Windows XP because basically every game nowadays requires XP or higher. Problem with that is just running xp nearly burns out my computer... neva mind running Flight Simulator X wif full gfx

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Honestly I would say that Vista would be the best operating system for running games, were it not for the fact that it has flaws.

The first is that it is still too new. Because of this fact alone it is still full of bugs and issues that are still needing to be resolved. Over time, Microsoft should be able to fix some, if not most of the bugs. Until then, however, it will be XP that is top.

The reason Vista would be the better choice were it not for all the bugs are because of how smoothly it runs, along with all of the protection on it file wise. Although some people hate how it requests permission for every file you want to edit(A lot don't know that you can actually disable that protection), I find it to be a great feature. It helps keep people from being able to hack you through games. For example, on some games you can easily implement virii into the maps that are automatically downloaded and ran. Vista would keep that from being able to happen(Unless, of course, you were running the program in Administrator mode).

The other great thing about Vista is that you can take things like external hdd's or memory sticks and take some of that space to become like RAM. I have not really messed with that feature yet, so I don't know a lot about it, because I'm already fine ram-wise. It could help those who have a small amount of ram, however.

Overall I'd still have to vote Vista as best for gaming, although it does have it's downsides. The positives more than take up for negatives.

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Well we all remember that Mac operating system was just Linux games where non-existent and slowly game producers are designing cross platform games. Although linux is a different story in the sense that the programming is a bit more complex in the sense that the designers would have to create a program inside the program in order for it to run, I think. Like dre said its all about the drivers and until someone designs a flavor of linux for gaming you won't see much support for it.

As compared to the Windows operating systems on this topic its XP hands down just because every designer has been building around that operating system in terms of graphic support, sound support, and some other stuff.

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Sorry to say, but WINE doesn't get the job done when it comes to trying to compare it with Windows XP. One of the most annoying things about it for me is that it only works for games it's been built to work for. For example, if I rack out a game or a tech demo and try to run it with WINE, I might want to think again, because it wont do squat. Tried it several times and I've just given up on trying to make games on and for Linux (without completely replacing all the programs I've bought and am used to). Also, the support for my favorite games on WINE is rather rickety, with BF2 not working completely. However, once you add Cedega into the equation, Linux then becomes a much more formidable gaming system. However, it's not free .


If you run a good enough machine, games shouldn't crash anyways. That goes for Windows 2000 and all the other OS's people have been recommending. These days, you'll probably have a much harder time trying to find drivers for those OS's also.

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As sad as I am to say it, Windows XP is probably the best gaming platform. I run linux exclusively, and it's difficult getting a lot of games running properly, since they're all designed for windows. If (when) linux has a larger share of the market, it'll be just as good (way better, actually), since games will be designed for linux machines as well.

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