcs

[Boop]

The biggest problem with linux currently (and the only reason I don't switch over to it) is the fact that graphics drivers are terrible. At least for ATI. Nvidia allegedly isn't as bad as long as you don't care about being on the bleeding edge of kernel/X Server releases.

SteamOS is optimized to get games to work, not for performance. However, SteamOS/Ubuntu/Debian are probably good choices, since they are "supported" by Steam. I wouldn't really get my hopes up for better performance on linux though.

[Hellblazer]

As i mention, get windows if your focus is gaming or else you are gonna cry.