<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gregor @ Aug 28 2007, 01:58 AM) [snapback]307240[/snapback]</div>
Quote:
I am thinking of making a linux build but before i do i need some information (and money  ).
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My primary machine is an Ubuntu linux box and I do a ton of gaming on it, so hopefully I can provide you with some useful info. To answer some of your questions:
System specs - Linux has come a long way in the last few years, but progress has a cost. Not all that dissimilar to Windows XP, many linux distributions are fairly "heavy" and take a decent machine just to run the OS with good performance. Eye candy features like compiz & beryl (which give Windows Vista style desktop effect, actually much more advanced that what Vista has to offer) are the main culprit. Any PC you can buy new these days should run it well though.
My box has a 64-bit AMD Sempron processor @ 2.25GHz, 768 MB ram, and a GeForce4 TI4600 video card. Although that GPU is a little dated, it's still pretty fast and much more powerful that integrated graphics solutions. Some of the newer games I play on the box include Doom 3, Quake 4 and Unreal Tournament 2004. However, those are
native linux games. If I had to run them through either Wine or a VM I doubt they would be playable.
Wine & Dosbox vs. virtual machine - It's my opinion that Wine and Dosbox are vastly superior solutions to running Windows on a VM. Yes, there are games that just won't run under Wine. However, these are generally the latest & greatest that PC gaming has to offer, and it's unlikely one could get them to run at an acceptable frame rate through a Windows VM either.
Note: There is a gaming specific fork of Wine called Cedega. Cedega supports more features of the Windows API, and thus supports more games. The downside? Cedega is not free. You have to pay a nominal subscription fee monthly to get the updates.
Word, Excel & other "must have" apps - I think you'll find that there are native linux programs to satisfy most of your needs. Open Office for example can do nearly everything MS Office can. Ubuntu has three different ways to install new software, two of which are as simple as a few mouse clicks, so it's easy to find and install what you need.
Final thoughts - I highly recommend Ubuntu as an alternative to Windows. Not only is it cost effective -
Free 
k: but I've found it to run more smoothly, support almost all the Windows based games I want to play, it's inherently resistant to viruses, spyware, etc. and with Beryl installed it's downright gorgeous to look at.