My old Win box won't run higher than Win98 - I have just changed a friends desktop from Fedora to Ubuntu - I just finally gave up - upgrades were becoming a total nightmare - Ubuntu worked much better - but there are tiny different glitches.

I just bought a new AMD V120 style Tosihba Win 7 laptop - it was just as cheap at about AUD$700 as buying a new desktop, and a secondhand laptop at about the same price is 5 years old and doesn't have Win 7 - which is the most useful/workable Win system for several years.... Still looking at Linuxing it - one big hassle is fighting things like the 'autoindexing' crap, etc - which makes the system think that you NEED 150 Gb - not the 30 Gb really needed to keep Win 7 as some stupid hidden INDEX.DAT file is probably not wanting to be shifted/deleted!

""since he has a lot of sophisticated computer games he wants to put on this new computer, does this type of thing by default run in the Windows environment or does Linux even go there?""

"sophisticated computer games" -> means most likely cannot work fully/reliably under WINE - if you have Windows Games (especially the latest ones with massive graphical capabilities), you almost always MUST run them under Windows - given up trying to run under WINE many old games that I loved under DOS/versions up to Win 98.

If he is 'committed to running windows' due to needing compatibility with the educational institution, then we need to work out WHY his desire/need to run a Linux system - but only because there are so many possible choices of systems, sizes, and capabilities.

Frankly Firefox is the best browser I have used - for far too many reasons to list here - and there are so many plugins (many thousands!) to do so many things, that there is really no choice for me. You can run it on either Win or Linux, so that's not a reason to 'need' Linux, actually - as indeed the many other useful Open System apps others mention mostly will be available to work on Windows too.

If he 'needs' Linux for particular courses - then one would expect that help/advice would be readily available (within the course at least!) on how to set up the dual boots, wht style of Linux, etc, what HW is useful, etc.

One is not 'restricted' to 'needing' 'full versions' such as Ubuntu if one 'needs' some sort of Linux - there are versions that will boot off optical disks and/or USB sticks - even the tiny 'business card CDs' or the good old floppy disk! Many of these do not even need to be installed to the Hard Disk. There are also very small foot print versions designed to be minimal some are called 'Tiny Linux', now there are even "Micro Linux' systems - some only need as little as 10 Mb - that's Mb - of RAM to run. There are even special versions designed to run off those tiny 'notebooks'. One can also often keep a Linux on a thumb drive' that will allow a cold boot on any PC you plug in to taking your fixed data with you too.

Sad as I am to say it - if you buy a system that bundles Win - especially 7 - then the later addition of Linux capabilities is no problem at all, really - from a technical viewpoint! :-)