Off topic but curious. Perhaps I should start a new thread but ...@ Glen or anyone who cares to respond :You and many others have a more decent/current system, how do you get such a system - are they Dell's, HP's, etc. or custom ?If I were to go custom, I could probably build one seeing the videos on Youtube and Newegg on how to build one, but I am a bit too impatient and would probably need significant hand holding. What is the best approach, in your opinion, on how to acquire a "custom" machine ?

Do your research, and most definitely have a look through the hardware forums here at Avsim. There are a lot of smart, very experienced users here to give you a hand, and their all (most) building flight simulation systems. I built my first pc back in 1987, wow, how old am I, and other than my laptops, phones and tablets, I've never bought a over the counter desktop computer since. You'll be pretty hard pressed to find a computer from a store or shop any better that what you can do yourself. Even then, to get something similar is going to cost you a fair bit more to have someone else build it for you.GlenEdit: Just to give you an idea of cost, I just looked at the receipt for my system from Feb 2011, and the cost was $2091 Canadian (Computers Canada), minus the 3 monitors, which I got from Newegg.ca for $110 Canadian each. They were very competitive price wise, and only an hour from where I live, so I could go and spend the day picking everything out I wanted. So, total cost was close to $2500 Canadian.Here's the last pc computer I bought over the counter, man I loved this thing. Shortly after I started building my own. This Atari was the model without a hard drive, everything on floppy disc. If memory serves me correctly, I think the 20mb hard drive was $900, I could be wrong there, but it was a lot of money, never did get one.Specs: NAME PC MANUFACTURER Atari TYPE Professional Computer ORIGIN U.S.A. YEAR 1987 END OF PRODUCTION Unknown BUILT IN LANGUAGE Unknown KEYBOARD Full stroke keyboard CPU Intel 8086 SPEED 8 mHz CO-PROCESSOR Optional 8087 Math coprocessor RAM 512 KB VRAM Unknown ROM Unknown TEXT MODES 40 x 25 / 80 x 25 GRAPHIC MODES All CGA, EGA and Hercules resolutions COLOrsc 16 among 64 in EGA mode, monochrom in Hercules mode SOUND Beeper SIZE / WEIGHT Unknown I/O PORTS Centronics, RS232c, Mouse, Monitor BUILT IN MEDIA one 5.25'' disk-drive OS MS DOS, GEM POWER SUPPLY Built-in power supply unit

I don't disbelieve what you are saying. what I am saying is because it isn't the best on your setup doesn't mean it isn't on everyone elses.

OK Glen, with an Ati GPU and driver, you may not notice a difference between Windows and GNU/Linux. It's not the same situation with an Nvidia GPU where the driver is different. It has been confirmed by Phoronix in X-Plane 9.45 (with a FPS Test and not approximative screen comparisons), and also by Nvidia users after installing FlightGear and X-Plane 10 on both operating systems.Egbert has high end hardware with an Nvidia GPU. He can expect a lot more than only "10-15 fps flying the default Baron cockpit view" and it's a lot easier to install and test a new operating system like Ubuntu than cleaning Windows. Trying another OS takes less time than removing all the software bloat that makes Windows slow for games.

I don't want to get in to an OS war as I pretty much like them all and it really depends on what you need to run as to what OS you use. I doubt there is anyone here who has used linux longer than I have as I remember downloading it from a bbs as a single disk when it booted straight in to root as there was no login yet. I moved to linux from minix and coherent unix, I was a real unix geek! Nvidia and ATI are fierce competitors in the GPU market so to suggest that Nvidia would run so much better on linux than on windows seems to imply that it is far any away a better GPU if ATI doesnt show any improvement on linux. Common sense tells me that if this is the case the problem is possbily with xplane because other software performs excellent on windows across both nvidia and ATI. I appreciate your point of view but as a first suggestion, to change os's, is a little drastic and assumes that xplane is his number one priority above all else. If we all know that he should get better FPS on his current system and OS then we should always start there.

If I were to install Linux, would I have to reformat a hard-drive?I don't like partitions, so I would just use my SSD. Can I keep one install of XP-10 that could be accessed by both windows and Linux or do i have to make two.Also are there drivers for Say the Saitek yolk and CH throttle. Are they even needed?

If I were to install Linux, would I have to reformat a hard-drive?I don't like partitions, so I would just use my SSD.Can I keep one install of XP-10 that could be accessed by both windows and Linux or do i have to make two.Also are there drivers for Say the Saitek yolk and CH throttle. Are they even needed?

Yes, you would usually have to format part of your HDD to put linux on it. If you have a partition visible by both os's I think you could have both using the same install. I have copied my windows install to my osx machine and it ran with the osx executable. I dont know if ch and saitek supply their drivers for linux. They are needed if you want to use the scripting and programming. They will work out of the box as a game controller with buttons and axis but if you use more than that through each vendors drivers, e.g. the ability to program an axis to send keystrokes then you will need something additional.