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?

      • Fatur_New@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        Old NVIDIA series (not wayland problem but very new users will blame wayland because old NVIDIA series are work on Xorg), VNC

          • Fatur_New@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            5 hours ago

            Vnc works perfectly

            Oh, it is work. Good then

            I think we’re talking 10 or more years old with the nvidia thing…

            Yup

                • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
                  1·
                  3 hours ago

                  I thought you were referring to having to install ancient drivers that are no longer properly supported, that is still a problem on x.org, but if we use nouveau, the problems go away for the most part.

                  it appears the only real issue with nvidia drivers from back then on wayland is accelerated xwayland according to the arch wiki. I don’t think we shouldn’t be recommending wayland because over 10 year old gpus have a relatively minor issue but still work.

                  Sure, if you have ancient hardware, I actually recommend XFCE, but outside of this one niche case, it’s not wise to be recommending it.

                  Once steam and proton/wine get rid of xwayland… there won’t be many xwayland apps that are used on a daily basis, however, when that happens, I don’t think this will still stand.