Basically the forced shift to the enshittified Windows 11 in october has me eyeing the fence a lot. But all I know about Linux is 1: it’s a cantankerous beast that can smell your fear and lack of computer skills and 2: that’s apparently not true any more? Making the change has slowly become a more real possibility for me, though I’m pretty much a fairly casual PC-user, I don’t do much more than play games. So I wrote down some questions I had about Linux.
Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?
Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?
If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?
Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?
How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?
How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?
Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?
Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?
And also, what distro might be best for me?
Depends. Single player games are basically a non-issue. Multiplayer games however? The major anti-cheat systems support linux but it’s up to the Devs. They can (and many do) disable support for it regardless if it runs well on linux.
I’m not going to say “yes”, because modding can be dodgy, but in my experience I have never had any difference.
Could you narrow it down to some programs? The only answer here is “It depends”.
Depends on the framework, but .NET is open source and supported on Linux
Ehhhhhh…yes but no. OpenSource does mean you loose security through obscurity. But it also means you have a large community of people auditing the code for said vulnerabilities. The decentralized nature of the Linux ecosystem also means bugs can be fixed faster.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter. The same rules apply as Windows. Keep your system updated, don’t be an idiot, and you’ve solved most security issues.
AMD? Generally yes.
NVIDIA? …better than it was a few years ago. Best to ask around about your specific model
Theoretically but that’s true of all software (including windows). You’ll be fine, don’t sweat this.
You click the “Update” button in your Distros “App Store” (it’s not an app store but…essentially the same thing) or type in the upgrade command into a Command Line. Then you walk away for a few minutes, brew a cuppa, comment on the weather, and then get back to it. Occasionally you might need to restart but it’s not too common.
Now…there’s a lot more complexity here that I almost wrote up, but for someone new? This is all you need to know.
“Just tell me what to use”: That would be Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. It’s simple, it has everything you’ll want, it looks nice.
If you want some other options that are popular with beginners you can look at:
Watch some videos on them and decide which one looks like the one you would like to use. Just focus on the UI because that’s the only real important thing you’d need to worry about right now. You can go into the more advanced options when you have a good foundation.