id just downgrade to windows xp and a gig of ram extra:)

He might not be able to downgrade to XP. Some companies are douches and have been make proprietary hardware and drivers just for Vista and Vista alone. The workarounds for making XP work are hardly worth the time.

I used to duelboot XP and Ubuntu, then, I realized I was tired of having to switch over to XP to play games. I really like Ubuntu, but, I also like PC gaming. And my computer wasn't powerful enough to handle WINE. Though, if yours is, then go for it.

What do you mean? Wine is just as fast if not faster than Windows. It is not an emulator. Any problems you experienced would be with the graphics drivers, which is because GPU manufacturers don't care.

http://wiki.winehq.org/BenchMark-0.9.33

Here is 3DMark:

Those will all run fine but you need the proper hardware and the proper version of linux. You also need to be willing to go in and add/adjust code, most of it you can look up.

Ignore this.

What I mean is different distributions such as Fedore or Red had. You can go read maya for linux install compatability if you don't believe me. Most of the code I was talking about was moving it around and it was mayas code.

I do believe Ubuntu is the best choice for Maya if I remember correctly.

Their website says it is compatible with Ubuntu. Sorry, I thought you meant in general. Usually application/OS compatibility is not an issue because you can compile it yourself* if you have the source and then it will always work.

*And therefore you don't have to because someone else already has.

For the kind of work you want to do, Linux is very good as that's what's used in many professional studios, but the software are VERY expensive, so I doubt you'd gain anything really.
But as you paid for them on Windows, you can ask for the Linux versions and they should give them to you without problems.

^ I'm pretty sure He has illegal software

@Game_Boy yeah I was just reffering to specific instantis with maya witch can be a pain on any OS