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?

  • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
    0·
    11 hours ago

    Here’s the problem: what you just did can be done with literally any distro. There are anecdotal stories of every single distro on earth being broken. Even non-linux distros, windows and macos have such stories.

    Do you have any actual statistical evidence that fedora works less often than mint?

    I’ve given it to quite a few people and nobody has had any issues. There are anecdotal stories of literally every single distro failing for somebody, them going to another distro and it just working.

    here’s a counter example: https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/53716147/18213941

    “UPDATE 2: Ok, Fedora seems waaaay more stable than Ubuntu (and Mint). No strangeness like before…”

    And their problems were MUCH worse than yours.

    I have cancelled out your one claim with this, we can’t make progress until there’s proper statistics, no amount of anecdotal stories will make fedora less stable or more stable than mint.

    less up to date software is a double edged sword, if you don’t have statistics I don’t think you can really make the claim that mint just works when fedora/bazzite don’t.

    Then there’s the things that are objectively broken in mint for everyone until cinnamon properly supports wayland:

    1. Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
    2. Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
    3. Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.
    4. HDR
    5. mixed refresh rate and dpi display configurations.
    • GoodEye8@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      10 hours ago

      We’ve already established that a lot of people will recommend Mint. What do you think, why do a lot of people recommend Mint?

      • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
        0·
        9 hours ago

        Simple, it was the best choice for a long time and hasn’t done anything to piss people off.

        it’s no longer the best choice but mint people are still happy so they still recommend it even though it is objectively the wrong choice to start with for a beginner.

              • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
                0·
                7 hours ago

                Back then ubuntu had pretty much all of linux cornered, the vast majority of distros were ubuntu based or ubuntu adjacent, and ubuntu was beloved, however, it came with a number of flaws, mint just rectified those flaws and was otherwise basically just ubuntu.

                By being ubuntu based and getting rid of the stuff that made people angry, you ended up with a highly supported, beloved distro. These days things have changed, however, fedora is just as if not more well supported than ubuntu, same with arch based distros.

                • GoodEye8@lemm.eeEnglish
                  0·
                  6 hours ago

                  The only reason Mint is suggested to beginners is because it’s “a highly supported, beloved distro”? A reason that has very little to do with beginners?

                  • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
                    0·
                    6 hours ago

                    That does NOT have very little to do with beginners, being a highly supported distro is one of the most important things for beginners, having guides for how to do things written specifically for your distro is fantastic for new people.

                    It being beloved is why it’s recommended, yes, and that doesn’t benefit new people, but that’s an obvious reason why one might recommend it…

                    There’s also the fact that it’s designed to be easy to use, but that also applies to fedora, and fedora is significantly more well-developed, so it’s not really relevant here.