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?
A lot of stuff runs with windows emulation as if it’s native. It’s the same method the steam deck uses and so Valve actively do work to keep it working. The main problem is games with heavy anti-cheat.
Generally, yes. I think so.
See above.
There’s .NET libraries for Linux, but things have to be recompiled to use them.
The distribution maintainer will issue updates on a regular basis. Update procedure is different for different distros, but all have a push-button update scheme. It’s pretty solid these days.
Keep your system up to date with security updates, and you’ll tend to be fine. Smaller user base tends to mean that there’s far less malware. Antivirus isn’t necessary.
Obviously phishing scams don’t care what OS you’re on, so mind what you click.
AMD ones are very solid.
Nvidia ones can be a pain from what I hear, but I don’t buy green.
No.
That said… You can always wipe a disk when you install an OS.
Download a few Live-USB images and try them out. You don’t need to install them to get a desktop and a browser up. You can see if there’s any compatibility issues with your hardware.
Whichever works for you, go with it.
Proton is a compatibility layer, not an emulator. The binary is running on the bare metal CPU, just like on Windows. It’s only the system and API calls that are translated to their Linux equivalents. That’s why the performance is basically the same, unlike a hardware emulator.