i would like to be able to use the start bar and fallout 3 in linux. can i do that?

well, start bar is designed for windows and its just a GUI implementation to improve usability. Ubuntu has got Panels at the top. Still if you want a "start button" like windows and want to access your application throught that, i give you "Gnomenu". Here's how you can install it :-
Open the terminal and type in this :-

Quote:sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnomenu-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnomenu

Make sure you are connected to the internet while working this out.

Now the thing comes to games, so let me be very clear, Fallout 3 i think requires Shader support so it would be very difficult for you to play this kind of game in linux platform as it is not available for Ubuntu/ Linux natively i think. So you can install wine to get it to play. wine just creates a comaptibility player of linux kernel for windows apps to run on linux. To install wine, open ther terminal and type :-

Quote: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.3

After installation of wine, run it and use it to install fallout. Fallout 3.1 is also supported on wine. foe details see http://appdb.winehq.org/