Play my games on Ubuntu/Windows 8?

I'm going to dual boot either Windows 8 Consumer preview or Ubuntu on my Mac. I would rather do Ubuntu because I like the UI a lot better, but if my games don't work then I'll use Windows. So can I play my Steam/Origin games (Battlefield 3, MW2, MW3) in Linux? Will they perform like crap compared to if I did it on Windows?

If I can't use Ubuntu, should I use Windows 7 or 8?

Thanks.

Use windows 7 for the best compatibility/ performance. There's no guarantee games will work on ubuntu, and they may perform like crap.

I may end up doing that, but I need to know whether Ubuntu can play games well. If it can't (which it probably can't) should I use Windows 7 or 8?

So you think Windows 7 would outperform 8?

Yeah I can play them. They worked fine on my old Bootcamp partition. So definitely not Ubuntu, so its between Windows 7 and 8. Any idea which would have better performance?

Highly suggest Ubuntu isn't used as AMD/ATI drivers haven't been properly ported as there is no official support from them also the compatibility rate for games in general is extremely low only a few games run almost flawlessly on Ubuntu. If you want to learn more about Linux distros look at more than just the buntu kernel, try fedora or microcore aswell. W8 is a waste of time unless you care about startup times.

When I had Ubuntu on my PC, it ran most windows programs fairly well, I played through the entire campaign of Halo using Wine, the only issue I had was the mouse was a bit jumpy, but apart from that it was nearly perfect.
I'm not sure how more modern games would run though...

Do not play it under any debian based distribution, as said above if you are using ATI. Anything else should work fine from my little experience with gaming.